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The Paperweight

The bag lady plodded the streets of our middle class neighbourhood, through rain, sun, or snow, her bulging bag of product samples slung over her shoulder. No matter the temperature, she wore a heavy coat and a wool cap pulled down over her tanned, worn face. On my way home from work, I drove by her as she trudged towards the straggle of woods we call a park. According to my mother, she had a home, if you could call it that, with a man who beat her.

My mother bought things from the bag lady. Vegetable wash, pot scrubbers, furniture polish. The thought of the woman's dirty hands digging in her sample bag, not to mention her unwashed smell, made me glad I wasn't home to answer the door during the day. I never said anything to Mum, she wouldn't have understood. My young daughter, babysat after school by Granny who lived round the corner, told me enough to make me feel guilty at my thoughts.

When the bag lady came to Mum's door, she invited her in for a cup of tea and a piece of cake. They would look over my mother's collection of paperweights, the bag lady smudging the glass as she picked them up and delighted over their colours and sparkle. My mother would examine the woman's catalogue, deciding on this or that, whether Mum needed the product or not. The bag lady gulped her tea and devoured the cake while talking in her stumbling drawl about the boyfriend who shouted, beat her and locked her out of their apartment. My mother, as she did with all of us, never judged, only listened.

The bag lady talked about her struggles with epilepsy and its fog of medication. Unlike my daughter who also suffered from the disease, the bag lady had never had anyone to fight for her best interests with the doctors and the schools. One day my daughter had into the house to tell me that the bag lady had a seizure on the walk between two of the neighbouring houses. We ran to the walk, but when we arrived, the woman had gone.

At 78, my mother developed a cancer that spread fast. She spent a few months in and out of hospital, struggling with chemo until finally she came back to her house to die. She lingered for a week until with her family, even those who had fallen away from the church, gathered around, she took a taste of a last communion. My mother passed away as her granddaughter filled the house with the piano music her Granny loved.

The undertakers came and took Mum's body away. People from the church and her cleaning lady came to prepare the house for the reception after the funeral. I took to the bed in her spare room with a sudden fever of 103. The door bell rang. Mum's homecare worker opened it and I could hear her talking, abrupt and harsh, to someone, then banging the door closed with an irritated mutter.

"Mom, Mom," said my daughter rushing into the bedroom. "Martha turned away the bag lady." I was too sick and grief ridden to care.

The funeral passed. The chancel guild raised money for an altar cloth in Mum's memory. Her friends missed her, tearfully telling me how much they had enjoyed the bible studies at her home. I sold her house, giving some of her paperweights to her friends, keeping the rest.

I couldn't get the bag lady out of my head. Each time I saw her plodding along, I wanted to stop, but I didn't. My children and people in the neighbourhood would tell me things about her.

"Mum, I passed her on the way home from school," said my daughter. "But I didn't say ‘Hi' because she was mumbling to herself."

The management of the local supermarket removed the bench outside the store because the bag lady would sleep on it. The local sandwich shop put up a sign saying only customers could use the washrooms. Once I almost stopped the car to give her five dollars for a meal, but instead, I drove on.

"She has a camp of sticks and old blankets in the woods," said a neighbour. "I told my kids to never go into that wood. It's dangerous. The police should be called."

"She wouldn't hurt a child. She's harmless," I said and the matter was dropped.

I attended church, walked in a march against poverty, gave my old clothes to the Salvation Army, prayed for the bag lady and others in need, but I knew that I could never be a Christian like my mother. I had turned my face away.

Christmas was coming and I was rushing. Into the stores for presents then spending a second to drop a dollar in the Salvation Army kettle. I pushed my full cart out of the supermarket and there sat the bag lady, hunched on the curb that had replaced the bench. I took the groceries home. I remembered when I was a child and my mother had chided me for teasing one of the poor kids in my Sunday school class.

"But she has cooties," I said.

"Her father left and her mother drinks," said Mum. "Being a Christian means being kind to people not making their life worse than it is."

That remembered lesson meant the bag lady wouldn't disappear from my mind. I took the easy way out and prayed to God to look after her. My prayers rang hollow. I picked up one of Mum's paperweights and drove back to the store.

The bag lady still sat alone on the curb. I said, "Hi." and sat down beside her. She smelt of the cold and old coats, not the horrendous lingering body odour I had imagined.

"Do you remember the elderly lady who lived on Highpoint and used to buy your stuff?" I said.

"There's new people there now. Never home," she said.

"She was my mother," I said.

"Nice lady," said the bag lady.

"She died," I said.

Large snowflakes drifted around us. The first snow of the season. The bag lady fiddled with the straps of her bag. I took out the paperweight and said, "My Mom wanted you to have this."

Inside the glass, the last of the winter sun turned the swirls at the paperweight's heart to fire. The bag lady touched the ornament with a chapped, broken-nailed finger, then cupped the paperweight into her hands as if gathering warmth from it. She placed it in her bag and brought out a catalogue.

"Do you still have that vegetable wash?" I asked.

"I had a kitten. It died," she said. "Jeff says he don't want no more kittens."

I turned the pages of the catalogue and listened.