She stood on the sidewalk in front of the glass outside the showroom, smoking while she waited for her ring to be cleaned and polished. She had snow white hair in huge curls, and she was wearing a cap that said Marines. Later on in our exchange I didn’t doubt that she was in the Marines, and I half wished I could’ve seen her in action. Her piercing dark eyes scrutinized me from behind her humongous…..well, granny glasses. She came into the store after her cigarette, the smell of tobacco mixing with her peppermint scent. Still waiting on her ring.

She handed me a pen from a tailor shop and told me that if I needed a tailor, to go to him. “He’s Greek, and he speaks Greek too. I don’t suppose you’re Catholic? No? Well I am, Latin Catholic, the oldest Catholics, and the Greek he speaks has a lot to do with the Latin services at my church.”

She leaned forward and stared at me, not blinking. “You have to listen to what I’m saying to get the real meaning of what I’m trying to tell you.” ( I had absolutely no idea what she was getting at….unless she thought I was really a Latin Catholic in disguise and there was some secret message being imparted to me…)

“Well anyway, this tailor makes my long broomstick skirts, and he fits them to me too.” (Now I have to wonder how a broomstick skirt could be tailor fit whatsoever) “He’s good, this tailor, so I pass his pens around and advertise for him by word of mouth, cause you can’t trust the newspapers.

“So if your jeweler gets me some pens of his, I’ll spread them around too.” She went on to tell me about young people today, who slide in to work at the last moment, leave the minute their time’s up, and are only concerned with how long of a break they get for lunch.

Then she got quite worked up about the picture of Jesus that hangs in the store, which she knew to have been drawn by a blind man. (I told you a lot of people notice it!) Her reaction was very strong, and she kept going back and forth between annoyance and incredulousness because he was blind, and extreme enthusiasm at the likeness, which must have come straight from God since he was blind from birth and was never influenced by other popular renditions of Christ.

“He saw it – IN HIS MIND!!!!!!” She shrieked, almost poking a hole in her own head. She is one of many, many customers to comment on the picture.

I am not Catholic, as she correctly assumed, but I was praying quite fervently that her ring would appear instantly…..



A BROOMSTICK SKIRT