Allison Hedge Coke
 
 

Eternity Safeway

 
 

Coming home from work Curses whisper from  Somewhere beyond our peripheral vision. Parking lot, Safeway.        safe way Leaning back  my light brown boy says, “Mom, there’s no one there.” The curses continue, not from human lips, at least not those in the here and now, but someone’s on the other side.                    over there. One who walked this grey Safeway plaza a million times or more. One who still tries to catch the glass auto-door at precise moments to mingle with the living, or at least those convinced they are. Slipping into box boy mania,  aisles and aisles dwindle to checkered cashiers,  the lowest paid public performers.  Waitresses barely beat ‘em out by tips. Only tip number three gal ever received was to bundle up, the front moving in quicker than predicted. Box boys bring oxygen tank for lady senior, as if it were a box of Rice Crispies. The tank’s connecting blue plastic hose is Lady Grey Hair’s extended visa to Planet Earth. She climbs into silver taxi.  Her driver pulls away. Hearing vulgar whispers, my mind Brings back the bag lady next to dumpster, Late last summer, Who claimed her son would come back  any day. He didn’t really mean to leave her in the       City all alone. Mornings my hands passed oranges and sandwiches into her crab cage palms two times a week.  And I remember that other one,  the apple dried older man who talked out loud though no one understood. He was Indian, like a lot of us  but, we didn’t know what tribe,  what dialect, he was. He couldn’t trust us to take him away from the granite curb. Someone had pushed him out a car door where he still waited. As if whoever dumped him like a box of styrofoam  would return,     take him home. Government Relocation Program victim? No one really knew. We gave him Sandwiches, sardines and mayonnaise.  My kids rolled him an old wool blanket. Over the years he went from limp to cane to walker, some skins got him a nice one from St. Vincent’s de Paul. Then some rank skin heads trashed his aluminum aid,     they got him drunk               holding back his head. He must have been close to ninety when he disappeared. We asked everyone for miles an’ miles, at corner stores, on curbs, sidewalks, streets, all over Indian town, no one ever knew where he went,  who abducted him this time.  If he lived and breathed.       Or, died alone picked up by street sweepers brushing up loose gravel. Leaning back hearing whispers my light brown boy says, “Mom, there’s no one there. Can you hear cussing?” I smile, rub his shoulders, “I know, kinda scary, huh?” He blinks and listens.

  (c)Allison Hedge Coke 2003