tamalpais

02/15/22

you are grasping at language to weave together the scratchy fibers of anxiety, of poverty and pressure.  you try to grip words in fingers slick with rain, because if you can follow the path of meaning like a line on a torn and crinkled map, maybe that's enough to carry you through, a kite on a current of wind, propelled into a future that is softer.  brighter.  gentler.  

but dogs come running, nipping at your ankles, unbelievably fast next to the spinning of your bicycle wheels.  their single-minded purpose, teeth like tiny javelins.  your own premonition ignored.  it's okay, you told yourself, not to wear boots for once.  okay to have forgotten the pepper spray.  okay to ride in the middle of the day, the bright bright sunlight, in the unincorporated neighborhood a few blocks from yours, where thin men in cut-off shorts with scabs on their hands disassemble bicycles in the patch of weeds in front of the liquor store.  where those small creatures come flying at you, gnashing and relentless, just like these dentists in expensive glasses and highlighted hair who quote numbers at you that are beyond your grasp, numbers that mean relief from infection, the cushion of risk elimination, and protecting your child's gap-toothed grin from the same infection which rides high in your gums, chanting its threat of poison to your blood. 

the one day you didn't seek out the rose garden. 

the pumping of pedals had been freedom, cycling in the wind.  you'd been hopeful in the newly-summered air, the lengthening daylight.  but now two tiny red punctures sting your ankle and the ache climbs up your leg, bone-deep like when one of the women in your family calls out that the cold is coming, and you all rub your calves and thighs and nod knowingly.  miniscule chance, they say, but you worry about the virus and the doctor's refusal to inject you.  poor-people's insurance.  anxieties like the constant scratching of rats inside the walls.  you dream of rats, your own dogs chasing them, scrambling close at their tiny heels, nipping at their tails.  

the next afternoon is sun-bright and smiling.  the oral surgeon's office is nestled between cafes and boutiques, in the shade of tamalpais, mountain of the sleeping lady.  $58 to fill your tank.  $156 for the surgeon to point to some X-rays, stretch your child's gums from his teeth, indicate and explain.  you are to schedule the surgery.  it will be $1500.  on thursday, your own tooth will be crowned, and the next root canal will be $1300 minimum, $2300 if you choose what the dentist firmly recommends.  no child support checks.  court-ordered payments ignored.  "you're all done," said the urgent care doctor, not meeting your eyes, after typing in a script for antibiotics, never even acknowledging your questions about the virus which, by the time it shows symptoms, is incurable.  ("there have been cases in bats," the animal control officer told you on the phone.  "we couldn't catch the dogs for quarantine.  so many dogs run wild in that neighborhood.")

you want the sleeping lady to awaken, to stand tall and strong, the mountain unraveling, reconstructing itself into sinew and bone.  she would pound her fist outside your ex's mobile home, say get a job, damn it.  be a father.  she would dangle dentists and insurance agents by their freshly-pressed coats until they agreed that teeth are not "luxury bones."  she would shake the urgent care doctor until she acknowledged that eye contact should not be dependent upon quality of insurance coverage, that level of risk is not equal to ability to pay.  

bills and debt statements like scraps of trash swirling in the wind on a street crisscrossed by those tiny, snapping dogs.  and you, pushing uphill, fast as you can while they nip, trying to remember why you didn't choose the neighborhood of glowing lights strung in the trees, of shaded and manicured lawns, free book libraries, the labyrinth and the garden of roses.  the neighborhood you frequent because there, you don't get cat-called, don't have to walk with one hand in your pocket, clutching your unfolded knife.  there, dogs are freshly groomed, trotting on leashes in pink, bejeweled collars, too pampered to think twice about chasing you down.  people smile in that neighborhood, they wave, at ease in their ability to sleep at night without sirens and the crackle of firearms, profanities puncturing the night air from the man in the car across the street with garbage bags taped over the windows.  people there don't know the nod, the single nod you give a stranger when you walk in your neighborhood, an acknowledgment, a simultaneous white flag of peace and assessment of threat level.  if you maintain eye contact a second too long, it may open the door for hey girl, where's your husband?  hey girl, you got any other piercings?  sharp eyes roaming over you.  the smile you quickly and automatically offer then, the nervous laugh, the slow retreat, never turning around, as if confronted by a growling dog.  easy now.  

you, punctured and aching, afraid.  gulping down the antibiotics.  trying to remember the speed and the wind.  these cycles.  trying to find that line on the map, trace it backwards to a place before, a northern city of roses and rain, where you were young and the streets were calling you to wander them, unafraid and infused so thoroughly with that smoke-scented magic, all the cords of your life woven into a blanket of meaning with which you covered yourself on a white couch on the front porch as the sky broke open and open when you were 22.  

sleeping lady, if you can't stand up for me, give me some of your dreams.  let them be rain-soft and scented with roses.