JUST MY MARY ALICE

In the middle of a summer morning the relentless sun is blasting away at the barren desert of a young woman's heart. She is not a lady by the standards of polite society, far from that for sure. Since teen age years she has bartered for her life.

On the streets at thirteen she gave her frail body to any who would feed her and warm her on a cold night. Experience brought her more finesse and with that her simple barter changed to money and money changed from mere subsistence to some degree of profit. By age nineteen she had a clientele of men who chose her easily over her street sisters.

Now at age twenty eight she felt that her life was done, wrung dry of any emotion or hope at all. She walked a lonely road that went back to her old neighborhood. She looked for anythmg or anyone who could give her hope that somehow life could still be worth living.

But she did not expect anything to change what she was or what she could expect to be. She had thought of ending her life but she was afraid of that, for she had heard somewhere, sometime that suicides always go to hell. She was afraid, down deep somewhere, that as bad as life was for her, hell might be even worse.

As she walked she heard a child crying as though her heart would break. She stopped and stared down a muddy, stinking alley at the back door of a shotgun house that stood leaning over and unpainted. The child was sitting in the doorway with seemingly no one to comfort her cries. The heart of Mary Alice, this "woman of the street, melted as she looked into the eyes of this little one.

And out of that heart that had never thought much of God came a half prayer, half cry that at first she thought had come from another person nearby."Oh Dear God. Please help this little girl to find somebody to love her, please God." "She just did", said another voice that seemed as foreign as the first.

"No, I mean somebody that counts. Somebody that is worth something." "My Dear Mary Alice. There is no one in this whole world that counts to me any more than you do and you are worth everything to me. I have heard your crying just like you have heard the crying of this little girl.

How I have longed to pick you up and comfort you. But I had to wait until you called to me. Through hunger you cried but not to me. Through your loneliness you cried but only to the men who used you. Even in sickness you cried the tears of suffering but you did not cry to me.

Only when you felt the suffering

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