Margot's Errand

Cora Parsons stood in front of the sink, a faded peach apron fastened tightly around her waist. She glanced down momentarily as she rotated a plate between her washcloth and then placed it to dry in the wire rack to her left. In between dishes, she took on the statute of a hawk as she watched her children through the throng of commotion in the street. Jumbled, excited screams and bits of unintelligible conversation travelled through the tattered screen to her ears; Cora smiled, ignoring an unwelcome turmoil growing in her stomach.

Milo and Margot Parsons crouched side-by-side on the inner circle of a large crowd. Their jackets puddled around them in a mangled pile near their feet. Each wave of concerned whispers prompted Milo to rise from his hunch and gently shush the younger, excited children, and then returned to the task at hand. On a thin piece of cardboard was a disorganized pile of sticks—a ragtag collection of twigs, used chopsticks, and conjoined toothpicks. Small, soiled hands latched onto the ends of these and wiggled methodically in an attempt to not disturb the heap.

It seemed as if the scene shifted to slow motion as Malcolm Parsons, who had previously been sitting at a distance playing with a bundle of rags bound together to roughly resemble a doll, stood up on his unfamiliar legs and toddled over towards the noise. His small size served him well as it allowed him to duck through the crowd undetected, but his stealth mission quickly ended when he crashed straight into the game of pick-up sticks and in a flurry of scattered wood, had ended the fun.

The children flew upwards in a fit of rage, catching Cora’s attention and launching her into a panic. Milo, still unknowingly hanging onto a twig in one hand twisted his mouth downwards in an expression of panic. Malcolm had fallen backwards near his brother’s legs and began to wail.

“You Parsons are all goddamn twits!” Billy James screamed. He was a smaller boy compared to the others at his ripe age of nine, but made up for this with an enormous temper. Milo stood paralyzed as Billy moved closer, flailing his arms and pointing at the panicked toddler. “This whole sudavison woulda been better off wih-ouh yoo and your no-good fellow traveler of a fatha! Lost his dam job ‘cause he’s a dam commie.” He produced a low growl and then spat, thickly, on the tip of Milo’s shoe.

Fannie Mae perked up from the back of the crowd, a young girl with blonde ringlets that stopped abruptly before her shoulders. “We never wanted you to mov’in ‘ere!”

Cora burst onto the street before any other children could close in. She paid no attention to the shock in temperature change; snow was expected that evening, and the gray sky was bellowing in anticipation from above. Her peach apron still hung from her waist and suds dripped from her forearms. “Quit it!” She screamed. Cora had never been an aggressive woman, but when it came to her children she adopted the demeanor of a nesting grizzly bear.

She barely remembered launching herself from the stoop onto the street, her panicked strides resembling long leaps. The gaggle of children had parted as she stormed through, fixated on Billy James. She had reached out with a pruned hand and grabbed his wrist with such anger that he let out a distressed yelp, catching the attention of Missy James, who was already barreling out towards her son from the opposite side of the street.

“You get your red hands off o’ him!” She screeched, grabbing a tight hold of Billy’s other arm and yanking as if he was a rope in a game of tug-of-war. Cora reflexively let go and instead pulled Milo and Margot to her instead. Malcolm had already attached himself to the hem of her skirt, making no eye contact or noise. The turbulence had halted to a roaring stop as the two mothers stood face to face at the center of a curious crowd. The children had formed what closely resembled a schoolyard fight circle, and it seemed the only thing missing was jumbled chanting and comments to egg them on.

“You no good Parsons always stirring up a crock of shit on this block!” Missy hissed. The children gasped in chorus as a response, acting as if they had never heard or used cuss words—a blatant lie.

Cora was never one to raise her voice or become violent towards another soul. She simply tightened her grip on her children’s hands and whispered, “It was just a misunderstanding. Have a good holiday, Missy.”

