Chapter Eleven – Justice

There was a justice on the street that hadn’t been in my life before.

In my life that had been, bullies sometimes went unchecked, those that were different were hurt and often there was no way to find retribution. The street held a kind of law and an unspoken rule of conduct. If someone was down, you held them up. It someone had been hurt by someone else, you stood up for them. I’d come to realize in a short time that you protected those that you were close to. It was just something you did without thinking about it.

Fast friendships formed and these people cemented themselves into your life and it was like you knew them right away. It was like this with Angel. I hadn’t known her at all when I had first met her, but now I searched her out whenever I was at YSB or the square. She filled my life with light, and I tended to gravitate towards it, not to drink from it but so I could bask in her glow.

It was healing to be next to her and her warmth filled over into my life. She would often draw her chalk art on the pavement of the square and put a hat out to collect change. Her art was so beautiful and lifelike that it looked like it could rise up out off the pavement and come to life. I was amazed that she could create such beautiful art with chalk on something as hard and unfriendly as the pavement. It seemed like a wonderful kind of balance whenever Angel worked the chalk into the cold pavement and brought it to life. Angel found life in the world that hadn’t been there before, and I marveled as I watched her work.

“Did you want to write something?” She asked.

I shrugged. “Well, nothing I write will be as good as your art.”

She stopped drawing and gave me a stern look. “Don’t say that. You’re a beautiful writer and your poetry is incredible. Why don’t you write a poem to go with my drawing. You can take your time with it. Here,” she handed me a piece of white chalk

I held it for a moment, watching her bring a woman to life within a forest of leaves. She looked out at me from within the window that Angel had created for her, and I could see her looking up at me. I looked into the woman’s eyes and began to write her story, scratching the white chalk onto the pavement.

I watched as both of our creations came to life together, my words taking inspiration from her. “She looks like she’s looking up at me from behind a window.” I told her. “Or like she’s outside looking within.”

Angel nodded and worked window lines in front of the chalk woman’s face. Only a few lines had been added, but it brought the chalk painting alive for me, made the final words of my poem come out and tumble from my fingers.

“There,” Angel said. We sat back and looked at our piece of art, my words a balance to her world of colours. I hadn’t noticed, but the amount of money in the hat had grown quite a bit. When the day was over, Angel handed me half.

“I can’t take that,” I said. “I wrote my poem for fun.”

“I painted my lady in the window for fun, too. We both worked hard in our own way and should both get paid for what we made. Fuck, I made more today than had it just been me painting. We helped each other.” She put the money into my hand and folded my fingers over it. “I mean, you didn’t see the people going to walk by my art, but they stopped to read your words and what you had written. We did it together, Jamie.”

We gathered up our windfall and headed towards McDonalds on Rideau Street. We could treat ourselves to something. I usually got a Fillet o’Fish and Angel would get nuggets or a Big Mac. We could eat in the restaurant and be near a washroom, pretend that we were normal, just for a moment.

I remember getting our food and thinking about the poem I had written. Eventually, both the drawing and my poem would be gone, never to exist again. It’s not like Angel and I could take a copy of her drawing, and I hadn’t thought to write down a copy of the words I had left behind.

I was okay with that.

It was our give to those that had given us the money we had in our pockets. The art and the words belonged to them, and we had left our magic in the streets. I wondered if others would be guided by the flash of the woman’s blue eyes or the curve of the vowels I had penned.

In that moment, I thought of the chalk dust we had marked the pavement with like stars, waiting to lead others to where they would find their magic.