Week 43: Jet

The moment the engines rev up and we start speeding down the runway is the only time I consistently pray. I think of myself as a sort of secular pagan. I believe a lot of what pagans believe about how we should treat one another and ourselves and the earth, but I don’t believe in, well,  magic, and that’s a bit of a sticking point. And perhaps more of an issue: I feel—in my soul or whatever, but even writing the word soul makes me cringe-y and self-conscious—I feel like there’s some kind of god out there, but there’s no proof of that, and my mind wants proof. I wasn’t raised with a good picture of faith, and so this idea of just believing something without any tangible or scientific reason for doing so is not something that comes easily. And yet, for maybe half my life now, I’ve tried.

I used to be a really self-righteous vegetarian straight-edge pagan. I was fairly lacking in humor and wore my religious-outsiderness, like the  pentacle necklace I picked up for five bucks on Broadway, with a smug certainty. These days I’m not vegetarian or straight-edge anymore. I try to be less self-righteous, although those habits die hard. But I leave the certainty to others now. I can’t say how or when or what prompted it, precisely, but I just started replacing the statement God. in my mind with the questions What? and Why? I’m sure part of it was coming out of a really dark period of my life, like a lot of us deal with at some point, and suddenly realizing I didn’t need to cling to this life raft to survive. I don’t know if religion is just a lift raft for everyone in the world, but I know it is for a lot of people, and I know that I was one of them.

And I’m pretty sure that, doubting and drinking and animal-eating as I am, I’m a better person—and perhaps a better pagan—now than I was ten years ago. I know much less and am, I hope, a little wiser. I try just to be a decent person, a good daughter and sister and friend, an upstanding citizen, as much as I can, regardless of what may or may not be out there or in here or wherever god exists if it exists. And I try to be thankful for the good things in life, even if I’m not entirely sure what I’m being thankful to. And when hard or scary things come along, illness or depression or uncertainty or the stomach-plummeting woosh of an airplane taking off, I pray, as sincerely as I know how, even if I don’t know what I’m praying to.

Week 42: Noncommittal

What’s the problem? It’s not that hard. It can’t be, right? Have you lost your edge? Your trusted gut no longer trustworthy, your nerves of steel a little dented? You’ve taken decisive action before. It’s what you do best. Moved to a new city. Dumped a crappy boyfriend. Chopped off your hair. Moved to another city. Dumped another crappy boyfriend. Took a new job. Bought a house. Flew to Barcelona.

It’s your true talent, to be bold yet practical. When you used to play chess you always made your moves quickly and without hesitation, and if you made a mistake or missed something you accepted the consequences but did not dwell, just made the next move.

You do not drift. You do not dither. You do not bide your time. You do not wait and see. You decide. You act. You move.

So what’s the problem? Why are you standing still? You know which way you want to go. There’s a whole lot of walking to do, so you better start now. Go. Now.

Go.

Week 41: Harangue

[Note: This morning I wrote something different before this piece. And I'm pretty pleased with it. But it is so clearly the ending to this round of Dictionary Project that I'm going to save it until next month. In order to still have something to publish today, I picked a new word and wrote this piece. It's sorta eh. But seriously you guys, I think you will really like the other thing I wrote this morning, when you get to read it. I know, I'm such a tease.]

Why aren’t they required to act like adults like the rest of us? For most of the population over the age of, say, three, the idea that instead of trying to talk a problem though and work out a compromise you would just cross your arms in the corner and stick out your lower lips and say No and No and No again until you get your way is absolutely unacceptable.

And yet here they are again, using the same tactic. It’s the only one they’ve  got. They don’t employ reason or persuasion. They don’t even bother proposing alternative workable solutions. Just No. Just I have signed a pledge that a fringe group shoved under my nose because I wanted headlines/money/supporters/all of the above, and that pledge says that I have to say No regardless of the particulars of the situation we find ourselves in, regardless of what experts tell us the data indicate, regardless of if the sky splits open and my god himself comes down and commands me to say Yes, my signature scrawled across that pledge says I am bound to say No.

No is not how the world functions for the rest of us. None of us is allowed to keep our jobs if we show up every day saying No. No I will not rework those specs again. No I will not scramble those eggs. No I will not design that house. No I will not deliver the package. The rule for us is Yes. Or at least Maybe or Yeah… I guess. But not No.

No gets them—or so they think, so they are pinning their futures on—re-elected, praised. But if those people voting for them and praising them went to their jobs and said No? No would get them a verbal warning and a written warning and then out the door with no chance to collect unemployment. No gets us nowhere, yet somehow No gets them, like a toddler with exhausted parents, most everything they want.

Week 40: Quarter

I heard the shouting from down the alley. Three, four voices at least. For a moment I tricked myself into thinking it was just kids roughhousing, and I flipped the steak on the grill. Then the man raced past the dumpsters and into my backyard. My mind processed three things: he was holding a gun, his white t-shirt was stained a spreading rusty red at the bicep, and he was stage-whispering at me to get in the house. I didn’t move. I’d forgotten how. He grabbed the shoulders of my shirt, the gun so frighteningly close to my face that I thought, stupidly, how real guns look faker than fake ones, and pushed me in the back door, shutting it behind us.

