For Maria, on a Saturday night in Long Beach

It was Saturday night as I was leaving a reading
that a young hispanic woman approached me in the street.
Her doe eyed look uttered for help before she even spoke.
She asked me if I knew of a church that was on the street

we were walking on. I said I was sorry, I didn't know
of a church being near us. She exhaled and hunched over,
just a little. I wished her luck in finding that church. I began
to walk more briskly to my car, her footsteps were slightly

behind mine. I turned when I saw my car parked in the
neighborhood. I looked back to the street and saw her
walking north in search. I wondered about her, her story,
her need to find a church at 9:30 p.m. on a Saturday night

in early autumn. As I began to pull away I saw her again.
She motioned for me to roll down my window. I did.
She said she was sorry to bother me, but wanted to know
if I knew where a certain street was. I said I did not,

that the only street I knew of by that name was nowhere
close by, certainly no place she could make on foot
in the next forty minutes. I told her to give me a moment.
I called my friend who lived in town and asked him

about that street. He confirmed what I already felt and said
that it was farther up in the far north end of the city.
She pulled out a business card for the church. I told her
I could call them and she could ask them where exactly

they are. I dialed the number and handed her the phone.
They picked up almost instantly. She began to speak
Spanish that was flecked with an English cadence.
There were a few hiccups in her speech when she struggled

momentarily with a word, but nothing that took away
from her need to be understood. I could hear them begin
to give her directions so I handed her a pen and paper.
She jotted everything down quick and handed me the phone.

When she showed me the directions I knew she had
no chance at getting to that church on foot in the time
she needed. "I normally wouldn't offer and you don't have
to trust me, but if you would like I could give you a ride

to the church," she thought for a second."Ok," she said.
I cleared my passenger seat of the bag of cds that had
been sitting there and the books of poetry I had just
picked up. She opened the door and sat down.

She said that her pastor had told her about this church
and that she had been looking for it for hours but had not
been able to find it. She wasn't from here she said.
She began to tell me the why of now:

her name is Maria, she is twenty years old, her fiance
is twenty-two, they both pick up small jobs here and there
to pay for the motel room they stay at, it's been like this
for an entire year, her mother was a drunk and kicked

them out, her mother-in-law was a drunk and drug addict
and used the money they gave her for rent to feed
her addiction, she had just found out she was pregnant
with their child, he had hurt his back the previous day,

they were trying to gather enough money to pay for their
room the next morning, she was hoping the people at church
could help her out with some money, she had only been able
to get thirty-five dollars over the course of the day,

she asked me if I was Christian or Catholic. I told her
I was brought up Catholic but that I wasn't practicing. I said
that I still do my best to help people and be a good person.
She seemed satisfied with that answer. She told me there

was a man who was going to help them out with getting
an apartment but that it wouldn't be ready for them until
a week from now. Until then, they still had to fight to keep
themselves under a roof. We drove along the street,

miles from where we had started, and told her it was still
a little further up. When I first saw her I thought she had
to be a teenager. The truth wasn't too far from that.
I wanted to ask her about school, if she even thought about

college. I didn't. I cared enough to just worry about now.
About getting her to church. This young woman who
could have been my sister, my cousin. I didn't care that
I was going to be late to the party I was attending.

It didn't matter. They would understand. We arrived
at the church and I pulled over. I pulled out my wallet
and said it's not much and handed her a ten dollar bill.
I took the change I kept for meters and gave it all.

I told her I didn't expect anything from her. I wished
her luck as sincerely as I have ever meant it. She said
thank you. I watched her enter the church. I turned
and joined the tides of the streets once more.