“You’re misunderstanding. It isn’t charity.”
“Then what is it?”
“A debt.”
I frowned.
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“Not to you.”
Margaret stood and walked toward the window.
“To a woman named Alice Ashford.”
Then she told me something I had never known.
Margaret’s mother had cleaned houses.
Her name was Rose.
She had been a single mother after Margaret’s father left.
For thirty-one years, Rose cleaned other people’s homes.
Margaret had grown up watching her carry a gray metal bucket with a dent in its side.
“For years, I was ashamed of it,” Margaret admitted.
“I became a school principal. I wore pearls. I bought a house with forty-two windows.”
Her voice broke.
“And I spent years pretending my mother had never cleaned houses.”
She looked directly at me.
“That is the thing I am most ashamed of.”
One of Rose’s clients was a wealthy widow named Alice Ashford.
Rose cleaned her house every Thursday for twelve years.
When Margaret was seventeen, she was accepted into college.
Her family couldn’t afford the tuition, so Margaret had decided she would work at the telephone company instead.
Then a letter arrived from a bank.
Someone had established a scholarship in her name.
Four years of tuition.
The donor was anonymous.
It was Alice Ashford.
For years, Alice had quietly deposited money into an education account for Margaret.
Every Thursday.
The same amount she paid Rose for cleaning.
I couldn’t speak.
Margaret continued.
“My mother found out after I graduated. She tried to repay Alice.”
“But Alice refused?”
Margaret nodded.
