Small Mercies

“But he’s Dreamy’s kid. And we all know Dreamy, all know what a hard worker she is.”

The other girls murmur and exchange looks of possible agreement.

Dottie’s having none of it. “The mothers can be saints — you see that on the ten o’clock news all the time. But the sons, the sons, Mary Pat, we all know, are born to crime. They have no fathers, so they—”

“He had a father.”

“And look where it got him.” Dottie snorts and takes in the rest of the room. “As nice as Dreamy might be, who would leave her son in here alone with their purse? Anyone?”

All the girls shake their heads.

Dottie turns on Mary Pat. “How about you?”

“Let her be, Dot,” Suse says. “She’s going through something.”

Dot smiles warmly at Mary Pat. “I’m just asking — would you leave your purse unattended with this Auggie Williamson?”

“No,” Mary Pat says. But before Dot can crow, she adds, “I wouldn’t leave it alone with anyone.”

“Okay. Would any of us leave our daughters alone with him?”

A round of headshakes. Dot looks at Mary Pat in triumph. Takes a step back when she sees what lives in Mary Pat’s eyes.

Mary Pat stands, a crumpled paper in her hands that she doesn’t remember crumpling. “I can’t leave my daughter alone with anyone, because I can’t fucking find her.”

Dottie holds up a hand. “Mary Pat, I’m sorry.”

Mary Pat cocks her head at that. “Are you? Because you run your mouth a lot, Dottie, about the niggers and how they’re all lazy and from broken homes and how the men all fuck around and don’t stick around to raise their kids.”

A nasty little smile finds Dottie’s little green eyes. “Because it’s the truth.”

And a question that’s been nagging at Mary Pat for a while — maybe her whole life, who knows? — finds her tongue. “It’s your truth too, though, ain’t it?”

A few of the girls make audible noises, something between gasps and moans.

“What’d you fucking say?” Dottie asks.

“Aren’t you from a broken home? Didn’t your husband fuck around and then leave you to raise the kids by yourself? I’ve noticed the people who bitch most about the coloreds and their bad qualities, they usually have those qualities themselves. I mean, when’s the last time you did even half the amount of work around here the rest of us do?”

Dottie clenches her fist and steps hard up to Mary Pat. “You listen to—”

“Dottie, you’re gonna unclench that fist before I snap it off at your wrist and shove it straight up your fat fucking ass.”

Dottie looks at the rest of the girls. After a few seconds, she tries a laugh. But when she looks back at Mary Pat, her little green eyes swim with fear.

“I am not going to repeat myself,” Mary Pat says.

Dottie’s fingers unfurl slowly from her palm. She wipes the palm on her slacks. “You’re not yourself.” She turns to the girls. “She’s not herself. And who can blame her?” She takes a drag off her cigarette, her elbow cupped in her palm to steady the shakes. Turns her eyes back on Mary Pat. “Who can blame you?” She crinkles her face in something that’s supposed to resemble sympathy. Her eyes pulse once — just once — to let Mary Pat know this moment will not be forgotten. Or forgiven. And then she smiles sadly, playing to the room. “You poor dear.”

After the break is over, Mary Pat lingers to smoke another cigarette and read the papers. If the nuns got an issue with it, they can take it up with her. In her present mood, they better be awfully brave fucking nuns.

Unnamed witnesses saw a black man running into Columbia Station at twelve-twenty, followed by at least four white kids. One witness thought it was four males with long hair, another witness thought it was two boys and two girls. (Was one of those girls mine? Mary Pat wonders. But she doesn’t really wonder. Jules. For fuck’s sake. Jules.) One witness distinctly heard someone whistling, the way one whistles to a dog. Another heard someone call, “We just want to talk.”

Police have ascertained that there were other people on the platform when Auggie Williamson and his four pursuers arrived. They are asking those people to come forward. It’s believed — though not proved yet — that Auggie Williamson fell or was pushed into the path of the train. That the impact to his head spun him around on the platform and he somehow, from there, fell to the tracks and rolled under the platform.

It all sounds fishy as hell. If Mary Pat can buy that someone could extend his head into the path of a moving subway car and not end up getting the rest of his body knocked onto the tracks ahead of the car, she certainly can’t accept that Auggie then staggered in place long enough for the train to pass before conveniently falling forward onto the tracks and then rolling backward under the platform.