She turned and retreated back towards the stoop, ignoring the taunts from the crowd. The Parsons lived in community housing in the depths of the city, and beyond the stoop was a long, dark, musty hallway lined with doors. Behind each one was the same situation, different family. Struggling to make ends meet while sharing a single bedroom with up to five other people, maybe more. Today was quieter—violently loud conversation and blaring radios of talk shows and ball games had transitioned into hushed voices, paired with the sullen piano melodies coming out of apartment 7A, where Susie Jenkins had lived alone for decades. She had lost her husband to the Great War and never remarried; the only time that she was seen, or heard, was during the holidays. How she snuck out undetected during other times of the year remained a mystery.

The Parson’s apartment had no piano, but rather a tightly-packed living room whose centerpiece was a worn-in recliner, inhabited by none other than Joe Parsons. Up until three months prior, he had been employed by a company who transported steel and woodworking materials around the city, but a few too many late nights and missed shifts lead to him being laid off. He spent his newfound free-time laying in his recliner and listening to various radio personalities discuss how FDR was going to sweep in and right the wrongs that had been destroying the country for the past few years. If he was not in his recliner, he could be found at the nearby recreation center for weekly communist interest meetings.

To the same question he always had the same answer, “Honey, have you been out looking for work yet? Maybe taken a peek at the paper?”

With ignorant confidence he would turn up the radio slightly and reply, “Something will come along. We just have to wait.”

And so that was what the Parsons did. They waited, and waited, and waited, but nothing had come along and Cora had been steadily draining the cash from underneath the mattress until she reached in and there was nothing more to take. She now worked nights at the general store, cleaning and restocking until she had to get home in the mornings to prepare breakfast and take care of the housework. Her work schedule was inconsistent and the pay rarely came, but there were no other opportunities at the time for her or any other struggling mother.

Joe grunted as Cora and the children entered. He showed little interest in the commotion that had occurred outside and rather asked, “When are we eating?”

Cora stood back and analyzed the progress in the kitchen. Milo had sat Malcolm at the table and was sitting with him, pointing at faded pictures out of a baby book. Margot stood apprehensively near her mother as if she was a shadow. 

“I’m a little behind, Joe,” Cora answered, but ended on a gleeful note in an attempt to not anger him. “But I have some rolls ready if you’d like a snack.”

She thrusted two rolls into Margot’s unsuspecting arms and motioned her towards her father. She approached her father timidly with the rolls, only to quickly have them snatched out of her grasp, prompting her to run back to Cora. She was bent over beneath the sink, rustling about, and before standing back up she slipped an envelope into the front pocket of her apron. Margot’s curiosity piqued but she said nothing, simply twiddling her thumbs in the corner. Her mother placed her hand on her shoulder and guided her towards the door of the apartment and out into the hallway.

“I need you to run a quick errand for me, Margot.”

Margot glanced towards the end of the hallway and out of the glass door, bordered with rickety wood. The gray sky blushed with muted traces of crimson and amber as it danced with the night, and small flurries of snow fell from above and blanketed the street lamps and stoops down the street. Her mouth twinged in objection to the weather but respectfully she returned her attention to Cora, who was pulling the envelope from her apron. She handed this to Margot.

Inside the envelope was a single dollar bill. She felt her arms shiver with the excitement of responsibility. Suddenly, the weather outside seemed like a bug that she could squish underneath her feet.

“Put this inside your jacket and don’t take it out until you get in Miss Goodman’s store,” Cora spoke sternly, quickly. She took the envelope and tucked it inside the breast pocket of Margot’s peacoat. “I need you to go and get some groceries for me so I can finish Thanksgiving dinner.”

“Okay, momma.” 

Cora continued. She gave the mother’s rendition of the Miranda Rights and scolded her daughter against talking to strangers and travelling through unlit streets. Margot’s tenth birthday was right around the corner, and she had never gone anywhere without Milo as her bodyguard. She felt her cold toes tingle with excitement as she half-listened to Cora’s instructions. She did not forget, though, that she was to buy these select items: a loaf of bread, one pound of apples, one pound of flour, four eggs, one box of sugar, and a can of peas. She was to fetch the ingredients for the apple pie (a delicacy in the Parson household) along with bread and peas for the dinner. Under no circumstance whatsoever was Margot to spend the entire dollar or spend more than the cheapest price for the groceries Miss Goodman offered. 

