Lib Hall: Three Memories

Memory One: Childhood

Not all rain is good rain. Not anymore, anyway. Black rain shut down the parade early three out of the last six years. The first time I ever felt the itch was in second grade, at one of the first parades I can remember. It was my eighth birthday. I’d seen the clouds roll in from my bedroom window plenty of times, but until then, I’d never actually stood under them, right where they would pour their poison. It was the smallest I’ve ever felt.
I was picking up Tootsie Rolls and Jolly Ranchers from the ground when I felt the first drop. While reaching one grimy, stubby-fingered hand out for a hard candy, I felt a sting on my thumb. I yanked my hand to my chest and sprinted back onto the sidewalk, to my mother’s side.
“Mom, a bee stung me!” I whined, limply holding out my hand to show her the wound. She made a clicking noise with her tongue and inspected the hive-like injury. 
“Don’t squish him, Mom. He did it by accident.”
“Oh,” she mumbled. Her eyes shot up, toward the sky. Her mouth hung open just slightly while she stared. She looked back down at my hand. “We have to go.”
In a matter of seconds, my mother had packed up her lawn chair and was dragging me by one arm to the car. We had parked two blocks away, in a nearby neighborhood.
“Why?” 
The jarring scream of sirens answered my question. I began to run, but my mother was still too fast for me. As I struggled to keep my footing, I watched chaos erupt around me. The floats kept moving, but the uniformed war veterans atop them were rifling through bright orange backpacks. They pulled rubber cloaks from the bags and began hurriedly flinging them into the audience rather than candy. Parents shoved each other aside to catch them, as if they were all a homerun baseball worth millions.
“Slo-ho dow-won, Mom!” I tried screaming, but I was breathing too hard to manage any intelligible speech. She had my itchy hand in her grip, too. I wanted so badly to scratch it. I thought maybe I could reach up to it with my other arm while I ran down the sidewalk. I flung my free hand toward my itchy thumb and got two good scratches in before I lost my balance and tripped over a ledge of rising cement. With two dull thuds, my knees hit the ground, then my chest. The pain didn’t set in immediately. I had a chance to turn onto my back and bring my knees to my chest as I waited for my scrapes to bite. 
Lying on the pavement, my body tingling with the sting of my wounds and high-pitched sounds of panic making my head swell, I looked at the scene above me. 
        Clouds, more powerful than any sinister swells that nature could produce, filled my view. These clouds, though, weren’t Earth’s. They belonged to us, and they’d come to seek revenge on their mothers and fathers for their Frankenstein creation. A freakish conglomeration of nature and industry. They weren’t made of water; they were made of sweat. Sweat from our ancestors, who built our homes, our railroads, our mines, our pipelines, and our cities. Sooty sweat from the machines that harvested our farms and cooked our food and took us to school and kept us warm and made us cool and watered our lawns. 
It was as if I’d looked up to see the same dark sky I’d seen in an old painting once during a field trip to the Art Institute. It was called Manifest Destiny, by some fart named Gast. 
It didn’t make sense. The Native Americans lived in the dark, while the white men brought clear skies and light to the land. My second-grade self lie on the cement in the land those white men took from the Native Americans, but I didn’t behold those pink and yellow skies and white clouds in the painting. I saw a black, billowing mass that rumbled with corruption.
“Moooommm,” I whimpered.
With a swift yank, she pulled me up by my arm again, and we were off. 
Mom’s white sedan came into view. I felt victorious, having beaten the impending downpour.
“Don’t look up, Liberty,” breathed Mom heavily. 
“Why?” I said, curiosity having compelled me to disregard her warning and look into the sky as she dragged me along.
The rain began to come down harder. The steadily falling, stinging pellets hit my skin like needles from the sky. I closed my eyes, but kept running.
“Get in!” I heard Mom yell. We’d made it to the car, and she was holding the door open for me, panic painted across her face. I climbed into the back seat. She slammed the door and slid into the driver’s seat. 
For a moment, she just sat, breathed. She finally turned around to buckle me in.
“Are you okay, sweetie?” she asked. She was breathing so heavily. Her wet, brown locks stuck to her lips, despite her efforts to push them away with her tongue. She smelled almost metallic. I noticed a number of puffy, red hives on her freckled cheeks.
“Yeah," I said. "It itches, Mom."
“I know, sweetie. I’m sorry.”

Memory 2: Adulthood

After pushing my breakfast away, I swung my backpack over my shoulder and walked pointedly out the front door. My bike was chained to the light post outside my house – right where I left it yesterday. I freed it from its cuff, climbed gracelessly onto the seat, felt around for the pedals, and took off. First, down Ellis St., my street, then onto Main, and into the busier side of Evanston. The air was hot, thick with moisture. Within minutes, I was dripping in sweat. The humidity was oppressive. Dense, blackish clouds filled the horizon as I pedaled toward it. I hoped desperately that more wouldn't roll in and set the sirens off.
       I hate when the sirens go off while I’m riding. As soon as the first, ugly scream of those alarms pierces my eardrums, I know the black rain is on its way and I’d better get my poncho and gloves out quick. If I don’t pull them from my backpack in time, I’m itching and scratching for the rest of the day. Mom always knows when I don’t get my gear on before the first few drops fall, and she gives me hell for it.
       If those sirens went off this morning, I’d have a hell of a time trying to pay attention in class with a bunch of little red sores on my skin. 
       By the time I hit the city limits, traffic was pretty ugly. Cars were lined up along Main Street, just about to scrape each other’s side view mirrors off. I did my best to weave in between without hitting people’s nice rides with my handlebars. I may have clipped one or two, but I kept pedaling down the middle of the road.
       There was one poor semi-truck on the road. I figured the driver was pretty angry he decided to get off the crowded freeway and try his luck on the even slower side-streets.
       I saw that his truck had slits in the side. Wondering what was inside, I pedaled toward it. With a screech of my brakes, I came to a halt next to the cargo.
       Before I could even peer inside, I felt something wet spray my face.
       “Hey!” I shouted, wiping the slimy residue from my cheeks. When I looked inside one of the gaping slits,  I noticed one big, shiny, black nose pushed up against the open space. It breathed heavily into my face and brushed away my bangs.
       “Who’s that?” I murmured.
       Suddenly, it wasn’t a nose looking through the slit, but one big, brown eye. It blinked curiously at me.
       I couldn’t help but laugh.
       “What are you lookin’ at? Huh?” I said playfully and pulled one hand away from my bike’s handlebar to reach inside and pet the furry face that stared at me.
       The fur on the cow’s snout was short, velvety. I could’ve stroked it for hours, and I’m sure she would’ve loved it. But only a few seconds later, the truck jerked into gear, lunged forward, and pulled her out of my reach, down Main St., to some slaughterhouse on the outskirts of downtown Chicago that awaited her.
       I knew what was going on. I wasn’t stupid. That’s why I felt my chest tighten as her truck disappeared around a corner. No one would ever touch her with a kind hand again. I wondered how many times I would feel the loving touch of my mom, my friends, maybe even a boy someday, before I’m worm food. Probably a whole lot more times than that cow did. And I’ve done a lot meaner things than she’s ever done.
       “Go, kid!” a man in a tight-fitting grey suit coat shouted out the window of his sports car. Had he really been laying on his horn that entire time? I looked before me: the traffic light was green and every car that had been in front of me was long gone.
       “Oh, shut up!” I barked back. My feet found the pedals again, and I was flying down the street.

Memory 3: Twilight Years