Sister, Can You Spare...?
I'm rushing into the local Smart & Final to get last-minute supplies for a meeting: fruit, soda, salad mix. Maybe a low-fat sweet, if they have it. Deadly as meetings can be, I look forward to this one. It's a monthly confab at somebody's house around a dining room table that's part social, part social evaluation: a handful of black folks coming together to catch up on each other and on the perilous state of the race. Our state in Los Angeles is always more and less vexing than it is in other big cities--an enigma wrapped in a conundrum. The advent of President Obama has only intensified the riddle. So we need food that's as festive as possible at these discussions, sometimes a little wine. I'm on a mission; the meeting starts in fifteen minutes. At the store entrance is a cluster of young girls selling something. Girl Scout cookies, candy bars, I assume. I'm prepared to pass. Sweets, but hardly low-fat. Nope. I get closer and see the girls are holding up a flier. I get even closer and see it's a picture of a black man, young and somewhat portly. He's their uncle, the girls explain. He got killed over the weekend. They're collecting money for his funeral.
My first thought is that this is a scam. A black- on-black hustle. "How'd he die?" I ask, trying to not sound sarcastic.
Got stabbed in the heart by his wife, one says. It happened in Gardena. The girl is about 12. She looks tired beyond her years. But also composed. Too composed to be 12 and canvassing the neighborhood for funds for a dead uncle.
I study the flier like I'm studying an order form for cookies or magazines. Catch me on my way out, I say. It's my standard line to storefront solicitors.
I decide. On the way out, I drop a $10 bill in the girls' cup. It's all I've got. I know I'm gambling that the cause is a good one. But it's a risk I realize I have to take, because no one else will. I realize also that it's not about winning the bet, it's about taking a chance in the first place. Taking into account the state of so many things.
The composed niece looks up and gives me a startled smile. Thank you, she says. The wonder I still expect to see in a 12-year-old breaks through like a shaft of sunlight through gray. That's worth the ten bucks. I've got five minutes to make it to the meeting.
The image associated with this post was taken by Flickr user LiminalMike. It was used under Creative Commons license.
