Sitting in my car in the Santa Monica Staples parking lot, gathering documents once again for FEMA,….a gorgeous Afro American woman pulled into the parking space next to me, climbed out of her car with a tiny dog dressed in ballet clothes, turned to me and said “My GOD it’s hot and are you an angel?”
I hear this often and I honestly do not know how to answer. And then she said, “I can tell I can talk to you.”
I shoved my papers aside and decided to go with the flow, and she let ‘er rip for an HOUR LONG monologue…her life at the moment. She fascinated me..visually, with intricately woven braids twisted into a semi beehive on her head, necklaces and bracelets shining and jingling next to her deep dark flawless skin, her layers of silky colored fabrics wrapped around strong fleshy curves and a mouth that did not stop moving. Sonya.
Sonya began by being irate at her own grown daughters’ entitlement and blasting the current culture of selfishness and then moved into sharing her own inability to turn away from others’ needs. She said that she had suffered in her life and cannot turn a blind eye to others…and she she said “I AM ONE BLACK LADY AND I TAKE ACTION!” She unofficially works with the Venice homeless and was screaming at how her non authorized role saves dozens of sweet lost souls. The particular program that she is currently on the periphery of, houses homeless for a year in a hotel in Venice. The hotel people get paid, and then the homeless are released to the streets after one year. She says that while they are in there, the conditions are horrific and the inhabitants simply continue their drugs and drinking because what else are they to do, and there is no to effort made to rehabilitate/counsel them…the city gets credit for “ helping the homeless” and they don’t care.
On her one day off, as she said that she needed some play time, she orchestrates a ‘day in the spa’ for neighborhood poor in her LA hood, and invites the children into her friend’s salon where they all have their fingernails and toes painted and their hair braided.
WHO is the angel, I might ask?