So, with an empowering dollar bill and a slew of instructions, Margot departed from the apartment building and down the sidewalk. Dusk followed her closely, and she pulled her hat down tighter on her head and thrusted her mittened hands into her coat pockets. The route to Goodman’s Groceries was second nature thanks to many trips with her mother back when they were able to go shopping once a week, but now they lived day-to-day off of canned goods (typically expired) and ran to the store for bread once a month. 

The streets were fairly empty due to the holiday. Food banks were open later than usual and some found refuge in vacated warehouses for the night. This allowed Margot to reach her destination in a mere twenty minutes—entering into the humid store was a relief to her frozen toes and tingling tip of her nose. A metal bell latched to the handle with a shoelace announced her arrival as she walked inside, prompting Miss Goodman to enter from where she had been sitting in the backroom. At first she showed annoyance, as if she had been pulled from an important task, but upon seeing Margot her annoyance turned to cheer.

“Happy Thanksgiving, dear!” She spoke loudly, as if there were other conversations in the store that were less important than hers, but there was no one. “What can I get for you?” She fetched a notepad and pencil from beneath the counter.

Miss Goodman admired Margot, who appeared overwhelmed from where she stood. She had bright red hair like her mother, naturally held in loose curls. Her freckles cascaded across her cheeks as if they were their own constellations. She was a sheepish young girl, and unless she made direct eye contact with her onlooker, her pale verdant eyes would go unnoticed. She was still thawing out from her trip as she began to rattle off the items her mother requested, disregarding the routine politeness and her typical pleasantries. Miss Goodman decided not to chastise her for this, only because it was a holiday.

She quickly wrote down every item Cora had requested, and directed Margot to each aisle where she could fetch the item. The young girl would go down each one and grab the target item: a box of sugar, a bag of flour, pristine eggs, the best-looking apples she could find, and then she would come back and set them on the countertop for the grocer to keep track of. Unfortunately, there were no peas, causing Margot to grab carrots instead. She hoped this would please her mother. Before totaling the groceries, Miss Goodman rounded the store to light the various oil lamps she had scattered about randomly. Dusk had come and was knocking harshly on the window.

Margot’s total came out to fifty-three cents. She fetched the envelope from her jacket and nervously handed her the dollar. While Miss Goodman made change, Margot calculated what she would be getting back in her head. Her math was not the finest, but she landed confidently on the sum of forty-seven cents. She could only imagine the world of hurt she would be in if she returned home with incorrect change. Miss Goodman wrote out the receipt to go along with the groceries, placed it alongside Margot’s change back into the envelope, and handed it back to her. She scrunched her eyebrows in concern as she asked, “How are you going to carry all of this home? I know you don’t live very close, sweet pea.”

“I think I’ll be okay, Miz Goodman,” Margot answered quietly. She fetched her hat from her pocket and covered the tangle of red. “‘M just gonna carry it. I have my mittens.”

In response the older woman clicked her tongue in succession. “No, no, sweetie. You’re gonna put your fingers through a world of hurt,” she paused and chewed on the pencil eraser as she pondered. “I have a knapsack you can use!” She retreated into the backroom before Margot could contest the act of kindness, and in moments Miss Goodman had flown through the thin wooden border that divided the store from behind the counter. 

As she was fitting the groceries in the knapsack like a puzzle, Margot could only imagine the rage her mother would fly into if she saw this when she arrived home. Everyone and their neighbor was in need and to accept a gift would only land the Parsons further indebted to those around them, but she had been taught to always be amiable in the presence of her elders, and put up no debate once the knapsack was slipped around her shoulders and adjusted snugly. Miss Goodman took a step back and placed her hands on her hips as if she had just finished a painting. “That’ll do!”

“Do I owe you anything?” Margot asked.

“No, no!” Miss Goodman insisted. She walked her to the door. “Just bring it back the next time you and your momma stop in. Speaking of Cora, tell her I said Happy Thanksgiving when you get home. And your daddy too.”

