When Angels Fall

A church bell chimes. An old woman stops to feed pidgins on her way to work in the men’s lavatory in the basement of a public building. She sits all day by the lavatory door as little dramas play out — of illness, assignation, and routine — a few tips her only acknowledgment. The sound of footsteps on the floor above her brings a reverie of her youth, when she was a beauty, the day a platoon of soldiers marched into her valley. As the day in the basement proceeds, she completes a set of memories that takes her from passion to maternal love to rejection and tragedy. Could there be more awaiting her on this day of remembering the fruit of her womb?