Innocence and Experience
Michigan Stats, April 7
Total Confirmed Cases: 18,970
Total COVID-19 Deaths: 845
Daily Confirmed Cases: 1,749
Daily COVID-19 Deaths: 118
Four fifths of Michigan's COVID-19 cases are in metro Detroit.
One third of Michigan's COVID-19 cases are in the Detroit city limits, where I live.
***
The last of the fresh milk went into my coffee this morning. The first of the evaporated milk topped it off.
***
I'm crawling out of the enervation. It doesn't feel much better, but it does feel a little. It's good to feel. It's good to feel something besides whatever has been shredding the inside of my chest since Friday.
***
Yesterday. Lunch. No interest in eating but remembered if I wanted to walk on the treadmill I'd need fuel, since I'd barely eaten the three days prior. Got up, went to the kitchen. Felt the grip of determination like a fist in my gut when I looked at the clothes-drying tree in the dining room. Spent the lunch hour putting away clothes, picking up cat detritus from the floors, running the Roomba, scooping litterboxes, emptying waste baskets. It felt simple and small and manageable and present.
Ate an avocado. (Millennials will always find a way to eat an avocado.)
A flicker in my chest.
Convalescence.
***
End of the workday. Talked with one of my mentees for two hours. She's my protegee, bright and alert and eager and anxious and so, so young.
She's breaking too.
There's little I wouldn't do for her. There's little I can do for her.
So I talked to her for two hours.
***
August, 2004. I have just graduated from college and moved to South Bend, Indiana, for no fucking reason.
The move had intention. The destination didn't. I would do that a lot, over the years. The where didn't matter. Only the what.
The what, this time, is getting away from home (that would be the what for a long, long time). I picked the where because a college friend was starting grad school at Notre Dame and wanted a roommate. It's as good a place as any to get started with whatever real life is supposed to be.
I have a thousand dollars in my pocket from a summer job. I have a degree in English, my collection of books, my sixty-year-old stuffed elephant, and my childhood bed. I have no job prospects, no ideas, no plan.
I am terrified. I'm going through with it anyway.
It isn't courage. It's practice. If I'd let fear render me inoperable I'd have never climbed out of my cradle.
My mother takes me to the nearest shopping mall to buy a suit for interviews I haven't applied for. Everything is abstract, conceptual. Even the concrete purchase of a suit, even the suit itself. Preparatory. Symbolic. Unfathomable.
It's a nice mall. We walk into Ann Taylor. The manager starts helping us.
Lisa is professional, steady, personable, reserved. Hair highlighted and cut short and stylish, voice soft and a little raspy, a way of smiling with just one corner of her mouth that shows a wicked, private sense of humor. She carries herself with purpose and power. Her kindness is as quiet as her voice. I have never seen this kind of strength. It's not for show. It's just there, still and peaceful and independent of everything.
She asks the questions a good salesperson asks to help us pin down what we want. My mother and I have no fashion sense. Lisa stays with us, offering feedback on color and fit.
We pick the right suit. I look at myself in the three-paned mirror. My body looks professional. My face looks tense.
We go to the register, where Lisa rings us up. She asks me what jobs I'm applying to. I don't know.
I don't recognize the look on her face until years later. She casually hands me an application and says if I don't find anything I'm always welcome to apply there.
My parents return home. Within two weeks I'm walking back into Ann Taylor and handing the assistant manager my application. Lisa sees me. Her smile is both welcoming and sad. She thinks I can do better. I just need the money.
When I interview, I wear my suit.
***
Fall, winter, spring, 2004-2005. Lisa frequently schedules us to work the same shift, often at closing, when it's just the two of us and we can talk while we sweep, fold sweaters, align hangers. She's always asking me questions, always listening when I talk through my thoughts, her face quiet, her eyes intent. She keeps her own counsel, passes no judgment. The advice she gives is spare and specific. She never talks about herself.