And with that Margot was back onto the street, now encased in a thick shroud of darkness whose grasp was only broken by flickering street lamps. It would take her longer to get home now as she had to adhere to her mother’s stern instructions to avoid dark pathways. Margot sighed, tugged on the straps of the knapsack, and began to walk back the way she came. 

The walk was quiet until she exited the small shopping hub which was home to Goodman’s Grocery, a general store, and a doctor’s office. The towering townhomes and apartment buildings seemed to bear down on her with extreme weight. The snow had stopped falling, and her boots created a brief history of her travels. Momentarily, she looked up to observe her surroundings, but otherwise kept her head down in an attempt to ignore the wind.

As she turned the corner of Huntington and looked up, she was startled by a lanky boy staring back at her. He looked to be about Milo’s age, entering into secondary education soon, but was far ghastlier. His eyes sunk backwards into his skull and he wore no hat or jacket to protect him from the cold. The chattering of his teeth was the only eerie sound to be heard. Margot was about to walk around him and proceed on her way home when he reached out and grabbed her upper arm, which both surprised and terrified her. She turned.

“Excuse me, miss, but ‘m very hungry. The food banks ran out of food before I could get to them.” This was said between the incessant chattering of bones and shivering limbs, and took him quite a long time to get out intelligibly. 

“What’s your name?” Margot asked. She, too, was shivering, but at a lighter degree. She removed her arm from his hold and stepped backwards a few feet so she could stare directly upwards at his pale face.

“Norman Jones,” he replied.

“And where are your parents, Norman Jones?”

He seemed to flinch at the question, but answered submissively to the girl half his size standing before him. “They couldn’t afford me no’ mo’ and they sent me away, but the new lady would hit me and send me to bed w’out anythin’ to eat at nights. I’rather be out here than there.”

She could tell by his demeanor that he was telling the truth. She thought briefly of her mother, waiting at home, but instead of continuing onwards she took her borrowed knapsack off and set it in the snow to begin digging through it. She produced the loaf of bread, which she pulled two slices from, and one of the apples. She handed these to Norman, who took them with greed and kissed her mittened fingers in pure gratification. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he mumbled through bites. 

She put the knapsack back on and was about to walk away when she turned back and asked him, “Are you cold, Norman?”

He looked back at her. “Just my fingers and nose, but I’ll be jus’ fine. I’ll find somethin’ maybe tomorrow.”

She knew he would not be able to last through the night with the temperatures diving rapidly, and if he did, it would be without his fingers. She begrudgingly took off one mitten and her scarf and handed them to Norman, who looked at her with a pure bewildered expression. “Those are yours,” and then he paused, asking, “What is your name?”

“I’m Margot,” she answered, forcing the articles of clothing into his hands and pulling her own away. “And now they are yours. Please use them to make it through the night.”

She departed now, ignoring his gleeful ramblings and picking up her pace as she moved farther away, but did not miss his final words, “Margot! Margot! Thank you, Margot!”

Her cheeks flared. She shoved her one uncovered hand into her coat pocket and held one strap of the knapsack with the other. She had no idea what time it was but whatever time it truly was, she was late. A mere five minutes passed until she came upon what she thought was a pile of trash and tattered blankets. She began to walk around this strange obstacle, until it moved slightly, causing Margot to yelp. The pile shuffled and then began to speak.

“Happy Thanksgiving, youngin’.”

Margot took no time distancing herself from the pile before replying. “Are you a person?” She asked shrilly. A simple, but necessary question.

The blankets and plastic moved aside to reveal a small elderly woman, who was wrapped in endless scarves and rags. The only visible parts of her were a pair of beady eyes and her arms, which extended from underneath the rags towards Margot. If the woman was not shielded by a translucent layer of skin, Margot would have been staring at pure bones like that from a model skeleton. She retreated farther away but did not turn and run. Instead she asked the same question she had asked Norman. 

“What’s your name?”

The arms and eyes replied. “Mildred.”

“Where is your family, Mildred?”

