Cops We have the other kind, too. Or anyway, ones who follow orders. Not police, technically, but they raided yesterday near the edge of Harrisonburg, we heard, and loaded the victims into vehicles. I don’t think anybody in spongy heels could’ve stopped it, even if she’d thrown her shoes and blocked the doorways with her body.
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In My Spongy Heels Wednesday morning I’d just pulled into a not-big-enough parking space at the end of a row of spaces, scraping a wheel against the curb—the car to my left was parked almost over the line—when I noticed, yonder by Reservoir St., pulsating police lights. I made my decision. Trying not to ding the other car, I wriggled out of mine. I started up the alley toward the scene—the pulled-in police vehicle and the small blue one just ahead of it, at a stop. There must’ve been two cops, because one had gotten out from the police vehicle’s passenger side. He watched as I approached in my sweater and ankle leggings and spongy, weird heels, carrying only my keys and my phone. As I got closer, I peered. Huh. The blue car’s window was rolled down. In the fresh warm sun, blond tousled, the driver grinned at me. Maybe a JMU student. “They got me for expired registration,” he said. “I’m just checking for profiling,” I said. “I know,” he said. He added, “I’m not tall, dark,...
Dearest Heloise Beyond amazing, this. Here’s Heloise in our paper the other day—hints for peroxiding your toothbrushes, thawing your meat on top of ice cubes, and cold-drying your parsley. Also you’re not supposed to let some scammer trick you into calling the Inspector General of the Social Security Administration, as he’s been fired. Where you least expect it. Now that’s resistance. Heloise of all people.
Snow on the ground. In our beloved city 10 miles south they’re bracing for the ICE storm. Inside, in the warm, I’m cleaning up the junker nightstand I found at Goodwill with fallen-off knobs. The drawer slides out willingly, lets me poke around in the back for dust. The shelf, too, in the compartment below, submitting to my tugs, upends and departs its grubby spot with barely a screek. The thought that comes is, you could put a baby in there. It’s not something I’ve ever ever contemplated, gazing into a cupboard. Sign of the times.
Our Congo Here Always I’ve got my head down, glued to a page, the screen, my plate, the indoor tsk tsk tasks tasks. Him, though. He goes outward, outdoors, driven by his rabid devotion to the wild. Early a.m., after a quick dash to the workshop, “I went to let out Buster and the Big Dipper was standing straight up on its end.” Or it’s after 10 and I’m already in bed and I hear, “The moon is up and has everything awash in white.” On a cold morning, I must come see. I must stand right up next to the window and look. He says, See that down there? What do you see? Where? There, he says. There? No, there. There. Look. It’s maddening. I can’t see. All I see is snow. He won’t give up. He even goes for a piece of paper and draws paw prints, oblong—although out where it’s blue the small depressions have drifted somewhat into oblivion. “You’re good at things,” I say one day. “You take care of birds.” They dive at the windows, hit with a dull thump, fall to the ground dead or para...
Shelves, Shelves So is it any good—Chuck & Franny, the play I mentioned in January prior to the reading we’d be hosting at our house? Good enough, no. Chuck and Franny , you see, argue constantly. Or she argues and he shrugs, stalls, deflects. People laughed, and afterwards, someone told me she’d felt a little torn up, at the end. So that was nice. But as another attender, Aili, said later when we spoke by phone, Chuck and Franny’s squabbling didn’t move them toward a resolution. But that was kind of my point. All too often there’s no fixing things. No f-i-x fixing. You and me—we’re who we are. Our lousy habits persist. Who’s the audience? asked Aili, on the phone. She’d seen Oh Franny—the performance in 2023—after which I pared down the cast, axed scenes. The older people, said Aili, like the play a lot, whereas the younger ones say it sounds like their parents’ bickering. Uh-huh. Now Aili, she’s the brain. She runs Silk Moth . She’s the one who knows. She s...
