Bubbles on the roof

04-30-80

The morning sky bleeds rain, a Chinese water torture of a billion drips, day in and day out, leaving lines of bubbles along our back porch roof, with me, framed by my bedroom window staring out, safe, dry, but stranded, clutching this poor entertainment in exchange for wilder adventures I might have if set free – this memory of me at nine in the old house at the top of the hill my grandfather ached to own but could not afford until his mother died.

The roof is a war zone, and the bubbles the helmets of soldier desperate to survive the onslaught as they rush from the drain pipe from the roof above to the small dark hole leading to the pipe down to the ground near my grandmother’s rose bush at the foot of the porch.

I watch as they flee, drops of rain like bullets with too many near misses and many more direct hits, like the Normandy Beach my uncle’s old friends used talk about at night just before my grandfather’s boat store closed next door, fate deciding which of them survive, erasing all those who don’t.

Now, I see those bubbles in the eyes of this woman, eyes wide, open, vulnerable and waiting, as one-word responses emerge from bruised lips in response to questions people ask her.

She is a bubble merely trying to cross this roof unscathed, a target, the girl with HIM. The GIRL with him. The GIRL with HIM.

I watch her bubbles burst whenever she is near the others, and tries to speak, only to have others ignore her. She bursts with ideas like flowers growing out of her ears or eyes or lips, withering for lack of attention.

I keep thinking that if the only reason for life is death, why do we bother, one of the tons of grim thoughts popping into my head these days.

When I talk with her, ask her advice, her eyes widen, and I think I see a bloom in them, ideas spouting up inside her I am too unworthy to comprehend, and sudden, drops of words turn into a torrent I can barely catch half of them, she casting them all in my direction as if I am the last hope she has that anyone will listen.

We sit in a cold apartment.

She talks of men, and I think of myself, and how cruel I had been when I was younger, much worse in some ways than the men she knows. I have hidden my flaws behind a wall of concern, acting out the part of a kind and gentle person, when great rages roar in me, not against people so much as society, and my family, and the unfairness of life.

If we're only going to die, what is the point? If no one will pay attention to us, why should we talk?

Are we all just bubbles rushing from one gutter to another hoping the heavy rain won’t erase us from existence? And what fate decides us before we take the next plunge down to the rose garden? And what will we find when we get there?

She looks at me now, wondering where my attention has wandered to, and why I cannot grasp all that she is saying, she still believing herself inferior because of the way men have treated her, me knowing her better than that.

I'm the one that should be in awe; I'm the one who should fear crushing this very pickable flower, as if she was a weed.

The rain falls, staining each brick outside, staining each inch of the walkway up to the door.

I am wet on the inside, dripping from my own painful thoughts.