She strolled the Pan-Am Pool deck, backlit by the bright glare of the glass wall behind her. She might have been on a movie set for the way she carried herself. Her eyes stared forward and she had a placid, neutral look on her face. I watched her for a moment and noticed that her head remained on a perfectly level plane as she walked, barefoot and bikini-clad.
Studying more carefully now, as one woman to another, I noticed how—with the prairie sky her dramatic backdrop—she placed her feet close to the centreline as she moved; like a runway model, cool and aloof. Her smooth passage was a gift to onlookers, each step sure, delicate, and precise.
It occurred to me, in my judgmental way, that this woman had once been striking and still strived for that status. I believed she had suffered along the way. Much of the shimmer of youth had been rubbed off by a harsher than necessary abrasive.
She was heavily tattooed. The blue markings—blurry and faded—hinted to me of jail or street life. Her facial complexion added to the backstory I was creating, not so much intentionally, as automatically.
Her pretty face still shone through, but a badly healed broken nose gave her a roughhewn look—I thought of a Canadian boxer from long ago, George Chuvalo.
George, my same-named husband, loved Chuvalo. First because they were both Georges, but also because of the fighter’s rugged manner, which “my Georgie” had idolized as a boy. I was secretly fond of this boxer too. He was such an unusual man, so out of character for a warrior. His television interviews showed him to be sweet and soft-spoken despite being seemingly indestructible. He broke the mold of a brutal, violent prizefighter. He was in truth a gentle, thoughtful person, a family man and an avid reader, despite his public persona.
“He could punch a tugboat out of the water and his opponents broke their fists on his head!” my husband would exclaim. Before their big fight in 1966, Muhammed Ali mocked him, calling Chuvalo “The Washerwoman” because of his odd style, twisting his torso left and right. That derisive nickname made me love George Chuvalo even more, somehow imbuing in him a feminine element. The Washerwoman surprised Ali, outlasting all previous contenders and punishing the champion despite fighting above his weight class. (I was proud of my boxing knowledge and my status as an atypical fight fan.)
My visual appraisal of the tattooed woman, including my recollection of George Chuvalo, was done in the thirty seconds or so it took her to walk the length of the pool. I looked back out at my friend, Cindy, swimming laps methodically, her effortless, gliding crawl pulling her along the top of the water like the former college swimmer she was. I wondered who was appraising her as she swam? Or me, exhausted after only a few laps, sitting there with a towel draped modestly—and strategically—over my midsection. A pair of gifted “professional” goggles, the same kind Cindy wore, hung casually around my neck.
***
I headed for the steam room. It was empty except for a small red-haired man sitting on the lowest bench near the back of the chamber.
I was reminded—as I was every time I went in this place—of the first steam room I had ever been in. It was at the Minneapolis Athletic Club, where my husband and I stayed years ago. We were, back then, a young Manitoba couple on a business trip to the big city. The downtown club was a throwback to the Twin Cities’ former glory days for lumbermen and other Babbit-like Midwesterners. George and I booked one of the small hotel rooms, ornately decorated with period furniture and musty with age.
Just off the Athletic Club’s pool area there was a common space for both men and women. It was a kind of tiled atrium with a few lockers and some wood benches. Placed centrally between the pool, the steam baths, and the separate bathrooms and changing areas it was often populated with large, hairy men who smoked cigars. They wore drooping towels and used the space as a smoking area—so common in those days. It was like being on a “Godfather” movie set, absent the plaintive trumpet solo. After my swim, I was heading for the Ladies change room when a middle-aged man caught my attention. He was standing perfectly still, like a street corner busker. He stood with his back unnaturally stiff, in mid-gesture, reaching for the door to his locker.
He saw me glance at him and furrowed his forehead vigorously, up and down, up and down, grimacing slightly and grunting without moving his lips. I froze, looking at him intently to try and understand why he was behaving so oddly. He hummed loudly.
Is he talking to me? I wondered. There was no one else around.
His words were garbled, urgent—pushed out through a clamped jaw.
Puzzled, I went to him, stopped two arms-lengths away, and asked what was wrong. He did not move and stood with his feet flat and one waxy arm reaching for the locker handle. He grunted again, troubling me and sending a tingle up my spine.
“Hocket,” he implored, non-sensically. Then he seemed to reset, and grunted, “Hock…hocket…”
Pocket? I thought, borne along by context clues. I asked him, speaking loudly, “In your pocket?”
