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An old man was sitting under a rusty awning across the street. His clothes were soaked. I didn’t ask anyone for anything. I didn’t even look up.
I was just sitting there, shaking so much that it hurt to see him.
That’s when I saw him.
I knew that feeling.
And before I could stop, I crossed the street.
Without thinking, I took the money out of my pocket and gave it to him.
“Please… take something hot.”
Then he looked up at me, staring at me.
And for some reason, I asked, “What’s your name?”
There was a pause.
Then, quietly, he said, “Arthur.”
I nodded.
“Please… have a little hot.”
“My name is Nora,” I added, and I also said my last name. I introduced my twins, tilting them so Arthur could see them. He repeated my name once, as if he didn’t want to forget it.
“Nora.”
That afternoon I walked home instead of taking the bus, five kilometers in the rain, hugging my daughters so they wouldn’t get wet.
When I got to my apartment, I had shoes soaked and my hands numb.
I didn’t want to forget it.
I remember standing there, looking at my empty wallet.
I thought it was a fool.
That I had made a mistake.
And that I couldn’t afford to be kind.
***
The following years were not easy. He worked in the afternoons at a restaurant and in the evenings in the library. I slept when the girls slept, which was very little.
There was a woman in my building, Mrs. Greene, who changed everything.
“Leave these girls when you have shift,” she told me one afternoon.
I was wrong.
I tried to pay him.
Mrs. Greene denied with her head. “End your studies. That’s enough.” “
So I did, little by little, step by step.
Lily and Mae grew up in that small, ramshackle apartment, then another, and then something a little better when I found a steady job as an administrative assistant in a small business.
It was not easy.
But for a while, it seemed enough.
I tried to keep it.
***