That woman in Edmonton

EDMONTON, Alberta, sometime in 2009 — She was sitting on a bench near the library.

She was panhandling, but she didn’t look like a typical panhandler at the same time she did look like a typical panhandler.

Her clothes were shabby, but her skin was clear.

She looked young, perhaps late teens, early 20s. She looked healthy, at least by the standards of people you encounter on a street holding a cardboard sign.

Her eyes, though, had the weary look of eyes that had seen way, way too much. Wary, certainly. Sad, presumably. Angry, almost.

Maybe she was on drugs; maybe she had just been kicked out of somewhere; maybe she was just drifting and lost.

I wanted to ask her how she got there, how she came to be sitting on a bench in downtown Edmonton with a cardboard sign. I wanted to hear her whole story, or at least her side of it.

I was a foreigner in her country. I was a visitor in her city. I was about to be an interloper in her life. I approached her, fully ready to ask my questions.

Our eyes met for a second, maybe two.

I gave her $20. I kept walking. She didn’t say anything and neither did I.

I went back to my hotel and she … well, for all I know, she’s still sitting there.