The Village

I.

There was only a sliver of sunlight remaining in the middle courtyard – really just a sword of uneven brightness across my legs, outspread on the broken concrete. Too tired to get up, but knowing it would soon be dark, I let myself be distracted by the old woman who’d moved in last week to the apartment across from where I sat. She backed out of her doorway, a colorful headscarf dancing off her shoulders, and eyed me doubtfully, while roughly turning the key to lock the door. She pulled on the doorknob a second – then a third – time, to ensure it was really locked.

I looked away, but not before eyeing her doubtfully, then jumped to my feet. She was dark, wore all black – except for the headscarf – and her long skirt blew up over her ashy knees in a sudden late summer bluster. All of this I noted in the infinitesimal moment our glances coincided before we each broke away, back to our own worlds. Back to our own suspicion and judgment.

Wiping imaginary dust from my shorts to avoid an encounter with her, my back turned, I felt her lumber past me. She pushed a bent grocery cart from the Foodtown up the street, and her breathing was thick and deep.

“Deserter,” I heard her mutter.

I continued walking toward my front door, unfettered by her bizarre utterance and set in my refusal to garner any further attention from her. Crazy old woman.

“That old lady is nuts,“ Mama sighed as I skittered past her, up the few steps to our front stoop, then into the apartment. I felt my shallow breath and heart pounding as I sank into the sofa, kicking off my sneakers one by one, with a shiver.

II.

“I know you heard me, little girl,” she said, the next day, when we met up unexpectedly by the half-open side door, where the washing machines and dryers all hummed and thrummed simultaneously.

In fact, I hadn’t anticipated seeing her that day, since it was Sunday, after all, and she looked like the type who would be in church all day. All day, and well into the evening, long past when I’d be snug at my mama’s feet by the sofa as she watched television, poised to bolt into the kitchen at any moment. I knew quite a few crazy old ladies, and that’s where they mostly spent their Sundays – or at least I thought. Yet here she stood. And here I stood.

Pretending not to see her – as ridiculous as that was, since she was only a few inches away and directly in front of me – I turned on both heels. At the same time, the old woman grabbed the bottom edge of my t-shirt, and I stumbled forward, forced to twist myself back around.

“I said, I know you heard me, little girl,” she confronted me, finishing her sentence with a low grumble, like an “mmm-hmmm.”

“And I know you can speak,” she continued.

No, I could not speak. And I would not speak to her, even if I could. She was frightening, and I couldn’t imagine why she had singled me out in this way.

“A deserter. That’s what you are,” she accused me, letting my shirt go abruptly. I remained still, but silent. “I seen you with your friends.”

What was she talking about? I had no friends in the Village.

III.

We moved here last year after Daddy died, which was in March. Although it was only a few blocks from our old house – and so only a few blocks from almost all of my friends – I had spent the summer alone. One by one, I counted them as they fell away, some with carefully crafted excuses and some only with the silence of embarrassment poor people always seem to receive from those around them. Settling into the summer here, I quickly acknowledged I would neither be readily accepted by the Village kids, nor would I attempt to win them over.

Either way, I did not have any friends.

And I didn’t care.

IV.

A few days later, as I balanced along the curb, pretending to be a gymnast, I noticed the ambulance pulling out of the hospital driveway behind where we lived. Although it was common enough, something caused me to skip off the curb. I was drawn to the middle courtyard.

Then I saw the small crowd of people, hovering over the walkway. I saw her, too. She lay flat on her back, motionless. Her bent shopping cart was on its side, in the grass, a paper bag with fruit, opened boxes of rice, and a white paper wrapping with some kind of fish or meat spilling out of it rested nearby.

At that moment, I knew she was gone. For the next hour or so, I watched as she was taken away, fully covered, in the ambulance. And I waited to see if someone would pick up her scattered groceries.

But they did not.

V.

Months later, after the school year had started, I remembered.

It came back to me as a gift from the recesses of my memory, now that I had settled – lonely – into the routine of the second marking period. A blunt-edged, but largish, gift box containing one word fell forward into my thoughts.

Deserter.

There had been a day in winter, when I still had friends, that we roamed the park together. The ground was packed with gray snow, and the street winding through the park was covered in foul, blackened slush – icy in spots and altogether treacherous.

That’s when I had seen her.

The old woman pushed her bent cart through the perilous heaps of snow, unable to travel more than a few feet, before sitting on the half-visible, wet curb. She sank gently into the snow, and she eyed me doubtfully, asking “Help me, little girl, will you?”

I quickly turned around, following the other kids who were already jumping from one ice block to another in the semi-frozen brook which, in the spring, would be framed by brilliant pink cherry blossom trees. I imagined the ground blanketed in silky pink petals as my feet crunched in the snow, walking away.

In that moment, I had seen the great death, but I had turned away.

It was only now that I realized scars faded as flowers. And the Village was now my home.

“Thank you,” I whispered.