What To Do?

We got home the other night to a peculiar and difficult message on the answering machine. It was from the woman who’d been our housecleaner for many years, until we moved out of our apartment in the city four years ago. We haven’t spoken to her since then.

The message was very hard to understand, so much so that we listened to it three times, a perfect storm of English as a second language, a Guatemalan accent, and a scratchy cellphone connection. Eventually, I picked out “six weeks”, “Kennedy Airport”, a phone number, a reference to a lawyer, and her daughter’s name. I still had no idea what she was talking about, but something sent me to the computer to Google her daughter’s name.

Shock. About six weeks ago, a young woman was killed on the roof of a midtown club, where she’d gone to a birthday party for a rapper. It was our housecleaner’s daughter.

I spoke to her later, and I still don’t quite know what she wants or needs, or what she was asking us for. But it’s deeply saddening, and completely unsettling. And I don’t know what to do.

I know that there’s a court date in November. I know that there’s a raffle for an airplane ticket. I know that there’s a lawyer. I could call the lawyer. I could buy a raffle ticket or three. I could go to the court date and give her a hug. I could send her some money.

The daughter was a good daughter, supportive of her mother, a helpful kid who made phone calls for her mom (because the kid spoke better English). The daughter had a job – and while I don’t know if she was living with her mother, I’m sure she was helping to support her mother. Because her mother has another child. A severely handicapped Down syndrome boy who’s eight now. And that’s the piece of it that really pushes the envelope for me – that boy lost his sister. That boy lost the sister who might have been with him after their mother’s gone. What about that boy?

I think I'll put a check in the mail later, but it just doesn't feel like enough.