She looked like she had just walked out of a small-town church, the picture-perfect grandmother.

She yelled, she cursed, she waved her fists.

HEY LADY BY ANDREW M WASSERMAN 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 121

She looked like she had just walked out of a small-town church, the picture-perfect grandmother, with her neatly coiffed gray hair, wool V-neck button-down sweater, knee-length cotton skirt, sensible shoes. And she was little-old-lady short, barely five feet tall. She had a slight stoop but not hunched over. She was skinny but not skin and bones. She had a gait that spoke of arthritis or some other achey stuff. Walking was a bit of a chore, a bit of a pain. She had some wrinkles and some worry lines, like you’d expect with someone in their late-70s.

You could imagine her in a country kitchen in Massachusetts or New Hampshire sipping a cup of tea as her just-baked, oven-warm apple pie cooled on the windowsill, the mouth-watering aroma of cinnamon and nutmeg filling the late morning air.

But she was in Brooklyn walking down a crowded street. Her pleasant features suddenly turned angry. She scowled, her tiny, boney, liver-spotted hands, clenched into fists. Looking right at a man passing by she unleashed an ocean of bile and vitriol the likes of which would have brought a drunken biker brawl to a sudden stop. “Fuck you, you fuckin’ piece of shit. Why don’t you go fuck yourself?” she screamed. The man jerked back just a bit but continued on his way, looking over his shoulder.