Maryam

She told me she was eighty-four and had been homeless for the past seventeen years as she helped me push my car. A part of me wanted to pause and look at her, but I knew that if I did, my car would crush her. I hadn't asked for her help. She just saw my car break down, put down her knitting, and helped me push. As we pushed, she explained her life, but she wasn't a typical old geezer blabbing about her grandchildren. She called herself Maryam and told me she immigrated to the US when she was forty-three with her only child, eleven at the time. They were poor, but never too poor to give to people poorer. When she told me about her house, I asked why she didn't live there.

"A family with six children live there now. I'm old. I'd just die there anyway."