Fat Time and Other Stories by Jeffery Renard Allen

Author:Jeffery Renard Allen [Allen, Jeffery Renard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Published: 2023-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Lucky Ones

“You know how when something really touches you …”

—Leonora Carrington

Here I feel welcome. A room of my own, spacious compared to where I lived, the compound cluttered with too many families and the two-room house too small for me and my kids. Here a bare expanse of walls and floor. And machines clocking my bodily functions and forcing the life spilling out back in. Not bad, all things considered.

Up until recently our biggest concern had been the drought. For years running the reservoir levels decreasing throughout the country from lack of rain and encroaching desert, forcing each person to take on the burden of rationing water even here in the city.

But we managed. I managed. The most important thing, I had a job and could provide for my family. I had not much else. The type of poverty one can manage. Even be proud of.

I was given to spending time with the Leather Lady every evening after work. We had long been firm friends, from the day my husband and I as newlyweds took up residence in the compound more than a decade earlier. Turning away from the compound, we would take a slow spin around the neighborhood, passing by many spots that were hot, dangerous. But we were safe since gangsters never do their dirt at home. Then too she dressed in a way that could not escape notice and that identified her to every beholder, always some combination of brown leather—pants and a top, or jumper, a skirt, and sandals that encircled her calves and shins with straps, even an ankle-length leather dress. Topped by a leather cowboy hat with small birds perched along the brim.

I was always surprised by the ease and swiftness of her movement. Life had thickened her and slowed her down, but she still maintained a plurality of youthful features. Her face entirely made up. Acrylic nails attached to her fingers like colorful beetles.

In the course of our walks she might smoke a cigarette or two, and she would speak to me about her day. (Now she made whatever she could from babysitting, cooking, sewing, running errands, and other odds and ends.) She never permitted her past to come up in conversation, and she wasn’t the type of older woman to know-it-all you, to advise and chastise. Rather, when you wanted her advice or her opinion, she was quick to say, “Oh, I don’t know. What do you think?”

The only time I ever heard her speak her mind was when the quarantine was announced. We started out on our nightly walk, masks fitted over our mouths. I asked her what I should do. She offered me a cigarette. Taking no chances, I declined. She accepted the risk. Took a few puffs. She was insistent that I remain at home during the quarantine. Once back at my house, we sat down on the stoop. The stars were out above us, light pasted to night. She was sweating, so removed her hat and used it to fan herself.

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