[I posted this on Facebook as a quick sketch, but I decided to look it up and nab it before it was too far back in the past to easily find.]
Dark. 40F. I’m blasting music, windows down, stopped at the light at 3rd and Central. Someone's hollering. I ignore them.
3rd and Holzclaw. More hollering. I look.
“Hey Miss Lady, you too good to talk to us? Miss Lady, you scared of us?”
Three teen girls in a car. One’s driving. One’s pointing her phone at me, making a TikTok video. One’s flipping me off.
I blow the flipper-offer a kiss. She can't keep her fierce face, just melts into giggles. I wave. They keep pace as the light turns.
A block later, they holler out the window again.
“What you doing?” “Where you going?” “Why didn you say hi?”
“I did, but y’all too busy flippin me off to notice.”
At the hot wing shack where the road narrows, I let them roll on past, off to wherever they’re going.
They’re so beautiful.
I think of them trying it on again at another intersection, but this time running into a woman who has 9-1-1 on speed dial or, worse, a handgun in the glove compartment.
That night, I just came from working backstage at a Nutcracker. Children the age of the girls in the car danced the parts of rats, snowflakes, live dolls. I bandaged a torn toenail, pinned up a seam.
“Miss Jenn, can you help me here?” “I’m all sweaty. Does anyone have deodorant?” “Miss Jenn, I’m reading a book about a vampire.” “That sounds cool.” “Have you read The Night Circus?” “I’m reading a book about a girl who keeps a knife under her bed.” “Let’s get that collar straight. There — you look beautiful.”
We look for connections. Reflections in all kinds of mirrors — folks our own age, older, the same, different, seen across the lights at Memorial Auditorium or in a string of comments on a TikTok video.
Until we find each other, Adrienne Rich said, we are lost.