Author’s note: This is from a series based on my journal. Unconventional and idiosyncratic punctuation and formatting are intentional.
Soon after coming downstairs this morning I took a screenshot of the flash I submitted to Richard at Paragraph Planet a couple of days ago and posted it as a Note. I heard from Richard yesterday afternoon that he wanted to publish the story today. He has a quick turnaround. Great! Meg said when I told her. I also said I won’t keep telling her whenever I have work accepted. I don’t want to end up in her Spam folder. Like Alisa at Star 82 accepting my postcard story this feels better than I expected. In the bathroom last night I saw a stink bug on the Swiss Army travel clock on the windowsill. Dad gave me that clock when I graduated from law school 20 years ago. He also has one. By the time I was up this morning the bug had made its way across the room to the sink, hugging the rounded shoulder of the lotion bottle. Likelihood was the pangram for Spelling Bee today.
In the paper I read about the Boys and Girls Club’s annual Gravy Cup fundraiser this weekend. I am all for helping such a good cause. The problem is that when I was in the psych unit putting the wheels back on after being suicidal I had biscuits and gravy for breakfast every single morning. Sometimes the manic diabetic would dig leftovers from the trash and take them to his room. Staff would try to get them back. It was always a scene. It sounded like squirrels chasing and fighting with each other, skittering, quaaing, and screeching. Last night at Dairy Queen the customer in front of me ordered two chicken tender dinners with three extra gravies along with extra Oreos in a medium Blizzard. We are hungry tonight, she said. She wore a sleeveless mesh basketball jersey and shorts that reached to her knees. She was about a head shorter than me. She said we a few more times finishing her order. She sat in a booth by the freezer case by herself. No one was in the car she drove. Vee was working with some new staff I didn’t know. A lot has changed, she said. I know, I said, Amber is gone, Mo. I asked about the real estate class she was taking. She said she had to stop. I gotta be honest, she said, too much happening.
At the shelter this afternoon I signed men in at the front desk and Patrick answered the phone and handed out supplies. Two groups had already come by with sack lunches and bananas and shrink-wrapped cases of water. Soon after I arrived a church group set up out front offering clothes, shoes, and more food. Bologna sandwiches tucked into paper bags filled two white plastic trash bags on the floor next to Patrick. Patrick cracked apart bunches of bananas and laid them across the top of the counter beside paper sacks of peanut butter and jelly. Mike stopped by the front desk after his shift in the laundry room. How is the single life? he asked. Very nice, I said. He asked me twice more. I answered the same way each time. It’s quiet today, I said to Ella when she came over from the intake room. Shhh, she said, don’t jinx it. It probably helped that Mr. Hill was asleep. He was on the floor under a table by the ramp to the offices in the back. The day’s sunny, warmer weather may have helped more. No one needed to fight like they do in the cold to stay comfortable. No one was irritable having to stay inside. A few men sat around in the patchy grass by the apartments across the street and one man reclined in an airplane seat with the belt buckled.
Taped to the top of the counter was a flyer for a memorial service for the man who just died of an overdose whose obituary I tried to find after hearing about his death. He still doesn’t have one. Next to the memorial flyer was one reminding men about the first Sunday of the month breakfast tomorrow at Aunt Lee’s church. Beside the CCTV monitor three doses of Narcan and a set of surgical gloves filled a small plastic potpourri jar that said Witch’s Brew in bubbly letters on the front with the name and number of a recovery center on the back. Two men from Haiti came in asking about a missing man from Togo. One of them showed me his picture and name on his phone. I checked the roster. He was not in it. The man said they filed a missing-person’s report two weeks ago. They’ve been advised now to start checking shelters. Speak French? I asked. Oui, they said. Moi aussi, I said, un peu. I pinched together my right thumb and index finger. You have a good accent, said the one holding the phone. Merci, I said. They left their names and numbers with Ella. Laura sent a screenshot of some of the birds she heard this morning. American robin. Golden-crowned kinglet. Pine Warbler. Mourning Dove. I could not identify the birds I heard this morning. I don’t have Laura’s app. I don’t have Dad’s ear. I am sure only that I heard more of them than what I heard just a few days ago.
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I really appreciate how you record the kind of detail we all notice but never put into word. Or even into spoken thoughts
Those darn stink bugs. I am not a fan. I also laughed a little when you spoke of the woman ordering double food. It reminded me that I still refer to "we" when speaking about 'our' home or the things 'we' did. It hasn't been 'we' for 5 years. Some habits are hard to break. On the other hand, she may just have wanted that much food to eat and didn't want the judgment! You left us to wonder.