Since my return, I have been engaged in many things besides updating this blog: sleeping, catching up on back logs of Cute Overload, knitting an increasingly unmanageable number of projects (due to the holiday season creeping up even faster than ever this year), and cooking. Since Elijah and I had Thanksgiving on the road, my friends decided to have a post-Thanksgiving dinner, preparing a free turkey that my friend Andy received from one of his jobs in lieu of a living wage. Luckily, our preparation of this turkey did not burn the house, and in fact turned out to be delicious. Inspired by this post on Michael Ruhlman’s blog, I begged Andy to let me keep the turkey bones to prepare some delicious stock.
Thus last night, instead of joining Eli on funny drunk escapades at a friend’s house, I opted to stay inside instead and tend to the stock (and maybe get a few stars in Mario Galaxy on the side, too. So I didn’t socialize but at least I was a warm dork). Several hours and seven stars later, the stock was finished - a beautifully colored rich broth of turkey goodness! Excited by my new creation, I let it cool while I deposited the bones and herb matter into a garbage bag, a peace offering to the aggressive raccoons of East Lawrence. Still in my pajamas, I put on some shoes and my puffy down coat and went outside to take out the trash, and then I saw a girl lying collapsed on the sidewalk.
She was on the street corner directly outside my house. My first panicked thought was that she was a homeless woman in the process of freezing to death at my doorstep, but no - she was slightly younger than me, college age, one dirty, crumpled ballet slipper on her foot and the other lying next to her. She was sobbing impressively.
“Hey…can I help you?” I ventured, repeating myself a little louder so she could hear me over her sobs. She lifted her head to look at me - kind of chubby, but pretty nonetheless - and looked kind of embarrassed amidst her anguish. “No, no, I’m fine.” I offered to call somebody for her, but she shook her head and said she lived just over there, pointing vaguely ahead of her. She thanked me and smiled, the embarrassment quickly replaced by resentment of my presence. My bag of bones was dripping, so I went to go toss it in one of the bins behind my house, and when I came back, she had gotten up and walked away.
As I saw the retreating figure, it occurred to me that I could have offered her a ride home - she was more or less standing in front of my car, and it was a terribly cold night for someone in crumpled, booze-stained ballet flats. I always think of these things too late.
It’s the morning now and I hope she was able to make it home without incident. I did hear sirens not too long after I came back to the apartment and wondered if it was for her. What in the world happened to her, to cause her to collapse on my street corner? Had she been raped? Or did she just get rejected, by a boy she liked, in a particularly odious manner?
Whatever the case, I hope she made it somewhere safe and warm.