Small life

Abstract

small life Dionne Brand (bio) Some days the cops stop you and ask for identification. Because they can do that. You know this. They're fuckers and they can fuck you up. Some days they just follow so you see that they're there. Some days they shoot you. Simple. Then there's a whole hypocritical blah blah blah and then it dies down. Because that's the bullshit they have going on. _____ It was my childhood front yard, but it can't have been. It can't. Is that front yard a graph, a palimpsest? Every thought, every future [End Page 132] move, prefigured in that front yard. In my childhood yard there was no tree. There was a parking lot, and I looked out on it from the third floor of 2955 Falconer Street, apartment 16. Anyway, I dug out a shallow place and a sentence kept going around in my head. This was the palace of the universe and the window of the soul looked out and in.* _____ The flood softened the doorways and the foundation, and before we could turn around, we were afloat in the living room. We took what we could. I took the kitchen knife and the bread and one of my rubber slippers. M. took the fingernail clippers and a book about electricity. Others took other things. Someone took a half-empty suitcase and when they opened it later there was a doll in it and a lottery ticket, the light bills, and three sets of underwear. _____ I confess. I confess, every day that I am going mad. At twenty-five I fell into a great depression. I couldn't move my limbs. One day I sat against the door, and I couldn't move. My neck couldn't bear the weight of my head. Certain years take longer than others. That year was very long. Is this a great revelation? _____ H. was suspect from the start. She was high all the time. I got high but not all the time. And I don't care about shit like that. But when she said to me, "Let's not give all the money to G.," I got wide awake. I thought what the fuck is this. And I didn't call her out and that made it look like we had a conspiracy. [End Page 133] _____ In late July, I couldn't say for certain what would happen. I waited to see what was what. They were the kind of days when the sky is low to the street and the world is impenetrable. I was waiting to hear from P. I was supposed to cross when I got word, but I hadn't heard anything. You can't blame me, I was getting uneasy. I mean you want to go on with life, right? _____ A mop or a broom in your hand, they don't see you. They see you, but they don't look at you. They see you like some thing that leaves places clean or dirty or tells them which place to go—like a circuit in their brain or a finger on their hand. They treat you like that, like you're part of them. A dirty part. _____ Guns and money. Is there a story without guns and money? Not that I've heard. Money we all want, guns we use to get it. That's the only conclusion you'd come to if you live here on this planet. If you think about life as a long sentence, and if you were born in the '80s like I was, you would see the story of your life turn from whatever long elegant sentence you have in mind into this short one—guns and money. So that's why I started all this with guns. _____ one dozen eggs,one can gasoline,light bulb,matcheslemons,newspaper5pm. [End Page 134] I found this list in the wallet of a woman named Hyacinth Barker. I'm sure she's written another list by now. I put the wallet in the mail, but I kept the list. Everything on it...