Standing on a Street
Some people are spiky and some people are soft and squidgy. Some people are smooth and slick and your fingers could glide over them like on polished wood. Others are uncertain and uneven, a wall of bricks. And some are a lump of powder and ready to explode into disintegration at any given minute.
It has been three hours now that I have been standing out here, in the middle of the street. There are looming shops and people on both sides of me, and only the shops are constant. The people flow past me and morph into other people who morph into other people, a bit like in the opening credits of Scrubs, if you’ve ever watched that.
All the people going past me, I don’t know who they are but they can tell who I am with a flick of their eyes. I am one of the people who stand outside shops collecting money for charity. I have a bright green plastic cylinder which I hold in my hand, and it has a slit where the people put their coins in. Nobody really knows what it’s called, that plastic cylinder. They mainly just call it “the Thing.” The mothers who take out their purses, look through them and hand the change to their children say to them, “Go on, put it in the Thing.”
When they put the money in, I give them a sticker. In my pockets I have rolls of stickers, but around the edges of the Thing there are stickers, placed for my convenience. They all say, “Supporting Education in the Third World.” And have a picture of a stick boy with a smile and three wavy lines for hair. I’m also wearing a jumper, the same bright green colour as the Thing, with the picture of the stick boy on it, only bigger. That’s me, now you know who I am. I’m sure you’ve given money to me before. But I bet you’ve also seen me and passed me by. Well, we all do that. People strolling down the street always notice the charity collector amongst everyone else, looking all smiley and approachable but with a hint of desperation. Then when they pass the charity collector, they forget all about them and think the smiling act was all for them.
The smiling bit can actually physically hurt if I do it for long enough. When I take a break I open and close my mouth a lot. A kind of stretching. But when I’m collecting money I have to remember that it’s like I’m fishing in this ocean of people and my smile is the bait. Eye contact means I can start reeling them in.
It can be funny watching the people who work, fiercely, to avoid this eye contact. They know the danger. They stare ahead intently and walk like robots. They remind me of an ice cube when it’s starting to melt. It slips about in your fingers and turns the tips pink. It doesn’t matter to the ice cubes if their iciness hurts if you hold it too long. It looks like glass, the kind of thick glass with bubbles in, and it feels like wet glass but you can crunch it with your teeth quite easily.
Over by the bench are two boys with gelled hair. They look about fourteen, and one’s wearing a tracksuit and the other has jeans and a t-shirt, which means he must be freezing. They’re drinking those energy drinks that come in cans, and the one in the tracksuit has just jumped up to his feet and is walking along the bench. Some mothers passing with children look at them and I notice that their faces tighten very slightly.
The boy in the t-shirt has taken out his mobile and now he has it pointed up in the direction of his friend. He’s probably videoing him. They’re laughing in a screechy loud way, probably just for the sake of making noise. The other boy jumps down from the wall and chucks his can down. Liquid flies out of it across the ground and his friend says something then kicks him. They both kick each other and I wonder what will happen if they start brawling, will anyone intervene? Then I realise that they’re only play fighting.
They walk away from the bench, getting closer to me. A man with a walking stick stops to give me 20p, and I give him a sticker. When the man is gone the first thing I see is the two boys walking towards me with interest.
“What you up to,” the boy in the tracksuit calls out to me, in a casual way, as if both me and the boy are good friends. They dawdle to a stop in front of me with their hands in their pockets.
“I’m collecting for charity,” I tell them, “It goes to helping children in poor countries get a better education.”
“Are poor countries like in Africa?” one of them asks, and the other one says, “Do you get to keep any of the money?”
“Yes to your answer, “ I say to the tracksuit boy, “It goes to places in Africa. And do I get to keep any of the money...no I don’t…I volunteer to do this so none of it goes to me.” This I say to the other boy.
He swears and laughs. In contrast to the swearing, his laugh is a simple, child’s laugh. “I would keep the money if I did it.”
His friend leans over to spit on the ground, then says “Then you’re just a big fat thief, Thomas.” This makes them both laugh.
I learn that they are called Thomas, the t-shirt one, and Shippy, the one in tracksuits. Shippy is short for Shipman, which is his second name. They stand around me asking questions, and swearing a lot.
“If you give money do you get a sticker?” the boy called Shippy says, and gazes at me like my answer will be very important.
