The Angel-Boy and the Old Woman
Two fairy tale encounters — the people unnamed and unknown to me. In the case of the young boy, I never asked his name and in the case of the elderly woman, she gave me her name, one of those Southern double names, but an unusual pairing — perhaps Alice Mae? — and my un-cooperative mind lost it immediately, as if she handed me a slip of paper and a mischievous wind snatched it away. So he becomes the boy-child of the fairy tale and she is the old woman.
I am walking my usual route along streets near home, older neighborhoods that are a hybrid of suburbia and town & country — no sidewalks, large wooded lots, each house far back from the street and in its own style. These streets are oddly empty, the people invisible, only seen if they happen to be coming or going in their enormous SUVs to and from their driveways, often their only stop to pause the car by the mailbox and empty it by reaching through a car window opened smoothly and almost immediately closed again. The garage door magically raises, the vehicle is swallowed, and the door descends. As far as I can tell, these people are modern castle dwellers who seal themselves inside fortresses. Many of the windows are shuttered from within and the slats never, never open. It’s really rather frightening to think how sequestered each household appears to be.
I am walking along this tidy yet ghostly road and I see a figure leaping up and down, dancing, on one of the vast lawns that slope down to the street. Closer, I see that it is holding a cardboard sign, and closer still, there is a dark-haired, slightly built boy, perhaps 9 or 10, running back and forth behind a low bench set out and filled with objects. His sign says “Yard Sale” and I can’t help but smile at his enthusiasm on this street where someone passes, usually in a flash by car, perhaps twice in 30 minutes. So of course I maneuver over to talk with him, and he is an elfin, charming child who radiates gentle sweetness. In the fairy tale, he is an angel in disguise who I must treat kindly so that later he will appear as my helper when trouble happens. The objects for sale are children’s paperback books, Pokemon cards, a few glass baubles, die-cast toy cars, an umbrella. On his sign is written that all proceeds go to help a Homeless Ministry.
I admit I haven’t a bit of change on me but that I’m interested in this ministry which he proudly explains is one he started at his church in a nearby town, a church where his father is pastor. He tells me that he has been putting together bags for the homeless. I mention how I see so many people living rough when I go weekly to the library. Now, in the winter, they sit indoors, gossip at the tables in the foyer or nap in various chairs among the stacks. In warm weather they congregate outside on a low wall at the corner, beneath the library’s tall, colorful metal statue of people reaching for stars. When the boy hears this, his already bright face glows with heightened intensity. “Will you take one of our bags?” he asks, never doubting that of course I will say yes, such is his innocence. And of course I say yes.
He runs into his house, which is a great, tall, conventionally dull colonial, surely packed full of bedrooms and bathrooms. What does this eager child know of being alone and unsheltered and poor as dirt? Yet he is applying compassion with imagination to try and share some of his own wealth even as he is too young to understand it. I am moved to smile again at his sincere kindness. Of course I take the bag he brings me — it weighs a ton because of water bottles and canned food inside. It’s a shiny pink drawstring backpack meant to be given to a woman, emblazoned with “Prayer Bag” and a graphic of a cross inside a heart, filled with zip lock bags that contain a space blanket, a hat and mittens, socks, a small Bible, grooming products, packaged snacks. Probably more items but I never empty the bag, just root around to make sure it seems both harmless and helpful.
I carry the pack home and stow it in my car to keep it available. Now I am on the lookout for a homeless woman. There’s something creepy and uncomfortable about that — a do-gooder being eagle-eyed for the appropriate “worthy” poor person. The feeling heightens my self consciousness about my own privilege, which only deepens my confusion about what my personal good fortune means and how it best can be used. Should I be like the early Quaker Abolitionists who wore wool and linen instead of cotton? How much should I be doing on a daily basis, and when all the dust settles, what does it accomplish? Are my good deeds designed to help someone or to make me feel virtuous?
So move ahead to my weekly library visit where I tutor on Tuesdays, and after class I am carrying a supermarket clamshell package holding a lone cupcake and I see the old woman sitting by herself.
“Ma’am, we just had a little party and there’s a treat here. Would you like it?” Here are our scraps, lady.
She exclaims,“Oh, you just made my day.” Here in Georgia there’s a way older Black folk act around me, a middle-class white woman, that is different from behavior in the more urban environment I come from. Here, the older people gush and nod and smile like I am the sun shining on their lives. It appears very genuine, and I imagine it is authentic as a habit, a facade as we all have public facades. The South is full of social conventions that are sweet confections, and there are advantages and disadvantages, but that’s another story. This story is about how the old woman tells me she got evicted because her landlord stopped taking her Section 8 voucher (a common situation here since the pandemic) and she is sleeping at the Salvation Army where, she lowers her voice, “they treat you just terribly.”
So I tell her about the church-boy who gave me the bag and ask if she can use it. Of course she says yes. I’m not innocent and I’ve learned this about the South — people always say yes and are expected to say yes when offered something, anything, and then afterward they are allowed to complain, to denigrate the thing they “had” to take. So I get the bag and give it to her. We paw through it a bit and she seems pleased although, without saying it aloud, I worry that it might be too heavy for her to lug around. She got to the library on the bus. I talk with her long enough to learn that she is checked in with the library social worker who is trying to get her housed again. I tell her I am at the library on Tuesdays and will look for her.
Then I am free. I am free of my promise to the angel-boy. My part in this fairy tale is done and it’s time to return to the mundane world, to my own concerns and cares. Will I see the boy-child or the old woman again? I hope so. But they will be real people from here on out. I will learn their names.