The pair of eyes closed for what felt like a minute before reopening. Mildred’s response was quieter, but concise, and honest. “My husband smoked himself to death. My son, gone to the Great War. My daughter… ran away long ago. My husband was not a nice man. No siree, not to her, not to my son, not to me. I don’t know where my daughter is anymore. It’s hard times out here, don’t ya know? I hope she is married and being cared for and is healthy. Healthier than me. Maybe she has healthy children. Which would make them my grandchildren—healthy grandchildren. Healthy as can be.”

She coughed, and Margot had again already laid her knapsack on the ground and began to rifle through it. This time she produced four slices of bread. Through Mildred’s explaining she could tell the elderly woman had few to no teeth left and handed her the slices of bread along with a nickel, which would hopefully buy her a can of soup from the store. The disembodied arms grabbed at these like a snapping turtle after its prey and then sunk back into an indistinguishable pile of rags and plastic. “Thank you, young girl, bless you, bless you, you healthy girl,” Mildred said. It was unclear if she was even aware it was Thanksgiving.

“I’m Margot.” Margot announced this confidently, equipping her knapsack once again. She turned and began to walk again, fixating on the nearest streetlamp up ahead.

“Margot, Margot,” the lump mumbled, and then fell quiet.

She felt her heart grow in her chest simultaneously as her stomach twisted with fear. Cora would definitely notice that half of the loaf of bread was missing, along with five cents (courtesy of the receipt she would read from Miss Goodman), and an apple. She replaced these thoughts with the lives of Norman and Mildred. Although extremely different souls, they were both alone, cold, and hungry, and Margot took comfort in the thought that she had helped them, even if it was a small contribution to their troubles.

Whether it was the route that Margot travelled that night or the idea that she had somehow turned into a human magnet, the same situation repeated itself down every turn, often more than once. Someone seemingly in need would catch Margot’s attention. She would ask them their name and where their family was, or why they were outside in the cold on Thanksgiving. 

She had met a Jewish immigrant, Andrew Schneider, from Europe. He sent his only income home for his family and left none for himself. This left him homeless and starving for a majority of the year, and for the rest of it, freezing. This was the first year that he had been unable to find community housing or a shelter, much like the rest of the country. 

She had also learned the story of Jane, a young girl just slightly younger than herself. She had never met the girl before. She had never attended school, and as a result used a very limited vocabulary as she spoke to Margot. She explained that her mother had died the same day she was born, and as a result her father hated her for it. She had three older siblings who gave no care to her existence and soon joined in on the hatred. She was abused, forced to tend to housework from a young age, and sometimes even sold to other families for various reasons in time fragments ranging from one week to three months. One night Jane’s father had beaten her so severely he had broken her nose and jaw. She ran away with nowhere to go, and a result adapted the vagabond lifestyle, finding the warmest place to sleep at night and searching for the trash can that held the most food scraps.

She learned of these stories, and many more.

Margot was not sure what time it was when she finally reached her own stoop, but she felt as if she carried the weight of the world upon her shoulders. Although she was freezing, she waddled over to the edge of the sidewalk and sat down. The cold ground gave her a shock but she paid no mind as she pulled the weightless knapsack onto her knees and opened it. She reached in and sighed as her hand thumped against the bottom of the bag. 

It was empty.

She was pulled from her fog when she realized that not only she had no groceries to present to her mother, but she looked as if she was ready for a day in scorching hot weather. She had given away her hat, both mittens, her scarf, and lastly her coat. She did not even have a penny to present for her travels; she had given away whatever she had the ability to. She handed out coins from her envelope, the apples, the bread, the carrots, and when she ran out of these, she found herself giving away raw eggs, flour, and sugar. It was a surprise that she still had the knapsack in her possession and had not given that away, too.

The drifting melody of Susie Jenkins’ music reminded her to go inside as the woman transitioned from Bach into Beethoven’s Für Elise. It was a jumbled blur from the curb to the door of 4A. Margot entered into an apartment of blazing heat, from both the fireplace and the thick temperaments of the Parsons, who sat around the table impatiently. At the sound of the door opening, the first one out of their chair was Jim, followed by Cora. He set his gaze on his seemingly barren daughter and was about to fly into a fit of pure rage when he was stopped by a soft hand upon his bicep.

