The little boy on the subway caught my eye and I noticed his arm first because it had pieces of tape or stickers or something all over it.  He was six or seven, with a new front tooth coming in, and dressed in a New York Mets outfit.  He was clean, and looked healthy except for some slight bald patches on his head.

  The woman he was with I assumed was his mother.  She wore shorts which revealed veins of such oversized dimensions for her small frame that I worried before I got to her face that she was a drug addict.  Her arms had the same veins.  The face was that of an Aldonza in “Man of La Mancha” – the “I have known too many men, too many beds” too many everything kind – puffy eyes, lined skin—and hard.  She wore make-up but it couldn’t hide the waste.  It was impossible to tell her age, but she was no doubt many years younger than she looked. 

  She loved the little boy – you could tell that much.  She drank something from a paper-bag-covered bottle and picked at a scab on his knee, then told him to leave it alone.  He was hesitant with her, but once they laughed loudly at something.  I watched them for half an hour and wondered how he would be affected if she were taken from him.  It would be bad for him, I knew, no matter what the circumstances.  This was his world, the one he knew and coped with and at six or seven, it was too late to cope happily with another one.

  They got off at Dekalb Avenue and I stayed on in my world—I don’t know what they thought about me, if anything, but I’ll think about them for a long time, and I’ll be sad somewhere in the back of my mind.

  Oh yes, I smiled at the little boy, and he gave me a big smile back.  Please, God, help him to smile like that every day just once for the rest of his life.