Green Money : Author of the Hoodoo Man

Book by SmithLevin Judith

The bench was a hard, yet comfortable old friend.

Molly Ludendorf favored this bench, and this corner of
the park.

The old woman pushed her "house on wheels," a McKay's Market shopping cart, to the bench and sat down. She began ceremoniously preparing her sleeping quarters.

The night air felt crisp. She raised her head and sniffed.

"It will be coldt before mornink," she muttered in a thick, heavily German-accented voice.

Nearly twenty years of living on the street had given her skills meteorologists could only dream about.

She laid out a ragged pink wool blanket on the bench, patting it lovingly. It was a find, from a Hillman Avenue triple-decker just before it was knocked down.

Molly stuffed newspapers into a white plastic Stop N'Save bag, and put it at the head of the bench. A good pillow.

Dipping into her cart, she fished out a baby blue polyester sweater with a bleach stain on the front. She'd found it in the trash outside of the Laundromat on Second Street.

She had seen some men going through the trash can and had waited for them to leave. She'd had her share of trouble with homeless men in the years she'd been on the street. Thank heaven she was too old to be raped anymore, but then, you never know.

When the men left, she went through the can. She discovered the sweater at the bottom. She pulled it on, over her clothes. It was big, but that was good; she could wrap it around herself like a coat.

Again she reached into the jumble in the cart, taking out a three-day-old copy of The Wall Street Journal. Carefully rationing out the pages, she wrapped them around her green Converse high-top sneakers, tucking the edges inside the shoes.

The nuns who ran the Saint Luke shelter had given them to her. She had dragged herself in on a cold, snowy night, her own shoes in tatters, barely clinging to her nearly frozen feet. The Converse sneaks were the only shoes they had that she could fit into. The nuns let her bathe, then gave her clean clothes, underwear, two pairs of pristine, thick white socks, and the shoes.

Once the shoes felt secure, she took out three dark green plastic garbage bags and smoothed them out on the bench. Selecting the one on top, she pulled it over her feet. The bottom had been cut away so that she could tug the plastic all the way up to her waist. She tucked it in to the band of her stained blue denim pants.

She took the second bag and pulled it up to her knees, then tucked it securely around her news-shrouded feet and legs.
Garbage bags were a miraculous invention, she thought. They held body heat like the finest goose-down quilts she'd owned in her other life, before the pain, before the alcohol, before the streets.

Holding onto the bag around her legs with her free hand, and pressing her ankles together to keep the paper in place, Molly lay down on the bench. She wrapped the third garbage bag around her body and pulled up the pink blanket, tucking it under her hips and thighs.

She felt warm and secure.

The breeze was beginning to turn cold. She pulled the
dirty black hood of the nylon windbreaker she wore under the sweater over her head. She pulled the drawstrings tight. The hood formed an ear-warming shield around her wrinkled, dirty face. She pulled her crocheted brown woolen hat from inside her sweater and tugged it down over her forehead. The brim touched the bridge of her nose. On the chilly, light breeze, she smelled a sweet, pungent smoke, coming from the trees.

"Lowlife scum," she muttered to herself. Her heavy accent gave the words a clipped and guttural sound. "All da drugs dey smoke and shoot, dey're killink da worlt."

She turned her back to the wind.

The bass-heavy beat of music rode on the air.

Molly pulled her hat down farther, trying unsuccessfully to block the sound. Dr. Dre and the prematurely departed Tupac Shakur, singing about partying in California, accompanied her into sleep.

The side of her head was cradled in the softness of her makeshift pillow, while her face pressed hard against the scratched, worn back of the bench, where it joined the seat.

She began to smile. She felt warm, full of the tasty spring lamb stew given to her at the back door of Jessie Mae's soul food restaurant. And now sleep, sweet and welcoming. Molly began to dream. She was home. In Munich, Germany, the city of her youth.

She saw herself. Young, tall, strong again, and happy. So very happy.

