Subterranean by Sarah Colombo

Author:Sarah Colombo [Colombo, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Spaceboy Books LLC
Published: 2018-08-27T22:00:00+00:00

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I ran into Isis again toward the end of our trip. I was in Ms. Ellis’s loft, looking for a raccoon. Ms. Ellis couldn’t climb the ladder anymore. She claimed she heard rustling at night and was sure it was a vengeful raccoon that she once tried to shoot when it got into her garbage.

Since the loft window was wide open, and its floor covered with random paper and photographs, it seemed likely that many creatures rummaged around up there. I shut the window and started looking through some of the photographs. “I’m the raccoon,” a voice said. I looked up to see Isis’s head at the top of the ladder. She climbed up, cleared a space among the debris, and sat down. “Ms. Ellis keeps everything,” she said.

“What is all this?” I asked.

“It’s the unofficial history of Doper’s Memory.” She grabbed some images of smiling, longhaired people in an empty field. “These are some of the founding dopers.”

“And these notes?”

“Just different letters, instructions, recipes. All kinds of things.”

“And she just keeps all this stuff thrown up here like this?”

“Well, I was helping her with an organization project, and then she fell and hurt her hip. I would come visit her and then come up here to ‘work,’ but I never really got anywhere with it. I liked seeing everything spread out here. I like that I can just pick something up at random and it could be a photograph of my parents or it could be a receipt for potatoes. Sometimes at night when I can’t sleep I climb in the window and look through everything.”

“Raccoon.”

“Right.”

“Having it all scattered and crumpled like this doesn’t stress you out?”

“It’s sort of like being in the brain of the commune: up in this loft, ideas and memories and facts spread around you, exciting things and boring things. I think this is exactly how it should be kept.”

“And what if someone needs to find something?”

“Then they turn into raccoons too.”

“Don’t you ever want to take some of this to show? To share? I mean especially the pictures of your parents.”

“I know about them. I’ve seen them hundreds of times. My parents were there when they were taken. Who else needs to know?”

I didn’t have an answer. “Whatever, just stop coming here at night and I’ll tell her I caught the raccoon.”

She laughed. “‘Whatever’ back at you.”

I was done with my duties for the day, so we wandered around the compound as the sun set. “I hope I didn’t upset you the other day,” she said.

“No you don’t.”

“I guess you’re right. I meant to upset you. But I think I like you, so I hope you being upset doesn’t make us not friends.”

“It’s weird. I like you too.”

“What’s so weird about that?”

“Well you’re kind of a bitch.”

“Oh that’s just what people say when you have an opinion and you share it.”

“Is that what your mother told you the first time someone called you a bitch?”

She just smiled.

We were quiet for a while, itching bug bites and watching commune dwellers sitting on porches and kids kicking up dirt.

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