A gentle spring breeze lifted soft feather-light, white curls backwards to expose her face. She had been standing on her side of the fence waiting for me as the traffic passed so that I could cross.
As I approached nearly tripping over the broken sidewalk slate, I could see her eyes, cloudy and dull, dart sideways to the attendant standing arms crossed in the play yard.
“Sarah,” I said breathlessly. “How are you today?”
She shook her head negatively. Sarah never answered any of my questions. Instead, her frail hand with its pronounced blue veins reached shaking for the bag that I pushed through a broken section of the chain-linked fence. At first, she just clutched the bag to her chest causing the bag to crackle and complain.
“Be careful,” I whispered, “They’re chocolate chip.”
A greedy bony-fingered hand shoved itself deep into the paper container, and exited with one cookie. Sarah’s eyes closed with her almost invisible lashes brushing against her translucent skin.
She chewed slowly. Her nearly toothless mouth gumming the cooked dough savoring each chip while her hallow cheeks pulled tight against her delicate facial bones.
There it was. Another. Shadowed under the draping willow’s streamers, under her left eye – a new bruise. She opened her eyes and two reluctant green irises focused on my stare. Sarah turned away.
“Oh, Sarah.” I breathed slowly as both her caretaker and I watched her walk from the fence to the base of the willow tree.
She painfully planted her bony bottom on the new grass, leaned into the bark, and shut off the outside world. Her faded dress, worn with age, fluttered against her alabaster legs now pushed sullenly into the sunshine.
I walked pensively back to my home thinking of the first time I had seen Sarah, and how she had impacted my life. She had been walking along the fence on a brilliant fall day. The house had been too warm from my baking, and I was sitting on the front porch watching her fingers trace the fence metal as she moved along its length. She came to the break. Four metal runners were missing exposing a hole to the outside world. She stuck her sweater-covered arm out all the way to her shoulder, pushing her frame into the crisscrossed wire, and opened her hand skyward as if reaching for an imaginary gift.
The street was empty as I crossed over to her asking hand. That ageless face, a little fuller then, studied me closely as I placed three oatmeal raisin cookies on her palm.
An understanding flashed from her eyes as her lips pulled back exposing gums and the remains of rotted teeth.
“Sarah,” she whispered as she moved away from my opened mouth stare reacting to the deep purple ring around her closed right eye. Her pale features seemed almost close to the bone as if time and the bitter cold wind of circumstance had chiseled away at her soul.
“I fell,” her back told me, shutting the door to further communication.
Sarah then approached the ancient willow that spread its branches so vastly that they danced over the top of the fence above the uneven sidewalk. She leaned her delicate bent frame against the steady security of the massive trunk and chewed.
Since her arrival, I have tried each day that she is allowed outside to bring her something to eat. I attempted to report my suspicions to the authorities beyond the fence, but they were only polite and distant. They thanked me for my concern and sent me back home to heal her the only way I knew I could.
It was a cold February Wednesday, the last time I turned on that oven. I had pulled gingerbread girls still hand-burning hot from the 350 degrees and let them cool on a rack before bagging the spicy crisp shapes.
She was there, barely coated, but waiting. Her blue lips worried me. Sarah did not look well. There was an evilness surrounding her that was not of her own making. She was the innocent inner core; and the fragile line of her nose was swollen and askew.
I was angry as I smiled the bag into her hand. I was furious as her tear rolled down a bluish cheek. My breath came in small spurts, and I exhaled sharp quick clouds at the fence that separated us.
Sarah studied me with those tired green, almost lifeless, eyes and then she did something I will never forget. One gloved hand pulled at the other until a freed bird-like hand exposed itself to the bitter outside. Sarah pushed it through the hole of the fence to my side of the world and waited.
I tentatively touched, then took her almost bloodless fingers between my two oven warmed hands. Sarah looked lost, and then I saw her mouth the words, “Thank you.” The attendant started towards us and Sarah pulled slowly away, this time with her eyes never leaving my own as she backed up to her tree.
It made the morning newspaper. Sarah’s picture was placed sensationally on the upper right. It was obviously an older picture taken when she still had some hope, for her eyes held just a hint of laughter. Laughter she had been denied. Laughter I had never heard.
It was tragic, the black print stated. The authorities had done all they could, but Sarah had been the victim of an overburdened court system.
The headline, “First Grader Bludgeoned to Death” numbed my soul to the day, as I walked outside to the fence. Under the willow tree in the new snow, yesterday’s bag lay cookieless and empty.