***

            All morning long Mary only sells six newspapers. She is huddled at the end of her favorite sidewalk bench with the unsold pile on the ground beside her, and the chaos of street noises and endless crowds of people numbing her. She is tired, so discouraged. It is close to noon, and she makes desperate faces at cars whose passengers don’t seem to see her or stare away. She wants to give up but she cannot, she has to keep trying until the end.

            “I have to do something!” she shouts to no one.

            Without thinking she walks off the curbside, between the cars, something she never does because of her fear of wanting to get run over and die. She looks right into the heart of her fear, and into the faces of all the people she senses hate her, that wish she’d just go away, disappear, die, who wouldn’t mind her getting run over.

            “Get out of the way!” a driver screams from one side.

            “Hey, you crazy or something?” another calls out.

            Cars honk and more drivers yell, causing her to jump and turn in all different directions. Mary’s short arms flail about. Some teenagers see her terrible suffering and torture her with their horn, laughing and making fun of her jerking movements.

            She shakes in fright, overcome by a severe panic attack and unable to move her feet anymore, unable to breathe, dizzy and stuck standing there between the lines of moving cars with exhaust fumes blowing in her face.

            “Have to breathe, Mary!” she yells at herself. “Breathe!”

            The traffic light turns to red as the rows of cars come to a slow stop around her. Then, she is hit by a strange dread of crossing the dashed white lines on the street. Onlookers gawk with curiosity and disbelief while she pushes aside the fear and manages to get her trembling body back to the safety of the curb. The involuntary smacking of her mouth and lips is rapid while she gropes for breath. No one offers assistance. She falls over the stack of newspapers, and realizes she didn’t even take any with her to sell when she went into the street! Oh, God, what was she thinking? She cries for herself inside. She imagines the passers-by are giving her their looks of hate or disgust. Having survived the cars, she can’t catch a breath. Oh, God, why does everything happen to her? she pleads to no one.

            After shutting his cell phone, a man stopped at the light desperately looks around until he spots Mary. “Hey, excuse me! You selling papers?” he calls to her from his car. Mary looks at her empty hands and sees her own body lying beside the stack of papers. “You should hold one up, so people can see!” he shouts. “Can I get one of those?”

            Realizing that Mary is not going to respond as fast as he wants, he pops out of the car, a heavy figure with multiple phones clipped to his belt. He notes her distress, but takes a newspaper and whips through it to find specific pages. “Are you going to be all right?” he asks while scanning the pages.

            “Yes...all right, yes.” She pants.

            “Whaddo you know! They put the article in!” He taps the paper with his finger. “A nice big feature.”

            “Why don’t you buy a paper for each of your family? As a special memory.” She looks innocent while struggling to talk.