The Man Who Gave Me $20

It was the summer of 2007. I was living in my apartment on the west side of El Paso; I had received my BA from UTEP in Theatre that December. I had bombed the interview for the only dance teaching gig available in what seemed like ages. I was an unemployed, single mom, with rent due, no child-support, and so "po" I could not afford the other two letters.

I woke up early one morning that summer, frantically looking for a pen to fill out an application for Medicaid for my kids and for food stamps as the application was due that morning. I, for the life of me, could not find one. That same day after my appointment at the DHS, I went to Wal-Mart to purchase a few essentials. As I was looking over the composition notebooks, pondering whether I had enough cash to buy one so I could write my stories, a weird old man with hands that trembled and words that stumbled asked me, "If you could write a book, what would you write about?" "Love," I thought to myself, "...and the loss of love due to time and distance." But leery of this man and the motive for his question, I turned it right back around. And he said, "Love, time, the loss of love and time..." I kinda smiled and said, "Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinkin'." He gave me $20 dollars and told me to write. I told him I couldn't accept it, but he insisted and said I could repay him by writing. I asked him for his name, but he said that was of no importance. I replied I needed to know who to dedicate my first book to, to which he said, "Anonymous. Besides, I'll be dead soon."

He turned the corner of the display, but then he came back around to where I was still standing. He handed me a package of pens and said, "Here, you need these."