City of God by Gil Cuadros

Author:Gil Cuadros
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: City Lights Publishers

HOLY

Next door in my apartment building lives a woman who doesn’t bathe. I had noticed her the first day I moved in; the hallway was pungent with her odor. I can see her from my rear window, running out the back door, garbage in her hands. She quickly disposes of the material as if she’s embarrassed. She wears bright red lipstick, no other makeup, and the same stained, yellow jumpsuit day after day, the cuffs and hems blackened. Her hair is always wet.

She stays home every day, like me; she obviously doesn’t work. When my taxi pulled up, I saw her staring out the lobby window. I felt odd, her watching what I was doing. Since I didn’t have to pay the driver — a service for the disabled — I felt feeble walking behind the driver, carrying my free groceries from the food bank. That night, with the heavy rains keeping us in, I could hear her through our connecting kitchen wall, speaking to herself, slamming cabinet doors, banging pots. I tried placing a glass against the wall. I couldn’t make out any of her words, so I turned the radio on, a little louder than it had to be. The next morning, I was walking past her door and she opened it. In her living room I noticed moving-boxes everywhere, some without lids. In that split second passing her door, I could tell she had no money to speak of, no furniture, that she lived minimally. She slammed her door when she saw it was me. I ran down the hallway and threw the front door open. I had a doctor’s appointment and couldn’t be late.

When I arrived home, there were cards of saints and martyrs taped haphazardly on my front door. One woman was sinking in a lake, another woman’s eyeballs were on a silver platter. I pulled the cards off the door, thought they might have been from one of my friends, everyone knew how I really enjoyed tacky religious objects. Or it could have been the woman across the street who sold me the clock with the 3D pictures of Jesus on the Cross and at the Last Supper. She knew where I lived, and I made a note to call her later to thank her for the gifts.

That night, I had already stripped for bed, was under the sheets, reading a journal of a Frenchman who died of a sexually transmitted disease. I could hear the woman and her usual ranting next door. For a moment it stopped and so I thought I could fall asleep. Out in the hallway, I could hear someone walking slowly, making the floorboards creak. I rolled onto my side. I could see light under the front door and the shadows of two feet in front. I waited to hear a knock. Nothing. I closed my eyes, thinking the shadows were my imagination; that’s when I could hear whispering, then the sound of scotch tape being pulled from its dispenser.

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