Gretchen

Gretchen saved my life. This old woman of four foot nine came into my world and turned it upside down and inside out in the blink of an eye. It was solely because of her that I was able to walk across the stage to receive my business degree in front of my adoring family.

I first met Gretchen six years ago at a small café on the outskirts of my college campus. School had just started, and I was in desperate need of a job. During orientation I recalled a café that had a help wanted poster posted and I decided to apply on a whim. It was my first shift, bordering on eight o’clock with only a select number of patrons occupying the building. Since business had died down, I was trying to get ahead of my classwork by reading over material for economics. The bell on the door to the café jingled and I glanced up to see a small elderly lady hobbling in. She asked for a banana nut muffin and a small black coffee before sitting at a secluded table in the far corner of the café. I absentmindedly prepared her order while attempting to encode the five fundamental principles of economics into my memory.

Once I had finished her order, I brought it over to her table. She too was reading, though a seemingly much less scholarly work. She held a little black book that appeared to be a journal of some sort and she was flipping back and forth through a particular section as if searching for something she thought to be missing. She did not bother to glance up when she thanked me during her search. I ended my shift without giving much thought to the old woman in the corner.

A few weeks had passed, and I learned that the old woman’s name was Gretchen. She came into the café every night at precisely eight, ordered the same thing, sat in the same table, reading the same little black book. Gretchen was the textbook definition of a creature of habit, but I had slowly been working my way into her routine. Since I exclusively worked the night shift and it was always fairly dead by the time Gretchen rolled in, I decided to spend some time talking with her. Or trying to at the very least.

The first time I sat with her she straight up balked and asked me who the hell I thought I was. Clearly, she was not in the mood for company, and not uninvited company at that, so I changed my approach. The next time I saw her I simply asked how her day was and if she would like any company. It took about a good three weeks before she finally caved and let me sit with her for a few minutes, engaging in reluctant conversation.

Spring quickly fell over the small college town and we were both glad to be rid of the overbearing layers of clothes that winter weather demanded. She was quite the character, old Gretchen. In the months that had passed I had learned quite a bit about my favorite elderly regular. She was a widowed mother of four with a whole gaggle of grandchildren whose names I had long lost the hope of remembering and lived alone. Her youngest child had gone to my college and it was during his freshman move in that she had discovered the café. Her son had passed away a few years prior in a car accident and she found solace in the café he used to frequent. After a few years coming to the café had just become an integral part of her life that she refused to give up.

Before I knew it, two years had passed. Our little daily talks loosened old Gretchen up, to the point where she would even greet me with a smile on occasion; though only if she were feeling adventurous enough. Her smiles held so much power, in the way that only a grandma’s smile can, and that was who she had become to me. I told her of my lovely family of three, being myself, my father, and my two-year-old daughter Delilah. She was obviously surprised at hearing that I had a child at eighteen but breathed a word in disparagement, of which I was endlessly grateful.

No matter how much time had passed and how much Gretchen seemed to open up to me, there remained two constants in our meetings. One was the presence of her little black book that was in essence her own personal Bible. The way she clutched onto it during tense conversations or whilst on the cusp of tears proved it was a Holy text of some sort. The other constant was in the way Gretchen never once offered context behind the book or its significance in her life and in the way in which I never asked. It was if we had developed this unspoken rule that the book was the only thing, the only topic, that was completely off limits. For the longest time I had respected this. Yet, as time went by the curiosity was an ever-present entity living in the recesses of my consciousness, begging for indulgence.

After hours of intense soul searching and deliberating, I had come to the decision to finally ask Gretchen about the book. It had been a regular Tuesday night, nothing out of the ordinary. She came in at her self-designated time and immediately sat at our table. I already had her order ready and grabbed her plate and mug, bringing it over to the table. Gretchen’s phone rang as I set down the coffee and muffin and she shuffled through her bag, muttering a small curse when she couldn’t locate it. Once she finally found it, she answered the call and I sat across from her after grabbing my own muffin from behind the counter.

