Monday, November 24, 2003
Our Lady of Refuse
Some weeks I see her frequently; some weeks, less so. She wears the standard uniform - blue twill trousers, black leather oxfords, a blue cotton shirt with a label stitched over the warm swell of her breast… her hair, raven and wavy, is pulled back with a barrette so just the ends brush her broad shoulders. Her long lean arms, the color of caramel, move with confidence; her hands are manicured but her nails are sensibly short. Her face is round and strong and beautiful; her cheeks are lightly rouged but the cosmetics are superfluous. Her lashes are enticingly long; her eyes are large, dark and expressive.
When I see her, she’s usually doing trash can duty. She pops the grimy lids, removes the plastic liners and their contents, sprays the cans and lids with something unnaturally floral, installs new liners, closes up the cans. She moves efficiently and with the grace of a Madonna; she stands among the trash cans like a lotus emerging from stagnancy and rot. Her remarkable physique (as I am sure it must be) is hidden by her plain workday blues; the only jewelry she wears is a thin simple wedding band. So lovely she is: so regal in bearing, so serene in her movements, so sublime in her beauty…
She is on the custodial staff, making a living, working a job that has all the dignity of labor. Though there is filth all around her, the garbage is illuminated and beautified by her touch. She is so lovely and calm, working assiduously and with perfect self-containment, not looking up or around at the sea of faces streaming past her, faces that, on seeing her, twist with hunger and desire and just plain lust - men and women both, devouring her visually as she gazes with devout purity of intention into the garbage cans… They take her callously with their eyes and she, in return, gives up nothing, nothing at all.
If so many are willing to stare at her so blatantly that even I can see it in the span of the few moments it takes me to walk past her as she works, how many will be emboldened to speak to her, she whose only adornment signifies that she is not available? Yet they pursue her with words more filthy and ploys more exhausted than anything she finds in the dingy bins she services. As she simply tries to make a living, how much garbage does she really have to put up with?
