A little story about Jenny Ball

There is a story in the Post today about a town in London where some of the park benches have been designated as “chat benches,” meaning that if you sit, you may be approached by a stranger in want of a “chat.”

I loved reading this. Everyone gets lonely, and I believe the elderly may suffer most and are least likely to do something about it.

In the comments that followed the article was one response that struck me, and it was from a woman who suggested we consider that predators may now lay in wait for targets exactly like the ones being “lured” to the benches.  

Okay.

I understand. There is danger around every corner. You never know who’s on the phone. Telemarketers, as mentioned in the Post story, prey on the elderly, and con persons in general will go to great lengths for that money under the mattress. Look at the phony grandsons calling to ask unsuspecting grandparents for money and getting it? And how are we supposed to square this facilitating of stranger liasons with what we tell our children about stranger danger?

Don’t forget, people. Kids watch our every move.

Quick story.

When I was very small, maybe six, I used to come home from school, say hello to my mother and leave to roam our quiet, end-of-town neighborhood looking for whoever was around, maybe playing with Barbies or building a fort in their living room.

But I had another friend in the neighborhood. Her name was Jenny Ball and she lived in a tiny house below the railroad tracks surrounded by waist-high weeds. In my memory, she was about ninety, and “no bigger than a minute,” as my mother would say, probably not over 5’2”. 

Jenny grew rhubarb, kept pigeons and was a hoarder. While my mother took care of my infant brother and probably believed I was across the street in Janey Woodman’s pink flowered bedroom putting tiny rollers in a Barbie’s hair, I was sitting at Jenny Ball’s kitchen table, peering at her between stacks of magazines while she told stories of all the husbands and dogs she’d had who had died, and were buried, “right out there,” she’d say, pointing.

“Right out there” was a patch of earth near the front door surrounded by a tiny picket fence and dotted with little crosses. Her son, Junior, had made them for her. Shortly after, he went to prison or died or both, I can’t remember, and maybe Jenny made it all up and buried her own dogs, I don’t know.

I was riveted by her stories.

The pigeons, who lived in a closet off the kitchen, cooed the entire time that she talked to me at her table. I got a few things in about school, and my brothers and my cat but it was Jenny’s show. She had a lot to say, and I was her very young, slack-jawed-with-fascination fan.

When it came time for me to go home, she would say, “Now you wait here. I’m going to get my gun and watch you go up the hill, so hobos don’t get you.” I’d wave and walk, turning periodically to be sure she was still there, and of course she was, stooped with a bent arm over her head, waving while keeping the other hand around the barrel of her shotgun. I could see the row of horsey false teeth when she smiled, and the glint of her wire glasses. “Bye Byye!!!”

I remember going home and telling my mother about Jenny Ball’s gun, and I don’t remember her sitting me down, or the color draining from her face, but there was a last time I saw Jenny Ball alone and I think it was that day.

Years later, I asked my father if he remembered Jenny Ball and whether he did or not, I think for my benefit he said, “Oh sure, I do!” When I told him the whole story and came to the shotgun part, his  eyes widened.  

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “She could have shot you.”

To this day, I am grateful for those afternoons in Jenny Ball’s kitchen. It may have been where I laid roots in the concept of offering less that means more, or learned that lifelong connections can form around words. Or, perhaps, it existed to supply one of the earliest and most lasting examples of kindness that would serve me when my own father became first ill, and then, “no bigger than a minute,” and still needed a listener.

But  however it came about, or should or shouldn’t have, there we were, a very elderly lady and a very young child finding happiness in each other’s company, in a cool, not very well-lit kitchen, while the pigeons cooed, the stories flowed, and “right out there,” her little colony of dog-friends rested below their tiny crosses. 

Those "chat" benches?  I'm a fan.