"Ayudame porfavor...."
He was sitting in the gutter right next to the curb where I was standing. I hadn't noticed him because his dirty hair, skin, and clothes were camouflaged to the color of the Mexican dirt street.
"Help me... I'm stuck!" His manner of speech had a childlike innocence probably due to his provincial Zapotec accent mixed with his Spanish. I was musing about other things as he lifted up his hands to me. He wore heavy work gloves, and I instinctively grabbed them and tried to pull him to his feet. But there wasn't the resistance nor weight that I had expected and he sailed high, as if he was a light -footed ballerina dancing with me. He laughed in an embarrassed sort of way. His legs were missing.
Shocked, I became aware of every detail in the immediate area. At his waist he wore a sock-like garment held together with pins and twine which covered the lower portion of his trunk. There was nothing below that. I lowered him back to his wheeled wooden platform.
As I stooped down and lifted the front of his platform onto the curb, my face came very close to his. All of the details of this man which previously had aroused a feeling of uneasy repulsion began to blur. It must have been due to the intensity of his face and his bright, penetrating eyes. He leaned forward to level himself against the extreme pitch of his platform as I lifted and pushed the back end onto the curb.
The task of getting him up onto the curb was over, and I asked, "Is there anything else I can do?" I expected him to ask for money, and momentarily his eyes retreated and lowered. Shyly he spoke, "My hands...they hurt."
He held up both gloved hands in a gesture of a scrubbed surgeon trying to avoid touching anything, and he unveiled a gnarled and crippled hand; the product of pounding the pavement to propel him on his platform. He took off the other glove to reveal the same horror.
His eyes calmed me, "My hands hurt and I can't move my fingers very well....please move them, and crack the joints for me." A wave of numbness engulfed me, while his eyes coaxed and pleaded with me to lower my guard and keep in check the fears of intimacy with fellow human beings.
He watched my face the whole time I worked on his hands. His eyes told me when I got in a good crack or when it was time to move onto another joint. Although we exchanged few words, our silent dialogue was lengthy and profound.
With considerable effort he was finally able to flex his hands. His face beaming, he thanked me and then zoomed down the sidewalk on his platform using the full stride of his arms. He stopped just before turning the corner. We waved to each other and then he was gone.