Suddenly, Gretchen shot up out of her seat, the slightly rusty metal chair screeching against the tile floor. She began speaking so frantically I could not make out enough of her words to form any sensible meaning. Her eyes brimmed with fresh tears as she quickly packed up her belongings and rushed out of the café. I had never seen the old lady move so fast in all the time I had know her. If it weren’t for the fact that I still had another hour before my shift ended and there were quite a few people still in the building, I would have run after her to see if I could help. Instead, I cleared the table and grabbed her chair to put in back where it belonged when I saw her little black book laying on the ground. Gretchen must have knocked it off the table on accident in her rush to leave. I picked up the book and dusted it off before placing it in my bag, figuring I would just give it back to her the following day.

Gretchen didn’t return to the café for two weeks. I had begun to lose hope that she would ever return. I was so worried about her, about that mysterious call, about her little black book that I had been carrying with me ever since that day. If I only had a way to contact her, to make sure she was okay and that she got her book back. That would be enough for me. For some reason, I found myself more concerned with her missing the book than anything else. I knew how important it was to her, even if I did not know why. Whatever it was that she was going through had to be harder without her book to fall back on in comfort. I had tried asking the other patrons if anyone knew her or where she lived, remembering she told me she lived in a loft nearby, but it was to no avail.

The Monday starting the third week since Gretchen’s Houdini act took center stage, she finally showed. I almost tackled the frail woman in my excitement and bombarded her with questions. She hugged me back fiercely, something I was not expecting due to her exceedingly unaffectionate nature. I led her over to our table, telling her to give me a second to make her order, and running behind the counter to make it. I almost forgot to grab her book in my eagerness to catch up with her. The very sight of the book caused sweet Gretchen to burst into tears. “I have been looking everywhere for that, I tell you,” she whined, wiping harshly at her tear-stained face. I simply smiled and handed it over before taking a large bite out of my blueberry muffin. She took a minute to collect herself, clutching the book tightly to her chest all the while. It was then that she told me why she loved the little black book so: it was a collection of her youngest’s favorite quotes and innermost thoughts. It was one of many journals that he kept through college and it was the only tangible item of his she had kept for herself, the rest going to his daughter.

Gretchen told me that she hadn’t come back to the café because her granddaughter, the only child of her youngest boy, had been run over by a school bus. She was rushed to the hospital and placed in the ICU when Gretchen received the call. After two weeks, she had no more fight to give, and joined her father at the pearly gates. Gretchen recounted the details of her granddaughter’s funeral she attended earlier that day and cried once more. I couldn’t help but to hold the old woman, offering words of comfort and love. “I have no one left,” she told me remorsefully. It was the unfortunate truth; all her other children were dead or estranged, and the granddaughter she just buried was the only one who cared enough to give her the time of day. With her gone, Gretchen had no more family left that cared for her, blood family that is.

“You’ll always have me Mrs. G,” I reminded her softly. I had truly come to care for the elderly woman in our time together and I couldn’t bare to see her like that. That seemed to click for her and she looked into face, staring straight through my eyes as if she was peering into my very soul.

“You’re right,” she mumbled and turned to grab her purse. She pulled out her wallet and dug around for a second before pulling out a check and handing it to me. I raised an eyebrow and looked at the paper, gawking at the fact she had written it to me in the amount of $20,000.

“Gretchen! Are you crazy?! I can’t take this!” I screeched, shoving the check back into her hands. She just smiled at me and told me it was her granddaughter’s college fund. She had use for the money herself and would rather it go to good use than to have it wasted. I still couldn’t believe that she had given it to me and ended up crying myself. Gretchen just laughed and told me to use it for tuition or to care for my daughter.

I never told Gretchen the severity of my financial situation, but like most things in life, she just knew. No words in any written or spoken language could properly describe the elation and gratitude I felt towards Gretchen and what she did for me that day. Although I wish it had been under better circumstances, I nevertheless appreciated the gift she had given and vowed to find a way to pay her back. I was never able to pay her back in cash, but I loved her and gave her much needed companionship for rest of her days.