It is a city that does sleep. Well, naps anyway. By six pm on weekdays the downtown traffic lights blink amber and crimson at the few cars edging out of town.
We’re dumping food from our shelf, a handout from a neighboring shelter. We have to be careful of the expiration date I explain to Amar. An Afghani, who fled his home leaving behind a mountain of family and memory, tells me he knows, he’s seen it. He knows. He says this while tapping the skin below his right eye with an index finger. I feel in my gut his meaning. I look around. Tonight the food will find a new home. I sigh and head back inside. Leaving Amar standing there alone by the bin, blinking the clouds from his eyes, looking down at a can of corn.
From the kitchen window of St. Anne’s I gaze out at the bridge. It stretches from here to Windsor. Though I cannot see the place where it starts or where it ends, I have driven across. So I know. From the drawer I retrieve a can opener. We have six.
At the grocery store I finger the grapes. USA they say, from California, politely indicating migrant labor. I wonder if I should buy them. Is it better to have a job, even a bad one, than nothing at all? Deciding it must be I take them to the teller.
Placing them on the conveyer belt I realize I’ve just walked into a stare down. The teller blows a gust of air through a jutted jaw, a lock of heavily starched blonde bang floats above her pimply forehead. She is impatient. The woman in front of me has enough kids to fill the pages of a class yearbook, but no words to write within it.
I blink.
Once. Such hostility. Twice. We all have a story. Three times. My mouth opens and I translate. Then I walk home past broken cars and shirtless men. There’s a boy on a bike, smiling and steady. He’s clearly just learned to ride.
Waking before dawn, I look up at the sky. There are no stars to find, just office lights. They brighten the skyline one by one, as cars passing by like comets in a meteor shower pull off the highway bringing daylight to the city once again.
jcmontgomery
Impressive Louise. This is like a stream of consciousness I can actually keep up with. Wonderful. I would love to hear your motivation behind this. Was it a dream? Something you felt, did or saw that initiated the flow of thought and words?
Louise Kuskovski replied
Thanks for you comments JC! This was motivated by my memories of the summer of 1992, when I worked at the Detroit/Windsor Refugee Coalition in a downtown neighborhood of Detroit, MI. It is what inspired me to become an English as a Second Language teacher. I was trying to figure out a direction for myself while also discovering a need for more bridges (so to speak) in the American youth culture—something I was still very much a part of, at the age of 18. I was a freshman in college and I wanted to improve the world.
wakeman490
“The woman in front of me has enough kids to fill the pages of a class yearbook, but no words to write within it.” Love that sentence. Thanks for the reading my work as well.
Louise Kuskovski replied
Thanks for your comment! I’m glad you liked the phrase!
L
Gordon Merrick...
I wanted to say that I am very impressed in coming across this work. Perhaps one of the most solid works restricted to a theme I have read in a long time. I have a lot of respect for your talent when eyeing moments in life, swift care in grabbing them, and unclouded vision in letting them go neither dead or destined for eternity… 2 thumbs up for your reality within wildest dreams.
Louise Kuskovski replied
Thank you very much! I wasn’t going to submit for this theme, but I had a free morning a while back and something triggered this. I’m afraid I don’t remember what exactly.
Thanks again!
Louise
Mardra
This is superb prose. Congrat’s on the City!
Louise Kuskovski replied
Thank you Mardra! I’m looking forward to viewing the publication.