Frustrated, I said, “Then what are you talking about?”
She repeated, “No matter what happens, everything will be okay in the long run. If you believe that, if you trust me, nothing that might happen in the days to come can break you. On the other hand, if you won’t take to heart what I’ve just told you, I don’t expect things will turn out as well as they could.”
I didn’t mean to cry, not out there in public, not on the front porch steps for just anyone to see who might pass by, tears flooding from me as if I were a baby. I was past ten, going on eleven, more than halfway to being a man, or so I thought, and if I had to carry a weight, I should be able just to shut up and carry it already, but I felt small and weak and confused.
In the most tender voice, Miss Pearl said, “Ducks, I’m going to do something I’ve rarely done before. But you are special to me, and I’ll give you this.”
Despairing at my weakness, I wiped tears from my eyes with both hands. “Give me what?”
“A peek inside my purse.” She patted the black handbag between us. She picked it up and smiled at me and set it in my lap.
“Your purse? What could be in your stupid purse that’ll make any difference?”
“You won’t know until you look. Mind me, you can’t have the purse, only a peek inside it.”
“I’m a boy. I don’t want a purse.”
“Then take a look right now. Much as I love you, Ducks, I can’t sit here all day. I’m a city, and a city is always busy, busy, busy.”
In spite of my having heard pure truth when she had told me what she was, you might think that I would at some point, given sufficient provocation, reverse myself and decide that she was a crazy lady. But I never did.
The handbag was large enough to carry a bowling ball and bowling shoes and maybe a tenpin. I folded the braided handles down, pressed the black clasp, opened it, and stared in bafflement, at first unable to understand what lay within.
“Put your face right down close to it, Ducks, right down close. Then you’ll see.”
I did as she said, and I saw. I don’t know how long the whole experience took. At the time it seemed to go zoom, all unfolding in a few seconds, but in retrospect, I thought it might have been an hour or more.
When I raised my head and looked around at the tree-lined street splashed with sun and shadow, I couldn’t for a moment remember any words in the English language, and I said something like, “Unnn-gah-unng.”
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Miss Pearl retrieved her purse and closed it.
When I heard the clasp snap shut, I came to my feet, swayed, and steadied myself with the porch-steps handrail.
At the time, the peek into the purse stunned me, thrilled me, but also confused me.
As Miss Pearl got to her feet, I said, “What? What was that?”
“You know, Ducks.”
“No. I don’t. I’m confused. Amazed and confused and wow.”
“You only think you’re confused.”
“I know that I think I’m confused. And I am.”
“Your confusion is only on the surface, Ducks. Deep down, you understand, and that’s what counts. In time, your confusion will go away, and your deep-down understanding will rise to the surface.”
She descended the porch steps to the front walk. She had no need of the handrail.
I didn’t move, still half dizzy. “I wish you wouldn’t go.”
When she turned and smiled, standing there in her severe dark-gray suit and prim black hat, I thought of Mary Poppins. If she’d been carrying an umbrella instead of that huge handbag, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had opened it and caught a breeze and continued along the street at altitude.
“I can give you no more help. I’ve already given you more than I ever should. You have to make your own future, day by day, with no rescues by me. As I said before, what happens next is up to all the people who live along my streets. Your part of it is up to you.”
“What if I make mistakes and people die?”
“People die every day. Wrong decisions are made, and they have consequences. Death is part of life. If you think about it, you were born into a world populated by the dead, because every one of them will die one day.”
She followed our front walk to the public sidewalk, turned right, waved at me, and walked away.
I watched her until the street trees and the shadows and sun glare and sheer distance allowed me no further glimpse of her.
Because I knew what I’d seen in her purse but not what it meant, because that understanding came much later, I won’t tell you at this point what the handbag contained. This is my life I’m talking, and I’ll talk it in the way that makes most sense to me. Everything in good time.
After Miss Pearl was lost to sight, I went unsteadily into the house to lie down on the living-room sofa until my dizziness fully passed.
I assured myself that no matter what happened, if disaster piled on calamity, everything would be okay in the long run. Meanwhile, on that fifth day of July 1967, nothing serious yet.
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