The Mums I Set on Every Porch

What Pril Said

I did not yell. I want you to know that.

My mother raised me in the Christian church. I have never once in my life made a scene on a public sidewalk, and I did not start at fifty-eight.

I waited until the man in the feed cap had gone. Then I said, quiet, “Pril, you need to explain this to me.”

She finally set the cash box down. She had the grace to look at her own hands for a second before she looked at me.

“I prayed about it,” she said. “I did, Donna. The youth group is nine hundred dollars short.”

“The bus is paid,” she went on, “but they have no money for the week. No food, no work supplies. Three of those kids have never once been out of this county.”

“And I am sitting there Thursday night with your hundred mums in my garage. And I thought, Donna would be the first one to say send the children.”

“You did not ask me,” I said.

“I knew you would say yes,” she said. “I knew it in my heart. You have never told me no about anything that mattered in thirty years.”

“These were not yours to say yes about,” I said. “They belong to the pantry. To the Fergusons and the Kolaceks and whoever is cold in January.”

“You do not get to decide that for them,” I said.

Her chin came up a little then. “The pantry has the county behind it. The pantry has grants.”

“These are children, Donna. I made a choice between a food box and a child’s soul, and I will stand before God on that choice.”

That was the thing about Pril. She could always find the high ground so fast that you were the one left looking small.

I had watched her do it to other people for thirty years. I always told myself she only did it when she was scared.

She was scared now. I could see it, under the chin and the vest and the cash box.

The trip was hers to run, and the trip was coming up short. She had reached for the easiest thousand dollars in town. And the easiest thousand dollars in town was sitting in her garage, because she had offered to help me haul it.