Dirty Rag, Dirty Water

            I watched him from the bus stop on Randolph Avenue, bobbing up and down like a fishing lure between the canary-colored taxi cabs. With all the remarkable structures and monoliths surrounding me, and with the thousands of combinations of color and clothing walking by, it is a wonder he stood out to me at all. But for some reason, he just did. He was smallish, and cigar-shaped; a shiny brown-skinned man with a bright-red bucket in one hand a dirty rag in the other. He moved through the line of cars, tapping on windows and tipping his tweed flat cap politely, whether the person inside the solicited vehicle obliged him or not. He wore a grubby Chicago Bears leather jacket and a toothy, pearly-white grin. As he progressed down the queue of potential customers, I watched his motions with rapt attention. He would approach a car from the driver’s side door, maybe give a quick whistle or a light pat on the windshield, and hold up his bucket and rag. Some of the cars were rusted Cadillacs, others were off-the-lot Benzes, but the man didn’t care. White folks, black folks, Asians, Hispanics, Jews; it didn’t matter to him, he just moved on down the line. It amazed me that in this ballet of motions, words were seldom if ever exchanged, yet I could hear the entire silent conversation unfold. I could see in his brown eyes earnestness intrinsic only to a certain type of person. It is the same look I see when I walk down Galloway Street in the Franklin projects, and I see the starving dogs that are so skinny their ribs jut out through their skin like the hands of prisoners through the bars of a jail cell. It is the same look one sees in the eyes of the death-row prisoner, wrongfully accused of his cellmates’ murder.  It is not a look that says “pity me”, but rather “mercy me”. This man’s eyes were not pleading, they were sincere. They said, “I am poor, I am unlucky, I am out of a job. Let me wash your window for a dollar.” Nothing more, nothing less. And perhaps not everyone on that cold November afternoon was doing it out of altruism, or even because they pitied the man. Maybe some just thought if they let him wash the window, then he’ll go away. Maybe some just thought their windshields needed washing. But almost every car that day had their windshield wash, and maybe only a handful actually needed it. This is love. There is a very old Catholic prayer that begins with the lines “ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est”: Where love and charity are, God is also. These acts of good will towards another man, these acts of charity and love, these are acts of God. They are not acts of ultimate sacrifice, or acts of extreme selflessness, but they are true acts of understanding. Here’s a poor black man, not looking for a hand out or pity, just looking for some consideration or compassion. It moves me to say that most people that day were happy to oblige.