Free Across The Tracks by Xyla Turner

Tilda started swinging her purse at the guy with the knife. The guy dropped the knife and he tried to push her, but she didn’t budge. Rich looked on in shock because the woman had balls. She stood between him and the guy who pulled the knife and yelled, “What ta blood clot is wrong wit tu?” She sucked her teeth and shook her head at the man.
    “Bitch, move the fuck out of the way!” the guy yelled as the other stood back.
    “You see ta man on crutches. What tu want money or someting. Look at tem,” she waved her hand towards Rich, “he don’t have no money?”
    “No, he got a problem, though.”
    “Yeah, he do got a problem, but it ain’t tur problem. Get ton tur way. There’s noting here.” She waved him on.
    The guy picked up the knife and started walking away and said, “Whatever, crazy ass bitch.”
    “Come ton, Mr. Wells.” She pulled out the keys to her car.
    At that moment, Rich didn’t know whether to kiss her or run away. She was definitely crazy, but she did just save his life. From that day forward, Rich started to trust her more and more. He went to physical therapy, abstained from drinking any alcohol, and gradually progressed to eating dinner with Tilda. At first, she would make food for herself, and Rich would smell it, then make a comment on the aroma. Then he tried some. Then she started making extra food for him and he would take it back to his makeshift room on the first floor because it was hard to go up and down the stairs without help. Then Tilda started setting the dinner table for the both of them and they would eat there or just relax on the kitchen island.
    Rich found out that Tilda was the only child because all of her brothers and sisters had died either in Jamaica or in the states. Tilda had a daughter who was diagnosed with cancer at a young age, so she cared for her until she passed away. Tilda also had a son in jail, doing life for murder. Rich was so moved by the tenacity of the woman, he asked if she wanted him to look into the case. She said no because if he were not in that jail, he would be in another. She described how he got hooked on drugs at an early age, even though she provided him with a roof over his head and encouraged him to go to school. She explained how the drugs overtook him, but where they grew up in Brooklyn, NY, there were not many options for a young black boy. The school put him out for threatening a teacher, then he refused to go back to school. Later he started getting locked up for petty theft, to grand larceny, and eventually murder. She visits him three times a year, writes him every two weeks and prays for him every day. The truth was she did not want him to look into it because she didn’t mean to give him false hope. Rich could understand that.
    Rich never talked about himself to her because his sad little story was insignificant, so he thought. Then the conversation started to turn into political and racial debates between them. For an old black woman, she knew a lot about a lot. He actually told her this. Then she clarified, that for a rich white boy, he didn’t know a lot about much. From then on, Tilda and Rich engaged in debates and usually he would be the one to concede because he simply didn’t know enough about the other side. He could only talk about what he heard or saw. Most of this was on TV, what his father taught him and what he experienced in his job, which actually dealt with people and their situations at their lowest point. Tilda took it upon herself to take him on a few field trips to North and South Philadelphia. They went to nursing homes, the YMCA, Freedom Theatre, community centers, state representative’s and senator’s offices in the inner city, and even schools. She began to slowly expose him to people that were not like him so that he could see there was nothing to fear and all humans the same struggle with the same issues, they just look different.
    Before Rich realized it, Tilda had become some sort of