Sarah in Apt 5R

E. Schwolsky

Between the waters

Sarah stirred from a dream that left a smile on her face. It was morning, but if she kept her eyes closed for a while longer, maybe she could stay on the shore of the lake. She could stroll in the mid-day heat that sent everyone to the shady side of the narrow, cobblestoned streets in the village, sheltering under dark umbrellas. She could linger beneath the blue cloudless sky that made the mountains surrounding the lake look like shadow drawings.

Sarah had known she wanted to visit when she first saw a photo spread in a book about travel in Central America–– Lake Atitlan, surrounded by volcanoes and tiny Mayan villages, reachable only by boat. Even the name––Atitlan, meaning “between the waters” in Nahuatl, a language she had never heard––seemed magical.

Every year, for the 35 years that she had worked as an English teacher at Midwood High School in Brooklyn, she had taken a trip in the summer—usually an orderly, well-planned tour of a region in Europe with some of the other teachers at the school. But this year, after her retirement, seemed like the time to follow her heart. Lake Atitlan was waiting for her.

She couldn’t convince any of her teacher friends to accompany her to Guatemala. “Of all places, Sarah.” Nadine, the 9th grade Spanish teacher, had said. “There are violent gangs there. It’s not safe.” But Sarah’s longing for this lake and its mystery could only be satisfied by seeing it for herself. So, she had booked a flight, a room in a small guesthouse on the lake, and left Brooklyn behind one chilly day in early March.

Now, two weeks later, she was back home and the world around her was frightening. She turned away from the morning light that was creeping into the room, pulled the pillow over her head, and let her mind drift back to the lake. In the early morning the fog turned the air misty-grey and the lake was still––its surface broken only by the leap of a fish or the splash of an oar. By midday women squatted between the ancient, gnarly roots of trees whose names she did not know, spreading mounds of orange mangoes, round green cabbages, bruised red tomatoes and small yellow bananas whose sweetness lingered on her tongue. She bought a woven shawl that captured the deep blue of the lake from an old woman whose face cracked in a toothless smile as she pushed Sarah’s money into a small embroidered bag. By evening, the women were gone, and the lake was still again––the blue so dark it appeared like a black unbroken mirror, reflecting the pale light of a crescent moon.

How she missed this special place––especially now in the midst of a winter that wouldn’t end, and the promise of spring that brought only more uncertainty. She missed the lazy rhythm of the heat-filled days, the relief of the cooling breeze at night, the secrets held by the lake. But more than anything she missed the colors, as she returned to her world of dull grey concrete and beige walls––and the sky just a pale sliver of blue glimpsed between the buildings from her 5th floor bedroom window.

Home

Until Sarah was fully awake, she could pretend that nothing had changed. As usual, her blankets were tangled, she had pushed the extra pillow off her bed, and she couldn’t find her glasses. She wriggled her toes, cleared her throat, lifted one arm. Everything seemed to be working—or at least as well as it usually did in her aging body.

She placed both feet on the wide pine planks of the bedroom floor. The sun coming under the shade formed a familiar lattice pattern on the floor. Dust motes winked in the light.

She shook her head and hoisted herself from the bed. “Get going, Sarah.” She had started talking to herself now that there was no one else to talk to.

Then she remembered––the sirens day and night carrying sick people to the nearby hospital, the masked doctors and nurses on the nightly news scurrying to care for them, the death count reported every day. An unknown virus had moved into their lives—starting in China, then Italy, then Washington state –– until it was on her block, maybe even in the building that Sarah had lived in for 47 of her 66 years on this earth.

The city began to shrink into itself. First the offices, the schools, and the stores were closed. Even the playground across the street was shut with a shiny new chain and padlock that glinted in the sun.

And then they were ordered to stay at home.

Sarah at the window

In the third week of the stay at home, it rained off and on, as if the weather was enforcing the order to stay inside. Sarah opened the shade of her bedroom window, viewing the gray, wet street, the garbage bags still dotting the sidewalk, the cars parked for weeks in the same spot. The rain created a dirt-streaked veil on the window through which she saw her narrow slice of the world.

Something about the constant rain and the trees stuck midway between winter and spring kept Sarah longer in bed each morning. Her days shifted from restless hours of making lists, emptying drawers, flinging clothes out of her overstuffed closet, to lethargic attempts to read, to write, or pick up the phone to call someone. In the last few days, her limbs had felt sodden, weighted down, as if they too had been absorbing the unceasing rain. Moving her head off the pillow felt like more than she could do. Dragging her legs across the sheets took all the strength she had. Standing on what felt like two soggy tree trunks, she moved slowly to the window and opened the shade. Bright sunlight flooded the room. Sarah squinted in the light and lowered the shade, peeking from behind it to the street below. When had the rain stopped?

