This morning it’s quiet—no leaf blowers or Waste Management trucks. My family worries about my hearing going in and out like the tides. I am the moon. The only sound is a pinecone dropping on my patio with a notable thud. White pine trees around the perimeter of our unit needle each other just like our condo conversations.
I keep informed through a listserve where my neighbors swap handyman numbers and report robberies. A lot of those happened around Christmas. A woman in a nearby unit was held up at gunpoint and posted a video of falling to the ground and screaming. People responded with angry and sad emojis and inquired about what app she used to capture the footage. The police congratulated the woman on making it easier for them to track down the perpetuators. Otherwise, we stay out of each other’s way unless it’s at the mailbox where we pitch junk flyers into the wastebasket.
If it weren’t for the ravens, it would be quiet. They perch throughout the development on light posts and trees and sound like croaking frogs. When I first moved here, I thought the place had been overrun with amphibians, a ten plagues thing until I found out the truth. They speak to me.
The raven’s glossy feathers are luminously black. They eat ants and other insects, also animal poop. In doing so, they help to keep our condo walkways clear from any mordant piles that a resident may have forgotten to scoop up in plastic bags that are provided throughout the area. But sometimes the bags aren’t replaced, or a dog-owner may come downstairs unequipped. They have only the ravens to thank for protecting their good names, patrol our walkways for rodents, omnivores that eat whatever they can.
About 300 feet outside my window is a firetrail that ascends along a stream to Merritt College. It has become a favorite for dog walkers who are allowed to escort their charges off leash. Long before I arrived, the area was home to the Ohlone/Costanoan peoples.
History’s eye is bloodshot.
In the late 1880’s, the discovery of iron pyrite along the canyon by Francis Marion “Borox” Smith, almost launched a new gold rush, but it wasn’t the real thing. Still, pyrite had other uses. From the 1890’s to the mid 1930’s, pyrite was processed into sulfuric acid. Its value dropped after people discovered that the acid was a waste product from the refinement of petroleum.
There’s another caterpillar turn. Across the street from the condos, the site of the former Oak Knoll Naval Hospital is being converted into 918 homes. Deer, opossum, skunk, and coyote have already escaped to higher ground making way for an additional 72,000 square feet of retail space.
My neighbors are considering whether to stay or relocate. A lady I know from the parking lot has moved to Oregon. She knocked on my door and gave me her extra rolls of aluminum foil. Another neighbor gave me his aloe plant because it was too large for him to move.
My family keeps saying that there’s something wrong and they mean with me.
I refuse to see doctors that line the halls of hospitals with sterling silver stethoscopes. Years ago they scheduled their private consultation beginning with an internal. I haven’t forgotten watching the way a door closed behind me.
I was there for observation. Everyone else was in the waiting room, waiting. They only knew what they saw, me in a sacrificial gown being escorted back to bed pulling an IV stand behind me. Nights were filled with beeps and hands holding out large white pills. Brush strokes by different hands, now a spider web lines the veneer of my face.
Here’s where it gets confusing. Bleu Radish lives downstairs. I call him that because he dyes his hair blue and because he’s shaped like a radish, also because he wears striped socks. Blue calls me Little Mama because he says I remind him of his mother. As far as being little, that part’s totally true. I wear a five double-A shoe. I have to buy them in the little girl’s section—Mary Jane’s with lots of daisies and rhinestones. Patent leather gets cracked in the rain.
(to be continued)