Her self-containment surpasses Virginia Woolf's beehive in To the Lighthouse, but I have learned to read bodies like minds. I pick up her thoughts from the tightening of an eyebrow, the flick of an eye, a twitch in the mouth. I know I'm a weird fundamentalist Christian kid. I know she isn't. I also know she sees something else in me, something underneath all the lostness and defiance and fearfulness and pride and uncertainty, something I won't see for a long time yet. But she never presses.
I'm working two part-time retail jobs, minimum wage, eighty hours a week, all on my feet in cheap shoes. I can't afford food. I lose forty pounds. Lisa eyes my lunches and says nothing. I shrug defensively.
When my coworkers start bringing me food, I know whom to thank.
Lisa won't let me.
***
September, 2019. I'm in one of the regional offices to train a new assistant. It's going to be a difficult position. Her resume says she just graduated from college. I insisted on training her in person.
When I shake her hand, I look into her eyes, wide and eager to prove herself. I see a world of potential, and a world of vulnerability.
I recognize the expression on Lisa's face when I feel it on my own.
***
Yesterday, evening. It felt good to get back on the treadmill, felt good to exert muscles, to sweat, to walk, walk, walk while watching Supernatural for the third or fourth time (my boys. I love my boys).
It felt good to talk on Zoom with my closest work friends. It felt good to be able to talk.
They told me, go outside.
I can't, I told them. COVID-19 is worst in the city, in the poorer neighborhoods, where people can't afford to do social distancing. I live in one of those neighborhoods. I've been fighting a fever for two weeks; I might have the virus. I don't want to infect anyone, or be infected. Six feet won't matter if there's wind.
***
In the last month I have had three face-to-face interactions. Two of them lasted seconds. I didn't know I could miss the idea of people like this.
***
Today, lunchtime. The cats are quiet. It's a beautiful day. It's as dislocating as it is comforting that there are still beautiful days. That there will always be beautiful days.
The dislocation and the comfort both make me smile.
Total Confirmed Cases: 18,970
Total COVID-19 Deaths: 845
Daily Confirmed Cases: 1,749
Daily COVID-19 Deaths: 118
Four fifths of Michigan's COVID-19 cases are in metro Detroit.
One third of Michigan's COVID-19 cases are in the Detroit city limits, where I live.
***
The last of the fresh milk went into my coffee this morning. The first of the evaporated milk topped it off.
***
I'm crawling out of the enervation. It doesn't feel much better, but it does feel a little. It's good to feel. It's good to feel something besides whatever has been shredding the inside of my chest since Friday.
***
Yesterday. Lunch. No interest in eating but remembered if I wanted to walk on the treadmill I'd need fuel, since I'd barely eaten the three days prior. Got up, went to the kitchen. Felt the grip of determination like a fist in my gut when I looked at the clothes-drying tree in the dining room. Spent the lunch hour putting away clothes, picking up cat detritus from the floors, running the Roomba, scooping litterboxes, emptying waste baskets. It felt simple and small and manageable and present.
Ate an avocado. (Millennials will always find a way to eat an avocado.)
A flicker in my chest.
Convalescence.
***
End of the workday. Talked with one of my mentees for two hours. She's my protegee, bright and alert and eager and anxious and so, so young.
She's breaking too.
There's little I wouldn't do for her. There's little I can do for her.
So I talked to her for two hours.
***
August, 2004. I have just graduated from college and moved to South Bend, Indiana, for no fucking reason.
The move had intention. The destination didn't. I would do that a lot, over the years. The where didn't matter. Only the what.
The what, this time, is getting away from home (that would be the what for a long, long time). I picked the where because a college friend was starting grad school at Notre Dame and wanted a roommate. It's as good a place as any to get started with whatever real life is supposed to be.
I have a thousand dollars in my pocket from a summer job. I have a degree in English, my collection of books, my sixty-year-old stuffed elephant, and my childhood bed. I have no job prospects, no ideas, no plan.