“Yeah. Yeah, you do.”
For some reason this idea appeals to them and they dig around in their pockets for money, bringing up coins and a heap of other stuff. Not things like lighters, like I’d half expected- I’m sorry- but chewing gum and key rings and what looks like a McDonalds Happy Meal toy. They give me, in total, thirty-two pence in coppers and fives. I give them their stickers.
They say, “Sweet,” then they move on. They raise their hands at me as they go. “What’s your name, person?” Thomas calls out to me, and I call back, “Jenny.” They start whooping and shouting things like, “See ya Jenny!” and “Don’t you be stealin any of that money now Jenny!”
People look over at me, some in alarm, when they shout that, and I try not to blush or smile.
Those boys are like sand on the beach, the wet kind that had recently been touched by waves. Its gritty texture on your feet is nice, and almost refreshing. Although if you go in a bit further, where water starts gathering round your ankles, the sand feels less gritty. When you burrow your foot into it, it feels silky. I hate the feel of sand between your toes when you’re home from the beach, though. All squirmy and grubby.
Anyway, those boys have the texture of sand I think.
A man in a sharp suit, probably on his lunch break, drops in a pound. In his other hand he has a shop-bought sandwich. He murmurs, “Thanks,” as I stick the sticker on his lapel. Then he marches on. This hardly broke his stride. He smelt of aftershave and, have you ever packed a snowball together in your hands, a crisp cold snowball, until it crunches? That’s him.
I see a man and a woman go past me who are quite obviously having an argument. They both have their arms spread wide, like they’re presenting themselves to each other, saying, “This is what you got.” The man is carrying the shopping. They’re quite young. Late twenties early thirties. As they go past me, the man says, “Look, I’m just saying. You do itevery time, every time.” Then the woman says back, “Oh get a grip.”
Then I don’t hear the rest of it because they’re gone. They are two rocks bashing against each other in your hands. The rocks are cold, since they’re from outside and have grooved surfaces. Every time they bash together, in your hands, you can feel the impact travel from your palm into your wrist into your arm. It’s relentless.
There’s this old woman hobbling past me, and she’s taking a big black purse out of a really scruffy looking bag. She stands in front of me, and I beam at her while she inspects the inside of her purse with her watery eyelash-less eyes. Then I feel a bit stupid for smiling so hard, because she isn’t even looking at me. But I carry on smiling. After about five years she extracts a pound from her purse. Then she buttons up the purse. She puts her purse back in her handbag. Everything she does is in slow motion. It makes me drowsy watching her. She fastens up her handbag. Finally, finally, she looks up at me and nods, then she puts the pound in. The strong clunking sound the pound makes when it hits the other money makes the woman seem even more quavery in contrast. I peel a sticker for her but when I hold it out her back’s turned and she’s hobbling away. I call out to her, “’Scuse me, would you like your sticker?” She hasn’t gotten that far away, after all, only a few steps. She turns and she has a totally disorientated look on her face. Almost shocked, at someone calling out to her. Once she catches on what I’m talking about she nods and I half-jog, half-walk over to her. I give her a sticker. She smells a bit. I notice. Then she goes on her way. Very. Slowly.
An old lady like that is like tissue paper. She is like tissue paper because tissue paper feels soft and it tears very easily. When it tears there are little tufts of tissue paper on the rip, little hairs. And when you touch them they are so soft you can barely feel them. A tissue always has two layers and you can peel them off. The layers look transparent and they feel transparent, somehow. When you think about it, tissue paper is quite pathetic.
A swirling veil of silk passes me by and puts in a pile of silvers and coppers. Splintery wood walks right into me and doesn’t say sorry. A pack of teenage girls, beanbags, come up to me and have a conversation. The dough you get when you’re making biscuits wanders past, needing kneading. Smooth marble fireplaces give me money with a practised smile. Shower gels, slippy and latherable, give money to their cute little cotton wool balls, who give it to me.
Six o’clock at nights comes. It’s dark if you look high up in the sky, but at normal level the streetlights and shoplights make everything look orange, and cast a shadow on peoples’ faces. I get my stuff together and start walking to the car, which is a few streets away. I’m glad that I’m finished for the day. I feel warm and comforted, like when I take my first bite out of a toasted crumpet, with butter on.