We sat on the aft deck and talked until well after midnight, or to be more accurate about it, Joree (as she bade me call her) talked and smoked, while I listened. I demonstrated my interest in her tale with frequent nods of the head and “uh-huhs,” but that was all I had to do by way of encouragement. Joree gushed words with the physical force of water blasting forth from an uncapped fire hydrant. Most of it was only casually related to her daughter’s death.

It seemed she talked about every other topic that came to her: about the sorry no-count men who had drifted in and out of her life; about the difficulty of making ends meet; about caring for her own mother and watching her die for lack of decent medical treatment; and on to a dozen other trials and tribulations she had ever suffered. Taken in total, it was a depressing tale of life at the bottom of the social scale. The only time she smiled and spoke in a positive manner was when she talked of her daughter, Tonya, as a child. Those seemed to be the few moments of joy and happiness in the sad litany of Joree Causey’s life.

I let her talk until she ran out of steam. And as I listened I realized that more than anything else, she just wanted someone to pay attention to her. Someone to treat her with courtesy and respect. Someone to listen sympathetically, and not tell her how she should or shouldn’t act, or feel, or speak. Someone to treat her as a fellow human being of worth and substance. This is a thing most of us take for granted, but something exceedingly rare and in short supply in the lives of the very poor.

And then, sending a last cigarette butt hissing overboard in a glowing red arc to the silent black waters we floated upon, she suddenly ran out of words and sat quietly, rocking back and forth in rhythm with the subtle movements of the boat, staring out across the darkened expanse of the great salt marsh.

While she talked I had held her with my eyes, never taking my gaze from her face as she poured forth her tale of hardship and sorrow. And I held her with my eyes still, as she quietly retreated into herself, her face softening as it relaxed, and becoming younger-looking, while her eyes took on the vacant emptiness of a thousand-yard stare. It seemed to me that she had gone someplace else, somewhere completely private, reflecting on memories old and new, and possibly seeing things that could have been but never were, and now, would never have the chance to be.