Zazen - By Vanessa Veselka Page 0,5
about the Wal-Mart campaign. I told her it was social bloodsport, which sounded like I was trying to be funny but I wasn’t. Credence treats social justice campaigns like sand painting. Everything he does is a fucking seminar on impermanence.
“So do you have any plans?” she asked.
Hang out in the sub-cultural ICU with the free vegan donuts until my definition of the sparkling horror show matches everyone else’s?
“See how it goes.”
“Can you hold up the lid?” she asked.
I lifted the green metal top of the recycling container. Jimmy threw the flattened boxes inside, then I let the lid fall with a deafening clang.
“Well,” she said, “Either way I’m glad you’re here.”
The way she smiled. I had this flash like it might be all right, like there might be a place for me and that I had maybe overlooked something, or lost some kind of perspective and that now it was going to get fixed. Her smile reminded me of my mom in this particular 1970s Polaroid where she’s a young woman bending over to play with a cat. Her hair is light brown and the backyard grass is dry like straw, cropped and short. All that day I felt like that, like the sound of future bombs might dissipate, become no more than white noise like the freeway or the sea, or that I might stop hearing them altogether. Sleep like who I was before I knew any better.
I biked past the yoga studio on my way home. It was getting pretty dark but the streetlights weren’t on because they had just switched to the new schedule. I know it’s because of the war. Credence says it hasn’t started yet but he’s wrong. They’re rationing power and the TVs are on all the time.
I pulled my bike up onto the curb by the yoga studio and leaned it against the trashcan. I watched the yoga class through the glass. The lights dimmed and everyone moved in amber. They flickered like votives when the teacher crossed back and forth in front of the window and I thought, that’s what we will all be one day, insects in sap, strange jewels.
The following week Coworker Franklin scheduled me to open the restaurant alone. The first day I got there early and it was still dark. I turned on the light in the pie case and it lit the whole room. I wiped the specials from the night before off the board. Outside the world was blue.
I went to get more bread from the back and was reaching into the pantry when I felt something near my foot. I jumped back and turned on the overhead light. On the ground in front of the pantry was a small brown rat. It was dying.
The rat held itself still and waited. Its fur glistened and it had tucked its paws in close so that its belly bulged out from the sides. I wondered if it, if she, was pregnant like Annette. I got down on my knees and slowly leaned over so I could see her face. She didn’t move and didn’t look at me. Her breath quickened and she looked straight ahead. I felt her fear like a wave of nausea.
Jimmy came in behind me.
“Franklin puts out poison. I think he thinks it’s more humane than traps.”
She leaned over.
“Has someone shown you what to do?”
“No.”
She went into the walk-in and got a slice of cheese then had me scoop up the rat up with a dustpan and follow her outside.
We walked along a garden path toward the back fence. The sun was just hitting the green wet vines and red tomato skins. I passed a cluster of sunflowers. Behind them stretching along the fence was a row of dirt mounds with tiny homemade crosses sticking out of them.
“This is where we put them,” Jimmy said.
I looked down a row of dew-covered twig crosses drying the morning light.
“If the health department comes just pull the crosses out and say it’s squash.”
“Squash? Really?”
She laughed a little, “Yeah, or something seasonal.”
Jimmy took the dustpan from my hands and laid the pregnant rat in the furrow between two graves. She pulled the paper off the cheese, tore it into little strips and left it beside her.
“We’ll bury her later. She’ll be dead by the end of the shift.”
The rat settled into the furrow of earth and tucked her paws underneath again. She put her nose down and shook. Jimmy pushed the cheese closer but the rat didn’t move. Again,