She was a sweet woman. A few years older than me at time, she still made me think of someone who could play a convincing grandmother, at least ten years older than her age. Nonetheless, she retired from her job a few weeks before she asked me if I needed any boxes since I was moving. She noticed, she told me. I lived across the hall from her in this building for seniors, but she never spoke before. I rarely saw her anyway.
A few days later, I saw her again getting out of her car, and again, she asked if I needed boxes. She had plenty to spare. She added that she didn't really retire as much as she was dismissed by her boss because of the way she kept her desk. I couldn't understand what she meant, but the way she conveyed this information made me almost tear up. I looked at her, and almost teared up. If I could speak with her boss I would have asked, was that necessary?
We walked together to the elevator. She was a larger woman, so I compensated for her slower walking pace by walking just slightly behind her. We stopped at her apartment. She opened the door, and first noted that it was dark. Darker than it should be in the middle of the day. Then I saw it and couldn't follow her, as she made her way on the various scraps of paper and lint, to the kitchen, where I could no longer see her for all the boxes. Piles and piles of boxes inches from me all the way to the living room window. In the bedroom, boxes. In the kitchen. Boxes. Piled high to the ceiling. Everywhere. Nothing, I surmised had ever been thrown out. No garbage. No boxes.
And the gnats. The gnats greeted me, and as I raised my hands to wave them off, as I heard her ask, what size do you want? I really really wanted to cry. Where is her family, where is an agency, anyone who could care?
I continued to call occasionally to check on her, even though I moved from Madison to Kenosha. Then I no longer heard from her. Or maybe because I'm always trying to live one step ahead, at least, of white supremacy, I forgot to check on her.
It wasn't what I would call "quality of life." I could understand someone like this woman wanting to remain as independent as possible. In the long run, the gnats would continue to multiply. But I would think she might have been experiencing the onset of Alzheimer. A problem, some seniors, if we live long enough, will experience in our lives. She might have received the help she needed then, these seven years later. But for others who might not be so "independent"? I'm actually thinking of a worse case scenario"
The sweetness barometer dropped considerably in 2016. That year, I was diagnosed with cancer. I noticed the atmosphere becoming more caustic, all civility gradually being eaten away. There was an assumption that I was a "good" Black person in which to have a discussion about "crime" and Black people. Others assumed I wanted to hear about "immigrants" and people speaking that "Mexican" language. In my mind, I saw the video of Trump coming down the escalator, and an increasing number of white men in pick ups, openly flying the Confederate flags, and young white women at stores or even working as nurses dismissed me as if turning away from a quarreling peer"
Last year, a "paranoid schizophrenic," by his own admission, roamed the halls at night in the senior building where I lived. He didn't communicate with his fellow neighbor. Verbally, that is. But we understood and became concerned for our safety. The year before, it was a forty-something woman, who seemed to spend her time developing conflicts with senior residents. She took an older woman to court because the woman's dog barked. On day, she wanted to know why I talked about Black people so much? Was I a racist? Meaning, did I hate white people?
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