Her long, silken blonde hair floated back from her shoulders, as she stood on the balcony of her parents' home, smiling down at the young face looking up at her.

Dieter. The boy she'd loved before she sailed to America . . . before Oskar Ludendorf, his whining, sickly wife, and his sweaty hands, before everything.

Dieter was urging her to come down. His wide, plump
face smiled up at her. She could see the freckles across his broad nose.

She reached out.

Suddenly she could barely see him.

The sun was in her eyes, a blazing, blinding light.
She started to sweat.

The heat from the sun gave way to the softness of rain pattering down on her outstretched arms and hands.

"Dieter," she murmured, as the rain softly touched her skin. She stretched out farther.

Immediately the heat was back.

Hot, burning. Painful, searing heat.

In her sleep, Molly Ludendorf shook her head.

"No . . . no," she said.

Dieter disappeared into the rays of that bright, agonizing sun.

"No."

It was the laughter that woke her.

The giggles that came from grinning young mouths.

"No!" She struggled to sit up. A hand clamped onto her forehead, holding her down.

Another hand squeezed her cheeks, forcing her mouth open.

"NO! NO!"

She was fully awake. The smell of lighter fluid snaked into her nose.

Above her she saw the faces.

They were young and white.

Through her watering eyes, she couldn't tell if they were male or female. All she knew was that they were laughing.

Some of them shook beer bottles over her, while another one sprayed a stinking liquid from a small red-and-blue can over her body.

"NO!" She tried to sit up, to run.

Her attempt at movement sent pain roaring through her body.

She looked down.

Her legs and feet were on fire. The melting plastic garbage bags and the burning newspaper combined to produce an acrid, lung-piercing smoke. The Converse sneakers given her by the nuns melted, and molded themselves to her cotton socks, and beneath that, her skin. The garbage bag around her legs was dissolving into the denim jeans. She felt heat gnawing through the fabric.

The old woman began screaming.

A hand clapped over her nose. She opened her mouth wide, trying to breathe and to scream again.

Her remaining teeth erupted in pain, as something hard and bitter was shoved against them. Pain shot through her jaw as she bit down, trying to keep it out.

The hand pressed harder. Molly felt her bottom lip split, blood spilled down her chin. The pain was so great. She struggled, trying to keep her mouth closed, but it opened. Her brain controlled her body. She needed air.

An object was forced deep into her mouth, into the darkness behind her bleeding lips.

"No . . . mmmpph!" She struggled, fought, and tried to scream again.

With each agonizing inhalation, the object moved farther into her throat.

She gagged. A thin white liquid rose and surrounded the thickness of the thing in her mouth.

She could feel it moving.

Like a boat tumbling over a waterfall, it slid deeper and deeper into her throat, closing off the air, choking off the scream.

Her hands flew over her body, her eyes began to bulge, tears ran down her grimy, wrinkled cheeks.

The laughter.

She could still hear the laughter.

One of them was laughing so hard, it turned into choking. It sounded as if it were coming from the ground, behind her. As if the laugher had fallen, overcome.

GOD HELP ME! her mind screamed. HELP ME.

God didn't help.

The agony in her feet raced up her legs, and roared over her thighs.

Beneath her clothes, the flesh blistered and popped.

Heat filled her skin, then burst out.

Fire licked her garbage bags, her paper, her clothes.

It devoured the streams and puddles of the "cool rain" strewn over her.
She felt the last air in her throat, as it slid over and around the object that she couldn't cough up or swallow down.

Molly Ludendorf made a rattling, gurgling sound and felt her life whooshing out from her body. She willed her bulging, tear-filled eyes to see . . . to know who was doing this to her.
She turned her head.

The stinking rain now covered everything. Her hood, her hat. She felt the fire licking her face, like a demented dog.

The skin on her neck cracked and peeled.

The rough fibers of her crocheted wool hat adhered to her blistering skin.

As the fire claimed her eyes, one color devoured her final thought.

Red.

The reddest hair she'd ever seen.

Red, her blistering brain thought. Red, the color of flame.