My Hungry Friend

1. The Old Woman on the Corner

One kick.

That was all it took.

One kick, and a cup of change.

I squeezed off the train at Harvard Ave, sweating underneath my collared shirt and pea coat, and walked toward the worst mistake of my life. It was a cold, cloudy day, no sight of the sun. In Boston, March isn't a month. It's a proper noun describing the long, gray trudge between winter and spring. Everyone had their head down or their hands in their pockets, except for the people sitting on the sidewalk. They had their heads up and their hands out.

I have nothing against the homeless, but when they come out in numbers, they make getting down the block a guilt trip. You help none of them, you feel bad. You help one, and you have to practically run by the rest. There's never enough to go around, and sometimes you're just cashed out. Even if you're carrying around a roll of quarters in your pocket, sometimes you're just cashed out.

That morning there were the usual faces. One was a black fellow sitting in a sleeping bag with big white eyes that seemed to jump out of his head. Another was Napkin Guy, who'd earn enough for a cup of coffee and use the coffee to purchase a few hours of real estate in Dunkin Donuts, making gorgeous, intricate flowers out of paper and straws. There was a woman who never stopped swinging her arms and calling out, "Can I have a dollar? Can I have a dollar? Can I have a dollar?" Occasionally she wore a leg brace, but today she'd left it . . . wherever she left her things. I'm not saying she's a faker, but sometimes I wondered if she wasn't just out to make a buck. Down that little strip of Harvard Ave, I passed maybe six homeless people in all, some parked next to shopping carts of recyclables, one or two holding urgent, anxious conversations with themselves (but still able to give me entreating stares as I went by) and soon I was biting down on the urge to scream, "I'm not a goddamn piggy bank!"

I wish I had screamed, but I didn't. I did something worse.

And it made me feel good.

For a moment.

There's a woman on the corner that everyone calls Mom because she calls everyone who passes her sweet child. She'd sat on her corner underneath an old movie theater marquis since Boston was nursing on the Queen. Her voice was melted chocolate and cigarettes and her skin was as thin as parchment paper, so she was forced to hide herself under thick blankets and wear a hood over her lined face. Every winter I expected her to die, and every spring she was still there.

"My sweet child," she said as I rounded her corner, "Can you spare a—"

That was when my foot found her Styrofoam cup in its path, and I could tell you I had no time to change course, that what happened next was an accident, but I won't. I kicked it. Like a boy at an empty soda can, I kicked her cup of change . . .

. . . and followed through, swinging my leg up through the hip and nearly spinning myself around in the process.

Quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies—the whole shebang—exploded in every direction. They ran down the sidewalk. They rolled into the intersection. A few even made it to the other side of the street. The sound of them scattering was music, and my outgoing breath stretched itself into something thin and strange in order to escape my throat, which closed tight in excitement. The noise I made was almost a yelp, like I'd been kicked. Everything went quiet in my head. I'd shocked my own inner audience into silence.

At long, long last my foot touched back down. I looked at Mom, who looked up at me from her deep hood, her face wide open . . . that is how I remember her in that moment, not hurt or surprised, but open, as though I'd knocked down some door inside her and let the wind into her house. All those many, many winters she'd sat there on her corner, and I let the cold in. I let the cold in, do you understand?

I hunched my shoulders and strolled away, my whole body desperate to break into a run. My office was one of six tucked out of sight underneath a concrete overhang, but she must have known where I worked and what I did. She had been there a long time, after all. I went into the warmth, blushing and apologizing for being late, and that was how the first day of my last week on Earth began.