Helga

Helga sat on the park bench and watched the people pass by. She put her hand into her purse, and pulled out a baggie with a somewhat squished sandwich inside. She removed the sandwich from the bag and began to move it slowly toward her mouth. Watching Helga eat was like slowing down just a little too much to stare at the aftermath of a car crash. She didn’t savor her food, she inhaled it. Helga should have probably developed better table-manners considering the fact that she was born during an era in which Emily Post was both well-read and imperatively followed. Unfortunately for anyone who had the misfortune to see her eat, she was from a working class family with a mother who was a chronically depressed alcoholic, and there hadn’t really been social lessons of any kind.

Helga hadn’t aged gracefully. In fact, she hadn’t really had the opportunity to do so. As an ugly baby, she had grown into an even uglier toddler and things only ever got worse from there. At 76, Helga was overweight with cheeks like a bulldog and hair like a balding poodle. Even the kindest of passerby would have difficulty believing that this woman had ever been loved. Despite all of her faults, Helga did have something in her past that no one would have guessed at: she had loved a man as truly as anyone could love.

When Helga was 16, she met Jimmy. Jimmy was 24, headed off to war, and quite drunk upon their initial encounter. After a few words and a quick shag in the back of his Ford Coupe, she was smitten. Even when he was a little more sober (because like her mother, Jimmy was never entirely sober), Jimmy still seemed to find some redeeming quality in Helga. Perhaps it was his kind heart that let him see past her lack of looks and abundance of really annoying qualities, but more likely he knew he could get laid anytime he wished. That being neither here nor there, Helga loved Jimmy wholeheartedly and was heartbroken when he shipped out to Korea.

The night before Jimmy left, Helga had given him a lilac and lime green silk scarf by which to remember her. It was garish and screamed silently for attention, and in that respect would remind him exactly of Helga. She had embroidered with great care “Jimmy and Helga Forever” and upon handing it to him, made him promise to keep it near him at all times so she could be close to him. Helga, though not very bright, was very romantic. Jimmy had died two months later and Helga, though resigned to a life of loneliness, was reassured by the fact that he had died with a part of her next to his heart.

Now, as Helga was an old woman, she would sit on this park bench and think about the only man she had ever loved. She’d watch the young lovers walk by, and remember to the point of pain what that was like. Wiping her hands on her brightly flowered dress, Helga struggled to rise from the park bench and return to her efficiency apartment.