At the end of the road where I used to play as a child lived an old woman who was friends with my grandmother. Her name was Ira, and she used to knit me little decorative squares with bells to hang on my wall. She always wore a light orange sweater that, at one point, had two buttons in the center. Her noisy white dog ate it off one day and choked on it. The dog lived, though I am not sure what became of the button. 
   Her house always smelled of incense and warm spices. She was the first Indian woman I had ever met, though I did not learn much from her. Ira was not a very talkative woman, and instead she chose to express herself through exaggerated hand movements. She only had a few teeth anyway, so when she did speak it was with a lisp. 
   One day I was at her house watching her and my grandmother play some sort of card game when I saw her reach into a little green bag that she always carried with her. She pulled something small and flat out of it and lifted it to her nose. Ira smelled the item before sticking it between her thinned, play-dough lips. I stared at her in shock. Ever since my grandmother had begun bringing me to Ira’s I had been listening to her smacking lips and sticky tongue working at something in her mouth. I had always assumed that she kept candies in the bag that she had just never offered to me or even pills that I had seen her pull from thin air several times before. It was neither. With my own two eyes, I watched this woman put a penny into her mouth. 
   “Are you eating pennies?” I asked, my voice abrupt in the otherwise peaceful environment. My grandmother’s head snapped toward me. I drop my eyes.
   “Only sometimes” she said back to me, appearing unphased by the question as if I had asked about her tea preferences. Her voice was a lower pitch that reminded me of a man’s. She explained to me that, while she tried to spit them back out after a while, “accidents happen.” I could only stare at her. It was not until my grandmother pinched me roughly on the back of my arm that I was torn from my shock. I mumbled something though I do not know what. Maybe I even said sorry. I really cannot remember. 
   The two older ladies went back to their game, and I did not speak another word until we left. On the walk home I asked my grandmother about the pennies. 
   “That was very rude of you to shout at her like that.” She scolded me. I opened my mouth to protest, but grandmother continued speaking. She told me that Ira was ill. Sometimes the illness caused Ira’s mouth to taste of iron. I will forever remember what she said to me.
   “Ira sucks on those pennies so that she cannot taste the cancer.” 
   Cancer. It was the first time I had heard the word, but despite my ignorance, a chill ran through my spine as if I had seen something of great horror. I looked down at my feet as we walked feeling my cheeks redden and my stomach turn. “The doctors will fix her though, right?” I asked, still looking at the ground. Grandmother put her hand on my shoulder. We stopped walking. She bent over so that I could see her face and looked me in the eye. She told me “When you get old and sick like that, sometimes it’s just easier to pretend than it is to try and stop it.” 
   I nodded my head as I looked into her stony eyes, noticing for the first time the thin layer of fog growing over them. I noticed the wrinkles around her lips as she spoke that looked so similar to Ira’s. She gave me a pat and we continued walking. My mouth was dry as. I remember that I reached for her hand and held it as tight as I could for the rest of the walk home.