VigilanceVoice

NYC-CC.COM
Monday--September 23, 2002—Ground Zero Plus 376
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Missing Fingers &
The Cross Of Terror
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by
Cliff McKenzie
   Editor, New York City Combat Correspondent News

       GROUND ZERO, New York City, September 23--I am sitting at Union Square, on a park bench in front of Lincoln's statue, next to a babbling man talking to himself, who is sitting next to a Middle Eastern young woman reading a book. 
        She is perhaps 20 or 22 at the most.   She has olive skin, and wears hoop earrings with Arabic inscriptions on them.   She is very attractive, and holds the spine of the book in the wedge of her left hand, somewhat hiding it from sight.  Her left  hand is badly deformed.  There is no middle finger.  What is left of her  thumb looks as though it had been honed by an electric pencil sharpener.   The remaining fingers are fragments of flesh and bone, appearing as though someone whittled on them with a sharp knife long ago.   Her other hand is perfectly normal.
       I am drinking my morning Starbucks, watching the people passing by--some hurried and harried, others wandering souls so lost they have given up finding themselves.   I have just deposited my granddaughter at her preschool and am looking for today's story.    I was told long ago everyone is a story and everything is the background for it.

     A homeless woman with unkempt grey frizzy hair and bloated unwashed skin deadened by the grime and filth of the city, asks for a cigarette.  She approaches timidly.  I nod and offer her one.   I am careful to take it out of the pack and hand it to her by the tip, so there is no physical contact.    I have learned the wandering souls carry with them the bacteria of the city.   She thanks me and shuffles off.
       I am taking notes of the man next to me, trying to comprehend what he is muttering under his breath.  It is intelligibly understandable.   He is having a conversation with himself, but it is nothing one can understand except to catch the word "wimpy"  and "whiney" and "whiner" that slip out of the mutterings.
       Another wandering soul approaches.  I think he is coming to me for a cigarette.   Instead he swerves to talk to the man next to me.  "Good morning, Robert."   His Voice is soft, and he doesn't wait for an answer.  He keeps moving toward the intersection of 18th and Broadway, where humanity is congested like the traffic, coming and going to all points of the compass.  
       The girl looks over at Robert whose Voice rises slightly.  Robert's head is hung or bowed, and he seems to be talking to the asphalt or his knee.  She offers him no disdain or disgust in her glance, but rather a look of compassion, and then immediately shifts her eyes back to the book she is reading.   She has Puma tennis shoes on,  Cordova colored with white trim, and a purple shirt and jeans--the sign of NYU student.   She keeps her left hand under the spine of the book, cradling it as she turns the pages with her beautifully sculpted right hand, a stark opposite of the other hidden under the book.

       A squirrel scurries up the tree in front of me.  Two days ago on the way to school the kids and I saw a squirrel without a tail.   I took pictures of it.  It appeared to be born that way rather than having its tail bobbed in some accident.   It looked quite different than the squirrel running up and down the tree in front of me today.  It reminded me of an airplane without tail, or a boat without a stern--so off balance.  The absence of a tail did not affect its behavior.   It performed as any squirrel might, dashing here and there for food, scampering when it found something to quickly  bury it and then returning to forage and hoard some more.
       I glanced at the Middle Eastern girl, wondering if she was born that way, or whether she was the victim of some tragic accident--a land mine that exploded, or perhaps a hand grenade.   
       I had seen many hands blown to pieces by hand grenades when I visited hospitals in Vietnam.   The disfigurement was similar, chunks of flesh carved away, whole fingers gone, tips gone.     One Marine had grabbed a live enemy hand grenade and was throwing it back when it went off behind his head, at the top of his throw.   Fortunately, it blew off major portions of his hand rather than his head.   
        The urge to ask the young woman about her hand grew in me, as did the urge to engage Robert in a conversation to find out how long his soul had been lost.    I felt a closeness to Robert because my real name was Robert before my father changed it to his, Cliff, just after I was born.   He preempted my mother's choice which the nurses had used until the preemption.
        Robert's head lolled.   I figured he was on some Thorizine-like medication, the kind that short-circuits the brain and tongue, and dredges one of the will to move, to interact in the space of normalcy.     He was probably in his mid forties, but it is always hard to say when a person becomes the tread of life, letting the world run over them.   His clothes were clean, his shoes new and fashionable, he wore socks, had glasses and a haircut--quite unlike the man who had come by earlier and greeted him.   His greeter had been disheveled, and wore the filth of the city as the woman had who bummed the smoke.  His hair was splayed out under his hat, and his skin a grimy soot-soaked color of the unwashed.