I am terrified. I'm going through with it anyway.
It isn't courage. It's practice. If I'd let fear render me inoperable I'd have never climbed out of my cradle.
My mother takes me to the nearest shopping mall to buy a suit for interviews I haven't applied for. Everything is abstract, conceptual. Even the concrete purchase of a suit, even the suit itself. Preparatory. Symbolic. Unfathomable.
It's a nice mall. We walk into Ann Taylor. The manager starts helping us.
Lisa is professional, steady, personable, reserved. Hair highlighted and cut short and stylish, voice soft and a little raspy, a way of smiling with just one corner of her mouth that shows a wicked, private sense of humor. She carries herself with purpose and power. Her kindness is as quiet as her voice. I have never seen this kind of strength. It's not for show. It's just there, still and peaceful and independent of everything.
She asks the questions a good salesperson asks to help us pin down what we want. My mother and I have no fashion sense. Lisa stays with us, offering feedback on color and fit.
We pick the right suit. I look at myself in the three-paned mirror. My body looks professional. My face looks tense.
We go to the register, where Lisa rings us up. She asks me what jobs I'm applying to. I don't know.
I don't recognize the look on her face until years later. She casually hands me an application and says if I don't find anything I'm always welcome to apply there.
My parents return home. Within two weeks I'm walking back into Ann Taylor and handing the assistant manager my application. Lisa sees me. Her smile is both welcoming and sad. She thinks I can do better. I just need the money.
When I interview, I wear my suit.
***
Fall, winter, spring, 2004-2005. Lisa frequently schedules us to work the same shift, often at closing, when it's just the two of us and we can talk while we sweep, fold sweaters, align hangers. She's always asking me questions, always listening when I talk through my thoughts, her face quiet, her eyes intent. She keeps her own counsel, passes no judgment. The advice she gives is spare and specific. She never talks about herself.
Her self-containment surpasses Virginia Woolf's beehive in To the Lighthouse, but I have learned to read bodies like minds. I pick up her thoughts from the tightening of an eyebrow, the flick of an eye, a twitch in the mouth. I know I'm a weird fundamentalist Christian kid. I know she isn't. I also know she sees something else in me, something underneath all the lostness and defiance and fearfulness and pride and uncertainty, something I won't see for a long time yet. But she never presses.
I'm working two part-time retail jobs, minimum wage, eighty hours a week, all on my feet in cheap shoes. I can't afford food. I lose forty pounds. Lisa eyes my lunches and says nothing. I shrug defensively.
When my coworkers start bringing me food, I know whom to thank.
Lisa won't let me.
***
September, 2019. I'm in one of the regional offices to train a new assistant. It's going to be a difficult position. Her resume says she just graduated from college. I insisted on training her in person.
When I shake her hand, I look into her eyes, wide and eager to prove herself. I see a world of potential, and a world of vulnerability.
I recognize the expression on Lisa's face when I feel it on my own.
***
Yesterday, evening. It felt good to get back on the treadmill, felt good to exert muscles, to sweat, to walk, walk, walk while watching Supernatural for the third or fourth time (my boys. I love my boys).
It felt good to talk on Zoom with my closest work friends. It felt good to be able to talk.
They told me, go outside.
I can't, I told them. COVID-19 is worst in the city, in the poorer neighborhoods, where people can't afford to do social distancing. I live in one of those neighborhoods. I've been fighting a fever for two weeks; I might have the virus. I don't want to infect anyone, or be infected. Six feet won't matter if there's wind.
***
In the last month I have had three face-to-face interactions. Two of them lasted seconds. I didn't know I could miss the idea of people like this.
***
Today, lunchtime. The cats are quiet. It's a beautiful day. It's as dislocating as it is comforting that there are still beautiful days. That there will always be beautiful days.
The dislocation and the comfort both make me smile.
Comments
Post a Comment