Asking for Mercy

She stood there looking at her – the bowed head and hair that looked like it hadn’t been washed in weeks, the slumped shoulders and the dirty grey sweater falling off one skinny shoulder, the tear halfway up the thigh in her once-stylish pants, the ratty, dirty running shoes with the frayed laces that hadn’t been bothered to be tied up, the dirty fingernails on those hands that once used to be so elegant.

Jas took it all in as though she was seeing double and the images were totally out of sync. This was Genna? The high and mighty Genna who had made her life so utterly miserable? She shook her head, as though that would clear things up, and when she finally found her voice it was to ask with disbelief, “What are you doing here?”

Genna shifted awkwardly but didn’t raise her head or look up.

“Jas,” she said, in a very quiet, small voice, “I was wrong, terribly wrong to treat you the way I did. I wouldn’t blame you in the least if you never wanted to have anything to do with me ever again. But I need help and you’re the only person I could think to ask that I thought might even give me a chance. I know I don’t deserve it – I was awful to you. But do you think just maybe you could give me a chance?”

There was something so utterly different in this voice – something quiet and humble and deep – so unlike the haughty, sneering, ugly voice she remembered – that almost without thinking it at all, Jas found herself stepping aside and holding the door open for Genna to come inside.

© 2000, Evelyn Grace Marinoski