     I had just delivered my granddaughter to her school, and spent considerable time prior to taking her in combing her hair.  Today was school picture day, and my wife and older daughter (the mother of my 4our-year-old grand daughter) are in Montana attending my wife's mother's funeral.  Before leaving they had given explicit instructions on how to arrange Sarah's hair for the pictures, and in numerous conversations reiterated how to do it.   Last night I had washed it and put conditioner on it, then sprayed it with Shine and combed it and placed the hair bands in the proper places after numerous clumsy attempts.   I am no longer as skilled at fixing a young girl's hair as I was when my two daughters were little.  

     I suppose the attention to cleanliness with the grandkids sparked my awareness of the grime and filth of the city, attached to those who had given up on living life in the mainstream, and sought the fringes of existence to wait out death.
      I found it also peculiar that there would be the three of us sitting on a park bench in front of Lincoln's statue at Union Square--a Middle Eastern girl with a deformed hand, a man muttering to himself, and I, always in search of the wandering souls of life in hopes I might better understand my own.
      Both of the people next to me were rich stories, I was sure.  My hesitation to communicate with either of them was based not on fear or intimidation, but rather on the belief that not every story needs to be told.   Some stories belong to their authors.   
       But there was no doubt in my mind that both had been terribly Terrorized in their lives.   The beautiful Middle Eastern girl had a deformity she kept hidden, and I wondered how she felt carrying it around with her, being forced to explain why the rest of her was so attractive and her hand so mangled.   I thought of the Courage and Conviction it must take to overcome the victimization of whatever had happened, and what destiny had in store for her, or she thought it did.
       The same was true with Robert.   He didn't have the appearance of the common street person.  He was clean and well-dressed, an obverse to the majority of wandering souls in the city.   Yet every outward action suggested he was mentally inept, and obviously "one of the disenfranchised" yet not by appearance.    Casually, one might have thought of Robert as some eccentric college professor talking to himself, but had they heard the word "wimp" being used over and over, they would have known he was in the throes of self-degradation, beating himself up inside, Terrorizing his self worth.
       And there I was.   I was sponging it up.   Listening, watching.   
       I thought of the Terror of Terrorism.   I thought of how it haunts us all, and in some, it breaks through into the core of the soul, contaminating us forever with its bile.   I was hungry to know the source of each person's Terrorism today, but chose not to pursue it.    Both had adjusted to their Terror.  The girl wasn't afraid to sit outside and read a book.  Robert wasn't afraid to talk to himself.  And I wasn't afraid to take notes and wonder.

      Later, when I picked up my four-year-old granddaughter from pre-school, and we headed toward her brother's school to pick him up, she wanted to talk about my wife's mother's death.
       "Is Ga-Ga on the Cross?" she asked.
       I thought about the question.   "I don't know.  I think she's in Heaven," I said.
       "Did she have to go on the Cross first?"
      Again, I hesitated.   "No, I don't think so."
      "So how did she get to Heaven, G-Pa?"
      "An angle flew down and gave her a ride up, just like a taxi."
      "Did she have to pay?"
      "No...it's a free ride."
      "Oh," she answered in a tone not complete in its acceptance of my answer.  
      I thought about her question: "Is Ga-Ga on the Cross?"   I wondered if in a child's mind suffering was related to sacrifice.   Did a child relate pain to being crucified?   Or, the afterworld as a place where one hung in eternal agony?    I knew that many of us walked this earth in "crucifixion."   Regardless of our religious beliefs, we were stretched out on the Cross of Suffering.  Surely, Robert was this morning.   He was nailed to his Cross of Terrorism.
      I couldn't say if the young woman had resolved the Terror of her mangled hand.   I hoped she had, yet often that is wishful thinking that one can overcome such a malformation when the rest of you is perfectly normal.   I hoped she wasn't hanging on the Cross of Terror.
       The woman who bummed the smoke was on it.    She was carrying her Cross.   It was written on every wrinkle, and the filth of time had become her makeup, her Cover Girl.  

       Then there I was, observing everyone's Cross, and wondering if we all were crucified on a Cross of Terror and chose not to accept it.    I wondered if Vigilance was a claw hammer, designed to pull the nails out of our hands and feet so we might climb down and leap on the back of an angel and be swept up to Paradise.
        I knew I'd never know the answer.   The only thing I knew for sure was that I told my granddaughter her Great Grandmother wasn't on the Cross of Terror.