Duped

I feel like the world's biggest chump. I feel green. I feel like a loser. I feel duped, cheated, messed with, and everything in between.
I got off a very long shift at the theater and I was walking to my car when a woman approached me. She was a middle aged black woman, with graying hair, frayed clothing, with a cast on her leg and leaning on a walker. Few sights are more pathetic. She told me she was trying to get a room for the night for her and her daughter. She said she needed to get $19 by the end of the night for the room. I gave her $2 and she told me that was the first money anyone had given her all night. I said, "Listen, you are not going to get $19 by the end of the night. Here." I handed her a twenty, and said, "Let me give you a ride."
I was half afraid she would run before I could get my car and pull it up, but she was there, right where I had told her to wait. I pulled up my car and helped her with the walker, got her into my low rider. She gave me directions and on the way we small talked. She told me she had seen me before, that I had helped her and her daughter. I had no recollection of this whatsoever, but she told me she had seen me at Fat Head's on the South Side. This is incredibly likely. I've never been any other place on the South Side, a neighborhood littered with restaurants and bars, but I have been to Fat Head's quite a few times.

Some of the things she told me I wanted to believe, like that she had just gotten a job at Goodwill, that they were going to pay her $9 an hour and par for her bus pass. Like that she had a little girl. Like that she needed to get this address so she could apply for welfare tomorrow. Some of the things I couldn't believe. Like that she had eight children, four sets of twins each a year apart, four boys and four girls. Some of the things I didn't know if I could believe. Like that she had leukemia. Like that her baby daddy worked mopping floors on the South Side.

In the end, our final destination was not a place she could "get a room." It was a broken down row home, now detached from what may have been other homes that had made it a row home. Next to an empty lot.
She didn't seem to need any help getting out of the car. Or unfolding the walker. Or taking out her key and going inside. Or taking me for a literal and figurative ride.

I had to fight back tears as I pulled around in the street and headed back to Fifth. I put my blinker on to turn left. A policeman walked over to me in the rain, signaled to roll down the window. I was certain he was going to say something about my passenger, though I had not a clue what. Instead, he leaned over and shouted in my face, "What the hell? Are you from another planet?" Right, because trying to turn left on Fifth meant I was as insane as the woman I had just dropped off. At least in Pittsburgh. I wanted to say, "What the hell? Not everyone in Pittsburgh was born here, lives here, and will die here. Maybe to any dumb fuck who's never left da 'Burgh, anyplace else is another planet, fucker." But I didn't. I turned right on fifth and made my way back to Forbes before breaking down. Not my car, just me.

It isn't about the money. I could easily have spent $20 on something else. And only part of it is about the lying. More of it is about the uncertainty, the betrayal of my trust. I NEVER do this. I learned the "don't give money to homeless people, they'll spend it on alcohol and drugs," lesson a long time ago, but it seems I have learned nothing at all. In my attempt to be a do-gooder, I've been played. And it doesn't feel good.

I know she needs help. I know she needs money. That much is certain. I know she needed a ride on a rainy night, and she hadn't even asked. I know, fairly certainly, that at least when I gave her the ride, she was sober and straight. I know I brought her to a safe place for the night. I can't say much else. If I can convince myself that I helped her in some way, maybe I won't feel like such shit.

My mom said that at least I learned my lesson. But what lesson did I learn? I am not going to categorically stop helping homeless people. I acted on a whim, and no amount of experience can dictate for sure what our instinct will be. The lesson is that I may get played again, that sometimes these things happen, and that hopefully, possibly, maybe, I helped her in some way, just a little bit.

The other lesson I learned is to never put on a turn signal to suggest I am going West on Fifth past Bellefield. For that is a cardinal sin, perhaps even worse than assisting panhandlers. I'm not sure; I'd have to ask the cops here.