But You, Sir, You Gave Me Ten Dollars

You didn’t know me but you gave me ten dollars. You didn’t know I was ten minutes away from home but you gave me ten dollars. You didn’t know what I’d spend it on but you gave me ten dollars. You gave me ten dollars – me who’d waste it on liquorice twists and coffee, too scared to walk home for having been catcalled in the night.

But you, you gave me ten dollars, and I remember.

I remember, over a decade later now, sitting on the kerb outside the local 7-11 – the very one I’d walk to with my mum, where my friends and I bought slurpees growing up, where my brother, right under the nose of the shop assistant, stole a candy bar. A Curly Wurly was it? Who knows?

But I sat there, under the clinical white lights, too afraid to re-enter the streets cloaked in night, determined to see the sun rise.

And you gave me ten dollars, sir. I can’t recall your face. Only the surprise, the mistake. Oh no, sir, not ten dollars for me. I’m not homeless. I’m just… stranded for the night. I guess I wasn’t used to danger in my own neighbourhood. A car that follows you. That stops. Whose lights, like eyes, ogle you in flashes. Bright lights. That, I recall.

But you, most of all. Your silent kindness, sir. And my guilt. My guilt that you were mistaken – that I didn’t need any help. That I would spend your hard-earned money, and thus your time, and your life, on liquorice and nonsense and pleasantries to make the wait more bearable, the clinical lights more bearable, the obese sleep sitting on my eyelids more bearable. And if my eyelids had legs, they might have broken then and there if it weren’t for you.

If it weren’t for you, sir, maybe I’d think all men stick their necks out of windows. Whistle at sixteen-year-olds. Follow us despite our ice-cold façade. I even recall the sidewalk home. The one from 7-11. I recall the cracks. I recall each square of pavement. I recall a handprint in one. A couple’s initials in another. I left my own in wet cement once, too, sir. Though I don’t want you to think ill of me – you who gave me, a stranger, ten whole dollars.

I’m sorry that I don’t recall your face, sir. I don’t even recall you filling your tank or getting out of your ute. I only became aware of you when your hand entered my line of vision, my Converse obscured, blue note. Not a word exchanged and then you were off.

When I recall you, sir, perhaps my hope is restored. There are good people. Altruistic people. But I realise that you, too, likely have your flaws. Come to think of it, I find that even more encouraging. Hopeful. Though we’re inevitably flawed, we can still do good. You know, the little things. The little things, they matter. They matter more now than ever. Actionable. Most people, though, like to hide behind the impossibility of everything, its grandeur, our insignificance, etcetera, etcetera, when really, all one need do is help their neighbour. Give a busker a dollar. An encouraging word. Tell a stranger you like their shirt. Your wife you love her. Compliment a man because he’s likely unfamiliar with compliments. Strangers, compliments. So sir, thank you. I cannot call you handsome because your face I have forgotten. But your heart, your small act of kindness, it stuck. You’re the rock-hard chewing gum beneath a school desk – to most you go unnoticed, but I noticed you, I felt you. And over a decade later, sir, I grope around in the darkness, as a student might beneath their desk, and I notice your presence.

What does it take to get a stranger to remember you? to make a difference? A blue Australian note, I guess. My parents, they were ten minutes away, fast asleep, and me anything but helpless.

But sir, please let my memory of you serve as testimony. The littlest of kind acts, they’re as big as zeppelins. You in all your modesty gave me ten dollars and ran off, and still it floats by in my brain over and over again, sir.

Never meet your heroes, they say. I hope I never meet you. Not again. Not after you restored my faith in humanity, in men. You know when you haven’t slept, when your eyes feel bloodshot? When light is a pin, a needle? And an engine, an engine is an unknown beast, its occupants too. Alert, spine stiff, hair on end.

But when you’re sixteen, sir, you don’t know how vulnerable you look. In your mind, you’re an adult. But I suppose you saw, as one might expect, a young girl. Thank you. Thank you for seeing me for what I was – not for what one might want me to be, or for what I was taught to be at sixteen. The shame, the shame of being a girl and not a woman. Drilled into you. By friends, by men, by media.

Thank you for seeing a sixteen-year-old girl for what she was. And I don’t recall if I was wearing eyeliner. The dirty, smudged kind, because I didn’t even apply it right. Once, in dance class, we were told to wear foundation two shades darker due to the lights, and I was made fun of. Why? It looked like I’d burrowed my face through dirt. Me, me who’d followed the instructions printed on a pamphlet. Dress code and such. The other girls, they seemed to know that two shades darker would render them unlovable. Not me. Not me stranded at a petrol station waiting for the sunrise.

The sky, it turned orange, then pink and such as I swallowed my liquorice, bite after bite. But sir, you saved me from those clinical white lights. I wonder where you are. I wonder what you think of me. Was I a bogan in your eyes? Poor dirty little homeless girl. But it was just a night. And the night had become more hostile than I’d anticipated. You know, we used to play Spotlight – hide and seek with a torch. How was I to know that walking home alone might put my safety at risk? Me who was raised to believe that she was just as strong as any boy. Me who didn’t realise there was another world, amongst adults, in which gender played a larger role than I’d ever known.

But you, sir… And I swear, I could cry. I remember you and that night, and everything else might just, could just, melt away. I bought liquorice with your ten dollars, but you may have bought more. Why else would I, all this time later, still recall the day I sat on the kerb outside the petrol station awaiting the sunrise?