My Neighbor A and the Girl

All this woman really needed, was someone who showed her the slightest care and concerns, and after that, she’d become, “normal” again, translated…

Everybody in my building believed that our neighbor, A has psychological difficulties, and so, everybody would avoid her, but one day, a neighbor’s mentally retarded wife gave birth to an infant girl, and the couple gave their daughter to A to look after, and, things started changing.

At the very beginning, everybody in the neighborhood treated this as a joke, but, with the passing of time, everybody began to realize, that although A would behave wayward from time to time, but, she’d taken care of the infant child with set rules, anything from feeding to changing, she’d handled it all methodically. And everyone started thinking, “Finally, this young child can be blessed.”

And, as the young girl grew up by the day, maybe, for some considerations, her parents didn’t take her home at all, starting from the girl’s kindergarten years, to elementary school, middle school, and into high school, A just kept watch and accompanied this girl, and we would all watch her, with the child’s backpack slung on her back, with the little girl’s hand in hers, walking around in the community.

not my photo…

And, for a very long period of time recently, I’d not seen them coming and going together, when I saw the girl alone, I’d asked her about it, she’d answered, “Mom fell ill, and I’m just picking something up for her to eat.” Later on, I’d found an opportunity to pay A a visit, and I’d bumped into the young woman, at her place, feeding her food, bite, by bite. That scene made me feel soured up inside, and my eyes turned red. And now, the girl became the caretaker of A, feeding her, wiping her face clean, changing her clothes.

And finally, the good deeds that this woman started shouldering some almost twenty years ago is now, paying off.

That just shows, with a little more care and concern from the world, people can get healed up, and, whatever problem this woman had mentally, was resolved, when her neighbor handed her own daughter to her to care for, because she’d found something else more pressing, than being troubled by her own mind, and sometimes, that, is just the small push that the mentally ill needed, to help them get their lives back on track again.