“Hess!” he responded, blinking rapidly, as if to substitute for a vigorous head nod.
His towel had fallen to the floor and he wore Speedo-style swimming trunks. I could see a lump beneath the fabric on his left hip. A little uncomfortable—actually a lot—I stepped closer and fished under the elastic waistband to flip out the small gauze pocket. Pulling the drawstring loose, I found a locker key with number 55 stamped on it. There was also a transparent plastic container containing some pills.
“Hill! Hill, houth, houth!” he intoned excitedly, sounding weak now, some spittle on his stubbled chin. He was breathing heavily. I started to reach over to open his locker, but he gurgled at me desperately: “houss, howth, howth!”
I felt bombarded by the pure oddity of the situation… Had I stumbled into a solo performance of Waiting for Godot? Near to being overwhelmed, I fought back the urge to find someone else to help. The man’s eyes told me he needed me, now; this could be no play-acting.
He closed his expressive eyes for at least a half-minute, then slowly, with all of his apparent strength said, haltingly, “PILL… huh. Hmm, mm-mouth.”
After fiddling with the container I tried pinching it as you would the small Aspirin boxes common then and it popped open. Inside were four round yellow pills. He nodded, just perceptibly, sweat breaking and running down the skin of his chest.
Carefully picking one of the tiny pills out of the container, I pushed it between his lips. He sucked loudly, to pull it into his mouth. Swaying slightly, he remained otherwise motionless. I closed the pillbox, opened his locker and put the medication on the shelf. His wallet was there and I flipped it open. The name on the Minnesota driver’s license was Sayam Latif.
I picked up his towel and dismissed my prairie propriety to wipe his slick forehead and neck. He was sweating profusely, belied by goose flesh all over his upper arms. With fluttering lashes, his eyes opened and he nodded his head slightly.
A few minutes later his upper body seemed to relax and his shoulders slumped. Gradually, his raised arm angled down, deflating like it had a slow leak. After a time, he drew in a loud, long breath through his nose, his chest filling and lifting. He moved his arm, which had by now come down to his side, and he touched me lightly on the hip, steadying himself.
Together, with me guiding him, we pivoted and sank down onto the bench beside his locker. He flexed his neck and rolled his shoulders. With closed eyes, he sat wiggling his fingers and toes. I put the towel across his shoulders and waited.
We remained like this for a few minutes. The silence was broken only by an occasional metallic tapping from the steam pipes. Finally, he opened his eyes and regarded me, as if for the first time. Deeply recessed and rimmed with dark skin, the whites of his eyes were mapped with red veins.
“You,” he began, his speech still slightly slurred, but understandable and with a definite foreign inflection, “you are an ANGEL in our midst on earth, as described by the wonderful Christian speaker, Billy Graham!” He patted me on the back, grinning with deep dimples in his cheeks.
Relieved by his animation, I laughed out loud at his surprising proclamation and my voice echoed in the tiled white room. Then I too breathed deeply. Feeling like The Washerwoman between rounds with Ali, it was as though I had been holding my breath since I first saw him.
“Billy Graham,” he said, his face suddenly serious, “foretold of a beautiful angel coming to the aid of a man. Reverend Graham said this in a sermon here in Minneapolis. He said this angel would be unrecognizable except by her deed and that the angel herself would not know she was an instrument of the Lord.”
We shook hands, his grip still weak, and introduced ourselves.
“What… ahh—?” I began to ask, but he interrupted, anticipating my obvious questions.
“I suffer from a rare condition. It is mostly controlled by my daily medication, diet, meditation, and exercise. But sometimes I suffer an attack that freezes my voluntary muscles and I am immobilized for up to twenty minutes.” He paused, smiling as I nodded.
Breathing heavily, with some difficulty, he continued, “I am not harmed, although the attack is physically and mentally exhausting. Sometimes, like today, if I can’t sit down in time, I am at risk of falling. This, my friend, would have happened to me if you had not been so accurately placed to see me and hear my cry for help.”
He spoke clearly now, with an English accent over traces of Middle Eastern pronunciation. He enunciated each word precisely. It was pleasing to hear him speak and it made me feel very Canadian and untraveled, although I did not mind this because I was, like him, awash in feelings of relief and consequence. Together, we had made a unique journey.
“The pill you gave me dissolves under my tongue and provides a boost to overcome the immobilization. Now I need to drink some water and lie down in my room and take some other medication.”
