los angeles leaf study in black & white
Perhaps because these were the days prior to the annniversary of 9/11. Perhaps because the wind arrived and blew the drought-stricken leaves into confusing spirals, making it suddenly feel oddly like an East Coast Fall in Los Angeles (no matter our leaves are the dead-gray of thirst-stricken foliage vs. that special prismatic amber) wigging us natives out since all week was I’m-frying-your-bodyparts, summer-heatwave-ish territory. Or perhaps it’s simply the usual weirdness. I can’t decide. But I’m haunted. Oh, no, I don’t mean that haunted, I’m over that, whatever that hauntedness was. Here’s what I’m talking about:
1. THE SAD, SAD TALE OF SABRINA
T was enjoying his stroller ride for once and I was thrilled I’d only negotiated one mattress dumped on the spotty pavement vs. plenty more junk, when a woman with a young girl neared us. The woman, without breaking her determined stride, yelled over her shoulder, “SABRINA, NOW!” The young girl walking with the woman was so concerned about scouting for said Sabrina that she didn’t see me, T and the stroller. With a quick and kind, “Careful, honey,” I stopped this girl from walking into us. “ARE YOU SO STUPID YOU DON’T LOOK WHERE YOU’RE GOING? YOU ALMOST–” the girl’s mother (I assumed it was her mother), shouted at the girl. I interrupted with a quick, ultra kind, “It’s absolutely all right.” To which the mother replied, gruffly, and with a dirty look at her kid, “Well, okay then.” As T and I carried on with our walk, the mother again yelled, “SABRINA!” Adding, “GET YOUR ASS OVER HERE!” I glanced across the street. Sabrina was ducking behind a battered minivan, audibly sobbing. “No,” she responded feebly. “You’re mean to me!” To which the mother replied, “F*** IT, SABRINA! I’M NOT YOUR F***NG MOTHER! THIS IS MY DAUGHTER RIGHT HERE! THIS IS MY DAUGHTER! YOU’RE NOT MY F***ING DAUGHTER! GET YOUR F***ING ASS OVER HERE OR I’M F***ING LEAVING YOU THE F*** BEHIND!” By this time I had stopped and was gaping at the mother, which she noticed, and which is why, I think, she made the distinction of who was and was not her daughter, as if the distinction justified the “f***ing” this-and-that meted to Sabrina. The woman’s daughter, sucking nervously on an index finger, her expression both rapt and terrified, stared mutely across the street at her sobbing friend. “COME ON!” the mother reiterated to one and all and marched off around the corner. Sabrina, sobbing, sobbing, loped reluctantly across the street and followed–a good several yards behind mother and child, but she followed. I’d say the girls were about 9 years old.
2. MICHAEL’S BLOODY FACE
I met the mommies at North Weddington Park. For two hours our kids gurgled and crawled and pawed each other. Then that bizarre wind arose, leaves spiraled Wizard of Oz style and everyone hastily packed up the diaper bags and strollers. A mommy-not-of-our-group materialized. She was frantic, holding a small girl in her arms. “Hey, do any of you belong to that kid over there?” We looked to where the mommy pointed. A boy, probably six or seven, Frankenstein-walked around the grass. I mean, he didn’t bend his arms or knees as he moved, his chin pointed at his skinny chest. If he’d been ten feet tall, we would have screamed in unison, in terror, fled. “He’s got blood on his face!” the concerned mommy not-of-our-group exclaimed. What??? Blood??? Suddenly mommies were as flurried as the wind-torqued leaves. A small cooing mob encircled the boy, the mommy-not-of-our-group roaming the playground in search of the bloodied boy’s parent. Every time a mommy touched the little boy, tried to help him, he jerked away, his stiff gait taking him farther from the swings and slides. The blood seemed to be specifically around his chin, as though he’d had a run-in with a jelly donut. “There!” a mommy near me cried. We had stayed behind with the blankets and strollers and babies. “I think that’s her!” the mommy cried, pointing at some picnic benches flanking the playground. The mommy-not-of-our-group was speaking earnestly to a mom calmly packing things up at a picnic bench. I watched the mother nod as the mommy-not-of-our-group mimed blood gushing from her chin, then pointed at the mommies