Chicago Cold

She had never been so cold.
She remembered when she was a little girl in Kansas. The time when the bus let her off and she had walked the mile home only to find that Mom was not home yet and the door locked.
She had been cold all day. Her hands had begun to hurt and her breath was frozen to the wool cap she had pulled down over her face, waiting. When Mom finally came home, she was very glad to see her and get inside the warm house and into her mother's warm arms.
It didn't seem to be as cold as it was over 75 years ago and her memory wasn't so good. The television had talked about how the city was frozen in the January sun and she remembered feeling sorry for the poor men who had to go out in this weather to fix things like electric lines and to clear the streets. She wondered if their families sat at home like she was, just waiting for things to get better.
That was two days ago, but the TV had quit working not long after that last weather report, and then the lights had dimmed and finally gone dark. She would be all right, she told herself, but she did wish she had a phone. It had seemed sensible to let the bill go unpaid until they finally turned it off. After all, there was no one to call and since old Mr. Ramson had died, there was no one who might call her either. That extra money every month bought food and she had to make her money last.
She sat on the edge of the bed for a moment. "If I just concentrate, I can get warmer. It's just mind over matter." She had always had a strong mind, and now was no time to be weak just over a little cold. She concentrated on the warmth of summer. She told herself that it was just around the corner and then remembered the best summer of her life. She had been 16 years old and her boyfriend's parents had invited her to the Jersey shore for two weeks. He - (she lost his name for just an instant) of course, Gene. They had laughed, laid in the warm soothing sun and played on the beach. She laughed at herself for forgetting his name, because she had loved him so.
She thought of the necklace he had given her. It was a gold chain with half of a heart inscribed, "May the Lord watch between thee and me, while we are absent, one from the other." He wore a necklace with the other half and they would walk out on the jetties and sit on the beach while the tide was out and nestle just where the ocean gently broke against the rocks. He would take the two halves of the heart and put them together and tell her he loved her and they would make plans and laugh and kiss for the longest time. He had made her warm. She wished he were here now to hold her. Her hand reached up and touched her throat where the necklace had laid warm in the sun, but now she only felt the emptiness and how cold she was. She really was very cold.
"Maybe if I eat a little something," she said, and slowly got off the bed and made her way across the room and went into the kitchen. She walked to the sink and even though she knew nothing would happen, she turned the faucets as she had done for the last three days. Sighing, she sat at the table to gain her strength and wondered if she could make the trip down all those stairs, but she knew she couldn't. She rubbed her legs absently while she was thinking of the stairs and how hard they had become these last few years. When she had found the apartment five years ago they hadn't seemed so steep. She had to stop on each landing and catch her breath, but it had been her "exercise" and she had even felt proud of herself every time she had conquered them. She hadn't felt that way in a long time, not any more, and especially not now. She was too tired, and she was cold, so cold. There were times, like this, when she would feel angry at nothing in particular because her legs were no good, and she couldn't do things like stairs anymore. She knew that ninety years was a very long time for your legs to work but it still made her mad that their strength had deserted her, along with the world in general. Her legs had been so strong. "The rest of me wasn't too shabby either," she smiled at the thought. Her mind rambled for a while, now visiting familiar memories and faces, sometimes hesitating on the details of a special moment or whether it was she or a girlfriend who had done such and so. Mostly she remembered warm sunny days of summertime, the barbecues, and how warm someone's hands had felt. Her eyes closed and for a time and she let herself drift through springtimes of sun. She was cold, so very cold.
"Eat!" "I need to eat." She got up, but to do so she had to lean so that most of her weight was over the table, and then push up with her arms to help her legs. She got to her feet and slid each foot forward a few inches, not really even a shuffle, more like an inchworm drawing her whole being up before making another five inches of progress toward the cabinet. It took her seven minutes to go the four feet from the table to the counter beneath the cabinet. She paused and realized she was suddenly exhausted from the effort.
"I really do need to eat," she persisted and reached up and opened the cupboard. There in front of her were two cans of Sunkist tuna she had found on sale, one can of Campbell's Tomato Soup (her favorite), and three cans of Nine Lives Liver and Kidney, but they were only good heated up.
She reached for the can of soup at the same instant that she said, "Damn!" No power. No. No electricity. Electric can opener. There was just a dot of time, a frozen second, when she thought that if she just put the can in and pushed down on the handle that it WOULD WORK! The instant passed and she stood for a long time, trying to deal with this. She knew that she did not have the strength to open the cans with the regular can opener (if she could even find it). She knew she was getting weaker and very hungry and she was cold, so cold. Her mind seemed to splinter.
"Silly," she thought, "after all these years"' A thousand emergencies, and she had handled it all. Now, she was just empty, and it didn't seem to matter. She realized she was in trouble of some sort but she wasn't sure what the trouble was. She thought of the neighbors down the hall but immediately thought better of it. They had trouble of their own and besides, it was such a long way down the hall, she didn't think she'd make it.
She leaned on the counter for what seemed like a very long time, not having the strength or the inclination to return to the table. Her eyes began to film, the light inside them fading, settling softer, like a kerosene lantern being turned down ever so slowly.
She suddenly turned toward the bedroom. Knowing what she needed to do stirred her consciousness. Once again she made the great effort to move. It was much harder now as the cold weighted her limbs. But she struggled on, determined (she had always been determined) to get to the bedroom. She leaned against the wall and watched a mist of breath stream from her mouth. She tasted something warm and realized that in her exertion she had bitten her tongue. Somewhere in the back of her mind like a faint little song she heard her mother's voice: "Bite your tongue, young lady." She started to smile but her lips cracked and with the quietest of moans she resumed her journey.
She felt a tinge of fear go through her as she approached the door to the bedroom and realized as she turned into the room that it was getting dark. With no lights inside or out she knew the dark would fall quickly. But she was almost there, so she just hunched her shoulders and hugged herself, inching the last three feet to the bed. She tried to move herself to sit on the edge of the bed but this last effort, 90 years, and all that cold finally defeated her and she felt her legs slowly give way.
They mired her down to the floor, where she knelt beside the bed. "That's okay, old girl," she whispered into the covers. "You did good. You made it." She lay her head on the blanket to rest for just a moment.
When she became aware again, she noticed that the moonlight coming in the window was sparkling on ice crystals that had formed on the floor and the corners of the windows, and the edges of her robe. When she tried to move her legs and realized she couldn't, she took an incredibly deep breath, raised her head, entwined her fingers, and gently laid her head down on her folded hands. Softly the words came. "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." As she repeated the prayed over and over, slowly slipping away, she realized she wasn't cold anymore.
She was sixteen, the sun was deliciously warm, and someone loved her.