Beyond the cracked sidewalk, and the telephone pole
with layers of flyers in a rainbow of colors, and the patch of dry brown grass
there stood a ten-foot high concrete block wall, caked with dozens of coats of
paint. There was a small shrine at the foot of it, with burnt out candles and
dead flowers and a few soggy teddy bears. One word of graffiti filled the wall,
red letters on a gold background: Rejoice!
“When did we start doing this?” I asked as if someone
paid me to wonder why Americans were so foolish. “At some point when I was in middle school,
we just started leaving physical tributes and nobody told me!” I went on,
citing some tragedies I remembered mostly for the makeshift memorials that had
sprung up. Maybe it was my imagination,
but I thought I could feel the crowd shifting away from me the way my friends
and family were beginning to when I answered “How’s the job search going?”
honestly. Nobody wanted to pay anything, that’s how it was going, but even in
the grip of what was becoming an obsession, I knew I couldn’t talk about it
here. Maybe that escape from my own problems even more than the hopes of cotton
candy from a street carnival, was what brought me out here today. Also, I
didn’t want to think about the almost-famous site I’d had a virtual interview
with and how they wanted to take my ten best ideas without so much as an
acknowledgement. I wasn’t exactly proud
that I’d faked a technical issue and logged off instead of continuing with the
sample pitch, but I’d do it again if I had to.
Still, I wondered if the story was circulating in our small world,
making the nibbles even smaller than they might be. Then I blushed because it was sure to help my
odds declaiming like a street-corner crazy person. The
wisdom, if that’s what it was, would keep. There were a few older cops
providing some security, which I took comfort in, not because I thought
something ugly would happen, but because we could be the only people in this
crowd old enough to not have Instagram accounts.
I stood next to a gangly guy with a nose-ring who
wasn’t born when I was in middle school. Time was passing faster and I didn’t
want to think about it, for me or for missing ten-year-old Kelli Watson, whom
the shrine commemorated. Days slipping past were dangerous for her, but merely
slightly tragic for me. Still, I felt
maybe neither of us could come back to what she had been, though I hoped I was
wrong. That was another thought I
couldn’t share on the message boards and social networking groups where
formerly hard-bitten city editors shared affirmations and yoga poses. I
sighed. Even without my experiencing
real tragedy, it still seemed as though every day had been worse than the day
before. My heart felt heavy as I took refuge in people-watching the young,
milling crowds. At least, these people
were more interesting than the same old Saturday afternoon movies with their
rivers of commercials. Plenty of piercings and tattoos were on display, but it
still seemed like a well-behaved group
“You need to talk to Rainbow,” a short black woman
with a voice like melted ice cream told me.
“She’s a priestess.” She waited for me to be impressed, while I reminded
myself I was not reporting and didn’t have to be cynical or track down the
kinds of parents who might put “Rainbow” on a birth certificate. I could stay
or I could go, live this experience or filter it out. The freedom felt staggering;
the way kids imagine being an adult.
Eventually, I’d know better, the way I had then, but for now, it seemed
great to ask questions without checking spellings or vital statistics. So, why wasn’t I chattering away like the
curious preteen that had written a neighborhood paper the summer she was ten?
Kelli’s picture reminded me of some of mine, but it wasn’t until days after
that I permitted myself to notice the resemblance, which humbled me and made me
feel that I was already at a funeral. It felt like one, too, as I had no
offering, except for a peppermint I’d gotten from an Italian restaurant the
night before. I took it out of my purse and laid it next to one of the dolls as
reverently as someone might move a Communion wafer, but it only sat on the
ground for a moment before it was crunched by a neighbor pushing a small child
in a stroller. I took the tiny defeat
as another lesson in not being something I wasn’t.
I had nothing to do that Saturday but console my
journalist friends through another round of layoffs, and I wished more than
anything I were writing instead, but when I tried for myself the words wouldn’t
come. I wondered if I would have felt better or worse during those breaks in
city council meetings, daydreaming of literary success, if I’d imagined that,
instead of a muse, my talent came from a coin-operated vending machine, another
depressing thought to bury. Maybe suppression, or trying to look forward on
pain of being punished for negative thoughts, was killing my creative vision.
Whether she had magic or not, Rainbow was tiny. And
while her hair had enough shades in it to make the name a natural, she looked
as wholesome as the little sister on a sitcom, complete with her tiny freckled nose.
“You were looking for me?” she asked in a husky adult voice that seemed not to
match her fairy’s body.
I couldn’t speak so it was lucky her friend came
back. “I told her to find you, but I
don’t think she believes…I think we are all just entertainment to her.” If it
hadn’t been a little bit true, I’d have something in response but flaming
cheeks, I was sure of it, but in a moment, I regained composure. “Right now,” I
explained, looking up and feeling like I was catching Kelli’s eye in the
posters of her. “I don’t know what to
believe.”
Rainbow quoted something, trying to make her voice
mysterious as the followers fell silent, but then she said “I can’t do this
anymore, I just feel too guilty. Kelli
is my sister and she’d be with us right now if I’d been the good babysitter I
know how to be. I was mean to her…that last day. She wanted to play a game on my
phone and I wouldn’t let her. Instead, I
got mad, threw my phone, and cracked the screen.” She showed me the phone and
the screen did have a spiderweb of cracks in the corner.
“All we can do is our best,” I counseled, wondering
why I couldn’t take my own advice. I wondered if I overstepped, but was
rewarded with Rainbow’s tremulous-yet-bright smile. I could feel the energy of the crowd warming
toward me and it felt better than my bylines or my collegiate journalism award.
“All the same,” I suggested, trying to keep my tone casual. “If you end up
talking to a reporter about this…which I wouldn’t advise by the way. Above your pay grade, you know?” I tried to
laugh, but it sounded crazy in my head. “I
wouldn’t tell them about that.” They were still my colleagues, even if I never
got another reporting gig again, but that’s why I knew how much they liked
having characters their viewers and readers could follow, and maybe even learn
to love and hate, in some realm beyond facts. I wasn’t sure if there was any chance
for a rebellious street-corner “priestess” to be a hero, but if she looked
petty, there was a pretty big shot at “Brat we love to hate,” and I hated to
see that.
“If you were right,
and I didn’t do anything wrong, why shouldn’t I say anything? But it gets
worse…maybe I could have saved her, if Tony and I weren’t back in my step
monster’s dressing room…” She blushed like a gardenia and looked no older than
thirteen, but she’d just had her eighteenth birthday “doing stuff. I really
lost touch with my Athena side that night.” Part of me just wanted to follow
Rainbow around with a signboard that said “Don’t say anything,” but I’d never
laid much claim to critiques from the Goddess of Wisdom. “Happens to the best of us,” I lied. It
hadn’t. My relationships so far had been as dependable and lacking in romance
as the plain little Timex ticking away the unemployed hours on my wrist. Friends,
mostly, not looking for anything complicated, but not wanting to go home
alone. It could be sloppy at times, but
not messy. What a bad
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