“Tell your friend to cut out the sob-stuff,” the officer continued,
flourishing his club authoritatively. “On your way, both of youse.
Y’know better than to loaf around here, Mag.”
The woman put her hand on mine in a friendly little gesture of
protection. “Leave her alone! Can’t you see she’s all in? I’ll take
care of her.”
Her touch filled me with the warmth of shelter. I didn’t know who or
what she was, but I trusted her.
“Poor kid! What ails her? It’s a rough world all alone.”
There was no pity in her tone, but comprehension, fellowship. From
childhood I’d had my friendships and many were dear to me. But this
woman, without a word, without a greeting, had sounded the depths of
understanding that I never knew existed. Even as I looked up at her
she lifted me from the bench and almost carried me through the arbour
of trees to the park entrance. My own mother couldn’t have been more
gentle. For a moment it seemed to me as though the spirit of my dead
mother had risen from her grave in the guise of this unknown friend.
Only once the silence between us was broken. “Down in your luck, kid?”
Her grip tightened on my arm. “I’ve been there myself. I know all about
it.”
She knew so well, what need had she of answer. The refrain came back to
me: “Only themselves understand themselves and the likes of themselves,
as souls only understand souls.”
In a darkened side street we paused in front of a brown stone house
with shutters drawn.
“Here we are! Now for some grub! I’ll bet a nickel you ain’t ate all
day.” She vaulted the rickety stairs two at a time and led the way into
her little room. With a gay assertiveness she planted me into her one
comfortable chair, attempting no apology for her poverty--a poverty
that winked from every corner and could not be concealed. Flinging off
her street clothes, she donned a crimson kimono, and rummaged through
her soap-box in which her cooking things were kept. She wrung her hands
with despair as though she suffered because she couldn’t change herself
into food.
Ah! the magic of love! It was only tea and toast and an outer crust of
cheese she offered--but she offered it with the bounty of a princess.
Only the kind look in her face and the smell of the steaming tray as
she handed it to me--and I was filled before I touched the food to my
lips. Somehow this woman who had so little had fed me as people with
stuffed larders never could.
Under the spell of a hospitality so real that it hurt like divine,
beautiful things hurt, I felt ashamed of my hysterical worries. I
looked up at her and marvelled. She was so full of God-like grace--and
so unconscious of it!
Not until she had tucked the covers warmly around me did I realize that
I was occupying the only couch she had.
“But where will you sleep?” I questioned.
A funny little laugh broke from her. “I should worry where I sleep.”
“It’s so snug and comfy,” I yawned, my eyes heavy with fatigue. “It’s
good to take from you----”
“Take? Aw, dry up, kid! You ain’t taking nothing,” she protested,
embarrassed. “Tear off some sleep and forget it.”
“I’ll get close to the wall and make room for you,” I murmured as I
dropped off to sleep.
When I woke up I found, to my surprise, the woman was sleeping in a
chair with a shawl wrapped around her like a huge statue. The half of
the bed which she had left for me had remained untouched.
“You were sleeping so sound I didn’t want to wake you,” she said as she
hurried to prepare the breakfast.
I rose, refreshed, restored--sane. It was more than gratitude that
rushed out of my heart to her. I felt I belonged to someone, I had
found home at last.
As I was ready to leave for work I turned to her. “I am coming back
to-night,” I said.
She fell back of a sudden as though I had struck her. From the quick
pain that shone in her face I knew I had hurt something deep within
her. Her eyes met mine in a fixed gaze but she did not see me, but
stared through me into the vacancy of space. She seemed to have
forgotten my presence, and when she spoke her voice was like that of
one in a trance. “You don’t know what you’re asking. I--ain’t--no good.”
“You no good? God from the world! Where would I have been without you?
Even my own sister shut me out. Of them all, you alone opened the door
and spread for me all you had.”
“I ain’t so stuck on myself as the _good_ people, although I was
as good as any of them at the start. But the first time I got into
trouble, instead of helping me, they gave me the marble stare and the
frozen heart and drove me to the bad.”
I looked closely at her, at the dyed hair, the rouged lips, the
defiant look of the woman driven by the Pharisees from the steps of
the temple. Then I saw beneath. It was as though her body dropped away
from her and there stood revealed her soul--the sorrows that gave her
understanding--the shame and the heartbreak that she turned into love.
“What is good or bad?” I challenged. “All I know is that I was hungry
and you fed me. Shelterless and you sheltered me. Broken in spirit and
you made me whole----”
“That stuff’s all right, but you’re better off out of here.”