Life of Ma Parker. There is nowhere.
Posted by: adonis49 on: May 2, 2026
Ma Parker lost her only grandchild Lennie. This little boy suffered immensely and was doomed and Ma could do nothing to alleviate his pains.
When Lennie coughed, the great hump bubbled as a potato knocks in a saucepan. when Lennie was not coughing he sat against a pillow and looked offended. “It’s not your old gran’s doing it, my lovely”
“Whose boy are you?”
“I ‘m grand’ boy” and Lennie would wrap his arms around Ma neck and kiss her.
Ma had one of the harshest and hardest life. She lost seven of her 13 children. She had to work on small jobs all her life to care by herself on that extended family. Two boys emigrated and the third one joined the army in India.
Her baker of a husband died from “flour cancer” in his lungs..
Her only daughter Ethel married a waiter who died of ulcer the days Lennie was born.
Women on the corner would murmur how hard Ma life was hard as she passed them.
The literary gentleman hired her on Tuesday to clean his flat for half a crown. “ You simply dirty everything you got, get a hag once a week to clean up, and the thing is done”
Ma came to work and the gentleman asked her: “How’s your grandson?”. I buried him yesterday replied Ma.
“Was the burial a… success?” “Beg your pardon Sir?” and Ma bent her head and hobbled straight to the kitchen to clean, wash and arrange the accumulated mess.
“Overcome. I suppose” said aloud the literary gentleman, helping himself to the marmelade.
Now Lennie is gone and Ma has no one to care for. She wanted to cry, cry out her miserable life.
Ma never cried, being busy tending to other people lives and she borne it up. Till now.
She is on the street, a cold day, and all that she wanted was a corner, a place to hide and to cry out her heart, and nobody to witness her crying and bother her with questions.
She could not go home: her daughter Ethel would be there. She could not sit on a bench or sit on a house step for all to see.
It started raining. She could not put it off any longer. There was nowhere.
Note: an abridge piece of a short story by Katherine Mansfield, of her Collected short stories, that affected me and gave me pleasure to read. Many of her short stories are worth entire books.
Adonis Diaries 
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