A policeman stepped from a side street and raised his hand for us to stop.

One hand rested on the pistol jutting out of its holster. Silver handcuffs nuzzled the gun, black-lens sunglasses hid his eyes. An odor of underarm deodorant hung in the air.

He stopped us because Eunice was Black and I was white. It wasn’t illegal for the two of us to be together on the street, but in Apartheid South Africa it may as well have been. The proximity of our bodies alerted this white policeman to something being wrong.

It’s late June 2022, pandemic still a slow burn. 

I’m at my parents’ house, on the highest hill in Carlsbad, CA. Nightly, my dad draws dark curtains against the Pacific sunset. I’ve come alone, my sons back home in Chicago with my husband. This is by design. 

I can’t remember what horrible thing I said to her the night before, so take your pick. Maybe it was after I got a third degree burn getting her dinner out of the toaster oven when I said: “Shirley I’d put a feeding tube in your stomach if I never had to cook another fucking tray of chicken nuggets.”

I don’t suffer from FOMO. Leave me alone. Leave me out. I relish the kind of quiet the breeze by the lake makes when it moves between the windchimes, a pleasing cacophony. The chimes hang from a branch on a mossy oak that stands between me and the lake. I see at lake’s edge a hammock someone left out. All winter it’s twisted back and forth on its ends of frayed rope.

We’re sitting in a sterile room. Cold air is streaming from above and ruffling a stapled medical resources page tacked to the wall. It’s filled with tiny, almost illegible print and endless lines of phone numbers. Its intention is to let the occupants of this claustrophobic room know that ‘help is available,’ but even with this never-ending list, I feel completely overwhelmed. Like no amount of resources can help me.