After spending hours on the road sweltering in traffic, I was in the home stretch, blocks away from my building. I pulled into the service road that ran parallel behind my building and Vineland. As I approached my building, I saw the bicycle Ice Cream Vendor, a staple of my neighborhood for as long as I can remember. I pulled to the side of the alley and eagerly flagged him down. It was the pick-me-up I needed. He stopped his bicycle next to my car, and both of us had the unspoken intention of making the transaction through my driver’s window.
Suddenly, a homeless woman in a tattered blue floral sundress jumped out of the street-level decorative shrubs below the first-floor balconies like a predatory animal. She quickly positioned herself between me and the Vendor and began an aggressive interrogation inches away from my face.
“What are you doing here? Are you with the Government? Did the Government send you to get me?”
“No. Not with the Government. I’m just buying ice cream from this man.” I recognized her. I had seen her trekking down the alley numerous times from my office window, having been drawn by her boisterous and chaotic rants.
“Oh, yeah?” She looked into my window and at my body. With disgust on her face, “You’re fat! You’re so fat!”
I shrugged, “I’m still getting ice cream. Do you want one?”
The Woman, taken aback, said, “You’re buying me food. You’ll pay for anything I want!”
The Vendor looked at me, and I nodded, “She can have whatever she wants. It’s okay, I’ll pay for it.”
The Woman verbally accosted the Vendor, snatched two bags of chips off the cart, and then spun to look at me, once again, inches from my face. “I was raped by Venus! My son is in jail! Sarah from the Government sees through my ears and controls my thoughts! …Are you Michelle?”
“No, I’m not Michelle,” I replied. The Woman’s complexion was the ashy color of road dirt and pollution. Her bushy hair didn’t fare much better. A three-inch from the scalp self-inflicted botch job, maybe once dirty blond, now gray with grit and loam. I aged her to be in her forties more by the intensity of her watery brown eyes than the lines on her face. She had all her teeth that I could see. They were straight, intact, and not terribly discolored. It was clear to me she wasn’t a hard drug user but had been on the streets for a while.
“What’s your name?”
“Kristine. What’s your name?” I had been looking for a homeless woman named Red who hung out at The Alley Music Studios during the 2000s. I was told she was living somewhere in the area, but I didn’t know what she looked like. If this was her, an interview would be challenging.
The Woman didn’t answer but eyed me suspiciously, “Are you friends with Stacey?”
“No.”
“I bet you are friends with her, aren’t you? Don’t lie! Don’t lie!”
Based on her hostility, I said, “Oh, God no. I hate that bitch.” Once again, the Woman was taken aback.
A UPS truck turned into the alley. The Vendor moved his bicycle toward the back end of my car. This unexpected interaction didn’t deter me. I still wanted ice cream—I deserved ice cream. I rolled up my window, turned off my engine, and grabbed my wallet. I got out of the car with my keys in hand. The Vendor struggled to keep the Woman from opening the freezer compartments like a game of Whac-A-Mole. He glanced at me nervously.
The Woman pivoted to glare at me. I stood at least a foot taller. She hunched her shoulders and recoiled as she raked me with her eyes. With the same previous look of disgust on her face, she declared, “You’re skinny! Ewww, you’re skinny!”
“You just said I was fat a minute ago.” As the Woman hesitated from my words, I smiled and pointed to a picture of a Nutty Buddy. The Vendor retrieved it, and, in what I interpreted as an attempt to conclude the escalating encounter, the Vendor handed the Woman an orange popsicle. The Nutty Buddy in my hand brought me a surprising amount of joy. But it was short-lived.
“No! No! No!” The woman screeched, snatched the popsicle with one hand, and began battering the Vendor with the bags of chips in the other. He deflected the blows, and the seam of one of the bags broke open. The crunchy pinwheels fragmented and flew into the air like fried confetti.
I slapped a folded twenty onto the top of the freezer. “Here, I’m so sorry,” I said, making sure his hand was on it before letting go. He started to reach into his pocket for change. “No. Take it and go. Save yourself.” I felt bad for him. This had become more than either of us had bargained for.
Having seen the twenty-dollar bill, the Woman changed her demand. “Give me! Give me money! Now!” Her eyes darted between my hardcase wallet and my face.
As the Woman’s agitation escalated, the Vendor mounted his bicycle. Before he could pull the cart around, she threw the popsicle at him. He flinched as it bounced off his neck and peddled away without looking back.
I approached my car door, and the Woman abruptly cut me off. “Give me money! Give me money, or I’ll kill you!” She lurched her head at me like a deranged pigeon while baring her teeth.
“You’ll do no such thing,” I said dismissively and calmly sidestepped the Woman, but she blocked me again. “I have no more money.” I wasn’t lying. Twenty dollars was all I had in my wallet.
“I was raped by Venus! I was raped! My son is in jail, and they’re performing experiments on him! Give me your money, or I’ll kill you!” Her eyes fixed on my left hand, clutching my wallet, keys, and Nutty Buddy.
