“Last month, the city was caught…”
by Katherine Cooper
Last month, the city was caught in a thick, gray storm—the sky a furious and swollen mess. A coworker and I walked for a while through the quiet white flurry, the pavement completely bare save for a blanket of snow. We were walking by the George Washington Bridge when we saw Elizabeth. With two pieces of plywood and a royal blue tarp, she’d constructed a hut of sorts, but she was missing some crucial sides 
and was exposed just enough that snow was fluttering all around her. When we approached, she was sitting up, leaning against some duffel bags. She wore a pair of enormous yellow rain boots, two jackets (one fleece, the other down) and polyester snow pants. She was smiling in this sweet and dazed way, a serene look in her eyes. Elizabeth couldn’t have been more than thirty. She held a carton of ice cream between her legs, a spoon in one hand and, in the other, a container of marshmallow Fluff. Every so often, she’d methodically dip the spoon into the Fluff and then back into the tub of chocolate ice cream. There were literally dozens of containers of ice cream scattered around her—some in yellow plastic bags, mostly draped in snow.
We asked her a series of questions. Are you okay? Do you know where you are? Do you know what day it is? Who is the president? Do you want to go inside? Do you need a doctor? Elizabeth was silent, but appeared content, if hungry. I asked what kind of ice cream she liked and she let out a joyous shriek, holding up her container like a prized, golden trophy and smiling, gesturing. I asked her what else she liked, and she paused for a moment. Carefully, she moved the ice cream and Fluff to the side and crawled to the back of her space to gather some other belongings. She turned around and then presented me with a handful of DVDs and a portable DVD player. She held them tight against her chest and just kept smiling.
Later, when the police and paramedics came to take her away, they were, at first, surprisingly gentle. They tried for a while to coax her out—they didn’t want to force her, they said, they didn’t want to take her away involuntarily, but they would. They would if they had to. One cop, a young and blonde guy, lifted off a piece of wood—the roof to Elizabeth’s home. She began to cry. No, no, no, no, and she raised her hands to her head, please no! The cop delicately put it back. Sorry, man, he said, but come on. You gotta get out here.
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