Artist

           Some days I wander around feeling hollow, feeling like nothing will ever fill that hole that got drilled in me at some point and allowed everything to drain out. Unless you find some way of patching that hole, it doesn’t matter how much you take in, it’ll all just keep dripping out. The best you can do is hope it does so slowly enough to allow you to keep on running.

          Today is one of those days. I spend the day wandering aimlessly around town, not wasting my time exactly but not really using it wisely, either. On the bus back home, I bump into a woman who lives near me. I’ve seen her for years but I’ve long since forgotten her name and it’s too late to ask now. She knows mine though, and today she comes and sits near me and starts talking about some doctor appointment she had to get her meds changed and it was way out on 140th street and she couldn’t figure out where the bus stop was and then the Blazers played a lousy game.

While I have absolutely no interest in basketball, for the past few years I’ve been delighted to see their star player mentioned in the headlines. “McCollum Emerges as a Team Leader.” “McCollum Donates 40K to Vaccine Research.” Now I say to her, “I see they’re losing McCollum.” Speaking my own name aloud in public is oddly thrilling. She tells me she thinks he’s already gone.

          When I first met her, she was getting on the bus in front of the methadone clinic. She has since cleaned up her life and has a steady job. Despite all she’s been through, she is unfailingly sunny and friendly. Lately she’s taken to wearing rhinestones and wigs and the longest false eyelashes I’ve seen outside of Darcelle’s. She’s younger than me but she looks much older. Her hands are tiny and gray and always look filthy. 

         We get off at the same stop and walk toward her building, which is directly across the bridge from mine. At the intersection four cop cars are parked at crazy angles, blocking traffic. A man is strutting around in the middle of the street, completely naked. He’s tall and fairly well put together for, you know, someone running around completely naked in broad daylight. He’s yammering on excitedly and the cops are still at that stage where they’re trying to reason with him, or at least get him to not do his thing in the middle of the busy street. He points at me and shouts, “Hey I know this man! I know this man! He is a very accomplished artist! A very accomplished artist!” I look around, wondering if he’s talking about someone else, but there’s no one there. The cops don’t even glance at me as the man continues to strut around and gesticulate erratically. I have never seen this man before but somehow he knows me. He knows me, and sees that I am someone special. A generous donor. A team leader. A very accomplished artist.

Superbowl

          After months of deliberation, the vinyl Black Lives Matter banner at the museum has finally been replaced with one made of metal. Occasionally some guy passing by will stop and stare at it for a while, perhaps running a hand over the bolts securing it in place, but so far no one has defaced it but the pigeons.

          On my days off this week, a young man kept trying to sneak into the museum without paying. He actually did get in the building and sat on a couch in one of the empty galleries for a while. One of our staff sat in a chair across from him to see what he was up to. The young man got up and threw a punch in his direction. The employee, a rather tall, if not particularly menacing, gentleman, merely stood up. The young man fled.

          The next day he was back, arguing to the ticket takers that because we have a Black Lives Matter sign hanging up, that he, being Black himself, should get free admission. I would say there's a case to be made there, or would be if he hadn't already snuck in and thrown that punch. He seemed to be of the impression that we are, in fact, a Black Lives Matter museum. It is a rather prominent sign. He grew increasingly irate, and ran around to the other entrance, where a number of staff members were lined up waiting for him. He tried to get shove them and they ended up pushing him out the door. Screaming with rage, he brandished a pair of brass knuckles but luckily didn't use them. By the time the police arrived forty minutes later, he was long gone.

          While all this was happening, I was having a lovely weekend. Now, the birds twitter in the bushes as I walk to work, the morning sun casting a yellow spotlight between the buildings. Crows fight raucously over a bag of Lay's Flamin' Hot potato chips. I step over a jacket, a sweater, a bra decorated with pictures of peaches, and a curling iron. I say good morning to three people huddled outside a row of tents. They say "good morning" in concert, like a murder of schoolchildren.

          Everyone at work is a little on edge, worried that the angry young man will return. My biggest fear is that he will come back with a gun. A coworker comes in and says she just saw him a few blocks away, yelling at some garbage cans. It's hard not to feel paranoid, especially with all the shootings which we've apparently all just accepted are part of everyday life in America. No one seems outraged or upset by all this violence, just beaten down, resigned to the fact that nothing is ever going to be done about it. Mass shootings don't even make the news anymore. Here at the museum, some suggest that we need to hire guards with experience in use of physical force, perhaps arming them with some sort of cattle prod. I don't know what the solution is, but this strikes me as being completely insane.

          But aside from being gorgeous and sunny out, today is also the Superbowl, and so the galleries are nearly empty. A few lost-looking college students, a few couples on dates bumbling about. Most of the galleries are closed, anyways. A number of people are lured in by the enormous Friday Kahlo banner out front, which clearly states that the show doesn't open for another week. (It's also not strictly a Frida Kahlo show, though it's being marketed as such. We are all dreading having to explain this to disappointed visitors.) The hours creep by. There is nothing to distract me from the snuff films projected inside my head; images of my coworkers getting mowed down, the sounds of their screams playing in an endless loop. Cattle prods or no, we are sheep to the slaughter. I try to imagine what it feels like to be shot, thinking about how upset my mother would be. I know it doesn't help to think this way. I guess I'm trying to prepare myself somehow, as we all just mill about, staring out at the sunshine, resigned to our fates, waiting, wishing we could go home and scream our lungs out at some mindless game.

River

          My inner alarm clock wakes me up at 5:30, even though I don't have to be up for another hour. Having finally hired a couple of new people, we're reverting to something resembling our pre-pandemic routine, which means I can sleep in a bit longer. The cat comes and curls up in my armpit, purring like mad. I manage to doze on and off until my actual alarm goes off. When I leave the apartment, the sky is gray instead of black. College kids hurry to class, buses cross the bridge over the rush of traffic on the freeway. It feels like everything is back to normal, although of course it's not. A woman sweeps the sidewalk in front of the Mexican consulate. The coffee shop on the corner is filled with customers. Fresh graffiti graces the side of the Plaid Pantry: "IDGAF," and below that, in a different hand and color, "I allready said sorry." As I pass the Candida Apartments, I look for the word RIVER, written in green on the yellow bricks. It's been there for months and I look at it every day. This morning it's gone; the river erased, as if it was never there. I look up, unable to get over how bright the sky is. What a difference an hour makes. If the clouds weren't so thick, the birds would be singing. I'd be singing with them.