That evening, he insisted on buying my husband and me a lavish dinner at the restaurant that adjoined the Athletic Club. We parted friends and a few months later, he sent me a copy of a Billy Graham book.
***
I thought of all this again as I sat in the steam room, many miles and years separating me from that bizarre encounter. Just then, the woman with the tattoos and the catwalk stride—her unique démarche—entered the steam room. She stood near the redheaded man on the lower bench and spoke to him.
“What is going on around here?” she said, shooting a quick side-eye at me. “What’s with that frickn’ giraffe, anyway? She always has it in for me.” She paused, then took a long pull from a water bottle she carried, re-capping it with a “pop” and sitting down beside him. The steam came on as she sat, seething hot and hissing, it seemed, in agreement.
“Paula? The pool manager?” the man asked.
“Yes, her!” she said, rolling her eyes. “Okay, like, I GET that I ain’t some… some middle class suburban mom, but I have as much right as anyone to be here. The City gives free passes out for this place; hands them out at the Main Street Project and I got one. Why shouldn’t I?”
“Paula, she thinks yer gonna steal somethin’,” the man said with indifference, looking across his shoulder at her. She shifted, her back arched.
The man stretched his short arms out in front of him uncomfortably. He stole a glance at me.
“Bitch says she gonna ban me!” she spat out, staring straight ahead into the steam.
I sat still, my back against the hot tile wall and my nostrils burning as I inhaled.
“So, I was in the family change room, eh?” she explained. “An’ there was no one in there but me and this old Mexican-lookin’ dude. I went to the can and when I came out, he was like, just standing there, like totally still. As if he was playing frozen tag, eh?”
“That’s wack,” her friend agreed. I turned my head a bit in their direction.
“So, I watched him and he’s standing dead still—not movin’ a muscle. Then, I go a little closer and he is, like, whispering to me. He is talking weird though, right?”
She took a deep breath and shifted her seat on the wet bench. “So, anyway, you know, he says to me—‘need pill’ or something like that.”
I was looking right at her now, listening closely. She noticed and did a tiny double-take, but seemed all right with me listening in. Then she stood up, canting a hip.
“In his locker—it’s wide open—is his wallet and a little prescription bottle.”
Just then, the steam room door opened. A teenage lifeguard entered with a tall woman I recognized, vaguely. I suspected that this was “Paula”, aka, “Bitch!”
“Eppie?” the tall woman said.
Eppie replied with a silent, grim scowl.
“I want to ask you some questions. Will you please come with me?”
Cindy came into the steam room just then, peeling off her fancy swim goggles. Leaning towards me, she said, “I’ve finished my laps. Let’s go,” in a stage whisper. I took a last look at Paula and Eppie and we left.
Cindy was curious about Paula and the lifeguard being in the steam room. I promised to tell her the story after we showered and changed.
When I came out, Cindy was standing in the entranceway with a small crowd near the front desk. Eppie was next to two police officers, one of whom was touching her on the arm with a blue nitrile-gloved hand. Eppie kept pulling her arm back, saying with annoyance, “You don’t have to touch me!” the whole time keeping her glaring eyes locked on Paula who spoke in whispers with the other police officer, a man as tall as her.
The officer next to Eppie nodded and said in a calm voice, “Yes, Miss. We just need to understand the circumstances, is all.”
“Well, why are you accusing me?” Eppie yelled, the veins on her forehead standing out, face fierce. “Not only did I not, like, steal anything, but I helped the guy that got ripped off. He couldn’t MOVE. I gave him one of his pills and helped him sit down—he basically fell over. Man! You cops gotta check your COLONIALISM, you know what I’m saying?”
Cindy heard this and gave me a surprised look. I nodded at her and whispered, “That’s what I was gonna tell you! She—Eppie—was telling some guy in the steam room about what happened. It was exactly like that guy I met in Minneapolis. Do you remember me telling you about that?”
“Yeah-yeah. The guy that couldn’t move and he bought you and Georgie the fancy meal afterwards…”
“Uh-huh! The guy that was ‘frozen’,” I said, making air-quotes. “The same thing happened to Eppie over there. She was the guardian angel—just like me! In fact, I was just thinking about it when she came in and told the story!”
“His name is Delgado,” Eppie said just then, almost shouting. “A. Delgado! I remember from the pill bottle!”
