—Tear off the scab
Blood would gush!
“I had better buy rolls.” She pressed her one nickel in her palm. She would have money that night.
A woman with long waist broken to the show of underwear swabbed the floor of the Bakeshop. Her arms were naked like the pole of her swab-cloth. All she was long articulated bone, swathed in moist grey. Her face, swinging above her work, smiled on Fanny.
Fanny sat at a dark table in the smell of dough, seeing the long face suddenly widen bright: seeing eyes in a woman, tender through the greased shadow of sawdust floor and a counter heavy with bread.
“I’ll have just a nickel’s worth of rolls.”
The woman came back: she placed before Fanny fried eggs, coffee, butter and bread. “Why haven’t ye been in, of late, silly?”
—She understands! The understanding of the woman stopped Fanny’s words. She was not hurt by this sharp tenderness like green in the crass mass of the morning.
She ate.—I must eat slow. She could not eat slowly. Something within her beyond her devoured the food.
She could not say Thank you, standing to go. She could not give her nickel burning in her palm. The woman swabbed her feet.
“Ye’re in the way,” she mock-scolded. Fanny was glad.