The Price of an Onion

There was a knock at the door.

I could tell it was Jimmy because he’s a bit short, so all I could see through the pane on the door was a messy blond man bun. I knew his boy was with him because his boy always tags along, when Jimmy does his neighborhood rounds.

When I opened the door, Jimmy prefaced by asking when a good time was to replace my spark plugs. I can always tell when he needs to ask for help because he prefaces it by offering to do something for me or remember something he’s forgotten to do. He is not a beggar. I told him I was going to run errands and pick up Adrienne from school in the two o’clock hour, but after that the car would be here all evening, and he promised to come put in the spark plugs then. He said that would be fine; he’d wait for my engine to cool down for an hour and then be over if nothing else came up.

Then he got around to the real point of his visit. “Do yinz happen to have an onion? Or part of an onion? I don’t know if you grew ’em this year. I’m making chili.”

Unfortunately, I didn’t have an onion.

I was heartbroken not to have an onion. As those who read Dostoyevsky know, refusing to share an onion is the difference between Heaven and hell. But there wasn’t an onion in the house or the garden, just then.

Jimmy thanked me and went off down the block to see if anyone else had any odd jobs he could do, or an onion to add to his chili.

I went to check the PayPal. That morning we’d been flat broke. I saw that a gratuity had come in my tip jar in the last few minutes, and we were now fifty dollars richer. That would not get us out of the September hole. It wouldn’t pay rent next week or the looming electric bill, but it would buy a few extra things for Adrienne’s lunch– she does not like to eat in the noisy cafeteria, so she’s gotten used to having a big breakfast before school, lunch at home at three and dinner just before bed. I’ve been going to the store and buying one meal just before I pick her up, lately: a box of gluten free spaghetti to eat with my home grown tomatoes, or rice and stew beef to make a quick soup in the pressure cooker, or her favorite pad Thai kit for a treat.

I drove out to Walmart to get chicken thighs and gluten free noodles, and a few other groceries I’d been putting off.

While I was in the produce section, I grabbed one white onion to share.

I got back just as Jimmy’s other children were getting home from school. I unloaded my own groceries and then ran down the block with my onion. When I knocked, it wasn’t Jimmy who answered and it wasn’t the five-year-old who likes to help me in the vegetable patch. It was Jimmy’s teenage stepson.

“This is for your dad, for the chili,” I said.

The stepson thanked me.

I went back to make Adrienne’s lunch.

A moment later there was a knock at the door. It was Jimmy and his man bun again. He insisted on paying me back two dollars for the onion, because he is not a beggar. I think that was a little more than the onion cost but I don’t know that I kept the receipt. That will cover the laundromat, since our dryer isn’t fixed yet. But I’d almost rather he’d brought me some of the chili.

I don’t know if there’s a moral to all this. I’m the blogger who lives my difficult life in northern Appalachia and finds morals in things, but I don’t know if I can say the moral in a sentence.

I guess I just have an inkling that we’re supposed to be this way. Not necessarily because God will bless us if we do and spank us if we don’t; just because it’s the way humans are supposed to be. We’re not supposed to be entirely self-reliant. We’re supposed to ask neighbors for help and help our neighbors. We’re supposed to swap things and help each other and pay each other back when we can. We’re supposed to be blunt about our troubles, and exchange information on the poor people’s telegraph. As grim as it can be living in a poor neighborhood, I think it’s taught me that much about being human. I like it.

I wonder if I could really get along in a rich neighborhood where everybody tries to look self-sufficient and mind their own business.

I don’t think I could. They might object to my backyard garden, and they’d be scandalized if I asked for an onion.

I realized, for the second time this week, that if I had a million dollars, I might not choose to move away from here. I might stay where I am.

What a puzzling thing to think.

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.
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