eyes narrowed in thought. “Just you wait,” she promised, measuring him with her gaze. She was good at estimating sizes. “Come Christmas, you’ll be the smartest-looking grocer around.”
“Nothing fancy,” he cautioned. “I cut meat in the back.”
“I know.” She picked up her bag and put the change he handed her from a five-dollar bill into her purse.
“Be careful going down the street,” he added. “We’ve got some roughnecks around here lately.”
“I know. Tim told me.”
He knew Tim. Most everyone in the neighborhood did. “Pity about him, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “All children should have someplace to live...”
“No, I mean about what he’s got.”
Her hand stilled on her purse. “What has he got?” she queried. “He was cheerful and laughing the last time I saw him.”
“He didn’t find out until today. His mama came in about an hour ago for some formula for the baby. She told me.” He grimaced. “Social services ran some tests last week on a few kids at the shelter, including Tim. Got the results this morning. He’s HIV-positive. She said she’d have to tell him. Poor woman. She was scared.”
She caught her breath painfully. “No wonder! But he’s just eight years old.”
“Some babies are born with it,” he reminded her. “But his mama doesn’t shoot up. In Tim’s case, they think it was a contaminated needle...”
“Tim doesn’t shoot up!” she exclaimed.
“I know that. But he has a friend who does.”
Ivory recalled with disquiet the conversation she’d had with Tim and his question about contaminated needles, and her vague reply. Oh, the poor little boy! “He told me about his friend. I wasn’t listening,” she said miserably.
“He told his mama that he picked up one of the syringes, you know, just out of curiosity, and accidentally stuck himself with it.”
“And that was all it took?”
He nodded. “Hell of a disease, ain’t it? Kids getting it, that’s the worst. Kids are the very last people who should get such a terrible thing.”
“If he’s only HIV-positive, he hasn’t necessarily got AIDS,” she said stubbornly. “Tim’s very young and they’re coming up with new treatments all the time. All the time!”
He smiled gently. “Sure.”
She shifted the bag to her other hand. She felt empty inside. She started to go and hesitated. “You won’t tell anyone else about Tim? Some people get funny when they know.”
“I haven’t told anyone else.” He shrugged. “I knew you wouldn’t treat him like a leper, or I wouldn’t have told you, either.”
She smiled. “Thanks, Mr. Galloway.”
“For what? I like Tim. He’s special.”
She heard the metallic sound of the bars being slid into place behind her and spared a thought for Mr. Galloway, who’d been robbed twice and burned out once. Gangs seemed to target small businesses these days. It was a pity that anyone would want to hurt a kind man who went out of his way to help anyone in trouble.
She walked toward the shelter despondently and hesitated at the foot of the steps, looking around. Tim was nowhere in sight. He was usually waiting for her when she came, and she’d told him that there would be some of Mrs. Horst’s gingerbread left over for him today. She’d tucked a slice, wrapped in plastic, in her purse for him. Had his mother made him stop coming? Unlikely. She was too busy trying to take care of the baby and the toddler to watch him all the time. If she had told him about his disease, maybe he thought Ivory might not want him around anymore. But Tim knew Ivory. Surely he wouldn’t think it would make her avoid him.
She secured the bag of oranges under her arm at the entrance of the shelter and opened the door. It was a sad sight, all those rows of cots and hopeless people who had no place to go. Some of them were mentally challenged, some were addicts. But most were just victims of circumstance with no education and no jobs.
Dee hadn’t arrived yet, but it didn’t take long to spot Tim and his family. She made her way through the clutter, past small colonies of Hispanics and other whites of all ethnic backgrounds, over to the side where groups of blacks huddled together. Some were Haitian, some Jamaican, some African.
Tim’s mother was originally from Zaire. She had a nobility of carriage that Ivory had always envied. She was an elegant woman for someone in her circumstances, and she had a pair of hands that could handle the most delicately detailed work. She crocheted lace. She could even tat. Her handiwork fascinated Ivory, who could sew but not crochet.
Ivory smiled. “Hello. I wondered why Tim hadn’t come to meet me.”
“Ah,” was the soft response.
Tim smiled and waved at her, but he didn’t come close. His dark eyes were hesitant, uncertain.
Ivory stuck her hands in her pockets and made a face at him. “I know. Mr. Galloway told me. You silly boy, do you think it matters to me? Friends don’t turn away from each other, do they?”
Tim shrugged and looked at his feet.
“Listen, wouldn’t you still be my friend, if I had it instead of you?” she persisted.
He looked up at her. “Sure, Ivory!”
She smiled. “Enough said?”
He smiled back. “Okay.”
Ivory looked at his mother, who seemed to relax. She shifted a sleeping baby girl in her arms.
“Here,” she said, handing him the gingerbread and the bag of oranges. “Those are for you and your friends. You can’t desert me,” Ivory told Tim gently. “Okay?”
He nodded. “Okay, Ivory.”
His mother, Miriam, lifted her face proudly. “There is a risk.” In the older woman’s eyes were the pain and resignation of years; there, too, was the pride that had made it all bearable.
Ivory nodded. “There is a risk in living at all,” she said. And she allowed the other woman to catch just a glimpse of the pain and humiliation in her own past. “And I know all about judgmental people. Probably almost as much as you do.”
Miriam managed a tired smile. The baby cried, and she rocked her, while the toddler, another girl, napped on the cot nearby. “Tim stuck himself with a bad needle.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “God in heaven, he only stuck himself.” She glanced around her with world-weary eyes. “If these people knew, they would not want us here. There was a man from Haiti who had the virus. He was beaten and his things were stolen. He had to leave to save his life.” For an instant there was fear in her face. “The children are very small...”
Ivory never touched people. Only rarely did she put an
