Act of Kindness

Senior Christina Sanabria faces a moral dilemma after meeting an ex-convict

“Disculpe, excuse me. Habla español?”

I slid my headphones to my neck and looked up at the man who spoke. I was sitting on my suitcase in a Providence bus station waiting for my bus to Boston. The man was young, early twenties, and he wore a pullover and jeans. He carried nothing.

“Yeah,” I said in Spanish. “What do you need?”

“Really you do? Que bueno – that’s great. How do you know Spanish?”

Grudgingly I engaged in small talk. As it turned out, we were both Colombian – my parents from Bogota and his from Medellin. His parents had recently moved back, so now he had only a sister in Manhattan.

“Yeah, that’s great,” he continued in Spanish. “Look, I was wondering if you could help me.”

“Um, sure,” I said. I sent my hand to my watch in anticipation of his question, or maybe, I thought, he needed me to translate something. “What is it?”

“Well, I just got out of jail today.”

I almost choked.

“I’ve been in jail for five years.”

My head swam.

I had never been in Providence before. I traveled there, alone, on a college visit trip and already I had had to swallow my nervousness about getting lost or missing the bus. And now, as if on cue, a newly-freed former convict, a deranged serial killer most likely, was approaching me.

From the snatches of his soliloquy that I managed to hear, I pieced together that after five years in prison, he had been scheduled to be released on Dec. 8. His sister would come from New York to pick him up and he would live with her. But on grounds of good behavior, he got out a month early, today. Now, because she didn’t have a telephone, he had no way to contact his sister, nowhere to spend the night, and exactly $8 to his name.

“And the lady at the court called around for me and you can get to New York on Greyhound for $22, but, um, like I said, I only have eight.”

I swallowed, incredulous.

“So you need $14.”

“Um... yeah.”

I swallowed again.

Fourteen dollars. I had the money, probably even in exact change, sitting in my wallet. My mom gave me money before I left.

Fourteen dollars to me is a pair of jeans, three hours of me baby-sitting or two hours of my mom cleaning toilets and showers. It is little enough that I could part with it, but I wasn’t going to just throw it away – especially to be the victim of someone’s scam.

“Listen I really wish I could help you, but I don’t have that much money myself. Really, I think I have like two dollars...”

I let my explanation trail off.

“Oh. It’s okay,” he said, biting his lip. “I know how it is. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

He turned away and rested his face on the window in silence.

It occurred to me how good of an actor he was, but you never knew. I remembered one time when a homeless man asked me for $5 for food and I offered to buy him a sandwich instead.

“You wanna buy me a sandwich? No, see, the place where I wanna get it is far away and you don’t wanna walk that far and anyways I’m not hungry right now, so you better just give me the money.”

Such experiences made me cynical. I knew there were sincere people who really needed help, but you couldn’t give money to just anyone. I looked around at the other people in the station and thought how they would shake their heads at me if I just handed over $14 to this stranger.

But I was surprised that he was still there by the window. It would be more effective, I thought, if he worked a crowd, asking everyone for $1 instead of one person for 14. And surely if he came up with a more likely, less shocking story, people would be more apt to cough up.

But he was still there, and I felt obligated to act my part.

“Geez, I really wish there was something I could do...”

“Yeah.”

“Do you, um, know anyone in Providence?”

“No.”

Silence.

“And there’s no way to reach your sister? No one else you know in New York?”

“No.”

Silence.

I suddenly noticed how Colombian his accent was – at least that part of the story was true. And I vaguely remembered some movie or soap opera where this situation, a convict let out early with nowhere to go, played out. But how could they do that in real life, send a man out into the world alone with nothing but $8?

“So have you, um, asked anyone else?”

“You’re the 23rd person I’ve asked and no one can help.”

“And you’re, um, sure there’s no one, no one at all that you can call?” Maybe, maybe if I could talk to his sister, someone, anyone, and they could confirm the story, offer to pay me back, maybe I could...

“No. No one.”

Someone held the door of the station open for a moment and I felt the sharp November wind outside. What if it was true? My thoughts swirled. I thought about where he would spend the night and felt my mouth go dry. There might be a church, or somewhere, where he could sleep, but how was he going to find it? How would he get there? What would he eat for dinner? For breakfast? And what would he do until Dec. 8, when his sister came for him?

“I’m really sorry for bothering you, okay?” He scratched his face.

“What are you going to do?”

“Right now I’m going to just get some air, and later... I don’t know.” He sighed.

“I really wish there was something I could–”

“No, really, don’t worry. I’ll think of something.”

He walked to the station door, opened it and stepped outside, arms crossed and bouncing up and down with cold.

I thought I heard something in his voice – desperation, frustration, bitterness. I thought about the cold, the dark, the twenty-two other people who refused him, some flatly and some, like me, with feigned concern.

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I thought about an hour ago when I thought I had lost my wallet, my terror then and what I would have done, alone in a strange city with nothing – like him.

I thought about what five years in prison could mean, about the wrongfully accused, about Jean Valjean, prejudice and about giving people a second chance. I thought about my own idealistic societal argument that all people are good and if we are driven to crime it is because our society has failed us. I knew it was naïve, but could I live with my hypocrisy if I did nothing?

Still, it could all have been a lie. It was terrifying, painful to think so, to think I could grant him my trust and step into a trap. I looked at him outside, blowing hot breath on his fingers, and I closed my eyes.

Finally, I got up off my suitcase and rolled it to the door. I knocked on the window and motioned for him to come inside.

“I need to tell you something,” I said. I took a deep breath.

“My name is Christina. I’m 17 and I’m alone. I’m on a college visit trip. I live in Kansas City.”

He narrowed his eyes.

“My mom cleans houses for a living,” I continued, aware of my incoherence. “My dad has an illness and he can’t always work.”

I felt my lip tremble from cold and fear and being about to cry. My heart raced.

“When I said I didn’t have that much money, I was being honest. Fourteen dollars is not like $100, but it’s still something and it would make me sad to think I gave it to you and you lied to me and did something bad with it instead. I don’t know who you are and I don’t know if what you said is true.”

I swallowed.

“But I’m going to trust you. I don’t want you to have to spend the night God knows where and be cold or be hungry and be alone and so I’m going to place myself in your hands and I’m going to trust you.”

His mouth opened slowly.

“I just want you to promise that what you’ve said is true and that you’re going to New York and your sister is there and that you’ll remember me and live a good life.”

“Oh sure! Yeah, yeah, yeah sure!”

I blinked away tears.

“Pinky swear.”

I held out my pinky and he took it.

“Pinky swear.”

I handed him the $14 and as he went to the ticket counter I saw my bus roll in. He caught up with me as I stood in line to check my suitcase.

“My bus leaves at 6:45,” he said, out of breath. He showed me his ticket.

“Really, really, thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. My sister is going to fall over when she sees me. Thank you. Really. Thank you.”

Suddenly he hugged me.

“Really. Really. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what I was going to do. Thank you. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. You’re welcome. It’s okay. You’re welcome.” I wiped my eyes.

I boarded the bus and a minute later it started to roll away. He waved at me from the sidewalk, and I waved back.