‘read’ lips: resentment

Their mere presence taints the water supply, invites the rodents, makes the garbage pile up seemingly over night. You have become Slum Lord to your own emotional body. Stuck on a street that will never be named in your honor. The block hates you and you hate it back. You’ve thought of greener pastures many times over. But will the air welcome you out there? The mere idea of welcoming terrifies you. All you’ve known are slammed doors, floors erected and cared for so poorly, no one dares walk barefoot. Greener pastures are for punks anyway.  It is everyone’s job to hustle you. To pull from under you a roof, four walls, the chance to complain if there is no heat in the winter, no central air in the summer. And so you oblige by hustling back. Saving room that doesn’t allow for stretch…that is damp, dark, dank at best. Your floors are stacked with rolling eyes, huffs and puffs that wanted to be anywhere…but here. No one dreams. But everyone is vying for sleep. After all, those greener pastures look a lot like ghosts and smart work – the things that really go ‘boom’ in the night.   And anyway, here, you are mayor and sheriff…income-based rent collector and editor of the nothingness that garners the most eye traffic – a pillar of the community residing with and amongst its citizens.  King of ordinary people not knowing which way to go. It was just last week, Ms. Turner, down on her luck, baby on one hip, overly packed satchel on the other flew past your doorway in an air of angry resolve.  What was it that she said? Oh yes, “resentment is really just saving space for someone you love to hate”. That bitch don’t know what she’s talking about. Your residents love you for your hospitality. Dummy spent her last on a bus ticket to who knows where!? Greener pastures?  You’ll have to remove her initials off her mail box. You go down the hall, sharp left to stacks of metal boxes housing dead trees and black ink – always bad news. Always. You find that Ms. Turner has already pried her initials from the small metal door.  You remember how she was always on time with her rent no matter how many bags weighed down her shoulders.  You run your fingers across the blank space, cleaner than it’s surroundings. Is that warm saltwater burning your cheeks? Within the hour you take all of the envelopes full of weightless dead presidents recently handed over to you by your day-late-dollar-short residents; venture to the ocean for the first time in your life, soak your feet in the briny ever moving waters then follow the scent of Ms Turner – baby on one hip, overly full satchel on the other. She welcomes you with a cup of hot tea, a seat on the porch directly in the sun, your eyes fixate on her feet, feet that never seem to settle for any ground unwelcoming of their bareness. Her baby looks at you sideways like you’ve got a problem. And you ain’t even mad (just a shifting uncomfortable) ‘cause baby’s don’t see nothin’ but the truth. She is laughing one minute and crying the next. Because…the truth. Ms Turner appears in the doorway, feet planted smack dab in the threshold – cradling a black and white newspaper in both her hands. Whatever she is holding is heavy, anchoring her bare feet to the spot in which she is standing.  So you rise from your seat on the porch as to relieve her of this burden that instinctively you know is really yours to carry. The headline reads: None injured. Many now homeless in East Side’s Project Fire.  Here it comes again…that damn warm saltwater burning your cheeks.  Ms Turner grabs up her baby after gently prying the newspaper from your hands. She mumbles something that sounds like… fire and water and the spectrum of cleansing being like the spectrum of love and hate. Why does she speak in such riddles?  Why are her feet always so busy?  Why is it that news of places seemingly forgotten about travel so fast once they are but ashes?  Ms Turner hollers from within the small beach house…”your bed is made. There’s food in the fridge. No one will be looking for you. You can stay here ‘til you get on your feet. One rule: no shoes in the house.”