Just Ask By Juniper Ellis

Just Ask

By Juniper Ellis

I'd like to share with you a story told by Langston Hughes, one of the great Harlem Renaissance writers.

A woman is walking home from work relatively late at night, 9 or 10 pm, when a young man decides to steal her purse. He is unsuccessful, so unsuccessful, in fact, that she hauls off and whomps him with her purse. He goes flying and lands on his behind.

She reaches down and grabs him by his shirt and hauls him to his feet. She notices he's just a boy, a tall, skinny, hungry-looking boy. She introduces herself, giving all four of her names and making sure he doesn't miss one of them. She is Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones. She tells him, “Remember, you decided to mess with Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones, not the other way around.” And then she takes him home and feeds him supper. It's not a fancy place where she lives--she's renting a room in a boarding house--but it's clean and warm and bright, and the food is good and plentiful. She makes him wash his face before he eats, because she notices his face is dirty. She makes him hot chocolate.

And then she asks, “What did you mean, grabbing for my purse like that?”

He confesses that he wants to buy the latest popular shoes and doesn't have the money.

She says, “I know what it's like to want things I can't have. And I have done things I am not proud of, and also not going to tell you about, but the good Lord knows all of them.” And then she says, “You could have just asked me. I would have given you the money.” And she takes out her wallet and gives him what he meant to steal. “Just don't you go stealing again, because shoes come by devilish like that will burn your feet.”

There's no judgment in her; only love. She represents that aspect of ourselves that is so fierce and tender it allows us to love in all circumstances. She is a great mother-figure, and she reminds us that we all have that capacity within ourselves, men and women.

As that great teacher taught, the boy is hungry and so she feeds him; he is thirsty and so she gives him drink. He wants shoes, and she gives him that, too. She teaches him something we have all realized by living. We cannot harm another without also harming ourselves. We cannot help another without also helping ourselves. It is the logic of life; it is the law of love. And it is very hard to put into words.

All the boy can manage to say in return, as he leaves her room and goes back out into the night is, “Thank you.”

When we meet with generosity and grace and kindness, strength and forgiveness and love despite our own human clumsiness, all we can do is bow in gratitude, and say, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”