The Apple of Despair

5 July 2009

The man pounds up and down the aisle of the red line train, talking fast, frantic.

“I’m just askin’ for something, some change for my daughter. Anything, some food, anything. We ain’t got nothin’. I tryin’ to get the money to go to court, see I used her momma’s Link Card when she was alive and then, they said I owed $685, ‘cause it wasn’t my card. We don’t got anything.

Please. I just tryin’ to raise my daughter right, just tryin’ to keep her fed. We ain’t got nothing.”

‘A Link Card is food stamps,’ Philipp whispered.

I turned around in my seat and I saw a tiny girl, too small to even reach the seat, watching her Daddy, her eyes wide, confused. She had an oatmeal cream pie in her doll-like hands and there was something scary in the way she ate it, so focused on gulping it down.

My heart broke.

You can’t, just can’t give money to people who ask you on the street; especially a to men. I had been swindled too many times by sob stories; been cornered by women asking for money to escape from their abusive husbands, who produced real tears, then became hard faced as they counted the money you gave them and asked for more.

But the little girl. I couldn’t bear it. Hadn’t he asked for food, too? I’d do that—at least I’d know where it was going to. I found an apple in my purse, newly purchased, shiny, mottled yellow and red. I wobbled down the aisle, clutching it.

‘I don’t have any change but… can I give her an apple?’ I asked.

‘Anythin’, anythin’’ her daddy said.

I knelt down by her. She was so small. I placed the apple in her tiny, outstretched hands. It seemed too big, too shiny, too beautiful for the context. It was an apple for a fairytale, not for this story. It dwarfed her, making her look like a little, fragile Thumbelina.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked. Something to remember her by.

‘Janeshka,’ she whispered, mouth still full of oatmeal cream pie.

‘Her mouth full,’ he said.

‘How old is she?’ I asked, straightening.

‘Three,’ he said.

The train jolted to a stop and the man yanked on her little arm, darting out of the sliding doors and onto the next car. She seemed to fly behind him, like he was a child dragging behind him a little, lost doll with a shiny apple in her hand.