Ali

Ali

by Colleen Lawson-Thornton

Sometimes I still think Ali is a prophet. Originally, I thought Ali was a homeless man who’d marked my block as his. Most days I spy Ali trapping around Girard, his lanky frame hunched and squeezed into clothes found in the discard bin down on 26th Street. Recently, he’s taken to a pair of skin-tight jeans, a camouflage vest and unplugged headphones.

Sometimes he waits for the bus with me and tells me about life. “Red,” he’ll say, “Don’t never sign nothing but your paycheck. That’s how they get you” and he’ll hold his hands up to show me the invisible shackles. “Red, you got a dollar?”

When we first met I found Ali face down in a garbage bin, looking for scraps and talking to himself about crinkled cigarettes. “Red, you got a cigarette? Don’t cross on red, or they’ll get you.” Back then I used to briefly wonder who got Ali and where they took him. I imagined unnamed men in white scrubs throwing him into a room where he was poked and medicated. Or maybe unnamed men in drab uniforms throwing him into combat too young.

In the years that I’ve lived in the neighborhood I’ve seen Ali at dusk with a boombox playing jazz, watched him quickly shooed out of corner stores, and once I didn’t see him for weeks until he reappeared with bruise-darkened skin and an eye swollen shut. “They got me,” he said.

Today, I see Ali sprawled on the stoop of the dry cleaner next to the 32 stop. His radio is blasting, and he’s sorting through treasures abandoned by their former owners. He’s babbling to himself, but takes off his headphones to talk to me.

“Are you related to me?”

“Not that I know of…”

He stands up and draws himself close to me, his body angled down so his face is near mine. “Yeah, but I fought a war for you” he sputters and spit dribbles down his chin. “So don’t you think maybe we’re family?”

I pause to answer, and in that moment the officer shows up. “Are you okay?” he says and I shrug. The hairs on my arms have begun to prickle and I know what the officer wants as he gets out of his car.

“I’m just waiting for the bus.”

“She’s fine, she’s my kin. We’re the same,” Ali says.

The officer turns to me and brushes his hand toward his hip. “It sounds like your bus is coming,” he says.

As the bus pulls up, I ready my money and climb aboard. “We are related. I’ve known you forever” Ali says and the bus doors close behind me.

Colleen-Lawson-Thornton is a special education teacher at Vaux High School. Colleen joined the Philadelphia Writing Project in 2013 as a teacher consultant.