For now, just one thing more. No—two things. The Congolese family new to Harrisonburg, living by the train tracks? I was going there to do English with Dominique. We’d sit side by side, try to talk. Something was wrong with the stove, Basil told me one day. The oven wouldn’t go on. It’s too long ago and I no doubt have the story all mixed up, but strategizing with my pea brain, I figured Dominique could at least use the microwave on the counter. Did she have the appropriate cookware, though? Not plastic that might leak its microparticles into the food? I got down on the floor to peek into the cabinet. Dominique must’ve wondered about me. The upper shelf in the bottom cabinet held a wild assortment of cups and dishes. Off balance, folded awkwardly, pressing against the shelf, I rooted. I didn’t realize it wasn’t properly anchored at one end. When it dislodged, a bunch of the cups slid off and hit the floor and shattered right next to my ears, thunderingly. No sweeper to clean up my...
So that you might better understand the shame— We’d invited a large family I’d met in class, Congolese. For the man and woman, seventeen years in a refugee camp, the babies adding up. You and I think we’d never do such a thing in circumstances so dire—bring children into the world. But what do we know? Inside, the girls trooped around looking. Upstairs and down. I even threw open the door of my pantry, stuffed to the gills. I have a terrible problem with showing off. One of the girls asked, “Where’s your family?” She knew we have children and grandchildren. “It’s just us,” I said. We wanted it this way? Just us? Well, yes. Hot dogs out by the fire. Ketchup and mustard on the picnic table, and relish deemed sickeningly sweet, probably, or just foreign. Potato salad, too, as I recall. Later we grownups lolled in our rickety, haphazardly parked lawn chairs, looking across the stretch of field to where it edged up against the woods. “It’s like Congo,” marveled the man, joy in his w...
Treachery Saturday evening in Lancaster County, after saying goodbye to our old folks, we drove away, ice pelting the roads. Horrid conditions, but did we want to spend the night at the nursing home? What do you think? Amish buggies appeared in our headlights, and young women pedaling their bikes, so we, too, would brave the treacherousness and maybe get where we wanted. Inch by inch. On 283, enough traffic to somewhat melt the ice layer. We reached Grace & Eric’s—warmth, whopping bowlfuls of ice cream, and wild, enthusiastic gabbing, and then the wonderful bed in their spare room overlooking the street. Early next morning, we could hear an occasional car passing, which told us we could get off as planned, though ice still hung from the trees. We wouldn’t have to miss breakfast at Gerry & Rose’s. There, too, we jabbered eagerly away, in utmost comfort except for the anxiety. Seems like too much of that is going around, over what appears to be a disastrous crumbling of...
Just the other day I broke one of my favorites, boo, but the others are holding up. The Chinese-lady one’s lid is chipped but not fatally. Mugs aplenty, all in all. And we have the two coffeemakers (a big one for crowds), the grinder, the ceramic pour-over thing we used for a while, on a no-plastics kick, and even, buried away, the cloth filters I made. Also our tea kettle, dented, a glorious gleaming red, and our proper sturdy teapot. Add in—obviously—the fine sugar and the chunky raw, and the actual coffees, and the bagged teas, Monday when I visited, the mother said she likes tea, coffee not so much. Besides mugs, the refugee family had been provided packets of Lipton, ordinary black. “Is it good?” I asked. Because what did I know? Pleasing to her, I meant. Not too unfamiliar, unpalatable. They had a can of coffee, too, but maybe not filters, because on the stove was a kettle holding a small amount of milk, speckled with black. Pepper? I wondered. Peppered milk? Then I understood...
I lost my baby today. I had it in my bag and was about to leave the house for town when the call came. The shutdown is on, said the CWS staffer. It’s happening. I’ll get an email to you. No more classes until who knows when. We were going to read the checkout counter story today. The customer unloading her cart—her tea, soup, eggs, juice—unthinkingly picks up her infant and puts him by the cash register, like he’s just another grocery item. We could’ve played out the scenario, using my doll I sometime haul to class. We were going to sample pickles today, too. The customer in another story, one about pickles, spits out her mouthful, and some of the class would’ve been put off by my store dills, but others would’ve loved them. I could’ve sent what was left in the jar along home with somebody. I think I’ll come in anyway, I told the staffer. She gave me an address. The family I was able to visit, among the last to get into the U.S. before the flights ceased, in temporary lodging, ha...