Here

The best pieces of writing are the simplest, the ones that capture the human condition honestly and poignantly. This is one of my favourites:

"I ate the food hungrily because I had not had dinner, and I sopped up the gravy with the light bread. Thelma watched me all the time. When I was finished, she put a wrinkled ten-dollar bill on the counter by my plate.

"Here."

"It was the kind of "here" your mother or your big sister or your great-aunt or your grandmother would have said. It was the kind of "here" that let you know this was hard-earned money but, also, that you needed it more than she did, and the kind of "here" that said she wished you had it and didn't have to borrow it from her, but since you did not have it, and she did, then "here" it was, with a kind of love. It was the kind of "here" that asked the question, When will this end? When will a man not have to struggle to have money to get what he needs "here"? When will a man be able to live without having to kill another man "here"?

"I took the money without looking at her. I didn't say thanks. I knew she didn't want to hear it."

- Excerpt from A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines


Photo courtesy Playhouse on the Square