Today, I came into work two hours before I was supposed to.
Yesterday, I went to Cindy’s house around 11 in the morning.
Their front door has glass all around so you can look into their living room and watch them come to the door.
Last time I saw her, the time before this, her hair was very thin and short. This time it was shaved, with a colorful headwrap. I watched her try and come to the door and it took a long time but the door was locked so I couldn’t let myself in.
We call her Aunt Cindy and her husband Uncle Wally though they aren’t related to us.
I watched Uncle Wally run up the stairs to open the door.
We talked about nothing for a while and I showed her a book called A Room of Her Own: Women’s Personal Spaces
I was telling her how I wanted to decorate my room in the house I was renting with five of my friends.
She showed me her quilting, and I looked through a big book of quilts. She got up to go to the bathroom.
We looked at more books, interior architecture and American craftsmanship, mostly. There were pictures of baskets and pottery.
We looked at the TV when there was nothing to say.
“It’s my birthday next month,” I said, but I don’t know why.
“When? The twenty-fifth?” Cindy was laid down on the couch. I was sitting sideways, facing her.
“Twenty first,” I said. She thought I was turning twenty, but I said I was still just eighteen.
“I feel a lot older,” I said.
Cindy sat up and said, “But you’re just a baby, you’re still just a kid.”
When I was talking to her about my family and the mess of our house, I was trying not to cry for maybe twenty minutes, I was trying not to cry. There was something, though, that made the both of us start hugging and crying. I told her I loved her, and I do.
She said, “Now is the time,” and “I don’t know where I’m going”
We made a date for next Friday and I asked her if she was up for a movie, if I brought one over. I didn’t want to be too presumptuous.
I said three in the afternoon would be good for me.
I thought a lot during my visit with her and cried again, driving home.
There is a tricky bend at the intersection of Ralston and Alameda that is sharp and hard in the boat of my dad’s car. I almost crashed and felt out of control, completely out of control.
Today I thought about how many people I have seen die, and what that means regarding my future. I thought about getting a tattoo for her, then I thought about how stupid that was. Tattoos are stupid sometimes because it’s one more thing to think about.
Cindy talked about her toilet not working, how there was a string instead of a chain in the water basin. She told me that once, while vomiting, Uncle Wally said, “I guess I should tighten the string.”
“We don’t have to live like this,” Cindy said. “No one deserves to live like this.”
I wasn’t sure if she was talking about the toilet, or something else.
