The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
Howard Books
August 2012
On Sale: August 7, 2012
272 pages ISBN: 1451648979 EAN: 9781451648973 Kindle: B004T4KXYQ Paperback / e-Book (reprint) Add to Wish List
"Excuse me lady, do you have any spare change? I
am hungry."
When I heard him, I didn't really hear him. His words were
part of the clatter, like a car horn or someone yelling for
a cab. They were, you could say, just noise—the kind
of nuisance New Yorkers learn to tune out. So I walked right
by him, as if he wasn't there.
But then, just a few yards past him, I stopped.
And then—and I'm still not sure why I did this—I
came back.
When Laura Schroff first met Maurice on a New York City
street corner, she had no idea that she was standing on the
brink of an incredible and unlikely friendship that would
inevitably change both their lives. As one lunch at
McDonald's with Maurice turns into two, then into a weekly
occurrence that is fast growing into an inexplicable
connection, Laura learns heart-wrenching details about
Maurice's horrific childhood.
The boy is stuck in something like hell. He is
six years old and covered in small red bites from
chinches—bed bugs—and he is woefully skinny due
to an unchecked case of ringworm. He is so hungry his
stomach hurts, but then he is used to being hungry: when he
was two years old the pangs got so bad he rooted through the
trash and ate rat droppings. He had to have his stomach
pumped. He is staying in his father's cramped, filthy
apartment, sleeping with stepbrothers who wet the bed,
surviving in a place that smells like something died. He has
not seen his mother in three months, and he doesn't know
why. His world is a world of drugs and violence and
unrelenting chaos, and he has the wisdom to know, even at
six, that if something does not change for him soon, he
might not make it.
Sprinkled throughout the book is also Laura's own story of
her turbulent childhood. Every now and then, something about
Maurice's struggles reminds her of her past, how her
father's alcohol-induced rages shaped the person she became
and, in a way, led her to Maurice.
He started by cursing my mother and screaming at her in
front of all of us. My mother pulled us closer to her and
waited for it to pass. But it didn't. My father left the
room and came back with two full liquor bottles. He threw
them right over our heads, and they smashed against the
wall. Liquor and glass rained down on us, and we pulled up
the covers to shield ourselves. My father hurled the next
bottle, and then went back for two more. They shattered just
above our heads; the sound was sickening. My father kept
screaming and ranting, worse than I'd ever heard him before.
When he ran out of bottles he went into the kitchen and
overturned the table and smashed the chairs. Just then the
phone rang, and my mother rushed to get it. I heard her
screaming to the caller to get help. My father grabbed the
phone from her and ripped the base right out of the wall. My
mother ran back to us as my father kept kicking and throwing
furniture, unstoppable, out of his mind.
As their friendship grows, Laura offers Maurice simple
experiences he comes to treasure: learning how to set a
table, trimming a Christmas tree, visiting her nieces and
nephew on Long Island, and even having homemade lunches to
bring to school.
"If you make me lunch," he said, "will you put
it in a brown paper bag?"
I didn't really understand the question. "Okay, sure. But
why do you want it in a brown paper bag?"
"Because when I see kids come to school with their lunch in
a brown paper bag, that means someone cares about them."
I looked away when Maurice said that, so he wouldn't see me
tear up. A simple brown paper bag, I thought.
To me, it meant nothing. To him, it was everything.
It is the heartwarming story of a friendship that has
spanned thirty years, that brought life to an over-scheduled
professional who had lost sight of family and happiness and
hope to a hungry and desperate boy whose family background
in drugs and crime and squalor seemed an inescapable fate.
He had, inside of him, some miraculous reserve of goodness
and strength, some fierce will to be special. I saw this in
his hopeful face the day he asked for spare change, and I
see it in his eyes today. Whatever made me notice him on
that street corner so many years ago is clearly something
that cannot be extinguished, no matter how relentless the
forces aligned against it. Some may call it spirit. Some
might call it heart. Whatever it was, it drew me to him, as
if we were bound by some invisible, unbreakable thread.
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