Sarah could see one lone yellow tulip that had braved the chilly air in the small patch of garden in front of her building, and the tree that filtered the sunlight through her own window was finally beginning to leaf out. The garbage was still piled by the curb and the cars were the same. But there were people on the street, a few neighbors she recognized––Mrs. Santiago was standing on the stoop across the street, a man whose name she didn’t know was walking a large German shepherd and a tiny chihuahua, a couple of teenagers sat on the steps of their building having a smoke, a young boy walking quickly by carried a grocery bag on each arm. They wore masks, their greetings were tentative, waving from a distance––but they were alive!

Of course they were alive, but it was then Sarah realized that she had been living as if the four walls of her isolated world, the rain, the virus, were all she would ever know again. She needed to shake off this gloomy outlook, but how?

How would she ever step back out into her city, into life?

Change

Nadine called every morning to say hi. “Are you checking up on me?” Sarah asked. “I’m worried about you, that’s all,” Nadine, who was 10 years her junior, responded. So now she had become someone to be worried about. When had that happened? And when had she become so afraid of what might lie ahead?

As a young student, Sarah had joined radical anti-Vietnam War demonstrations on her campus. She had marched in support of black students who had taken over a dormitory without worrying about the consequences. She had been ready for anything––new people, new experiences and new places.

Once she started working, she became more set in her ways–– teaching the same classes at the high school until they forced her to retire, living in the same apartment she was raised in. Now that she was retired, she shopped at Key Food on the same day—Tuesdays at 11—and bought the same things, unless it was a special occasion when she added a treat—a box of Entenmann’s chocolate covered donuts, or Breyer’s Ice Cream—Neopolitan. She didn’t like the strawberry and there was no one to eat it after Nate left, so she let it melt in the sink and then threw away the carton.

Nate—now that had been an unexpected change all right. Loud, clumsy, big funny Nate. The philosopher-janitor at the high school who had swept her off her feet when she thought there would be no more romance in her life.

But now he was gone. Sarah was alone again, and her life was the same every day.

Sarah takes flight

Sarah stood, warmed by the ray of sun that found her bedroom window every day at around 3 PM.

Today the sky was a hazy blue ––feathery clouds muting the sun’s brightness. Across her sliver of sky, Sarah saw the dark outline of a seagull winging her way to the ocean that was only a few miles away but felt so far.

A sharp sensation of longing, like the surprise pain of a knife slicing onions and finding flesh, cut through the blanket of dullness that had enveloped Sarah since the shutdown began. She had kept to the same routines, continued her existence as one person among many in this city of strangers, alone together.

But today––today she followed with her eyes, then pressed her body against the window and craned her neck until the seagull’s dark body, wings spread in flight, disappeared from view. She let her forehead drop softly against the glass, yearning to fly with the bird.

She thought of Coney Island—the long sticky ride on the A train with teenagers jostling each other around the poles, doors opening to the scent of sunscreen and salty air. Sarah loved Coney Island on Memorial Day, despite the crowds, despite the blaring of boomboxes, the kids kicking sand on her carefully arranged blanket, the seagulls stealing bits from the remains of her Nathan’s hot dog bun––the one day in the year she allowed herself that guilty pleasure.

Sarah remembered the dark blue Atlantic stretching to the horizon, always too cold for her in late May, and how it led her to imagine a life other than the one she had chosen. Would she ever dip her toes in that frigid water again?

The Marchers

Sarah heard them before she saw them from her usual spot at the window––the raggedy sound of voices shouting, at first far away and then coming up her block. She caught sight of them at the bottom of the street, turning left from the avenue, clumped together in groups, most wearing masks, their bodies clenched in anger.

The shouting turned into chants thrown into the air and it was then she realized that it was one of the protest marches she had been watching on TV, coming right up her block. Thousands were gathering all across the country––the threat of the virus no match for their outrage. She closed the window to shut out the sound. She knew what they were saying. Another unarmed black man had been killed by police. She had felt what they were feeling––the mix of rage and heartbreak, the hope and fear. She had marched through city streets herself once, though, now as the weeks turned into months, it seemed she could barely drag herself from the kitchen to the bedroom in her small apartment.

She peered through the lace curtain to the street below. They were still coming, turning the corner, moving up the block.

Her eyes caught on one young woman, curly auburn hair flowing over her shoulders, head thrown back, a red bandana tied over her face. Sarah could imagine her mouth beneath her mask, twisted in pain and anger, pushing out the words

No Justice, No Peace.

No Justice, No Peace.

The red-haired woman turned and looked up to the fifth floor where Sarah stood frozen in the window.

