Tuesday Morning
By S.N. Rodriguez
It’s Tuesday and you’ve just dropped your child off at the front door of the elementary school. They don’t allow guardians to walk children to their classes anymore as a safety measure. You blow each other kisses, wave goodbye, and watch as their backpack bobs out of sight down the kindergarten hallway. You hold back tears. Please be safe. Please let them all be safe.
You drive to Whataburger for breakfast and notice a white-bearded man wearing an old sailor’s hat sitting alone in a patch of wet grass in the Wal-Mart parking lot. You buy him a breakfast sandwich and a coffee, but when you roll your window down to offer him the food, he politely declines because someone had the same idea only minutes before you. As he holds up the bag, his smile reminds you of the child he once was.
At the intersection, you see an old woman hobbling up and down the sidewalk after a small matted black dog. You pull your car over to the side of the road and step out just in time to stop the dog from running into oncoming traffic. You try to coerce it with a crispy hash brown, but the dog runs into a nearby neighborhood and disappears. The woman thanks you for trying to help her catch the little stray and you drive home.
You knock on your widowed neighbor’s door and ask her if she would like some breakfast. She accepts the coffee and greasy paper bag with tears in her eyes. She tells you that you’ve made her day after a rough, grief-stricken morning. She gives you a hug and thanks you.
While you eat your breakfast, you reflect on the eventful morning. You hear the vibrations of police sirens blaring by and think about your son. You run to the window and anxiously track their path until they turn away from the school. You exhale and try to return to your work. Please let them all be safe.
After some writing, you head to the public library to return some books and pick up a hold. You pull into the last parking spot. You notice you parked a little crooked and want to reverse to straighten up, but there’s a white car with tinted windows behind you. You gather your books and a tote bag while you wait, but the car is still there. You decide you’ll just have to deal with your imperfect parking job and climb out of the car.
When you open the trunk to put away the tote, the person in the white car lowers their window and calls after you. Your fingers coil into a fist around your keys. You turn around to see an old white woman with short white hair in her luxury white car. You assume she’s lost and needs directions. You let your guard down.
“Yes, ma’am?” You ask with a smile the same way you were taught, but she doesn’t smile back.
“Did you not see my blinker?” Her voice twangs like an out of tune harpsichord. “I was waiting for that parking spot,” she says, pointing at your car with a polished fingernail for emphasis.
While she sits steaming like a southern dumpling, several parking spots empty and fill.
“No, ma’am, I didn’t,” you admit, which is the truth. You didn’t see her, and you certainly didn’t see a blinker.
“Well!” she huffs, and you swear her hair puffs out with indignation like a Miyazaki character. She rifles through a bag, and you step back as she pulls out a pair of sunglasses and fixes them onto her reddened face. She spits, “You are a rude person,” like a curse and drives away, tires screeching and burning like gun smoke.
You close your eyes and think about your son. Please be safe. You shake it off, gather your books, and shut the trunk. You recall the morning you’ve had. Please let them all be safe.
—
About Author
S. N. Rodriguez is a writer and photographer in Austin, Texas. She is a Writers’ League of Texas Fellow, and her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in The Journal of Latina Critical Feminism, River Teeth, Blue Mesa Review, and elsewhere.