corraling the little boy. The picnic-bench mom nodded again, slowly raised her face to the leaf-swirled heavens and yelled, “MICHAEL!” Then she continued packing up. “But,” I murmured in my shock and awe, “why isn’t she running over to Michael?” “I don’t know,” the mommy next to me murmured, equally blown away. Picnic-bench mommy never did go to her son. He made his stiff way to her as the rest of the mommies returned to retrieve their babies and gear. We murmured sounds of worry, watched as Michael stood before his mother, who did not touch him, make a fuss, but glanced at the blood, nodded and continued packing. “Does she know something we don’t?” I asked, but mommies were moving towards the parking lot. Everyone was leaving. Picnic-bench mom left, too, with several kids and Michael. She threw a glance I swear was humbly smug my way, but is that possible? Humbly smug. Smugly humble. Smrrrrg. When my usual nagging hindsight kicked in, I realized that smile was my cue to offer assistance, or wave, or smile back. My defense? I was: tired, so, so tired, so tired–as tired as Michael’s smrrrgly smiling mother looked. I numbly watched Michael’s mommy leave with her brood as the leaves tornadoed up again and T pinched my leg.
3. ZOO MADNESS
The zoo is a marvelous place now that school has started. If T and I are there when the gates open, stroller traffic is nil and we can gaze at the mountain gorillas sans a stampede from herd after herd of summer camp kids. T has been tolerating his stroller all September. One day, we’d been at the zoo for at least a good thirty minutes with no protest from him, no get me out or I’ll scream like I’m being knifed, just gurgles and kindly coos, a new stroller record so thrilling me I could have ripped my sunhat from head and tossed it in the air like Mary Tyler Moore her precious beret. Oh, the giraffes! Look how close that one is to the fence! I’ll take T up close! Was my thinking. I yanked out my camera from the diaper bag stuffed under T’s seat and started snapping away, trying to get just the right shot of the giraffe to show my husband later, so he might really appreciate how close we were, how–“Oh my god! Maam!” I peeled my eye from the camera to see a woman pointing down the hill, where the stroller, with T in it, his face lit in a goofy, adorable smile, rolled—fast. “Oh my god,” I echoed and bolted after my son. It’s not like he rolled into the lion pit. Or into the alligator pond. The stroller didn’t smash into anything, overturn, hurl my son onto zoo pavement before the wheels of the oncoming Zoo Tram. No, no–nothing horrid happened. Except that I was embarrassed, humiliated and forcing back tears as I retrieved the stroller and pushed it back up the hill, past the woman who alerted me, who I thanked and muttered, “Obviously I need more sleep,” which she didn’t find funny, nor did I, slinking away with T, the worst mother in the world—or at least in the zoo, surely. I always check the stroller’s brakes. I always automatically flip the brakes on whenever I stop anywhere with that stroller. How could this have happened? Furthermore, what kind of a mother screams “F***” this or that to a child, doesn’t run to her son whose chin is bloodied, allows a stroller to get away from her in a place where the baby is surrounded by wild animals? Back in the minivan, I gushed my fears to my husband on the cell phone. “Well, but people are weird, babe,” he said. “So what. You’re a fantastic mother. Focus on the positive. I mean, stuff happens.” Stuff happens? Come on, global warming–bring me an East Coast Fall. I’ll suck it in and spit it out in heated dreams I never, ever complete. Okay then—blow wind and crack your bossy autumn cheeks. I’ll rake your twisted leaves until they’re raked into oblivion. I can tell you: my son will never roll down a hill and into the lion’s den—or to the wall, electric fence and moat surrounding the lion’s den—ever. My autumn newsflash: bring it on. Bring it ooooooon.
But not too much.
So, where do I purchase a rake?
Pb, I notice you switch tenses in your paragraph. Do you notice? Hm. I think not. What does Virginia Woolf say? “A writer gets her tenses right”. Or something…..
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