Money for a Can of Coffee
One day a small child knocked at our door and asked my mother, “Can I have money for this?” He was holding up a new can of coffee with hands unsteady under its bulky weight. I saw his mother watching through a window across the street.
But this child came years too late. Life had already stripped from my mother the colorful fabric of joy, the sheer fabric of spontaneity, and the soft fabric of compassion and replaced them with hard gray armor.
A sometime husband, meals to cook for three small children, garment district sweatshops and the bundles of work she brought home on the bus to earn seven cents for each stitched zipper had darkened her outlook and wrung out the kindness that was there before.
Hurrying home in the dark with groceries, a neighborhood thug knocked my mother to the ground and grabbed her purse. We saw her bruises and heard her complain about the broken jar of mayonnaise.
So when this hurt woman and gentle child met, her response was cruel and cutting. “No!” she shrieked, and the boy was chased off the porch by a slamming door.
Now decades later, I still remember that little boy and wonder how many doors he tried before ours, and since.