I woke up on this Sunday. Or rather I went to bed at 5 a.m. and woke up five hours later. It was a major cleaning day. Double D came over to help me take out some screws my old roommates left in our walls. I don’t use tools. That’s probably the most femme thing about me. If I hold something even slightly mechanical, something that can cause major harm in the wrong hands, I get nervous. Even if they’re my hands and the worst I can do is screw the nail in further.
Cleaning out my roommates’ collectively old room made me realize I have an asbestos issue. I take care of my spaces and I look at the ceilings, the floors, the dust on the trimming around the rooms, the collective grime on the blinders, the spots on the walls, and… a homegirl finally realized… there’s a reason they made the ceilings that texture, huh? No wonder they all went loony with their door closed all the time. I open my windows and my friends give me things like plants and diffusers and pieces of wood I burn to help clear it up. I don’t pick up these things by myself because I can’t afford to be that gay, but I’m appreciative of the gifts and I use them the way they’re meant to be used. I grew up with pyromaniac tendencies, burning piles of pine needles for fun, so burning a stick of wood as an adult is pretty cool to watch. But when I did that in my roommates’ room about a week ago, I noticed the fire doing weird shit, like it was reacting to something in the air. Hah. Cancer-causing agents, am I right?
So I went on a quest for face masks. K-pop star? More like single, working class girl living in a recently gentrified apartment. The quest started and ended at Daiso, where I relegated to the fact that these hoes really out here buying up all the black face masks just to look cool. I walked around all day wearing a bandana, angry as fuck at having to deal with asbestos. I’m out here paying rent to breathe in shit that can kill me? I think not, sir.
And then something happened that made me even angrier.
A Mother, sweaty, faint, curled on the floor, in the corner of the winding checkout line of this $1.50 store. Weak and calling for help. Chinese. 50s, 60s. It was a kind of slumped I was used to. The kind of slump when your body is worn down and you’ve eaten something that made it upset. High blood pressure? Low blood pressure? A drop or rise in glucose levels? Asians love their white rice, their spicy oils, their innards. I got it. I took out my phone to call 911, but it was a step I waited to take. Could she afford it? Would that ambulance ride, those hospital bills, the Debt this call would put her in to receive Help… be worth… the Price?
Her Daughter came to her and I sat with them. I didn’t speak their language, but I knew how to say “water.” I ran to a store and said, give me hot water and a bowl of rice and bust a fucking move while you do it because someone needs it now. They did. And then I ran back and said, give her one of these. At this point, plenty of Assholes were watching. Two Women had stepped in at this point, watching, but closer. One of them picked up my wallet while the Daughter and I hoisted her Mother to the nearest bathroom. One of them opened the door.
I called Stephanie and cried. And then I stomped back into Daiso to retrieve my earphones because if some cheap Bitch had the nerve to steal my shit, while shopping for their petty presents, while watching someone be on the brink of DEATH, I was going to flip. But someone at least had the brain to pick them up from the floor and set them right where I needed to look. A little Boy stood in my path on the way out, not a care in the world. His Mother moved him out the way before I had to do it for her.
I hope it was enough.
I went home and dropped all my things on the floor outside my gate. A container of rice and fried fish. A half gallon of soy milk. The face masks I didn’t pay for. A jar of chili oil. And I held in my tears until I got back into my asbestos-filled apartment, right as my Mother rang.
A STOR¥ BY ? 