Some Wildflower In My Heart by Jamie Langston Turner Page B

menu and studied it, though I knew it by heart.
    I waited for her to leave my office cubicle, but when I turned my head I could see that she was still there. “You are free to go,” I said.
    Behind me her voice was low and mournful. “There’s just so many problems, aren’t there?” I did not answer. “Some of these poor babies break my heart—but I needed your reminder, Margaret, and I truly will try not to let myself get too wrapped up in their little lives. I’m a kitchen worker.”
    â€œVery well,” I said, and I turned abruptly, brushed past her, and left her standing in my office.
    The next morning I saw that Birdie had come to school with a large brown paper bag, and when she reached inside and removed a shoe box I knew at once what she had done. After the children filed through for breakfast, I retreated to the pantry to open a large box containing eight-pound cans of pinto beans. These I began arranging on a shelf. From the pantry I heard Birdie speaking to the children who came back for second helpings. “There you are, sweetheart.” “I bet you just love pancakes, don’t you, honey?” “That sure is a pretty barrette, Lindy.” I afterward busied myself straightening the boxes of gelatin and pudding mix, then checked to see how many packages of paper napkins were on the shelf.
    By the time I returned to the kitchen, Birdie was helping Francine prepare the apple cobbler to be served at lunch. I noticed that the shoe box was still sitting in the cupboard where the workers stored their personal belongings, but the lid had been removed, and the box was now empty. Later, when the classes passed through for lunch, I made a point of looking at Jasmine Finney’s feet. As I had suspected, the girl wore a brand-new pair of sneakers, huge white ones with purple and pink stripes stitched down the sides. She wore the same malignant expression on her face, however, and as she passed me, I heard the echo of Birdie’s gentle, sorrowful words from the day before, like the voice of doves. “There’s just so many problems, aren’t there? Some of these poor babies break my heart.”
    It struck me as a curious coincidence that the inadequate footwear of a child had recently been brought to the attention of both Birdie and me. I could not help wondering that day what course Birdie would have taken had she been in my place at the traffic light the morning before.
    The shoe was still on the striped pole when I drove past the intersection the following two days but was gone by Monday of the next week. I never pass that way now without visions of shoes filling my mind—my own saddle oxfords of long ago, which I had recalled that day as I considered the matter of gifts; the ragged shoe flung from a car window by an anonymous toddler; the large white sneakers on the feet of Jasmine Finney; Birdie’s canvas Keds. And each time I pass the intersection, I pause to contemplate the quiet aggressiveness of one small woman against the problems of the world, then to question the lasting consequence of her good deeds.

7
A Tinkling Cymbal
    I am no longer writing my story by longhand in my red spiral notebooks. Let me explain how this change came about.
    Two days ago Thomas came home at one-thirty in the afternoon to search for a receipt verifying the recent purchase of two new tires for his pickup truck, one of which was proving unsatisfactory. He entered through the kitchen door, as he typically does, and made his way directly to his bedroom. I heard him rummaging about noisily, as I suppose all men do, and after many thumps and exclamations I heard him cry, “There she is, by jings!” Had I known what he sought, I would have instructed him to look first in the pockets of his overalls, which is precisely where he had located the missing receipt. I never wash a pair of his overalls without checking the pockets, and my search invariably yields