A few minutes later, the police and Paula came over and questioned me. I vouched for Eppie to the extent that I had overheard her story in the steam room and that I knew about the strange immobilizing condition she described. I told them that I had a similar experience many years ago. Paula and Mr. Delgado arrived just as I was describing my past experience. Delgado then told them the whole thing, exactly as Eppie had described it and agreed that my past experience with the man in Minneapolis named Sayam Latif sounded consistent with his own medical condition.
Eppie’s monthly pass was reinstated and she walked out in her distinctive way. As she strode by, she regarded me with an odd intensity.
Delgado came over. His face was friendly, but his eyes looked tired and his head hung forward as if too heavy to hold upright.
“Hello,” he said with a warm smile. “You are rare, my friend. You’ve met a person like me before. A cataleptic...”
“Yes sir, I have. I didn’t know it by that name, though. Not then. I met… well, there was a man like you in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1985.”
“You helped him?”
“Yeah, just like Eppie helped you. I gave him a tiny yellow pill and he recovered,” I explained. “It was a long, long time ago but I remember it quite clearly.”
“I could have used you today.”
“Why? I don’t understand. I thought Eppie… I thought she helped you?”
“Yes and no. I’m afraid she helped herself, too,” he said, looking outside where a break in the clouds made the damp parking lot shine through the glass doors, causing Eppie’s silhouette to glow. “She gave me the pill but she also took the $200 I had in my wallet.” he said, speaking slowly. “So, don’t be too generous with your praise of her.”
“But you… I mean, you cleared her with the police. She took you for $200! And, she wanted the cops to talk to you —”
He cocked his head, squinting into the sun’s brilliance. “She didn’t know I saw her take the cash.” He stood still for a few seconds, then scraped his foot on the floor and continued. “I was going to tell them she took it but…” he shook his head and blew air out through his nose, reminding me of the long-ago Mr. Latif.
“My solution is imperfect, but—she gave me the pill. You know? You may think it’s silly, but I like to think God placed her there, thief or not. She, Eppie, could have just grabbed my stuff and ran.” Then Delgado patted me on the arm and added another thought. “You and I, Paula, the police, most people really—we see the Eppies of the world in a certain way. It’s in our nature. We make assumptions… stereotype or, at the very least, we don’t account for all that is not immediately apparent.”
He paused and I nodded my agreement in silence, thinking of Eppie’s runway walk earlier. I counted off the many assumptions that had entered my head.
“Not only that,” Mr. Delgado continued, “but I also expect Eppie might look at us in a different way too. Her attitudes as a person without an everyday home might not comport with those of us who have one. Her whole view of property and her feelings towards material wealth could really use some empathy… from us, yes?”
The more he spoke, sincere and quiet, the more I knew he was someone whom I had thoughtlessly dismissed as “just another…” I sheepishly admitted to myself how I had picked up on his Hispanic name and brown skin and speculated at first that he might be a migrant worker, or a recent immigrant. That condescension was far from the truth, only now noticing that he wore expensive dress clothes and carried a University of Manitoba backpack. He had no accent, or possibly a Toronto drawl, if anything. What else had I gotten wrong? About him? About Eppie? About me?
Delgado bent to pick up his bag and then straightened, lifting his head and pushing his shoulders back. “Look, I have to get home and recuperate. My attacks are rare, but when I do get one…” He twirled a finger in the air. “As far as Eppie’s concerned, I may be wrong, but I believe there’s more to her, more than meets the eye, as they say. Eppie saw my predicament and resisted the temptation to leave me stranded. She’s rough in her manner and appears to have suffered some economic hardship but despite it all, she found her better angels.”
He smiled gently, held my gaze for a few seconds and then walked towards the glass doors with slow, rigid steps. As he left, I thought of how I had come so close to abandoning Mr. Sayam Latif in Minneapolis, so long ago. That’s part of the narrative I never told Cindy when I repeated the story to her.
I was also reminded of my favourite heavyweight champion—of soft-eyed George Chuvalo, speaking to a reporter. He stood on his front yard in Pelham Park in Toronto and chatted, ducking his head modestly to speak into the microphone. In those thick boxer’s arms that could “punch a tugboat out of the water,” he held his infant son; swaddled in might. I’m sure Chuvalo felt there was nothing incongruent or noteworthy about any of those facts, in any combination. He was just another suburban dad, holding his child and enjoying the sunshine.
“Our Better Angels” is published on TOEWS.IR by special permission of the author, Mitchell Toews, who holds the copyright.