Cold and Wise

On a drizzly late afternoon last week, I was falling in line at the jeepney terminal at the mall, waiting for a ride home. There were eight or ten people in front of me and the line was moving slowly. Jeepneys were coming and going at quick intervals, but they were mostly already half-full when they came.

I pulled out my mobile phone, to check for text messages, to divert my mind from a brewing impatience. Halfway through reading my first message, I sensed someone cutting into our queue. I looked up and saw a teenage girl smiling awkwardly at me, as if making light of her misdeed.

Several of those in the line turned to the girl in apparent protest. But she appeared oblivious to them all. Her dress was nice, if only it was clean. She had straggly, dark hair and, while she was not at all bad looking, she appeared to be no cleaner than her dress.

“Singko lang, sir, palit pan?” she asked me. A mere five pesos to buy a piece of bread. But I didn’t find the matter to be as simple as that.

Something in her manner of speech suggested that she’d said those words many, many times before. I answered no, firmly. I stared straight into her eyes to communicate the irrevocability of my refusal. But I didn’t see any one there; there seemed to be a curtain of nothingness that hid whatever kind of person she really was.

I turned back to my phone, my way of dismissing the girl. I was no longer reading the incoming messages, though; I was becoming bothered. My response to the girl’s solicitation — it was a lie.

Of course I had five pesos. In fact, there was certainly more worth of coins in my pocket than that. And, for sure, I could have spared the amount without having to skip my next meal. Why did I say no?

Why didn’t I give the poor soul what she was asking for? But the thing was, was she really a poor soul? I couldn’t be so sure.

I remember during fiestas in our provincial town, when strangers came and knocked on our back door and asked for something to eat, my mother always served them a good meal. But, no matter how fierce the sunlight or the rain, she made them eat outside. Perhaps from that example I learned that mercy must be tempered with caution.

I’ve heard stories that many beggars in the city are actually con artists with certain vices – compulsive gamblers, alcoholics, drug addicts – and the physically handicapped among them are supposedly being maintained by syndicates, including those little children that scatter in the sidewalks. That girl at the jeepney terminal, although she did not strike me as an alcoholic or drug addict or anything like that, could be something else. Who knows?

There’s a city ordinance criminalizing mendicancy. There’s punishment for both the beggars and those who give to them. It irks me to see people dropping coins into streetside beggars’ hats and cans. To me, it’s such a cheap act that does more to the psyche of the giver than the receiver, a phony sense of compassion.

Life won’t become any better for the ordinary street beggar if she continues to depend on what anyone gives her. And, besides, the most unfortunate cases and the ones who need help most desperately don’t go begging. They prefer to be given the opportunity to be able to device a more lasting relief from their hardships by themselves.

Where did that girl at the jeepney terminal come from? I wondered. Did she have a family? Where were her parents and what were their means of living? When did she eat last?

It would have been, for my peace of mind, much easier and more practical to have simply given the girl the five pesos she asked me for. Now, I’d have to deal with the thought of her for some time. Caution had successfully reined in my raw humanity.

To drive the girl off, I pretended to be checking my phone for a few seconds more and then looked up to see where she had gone. She was standing a short distance away, on the heartless concrete pavement, staring blankly into the growing, heartless darkness. Did she even have a place to sleep that night?

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