“Don’t scream,” he said, but it hadn’t occurred to me. I was so much more scared than that. The gun was up, not pointed at anything, but he still had his hands on my shirt, and we both stood there, panting but otherwise silent, in the darkness of my back storage room.

The other voices and slamming footsteps had gone past us and then, in smaller numbers, back again in the other direction. They were shouting in Spanish, and I told myself that they were saying, “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” like they were playing a game. Tires squealed on the  street side, but that might have been unrelated. The voices faded out.

“Good,” he said. I didn’t say anything. I was still breathing hard because of the gun. His breathing was slower but ragged. “Anybody else home?” I shook my head. “You got some bandages? Those fuckers grazed me.” I didn’t remember hearing a shot, but on a summer night I might have decided it was a stray firework.

I nodded and stupidly said, “Can I get the steak off the grill first?”

He laughed, a short little snort, and said, “Sure, but remember I’m watching you.”

I walked as casually as I could out to the grill, tonged the steak onto the plate, close up the grill to put the fire out, and then walked back into the house.

“Good,” he said again. The gun was down at his side. I forced myself to breathe like a normal person.

We walked upstairs, him behind, and into the kitchen. I set the steak down on the table, and he sat. “You got a beer to go with this?” he asked. I flashed from fear to anger for a second, but my eyes fixated on the gun and the fear crept back again. I opened a beer for him and gave him a knife
and fork.

He put the gun down on the table, very black and very close by. “So those bandages?” he said.

“In the bathroom,” I said.

“Go get ‘em.” As though he were surprised I hadn’t done it already. I could have just bolted out the front door, but it was like he knew I wouldn’t, and I didn’t. I brought back a variety pack of bandaids and a washcloth and some antibacterial stuff. He was gingerly holding the steak down with the fork on his bad side while sawing away at it with the knife in his other hand. It wasn’t really working, so he gave up and swigged some beer.

He pulled up the long, baggy sleeve of his t-shirt. The wound wasn’t deep at all compared to how bloody it had looked. I thought he was being sort of a baby about it, how I’d wrecked out worse on my bike, and that was when I realized how young this kid actually was. Looking at him up close, his skin fair and soft and a bad mustache poking through, I put him at about fourteen.

I washed his arm and stifled a smile when I put on the ointment and he winced. He tried to keep his mouth hard through the sting.

The quiet was clearly getting to him, so he started talking, some bullshit about the war going on out there and being a soldier and running this town. It sounded like a speech from some gangland movie or just the chorus to a rap song. Like lines he’d heard from someone else and studied and repeated until he forgot where he’d heard them. I felt vaguely bad for him, for believing everything he’d been told, for feeling like he didn’t have any choice other than to believe it.

“Shit’s going down now,” he said. “You gotta take sides.”

“Right now, I’m on your side,” I said, pasting a big bandaid over the softly pulsing gash, “because you’re the one in my house with a gun.”

“Hell yeah,” he said, like this was some kind of moral victory.

He gulped down the last of the beer. Outside there were only the typical sounds of summer—chatter from porches and ice cream cart bells and bass from a passing car. He looked at me with a slow nod and said, “You been cool.” He stood up and picked up the gun. “You got a side door?”

I showed him where it was. He asked me to check if it was clear, and I did, and it was. He gestured at me with the gun. “Remember what side you’re on.” He said it like a true believer. I wanted to cry. I almost told him to take care of himself. Then I remember this kid tore up my steak and drank my beer and pointed a gun at me in my own house, so I didn’t say anything. He tucked the gun into his waistband, gave a last nod in my direction without meeting my eyes, and slipped out, down the gangway, onto the street, out of view.

Week 39: Vase

Everything was arranged. She had made orange blossom cookies and laid them out on the plate she’d bought down in Lansing on her last trip there. She had two places set for tea and a little yellow ceramic box of assorted tea bags. The kettle was filled—she would put it to boil when he arrived. She’d scrubbed and vacuumed as best as her hands and knees allowed, and made sure the doors to the boys’ old bedrooms were shut. She had found the tall glass vase with the etchings of flowers and vines climbing up it, but she set it out empty. He was a good man, she thought—he would bring her flowers.

The big clock in the living room, the one with a bird for each hour, clicked slowly toward four o’clock. She wore her new pink blouse and her best pair of khaki pants. She’d gone to the hairdresser just this week, so the color and set was still fresh. At first she was too nervous to sit, so she stood at the window looking out over the fading brown garden and the muddy road and the hills beyond on fire with autumn leaves. The little hand hit four, and the whippoorwill called out—one of her favorites. The minute hand continued on its track. Her legs ached. She sat.

Dusk was creeping in, and her view of the land from the window was lit up all scarlet and violet with the setting sun. It gets dark so early these days, she thought. Then she laughed, actually out loud. How many times in her life had she thought that? And how many times had she thought, It stays light so late these days? Back and forth, circling around and around, year after year. She was crying before she could stop herself.  She was not cut out to be alone. All the time and silence got her to thinking, and thinking led to this.

From the corner of her blurry eye, she saw him pull up. She leveraged herself out of the chair. He was here—that was the main thing. And if he’d brought her flowers, that was a sure sign it was going to be all right. She stood for a moment on her side of the door, composing herself. She quickly wiped the back of her hand across her face and patted the back of her hair. His knock was so loud and so close that she gasped. She made sure she was smiling, and then she opened the door.