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A Recent Midnight
On the Friday after that Thursday I saw the naked lady out front I did not go to work. I was too tired and a little bit upset, although the degree to which I was upset lessened as the minutes and hours passed and I was able to put perspective on a thing I would have just as soon not witnessed, or thought about.
I saw my boss the next Tuesday or Wednesday and he asked me did I not go to work on Friday. I told him I didn't but went in on Saturday to take care of the thing that needed taken care of. He was just curious because one of the supervisors had called him that day and bugged him two or three times and my boss put him off by assuring him I would be there. "No, I never was there that day," I told him. And with bags probably still under my eyes from the lack of sleep that night and a tone I guess he recognized from the previous seven years of dealing with me, I asked him, "do you want to know why?" His too quick and adamant, "No!" offended me some but that's okay, I'll get the story out of my system eventually.
Actually, on that Saturday I'd worked I was able to bounce the story off on Dave, the sheetrock guy. Dave was doing some repair work and I was painting the kitchen a Chinese restaurant red color. Dave drives in from Mississippi and says stuff like--I may be a Mississippi Redneck, but I'm not stupid. I would say that neatly sums up first and second impressions concerning Dave. Also, he is a good listener. I was well into my telling and he had asked some good questions and made substantial obervations long before he queried me-- "well, was she uh, I mean, how did she look?" She was blond, I mean blond, truly, and she had that blond skin to match, but, you know, under the circumstances there was nothing sexy about it, and well, she appeared, I mean, her behavior was such, I mean, she seemed demented. Dave nodded knowingly.
I was asleep but I guess I wasn't because I heard a few words spoken out there on the street and then the slamming of a car door and the screeching of tires. Watchdog started barking and I tried to go back to sleep. You can't get up for every little activity around here or you would never get any rest.
I did eventually get up and look out though, and that's when I saw her, the completely naked white woman, standing in the middle of the street, in the middle of the block, under the street lamp, her clothes strewn around her, in a black neighborhood in front of the only white guy's house for blocks and blocks around and I knew immediately I was outmatched, that the circumstances were beyond my ability to effectively control them. And that I was going to have to deal with the emotion of feeling cowardly.
You are supposed to help people if they are thrown naked from a vehicle in front of your home.
I know but...
How could there be a but, maybe she was injured and needed emergency medical care and...
No she was okay, trust me. She spent a good while being naked. She did pirouettes under the street lamp. She at one point was flat on her back, with knees raised, and just laying there, mumbling, and idly tapping her left foot against the asphalt. I saw all of her. There were no contusions or abrasions and certainly no deep, gaping, bleeding wounds that needed attending to...
Head injury perhaps, certainly not something you would see any evidence of from a distance, and perhaps this head injury was cause for her behavior; and you're not a doctor, are you?
Naw, Ima housepainter.
I'm sure the world needs painting now and then.
I just didn't want anyone to think she was like my date, she wasn't my type, I don't have a social standing here, I am a blank slate and maybe I didn't want her and me to be a snapshot for the neighborhood. There is no way she would not look like she was my date if I just went out there and tried to reason with a woman who was at least feasibly a Tulane St. hooker who got taken for a bad ride and dumped naked in front of another white person's house. And then what, most obviously offering her a ride somewhere? And leaving the scene of a crime with a formerly naked hooker? I'm not denying the cowardice, but there was also a small meaure of good sense involved in my not dealing personally with this particular naked white woman.
You should have at least called the police.
Yes, I think I could do that. This incident was in fact the deciding factor in me finally getting a phone. So I got one now. I think I could call the police next time.
But a few days later you didn't call when that "crazy"? gentleman was under your house.
I think I could do it next time a naked lady shows up like that. I feel bad for her, but whataya? I mean she did not seem in any hurry whatsoever to put her clothes on. She just stood out there, for minutes, rambling about something I could only hear a few words of. She tried on her pants at one point. She rolled them up like, and maybe they were, pantyhose, but they were bell-bottomed and her top was unremarkable and I forget the shoes. But she had taken the pants off because when the three black chicks arrived she was again naked. It seemed the white chick was talking trash to the three black chicks because at one point one of the younger black girls called out--We trying to help you but you refusing it. And then the naked white woman said something the older of the black women did not like and she called the naked lady a white ho. The white woman was now sitting down in the middle of the street and she responded to this, in a conversational tone of voice, no, my daddy was black, my daddy was black. The three black women retreated up the street but came back a minute later and the elder woman got in an argument with the naked lady and ended up cold cocking her pretty hard upside the face. The three women then left for the second time. The effect of this regrettable physical jolt to her system was, happily, to focus her attention on getting her clothes back on and getting out of this unfamiliar neighborhood. Fully clothed she lingered at the Iberville corner. She called out to a man lurking at the Bienville corner, asking him for a light She kept calling up the block, do you have a light? Do you have a light? The man approached from the left and they talked and then she started following him back towards the Bienville corner, her on one sidewalk, him on the other. A police cruiser crawled up the street and after it passed the white woman crossed over and joined the black man and they exited stage left, following the cruiser.