I saw the oddest story on the news tonight.

[Cleita]

2. I so believe in angelic interventions at times of crisis.

About forty years ago, I was wakened at 4 in the morning by a gray haired old woman knocking at the door who told me my bedroom was on fire. We were going through a heat wave and I had left my husband in the bed and fell asleep on the couch in the living room because it was cooler there. I ran into the bedroom and woke my husband up. The mattress side where I would have been sleeping was glowing red hot, smoldering. I called the fire department and we dragged the mattress outside. The firemen arrived and put the fire out, made all the other tenants in the apartment building evacuate, and chopped the mattress to pieces. In the meantime the old woman had disappeared. All the neighbors were awake by then because of the noise and commotion. When I tried to find the old woman to thank her, she wasn't anywhere. I questioned the neighbors and no one knew her. It's like she was a dream.

I really believe that it was angelic intervention. Evidently the mattress had lit on fire from the heat through a window pane during the day and smoldered. We didn't notice it when we went to bed, other than the fact it was hot. But the whole place was hot because of the heat wave. No doubt I was really hot because the fire was smoldering on my side of the bed. For days I questioned everyone who was there and who lived on my block about the old woman because I wanted to thank her. No one knew her or that there were any old people on the block. Most of us were younger, working class in the neighborhood. My husband decided she was an angel or one of his dead grandmothers.