Chapter 7

A few days ago, I shook my head vigorously like I always did when I was alive and said calmly. Delphine couldn’t take away the chance to taste the sweetness on her tongue. Since those were the last words I had left, she must have been sick with the sadness of regretting that moment. Every winter dozens, sometimes hundreds, of beggars died under the Elmanyef Bridge. I barely survived between corpses, but I had to endure the days when I couldn’t tell whether it was luck or misfortune to survive.

One day Delphine asked. “Grandma, if we die like that, everyone will go to heaven, right? They lived a life that was more difficult than anyone else’s, so the angels will surely take them to a better world, right?” 

I couldn’t answer that earnest question. I just told you my only wish. “Well, the angels are too busy to notice that they don’t get all the way under this bridge every once in a while, but if I die, if one comes to pick me up, I’ll wave my hands.” 

“Why, Grandma?” 

“I have already tasted both heaven and hell. I just want to stop feeling nothing if I stop breathing. But if they wish to show me one last mercy.” 

She stopped talking for a moment, lifted her bony, wrinkled, and fine fingers with difficulty, and wandered in the air for a little while before finally bringing them to Delphine’s cheeks, and then slowly caressing them.

“I am about to beg you to get me out of this hell instead of taking me to heaven.” 

I said so hopefully. And then that sharp nose. I diligently brushed the round forehead of the pretty thing that must have looked exactly like my Delphinia. Even without looking at you, I can see your pretty face, my baby. So that Delphine could hear, I repeated it over and over again. 

“Ah, grandma. I don’t want to live anymore!” 

For a while, my little baby, Delphine, who was struggling with grief over my death, a nine- year- old girl screamed like that. “Why was I born and why was I abandoned? hek hek hek now, without Elonzo, without my grandmother, how am I supposed to live on my own?” 

The cold hardened and cooled heart. When I lost, my soul suffered a sharper pain than ever before. How can you leave that poor child alone? To survive among the beggars, there would be no other way than begging or stealing… 

Then, when you get older, the only thing left is to become a street woman. To think that I had to leave that young thing alone who had to endure this punishment- like life alone. Homeless beggars, blinded by the crowd, I wonder if they’ll become my shield even if I’m by your side.