Cora whispered in his ear, keeping her steady grip on his arm, and the children watched in fearful silence as his facial expressions grew from angry, to contemplative, to angry, to indecisive, and finally emotionless. He stormed into the bedroom without a word. Cora turned to Margot, who stood in the doorway, motionless. 

“Margot, where are the groceries?” She asked, attempting to muffle the tinge of anger in her voice with concern.

Margot looked at her mother, who was kneeling in front of her on both knees. She still wore her peach apron around her waist. “I gave them away, momma,” she whispered.

“What do you mean? Why would you do that?”

She thought of Norman, Mildred, Andrew, Jane, and every pair of eyes she had looked into during their time of need. She answered her mother honestly. “I met people who needed it.”

Cora pulled the knapsack from Margot’s petite frame and looked inside of it. Her mouth grew dry at the sight of emptiness—of nothing but a crumpled handwritten receipt. She looked at this and then back to her daughter. “Do you have the change from Miss Goodman?”

“No, momma.”

Joe rustled about in the bedroom and knocked something onto the floor, causing Milo and Malcolm to jump simultaneously. Cora and Margot seemed planted in time. “Why would you give all of that away?” Cora fought back a well of tears, her stomach flipping as she realized that her daughter had given away the last of the family’s savings, and anything they had to show for it. “Margot?”

“They needed it.”

“Honey, so did we,” Cora whimpered. “We needed that.”

Margot’s eyes looked up for the first time and she gazed around the apartment, then back to her mother. “We needed all that, but we have somewhere warm to go. Those people didn’t have any gloves or coats or anything, momma. They were skin an’ bones.”

Joe emerged from the bedroom, impatient with the talking, and leaned against the doorframe, analyzing the situation. He had unraveled his belt and had it looped securely in his large hands. Cora walked over to him and pulled him back inside of the bedroom, leaving the children to stare at each other. Malcolm babbled and chewed on his fingers, blatantly unaware of the issue. Milo stared at his younger sister. “What are we going to eat now, Maggie?”

Margot shrugged. The snow had begun to fall off of her boots and now puddled around her in the entryway, adding another stain to the already spotted carpet. Voices rose in the bedroom, diminished, rose again, and finally came to an end. The children jumped as something fell and hit the ground once again, and soon after, Joe and Cora emerged from the other room. Cora smoothed her apron and turned to Margot. Joe was begrudgingly slipping his belt back through the loops of his pants.

“Did you get anything in return for your... gifts?” Cora asked, faking unwavering confidence, although her stomach was now in her throat.

“They gave me their stories.” Margot answered.

“Okay then,” her mother replied, walking into the kitchen and pulling a small turkey from the oven that had been roasting since the evening before. Her entire body shook with fear but she did not show it. The deceased bird in her possession seemed to be more similar to the size of a pigeon, but it laid in a bed of vegetables that seemed to lift it up out of the pan. “Why don’t we all go sit by the fire and finish this off? Then we can make bone broth and maybe have some toasted apple slices afterwards. And Margot, you can tell us the stories from the people you helped.”

This came off of the top of Cora’s head as she glanced around the kitchen, settling her gaze on the vast emptiness that ended on a slightly decaying apple, laying on its side in the corner. She would later delicately slice this into five portions (the largest for her husband) and toast them above the fire with a pinch of brown sugar. 

The Parsons gathered around the fireplace and allowed Milo to lead them in saying grace. Cora did not close her eyes though, but instead studied her only daughter, who sat with her small head towards the ground, ginger curls cascading around her. She could feel anger radiating from her husband, and as much as Cora wished to indulge and share the anger with him, she found herself physically incapable to be upset with Margot. 

Instead, Cora locked her doubts away for the night and closed her eyes. She thought of how thankful she was for the roof over her head, and the family who she cared for immensely, but most of all she thought about how thankful she was that she was raising a daughter who cared for others more than she cared for herself, even in a time of immense depression.