The Ballad of Norma Jean One Horse, by By F. Laurence Nightingale

The last time I saw Norma Jean she was on the front steps of First United getting ready for the evening tour, making herself up with Delphi Coracle there on the corner of Hastings and Gore. Frenchie was walking his new mutt and I was along for the ride. Just before we came up behind them, Frenchie says to me, just loud enough so the women can hear: "Who says you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear?" Delphine's got a duffel bag full of cosmetics dumped out, and her and Norma Jean are giving each other advice on how to proceed.

That Delphine, she's a real character, one of those people, every time she points to someone at a distance, has to say, "Oh, look, there goes so and so . . . he's a real character . . . you should see his furniture." For some stupid reason, too, with Delphine everything has to rhyme. Norma Jean on the other hand has the irritating habit of always asking for the time. For the last couple months they're both living on the street; things aren't so great.

The story is that Delphine used to do real good Greek when she still had a place to cook. She could put together a real nice platter: a salad with olives and feta and moussaka and spanokapita. They say she'd hold it up real high like a thespian waiter and when it was over she'd do all the dishes like the good deacon's daughter. She swears on her ratty old bible that she was delivered Caesarian on a pool table in Saskatchewan and the doctor that delivered her was getting a haircut when her mother walked into the pool hall where the barber had his chair, holding her guts, and then just collapsed on the floor by the kerosene space heater. She burned her right thigh all up and down on the red-hot leg of the old tin stove, and then gave birth to a daughter.

It's all too bizarre to believe, but what choice do we have...