Greed & Solace - Kent Wright

Alice felt the need. There was never a question about that. She had felt the need for attention as far back as she could remember, before that too of course, but that vocabulary wasn’t Alice’s. The attention Alice needed ran in thick underground rivers and filled reservoirs far beneath the surface. They were different than the need for it she battled on her first bike, or in grade school or trying out for cheerleader (5th & 6th grade, 7th & 8th grade, freshman year, sophomore year) unsuccessfully.

Her little thick legs didn’t pedal her bike as far or as fast as Beverly’s or Teddy’s or even Betty Ambern who was poor and had to wear her bigger brother’s old pants. Alice’s little white hand never flew up when Mrs. Ash in first grade flashed those cards with words like ‘was’ and ‘hop’ and ‘start’ on them. And long before math had gotten exciting for other classmates, Alice was used to not being called on for answers. She never made cheerleader either. Those legs that couldn’t keep up on her bike couldn’t jump high enough to make an impression when they got longer, and the splits were out of the question. And by that time adolescence had brought in abundance new needs.

Using a lonely, poorly tended path of reasoning, Alice decided that she was just being greedy wanting all those things that she saw others have. Fate helped Alice. She lived across the street from a church. It’s minister, himself no stranger to the outsider role, offered his assistance and helped Alice define her greed as sin. The preacher even wrote on a piece of typing paper GREED IS SIN and drew arrows from the word SIN to other words that were examples of it to help Alice, who he told his wife later on their screened in porch ‘wasn’t very smart at all’, understand.

“Take solace in the Lord Alice,” the reverend said to her when he handed her the piece of paper to take with her. Alice took the paper, and she kept it for a long time in a diary she started, but she never looked up the word solace to see what it meant.