A Hagiography of Kenilworth’s Resident Saint
By: Keith R Wilson
Tags: Charity, Novel, Fiction, Mother Theresa, Saint

A Hagiography of Kenilworth’s Resident Saint

Chapter 7

Image from Wallpaper Flare

Of all the people who might have been suspected of murdering the Lisping Barista, the first person who will be taken in custody will be an honest-to-goodness saint. I know, it’s ironic.

Kenilworth’s Resident Saint was so thin that she scarcely disturbed the ground when she walked. She was not especially pretty but had a habit of looking you full in the face so that it affected your heart. She didn’t make your heart beat strong as the Lisping Barista did; but she pulled it out of your chest a little, so that you felt more open after meeting her, more expansive, like you were given more air to breathe. She even looked at those people no one else looks at and gravitated towards the very ones everybody else avoids. She had even once conducted a complete, but one-sided conversation with the Waving Man, while he craned around her, looking for cars.

When she was still a child, she had heard about Mother Teresa. Even though she was not Catholic, she announced to her parents that when she grew up that she would go work with the good nun in Calcutta and clean the wounds of lepers. They were wryly amused and told all their friends the story with a mixture of delight and dismay. Her feelings didn’t change. Her parents would rather she go to college. “No,” she said. “Send me to India with the money you’d spend on tuition, instead.”

They weren’t going to spend any money on tuition. They were going to apply for college loans and grants, but there were no loans and grants for an apprenticeship in sainthood. Therefore, she got a job at the shop next door to the Epiphany Café. She saved what she could, but no matter how thrifty she was, no matter how much coupon clipping and budgeting she did, she never raised enough to buy a ticket.

Here’s what the problem was. Her bank was at the corner, down the street from her shop and the café. Every second week she would cash her paycheck and stuff an allotment of rent into an envelope and an ever-dwindling allowance of cash into her purse. Whatever was left, she gave to whoever she passed on the street on her way home. She gave to everyone who asked, and those who didn’t ask, even those who said they had no needs. She gave to drug addicts and single mothers, retirees and businessmen, students and con men, pushers and pullers, pensioners and probationers, the deserving and the non-deserving, alike. She gave as promiscuously as the sun shares its rays on the good and the bad. She gave as if she would never reach the end of giving.

Then Mother Teresa died. She felt terrible that she had never made it to India.

Her parents, who thought they loved her, said, “You told us you were going to India, but you made nothing of your life. You work at a shop.”

She had a habit of drinking coffee, stopping at the café every morning on her way to work. It woke her up. She needed it to get going in the morning. It was her only indulgence. Nonetheless, as time went on, the coffee tasted more and more bitter, no matter how much sugar she put in. With every sip she was more selfish; every swallow a scalding disappointment.

At last she hit upon an idea. She would stop drinking coffee and put the two-dollars-and-nineteen-cents towards a one-way ticket. Drop by drop fills the coffeepot. By her calculation, it would take a year. But bad habits are hard to break. She made it about a week, the very week before the Lisping Barista said yes to the Geeky Guy.

Maybe if she had come to the Epiphany Café that week, the Geeky Guy would have asked her on a date. Maybe then the Moodus Noises would not have groaned, and the creation of the universe wouldn’t have been re-enacted. Maybe then, everything would have gone on as normal, or what passes for normal in Kenilworth. Maybe the Lisping Barista would still be alive, and I would have no story to tell. The whole summer would pass, a forgotten causality of the insensate mill of normality.

When she took her place in line, tears were streaming down her cheeks. She was a hopeless coffee addict, a failure at everything she attempted. If Mother Teresa could see her now, she’d be ashamed. She was ashamed of herself. When her turn came at the counter, she stepped up and, tears or no tears, shame or no shame, just as she always did, she looked at the Lisping Barista, full in the face. She had her money ready, so no one would have to wait. A two-dollars-and-nineteen-cents in exact change, the cost of a small Fair-Market Guatemalan to go. She placed it on the counter as she had always done. The Lisping Barista, who had waited on her every morning, had her cup out and was beginning to draw the Guatemalan, but the slight woman with the reckless gaze said no, she didn’t want coffee this time.

“I’m paying for the next person in line.”

There was no one in line behind her, but there would be, eventually. She stepped away, as awake as a person can ever be, even without drinking coffee. Every morning thereafter, she would return to do the same thing.

The thin, not very pretty, but open and generous woman felt that, for the cost of a small Guatemalan, two-dollars-and-nineteen-cents, she had received a great sum without even asking for it. She was incalculably rich.

Now, she had one more thing she could afford to give.

She gave up her desire to go to India.