hi and die

 I've been doing a lot of walking in my temporary neighborhood. It's clearly an area that's been gentrified and some of the walks take me along a busy stretch of road where people congregate, sometimes in parking lots by a smoke shop or an abandoned restaurant or in front of a burned out house. 

Yesterday I walked past the burned out house and two women were hanging out on the sidewalk out front. It was a warm afternoon and one seemed tired, sitting casually on a piece of cement. The other, tall and thin, was standing in the middle of the sidewalk, no mask, giving me and my companion hard looks.

My companion said Hi, but I didn't hear this due to the traffic noise.

The woman glared and said, Die. 

I didn't hear this either. 

As I drew closer, I gave her a wide berth because covid19, and said, Hello, nodding to both of them.

Don't you die, the standing woman said (I thought).

Don't you die either, I said, thinking we were being light-hearted.

She lunged closer to me. No, YOU die!

Aghast, I said, Listen, I said "Don't die." I was trying to be nice.

You fucking die. You die, she screamed.

I apologized and stupidly repeated that I was just trying to be nice.

Fuck you, she said. I don't know you. Shut the fuck up.

Let's go, I said to my companion, who had paused, and turned to walk on.

She ran up close, screaming. I'm going to follow you. I'm going to fuck you up.

It was a tense few blocks, to be sure. I felt a surge of fear--was this angry woman without a mask and seemingly without boundaries going to hit me? Run up behind me and bash my head in? We walked as fast as we could. At an intersection, hearing her yells growing closer again, we ran. Finally, maybe a 1/2 mile later, we slowed and looked back. She was gone.

*

I don't know why she was angry. It could have been the heat, or she was hungry, or drugs, or the fact that two caucasians were walking through a neighborhood that is extremely diverse. I've been yelled at, chatted up, panhandled and catcalled many times over the past few weeks. You don't see many white people walking. They're all in the cars whizzing by, and occasionally on one of the very full buses laboring up and down the street.

It is clear that this part of town hasn't seen the tech money or the explosive growth that other parts of Seattle have enjoyed. There's a lot of litter and abandoned buildings and soulless strip malls. There's also a ton of mom and pop businesses and parks and community organizations. It's also clear that I am an interloper and I'll be leaving soon. I wish I felt better about my stay.