In The News:
Lily, aged 22, and Ida, 18, were my neighbors in New York City. Each evening, we’d see each other as we returned home from work. Saturdays, after mopping our kitchen floors, we’d sit on the steps between our apartments, sip coffee and chat about our dreams.
Ida was attending nurse’s training. Lily moved Ida from Brooklyn so her younger sister could attend school in the city. Lily worked to help support her sister and her education. However, their mother, who was ill, was worried. She thought Ida was too young to be in the city. She begged the girls to return home. Finally, they did.
Soon after returning to her mother’s home, Ida met a “home boy” five years older than she. He had left the neighborhood for several years. They dated occasionally. When I’d see the sisters, they would talk about how “crazy” Harry was about Ida. He sent her flowers, bought her gifts, followed wherever she went. Ida said he was “fun” but silly. Ida’s only dream was to become a registered nurse.
One day, Lily and Ida were in a local diner having lunch with a male friend. There Harry was, staring into the window. The girls became giddy and Ida giggled that she wished she could “get rid of him”, that he was “a pest.” Later, Lily told how they laughed as “we ducked out of the back door and ran like the dickens.”
Several weeks later, Harry followed Ida home from a date, waited until her male friend left, then -- as her mother watched from ten stories above, screaming for help -- he stabbed Ida 17 times. Ida died on her doorstep.
At Ida’s funeral, Lily completed the story, the part she and Ida had not known. Harry had been in prison those four years when he was not in the neighborhood for an attack on another girl. Lily wept bitterly, blaming herself.
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