On the Street Sweeper

Each day I see her. Maybe “have to look at her” would be more appropriate wording, because she’s not exactly a pretty sight.

She is always wearing the same baggy scarlet sweatpants tucked into a frayed pair of white tube socks.  The tube socks are peeking out of the top of a pair of black pleather boots, the pointed toes worn away just enough to allow her too-large feet to work the tip of her socks out through the hole as the days goes on, creating a strange little dirty sock nub. Her magenta sweatshirt might be the most disturbing part of the whole ensemble- no one has told her that it is inappropriate for 40-year-old women to wear pictures of Hannah Montana across their chests. Her body moves in a painful rhythm as she sweeps the streets of my bloc apartment complex. Every few steps her shiny red fingernails pull her rose-scented cigarette up to her lips and she takes a long drag. Sweep, sweep, drag. Sweep, sweep, drag.

She is dirty and defeated. Maybe that is why it stands out so much. It is perfectly pleated and lays across her head in an attempt to hide her frizzed mass of once-black hair, now mixed with stained orange sections and gleaming gray roots. It is not hastily pinned or knotted, but tied into a perfectly symmetrical and dainty bow that rests along her uneven hairline. It is not stained or ripped, and I’m sure that if I had the courage to approach her, it would not smell like the smoke and sweat that have saturated every other part of her life.

Though she may not be able to articulate such a thought, it is what remains of another world, another set of thoughts, another way of life- all of which have been brutally taken from her by time.

At first, it is shocking to hear the stories of her generation of Romanian’s nostalgia. A generation whose “Back in my day…” stories include food rations, misguided dictators, and whispered conversations in rooms with no power because of electrical shortages. But those sacrifices brought along with them a comfort. Under Communism, she (as well as everyone around her) had had what she needed. She had been a factory worker or a writer, or maybe even an engineer. She was proud of her work. Each day she came home with enough bread and vegetables for her family, and even had time to travel on the weekends. Silent acceptance of the system was the only price she had to pay for these luxuries.

 Now, she watches the people of Romania file past her each day as she sweeps the curb. Sometimes, she sees the few who had the right connections after the fall of Communism buzz past in their shining new cars. Sometimes, she sees the American girl with the huge backpack walk past and try to analyze her thoughts so she can write to her family about “the people over there” on her expensive laptop. Sometimes, she sees politicians travelling through town, paying for the desperate citizens’ votes with meat and beer. But mostly, she sees the families of Lupeni. There are so many children, but not enough jobs. There is so much trash, but not enough space. Their new “freedom” may have made them nearly invisible to the rest of the world, but she cannot help but see them.

She, like all of the people who pass her daily, remembers when she was able to be so much more.
That is why it is so much more than a floral headscarf.