I had no doubt this Woman was SA’d. My heart broke for her…but I had questions—many questions—that I didn’t dare ask. “I don’t have any more money. I gave it to the guy.” The Woman stepped in front of me again and well into my personal space. I stepped back. She moved in. I stepped back again. She moved in again, this time menacingly. Her irrationality and anxiety vibrated off her, reverberating in the space between us. It made me nervous. I was further away from my car than I was comfortable with.
“Give me money, or I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!”
I stepped back again. “No. You won’t. And I told you I don’t have any more money. I gave it all to him to buy this stuff for you.” I gestured to the Vendor, who had successfully escaped to the area further down where I found the human hand years ago.
“Oh, yeah? Fuck you! What do you think about this, you bitch?” The Woman pummeled the bag of plantain chips with a dirty fist, ripped it open, and violently scattered the jagged pieces everywhere. She then stomped on the pieces with both bare feet, jumping up and down, fists clenched, grunting on each impact. “How do you like this?”
I crossed my arms and watched like a bemused parent assessing their child’s temper tantrum. “Makes no difference to me,” I said, stepping toward my car. “I have food at home to eat when I’m hungry.”
The Woman stopped, very briefly reconsidered her actions, and then bared her teeth in a snarl. “Oh, you think you’re better than me? Whaddya gonna do about this?”
Wide-eyed, I witnessed the Woman dash ahead to my car, hike up her dress, reach one hand around, defecate into it at will, and then smear the excrement onto my car door. She smiled in wicked triumph.
“Yup, you win. I’m done.” With my phone in my car, I walked back to the next block, looking for anyone to call the police on my behalf. No one in sight. I yelled out a few times, but the day was a scorcher. ACs were on. Windows were closed.
From around the corner, the Woman yelled, “Oh, you’re running away? You want me to take your car? I’ll go for a ride!”
An icy twang of panic ran through me as I asked myself, did I lock the door? I immediately returned to the scene to find her yanking on the handles and hitting the windows. It was locked, and I shuddered at the thought of how that might have gone if it wasn’t. After her assault on my car, the Woman retreated to the bushes. I saw my opportunity to escape. But as soon as I approached my car, the Woman launched herself out of the bushes and came toward me. I would have stood my ground, but with shit hands unexpectedly thrown into the mix, it was in my best interest to back away.
As I contemplated my options, two teen boys, Twins, maybe fifteen years old, cruised down the alley on their bicycles. I stopped them, quickly explained my situation to them, and said I needed to call the police for assistance. Boys with summer-sun lightened brown wavy hair, shaggy and in need of a trim, hazel eyes, and peach fuzz above their lips and on their chins. Were fifteen-year-old boys this cute when I was their age?
One of them pulled out their phone, dialed 9-1-1, and then handed it to me with a kind smile. While on the phone with dispatch, the Woman saw me with the two boys and became irate. She collected garbage from the bushes and threw it all over my car.
“See,” I said, exasperated. “This has been going on for twenty minutes already. I can’t get to my car and she already beat up the poor Ice Cream guy. She’s going to attack me, and she has literal shit on her hands.”
“Don’t worry,” one of the Twins said. “We’ll put her on the ground if she tries anything.”
“You got that right,” the other Twin said and rode his bike up to her, yelling, edging her away from my car, “Get out of here! Go! Go away!”
“I was raped by Venus! My son is getting microchips put in him in jail!” Her arms flailed about.
“Take your crazy bullshit somewhere else, lady! Get out of here!” The Twin held his ground and continued to yell at her to leave, pointing away from my car with authority.
The Woman’s eyes found me as I was giving Dispatch my location. “Are you talking about me? Is that your phone? Is that your phone? Give it to me or I’ll kill you!” She charged like a bull and attempted to snatch the phone from my hand.
Her filthy hand clamped down on mine. “Hey! Let go! Let go,” I hollered, clutching the phone in an iron grip, imagining what she would do if she took possession. I kicked her in the shin, and she let go. The Twin closest to me jumped into action, putting him and his bike between the woman and me.
“Get out of here! You can’t grab people’s phones! Stop bothering her! Go! The cops are coming for you!” Somewhere inside, the fifteen-year-old girl in me swooned.
“You called the police?” She laughed wildly. “They’ll say mental health! Mental health! I was raped!”
More people began appearing in the area, intrigued by the spectacle. Miraculously, I was still connected to Dispatch. But the presence of other people and the tenacity of the Twins sent the Woman heading toward Lankershim, fists balled, yelling and ranting as she left. I told the operator the police were no longer needed. I returned the phone to the rightful Twin and said, “Thank you. Your parents would be proud of you guys.” Then I urged, “Please wipe this down with disinfectant as soon as you can.”
After thanking the Twins profusely and briefly recapping the event for the spectators, I got into my car and drove the remaining fifty feet home, feeling incredibly sad for the Woman. Later that day, someone posted on Nextdoor that there was a public disturbance and a garbage fire on Lankershim, not far from where my ordeal took place.
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