A Balm To Make The Wounded Whole

Lemon balm growing near cobblestones — image via pixabay

It was starting to get cold when Jimmy’s boy came to visit.

All I wanted was to sit down under a blanket in the living room, but Jimmy’s boy wanted a trip around the neighborhood. He asked if we could go up and down the alleyways a few blocks over, where there’s no pavement but only brick. It’s fun to bike over the bumpy bricks. I agreed to take him.

The alley was overshadowed with yellow Autumn trees. Another patch of lemon balm spilled out over the bricks of the road, alive and fragrant as if it was still summer. The lemon balm won’t wilt until the first freeze. I pulled up a great big handful of the herb, and tucked in some asters, and the last of the Queen Anne’s lace, until I had a little bouquet. There were also a few of those tiny pink flowers whose name I don’t know, but not many.

There is a balm in Gilead

To make the wounded whole;

There is a balm in Gilead

To heal the sin-sick soul.

Some times I feel discouraged,

And think my work’s in vain,

But then the Holy Spirit

Revives my soul again.

There is a balm in Gilead

To make the wounded whole;

There is a balm in Gilead

To heal the sin-sick soul.

“We should pick some pink flowers from the Dodgers’ yard when we go back,” I said.

The house the Artful Dodgers used to live in is still standing vacant. The yard is full of weeds, mint, and those pink flowers. I’ve been picking a spring every once in awhile from the edge of the yard, and leaving it in my icon corner as a prayer for them.

Jimmy’s boy and I talked about how much we missed having the children on our block as we went home– him peddling his bike, and me carrying the wildflowers, trying not to sing the hymn that was stuck in my head out loud.

There is a balm in Gilead

To make the wounded whole;

There is a balm in Gilead

To heal the sin-sick soul.

I told him that I’d seen two of them, walking back from the first day of school several weeks ago. They’d been happy to see me, and I’d been so happy I felt as if they’d returned from the dead. They asked me to guard the sidewalk as they continued home, because they were being followed by some teenagers who were bullying them. I promised I would. They disappeared between two houses. The bullies never appeared, and that was the end of that.

I didn’t tell him that the Dodgers looked even dirtier and more disheveled than ever, as if their situation at home had gotten worse. And I didn’t tell him I’d heard, from the grandmother of the Baker Street Irregulars, that shortly after that day, the children were sent away to live with another family member, in another town. When she said it, I felt my whole body relax in a way it hadn’t since June: the Artful and the Sylph and the Mandrake and the Baby were away from the terrible situation they’d been in here in town. I couldn’t save them, but for all I knew, they might be perfectly safe now. And then my heart jumped into my throat again, because I had no way to know if the situation they’re in now is better. I will never see them again.

On the way home, we found a blind kitten.

A jet-black cat, around six weeks old, was mewing piteously in the middle of the street. That particular block in LaBelle is fairly safe for sitting in the road: it’s a one-way without much traffic. There’s a basketball hoop on the corner, and there are usually a group of boys playing ball. Still, it was a road, with a kitten in the middle.

The kitten stumbled towards me as I knelt. I am still getting used to cats. Charlie, who took refuge with me, is my first. I don’t know anything about kittens, because Charlie came to me when she was all grown up. But I pretended to know what I was doing so that Jimmy’s boy wouldn’t worry. The cat’s eyes were shut, even though she was far too old to still have her eyes shut. The lids were swollen, a lurid shade of pink.

“She wandered into the street because she can’t see,” I told Jimmy’s boy. ‘She’s trying to get back where she came from. I think she has an infection.”

Jimmy’s boy wanted me to take the kitten home and care for her: an impossibility. Charlie is still extremely hostile to every other cat. The Artful Dodgers tormented her until she was desperate. It’s taken a whole summer of gentle treatment and abundant treats to get her to stop scratching and biting me, but she still has no mercy on the neighborhood strays. I’d had to stop her from murdering a young calico just yesterday. I explained this to the boy, as I gently herded the kitten to the sidewalk by stepping near her and nudging her with my toe.

The kitten cowered in the shadow of a neighbor’s concrete step, still mewing, sightless face turned in my direction.

“Can I take her to MY house?” asked Jimmy’s boy. “My mom wants a black cat.”

“Well, we can’t just steal somebody’s kitten. She might have wandered off from one of these houses. Maybe they have medicine to give her.”

The little creature kept crying, wandering towards the street again. I started to ask Jimmy’s boy if he could bike home quickly and bring me back a towel to carry her in so she couldn’t scratch or bite me, but there wasn’t time. I handed Jimmy’s boy the flowers and picked her up. She clawed out when she felt her feet leave the ground, but she didn’t hurt me.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m going to take care of you.”

The kitten kept right on crying.

I asked a lady on a porch across the road if she’d lost a blind cat. The lady pointed to another house– one in bad shape, like mine or the Dodgers’. There were weeds in the yard, and old lead paint on the windows. Two shabby adult cats were lounging on the steps. When I set the kitten down, she lunged sightlessly towards the older cats, who in turn padded over to stare at her.

I had no way of knowing whether the people who own them are kind people. I will never see that cat again. But I could help, for a moment.