BLANCHE
by Marie Delgado Travis
It is said that no one died during the first Big Blackout in New York City. I happen to know differently. The story began about ten days earlier on Halloween 1965, when I accompanied my ten-year old brother as he trick or treated in our Bronx housing project.
At sixteen, the festivity no longer held any appeal to me. I was merely trying to keep my brother safe. Just a year before, the nation reeled at the unheard of news that a woman in upstate New York gave trick-or-treaters tainted Halloween candy.
I thought it sadly unfair that children's trust should be broken in that way and wanted my little brother to enjoy the innocent tradition of Halloween, as I had at his age.
Still dressed in my Catholic school uniform, I escorted my brother, who chose to dress --perhaps not inappropriately--in a little devil's costume. We started on the top floor of our building, the fourteenth, and gradually worked our way down, apartment by apartment. I chose to use the stairwell, instead of the elevators, to add a "creepier " feel to the evening.
As a result of the recent scare, our neighbors weren't nearly as friendly and generous as they had been in past years. Many wouldn't come to the door at all, although I could hear their television sets playing in the background.
We eventually got to the second floor, my brother's trick or treat bag still only about two-thirds full. A Jewish woman named Blanche answered her door.
As always, she looked a bit frazzled, four inches of white roots contrasting with otherwise untamed dyed reddish-brown hair. Like most of the mothers in the building, she wore a light floral housecoat and slippers.
"Trick or treat!" My little brother shouted expectantly from behind his mask. Blanche picked up a bowl of candy from a small table near the door and silently added a handful of candy to the bag he held up to her. We thanked her and headed towards another cluster of apartments on the second floor.
"No, wait!" Blanche shouted after us. We turned to see what she wanted.
"Here," she said, scooping more candy into the bag with her hand... then more and more. It was as if she couldn't stop. All the while, her eyes fixed steadily on me, penetrating the thickness of mu eyeglasses. Suppressing a nervous giggle, I politely held her gaze.
Why the interest, I wondered, when she has children of her own? I couldn't tell if they were in the apartment. But I recalled seeing Blanche throw quarters to them many times, when we were little, so they could buy ice cream when the Good Humor man passed by, pushing his cart.
I remembered because I thought them fortunate to live on a low floor. My Puerto Rican mother needed a much better throwing arm and often missed from the eleventh floor, sending me scrambling into the bushes to find the coin she had tightly wrapped in paper.
I wondered if Blanche watched as I played tag with her children when we were younger or saw me reading on the park bench, just under her window, now that it was my little brother's turn to play.
The bag was nearly full and a piece or two of Mary Janes or M&M's trickled to the floor. Blanche seemed oblivious, as she continued to stare at me. I finally had to thank her and tell her we needed to hurry upstairs to do our homework.
I didn't think of the encounter again until the day after the Blackout. It seems that when the lights went out in her apartment, Blanche opened the door to see what was wrong. She died instantly of a heart attack when she found the hallway--where my brother and I stood little more than a week before-- empty and dark.
MARIE DELGADO TRAVIS is an award-winning writer. She writes poetry and prose in English and Spanish. Visit her beautiful new web site at www.mariedelgadotravis.com