No Justice, No Peace

She seemed to be sending her words right to Sarah.

An invitation.

Or maybe an accusation.

And then the woman was gone, carried away by the sea of protesters, by the rhythm of the words, by the power of their fury––and Sarah retreated to her chair and listened as the last voices faded, as the street returned to its empty silence, as the sound of her own breath was the only thing she heard.

Do Something

Sarah groaned and turned over in bed. She had hardly slept. The crick in her neck was back and reminded her of her own tossing and turning.

“It’s your own fault,” she told herself. She hadn’t turned off the TV till 3 AM, watching till the streets around the Barclay Center were dark and empty on the screen, till all the protestors in Minneapolis and DC had gone home to get ready for another day.

The revolution will not be televised—the phrase came hurtling back at her from the 70’s when she had been young and in the streets herself.

But now, this revolution, this uprising––still so unclear where it would lead––was coming right into her living room day and night and she couldn’t turn away.

“I feel so powerless, like a helpless old lady,” she told Nadine, who had also gone to a few protests in her day. “But I have this problem with my leg. I couldn’t run if I tried. And the virus. You see them, Nadine, all bunched up together?”

She hated the whine and entitlement she heard in her voice. What gave her the right to choose comfort and safety when others were risking their lives?

“You’ve paid your dues, Sarah. You’re entitled to rest,” Nadine told her. There was that word again.

Sarah did a few stretches and scooped some coffee into the old-fashioned aluminum pot she still preferred after all these years. She liked her coffee strong and black. “Like I like my men,” Nadine would have said. Nadine hadn’t called for a few days. She had sons and grandsons to worry about now. They would be on the streets.

Sarah’s friendship with Nadine had lasted decades, through lousy early marriages, through working together at the high school, through endless civil rights and anti-war meetings in damp church basements––Nadine’s kids eating stale graham crackers and coloring with broken crayons on the backs of old flyers.

That memory gave Sarah an idea. She rummaged in the black hole—her name for the coat closet in the front hall––and pulled out a piece of cardboard she had shoved in there when she cleaned out her classroom. Her fingers raked through the junk drawer looking for a marker.

Sarah drew in big even letters—she hadn’t been a teacher for nothing.

BLACK

LIVES

MATTER

And then she made them even thicker. She wanted people from across the street to see her sign, delivery people cruising down the block on electric bikes, dog walkers, the Fed Ex man. It was a small world she inhabited now, but she could do something.

She found some masking tape in the junk drawer and taped her sign in place, then saluted it with a raised fist and spoke the words out loud.

BLACK LIVES MATTER. She giggled at the absurdity of her own private demonstration.

There. She had done something. Not enough, but something.

Sarah sighed and sipped the abandoned coffee, grown cold and bitter in her cup.

A step back into the world

Sarah studied her face in the rust-speckled mirror above the stained porcelain sink in her tiny bathroom. Were those new frown lines? She couldn’t remember the last time she had smiled, really smiled. She smoothed her silver-grey hair, long grown out of its layered cut.

She had decided to leave her apartment, to walk up the block, to stand on her corner and join a vigil that some of her neighbors were organizing. She hadn’t stepped over the worn marble threshold, into the dimly lit hallway of her building since all of this began more than 3 months ago.

She gestured with her hands when she thought “all of this” even though there was no one to see her. She had been doing that a lot lately––talking out loud, having debates with herself. It was time––time to venture out into the world.

She didn’t need to go out for groceries––those were delivered by her neighbor’s teenage son, Carlitos, once a week––or for errands in the neighborhood. Nothing was so important that it couldn’t wait.

But this, this felt important, and after watching on TV night after night––young people pouring into the streets in cities and towns all over the country––signs held high, voices full of emotion, faces streaked with tears––she had decided to join them.

She wouldn’t march––couldn’t march, really––but she would stand among them, 6 feet apart, with the cloth mask her neighbor, Mrs. Santiago, had hung over the doorknob for her. She had not yet worn it. Not even once.

She would bring the small brass bell she shook outside her window each night at 7 PM—thanking the workers, even though it had lost its clear bright ring years ago, and now barely tinkled.

She would offer her tired body, her aches and pains, her worn brass bell and her heartbreak to those who were younger and stronger. She would let them know she saw them and heard them, feared for them and hoped for them. And she would pass the small flickering torch that she had kept burning inside her all these years, even when she didn’t show it to anyone—she would pass that torch to them.

Sarah took a deep breath, adjusted the mask on her face––just like Mrs. S. to choose a bright purple mask for her. She pulled the woven shawl she had brought back from the lake around her shoulders, breathing in its deep blue lake magic and energy, and opened the door to let in the light.