Thursdays

It was Thursday. Bobbi did not mind Thursdays too much. At work, Thursday was referred to as Friday Eve. A breath away from the weekend. Although the weekend would disintegrate any ideas of rest or leisure like a snap from Marvel’s Thanos, Bobbi still looked forward to Thursday’s arrival each week. Thursday was a day to look forward to. Thursday was a trusted friend. Bobbi left Gateway Auto Sales as soon as her shift was over. She worked in the business development center, affectionately known as BDC. She managed calls, scheduled appointments, and followed leads. The job was not exciting, but it was entertaining! The customers always had “champagne taste and beer pockets” as her mother would say. They would make all these requests and verbally submit their wish lists as if the list were peeled from their personal vision boards. The pay was extremely modest, an hourly wage of 12.00 an hour plus commission. Her colleagues made impressive commissions, but Bobbi did not agree with the methods the collective used to acquire those funds. They had sound motivations, but she noticed unprofessional relationships amongst staff with superiors and BDC representatives. She also saw many angry wives and girlfriends that would storm up to the sales floor asking for representatives by name or most recently, breaking a passenger window of a BMW in the parking lot. If you were a BDC representative and you collaborated closely with a salesman or a finance manager, you were figuratively joining the block association on “Easy Street.” The money, opportunities and repeat customers would flood in! If you were coming in and cold calling your little list of potential clients, well God bless you and good luck. Bobbi was the latter but realistically, she just wanted to put her 8 hours in and go home. Her part-time pay was in addition to her husband’s managerial salary at the finance company where he worked. Together they made ends meet.

After she “stole” her complimentary raisin bagel with vegetable cream cheese from the employee lunchroom and grabbed a Keurig cup to go, she waved her goodbyes on the way to the exit. “That will make a nice snack this evening when Corey goes to bed,” she thought to herself. Time to visit with oneself came few and far in between but Bobbi squeezed it in where she could. Her definition of self-care remained fluid and continued to develop with each swift kick to the rear end that life hurled in her direction. She was resilient but also very tired, both physically and emotionally. She needed a break, but it did not look like there would be one advancing closer to her near future. So, Bobbi continued to countdown to her next Thursday. Even her favorite show released a new episode every Thursday on Amazon Prime. It was these miniscule things that Bobbi began to use as motivation to be productive and positive during the week. Her life had been blessed but there were still so many concerns to fret over.

A grey/silver 2005 Toyota Corolla drove cautiously into the customer sales lot. Predictably, Bobbi watched the anxious salesmen ambush the approaching vehicle until they realized who was driving. This happened every day. “I’m not selling and I ain’t looking,” Bobbi’s mother said confidently. Carl, one of Bobbi’s associates who was always a perfect gentleman, guffawed at the remark. “Come one guys, leave this lady alone,” he said with a smile as he walked back to the showroom. Bobbi opened the passenger door and plopped herself inside the petite automobile. At 5’9” and “thick” as they called it around the way, that corolla was like a matchbox toy to Bobbi. Nonetheless, she was appreciative of the ride home her mother, Joy, always provided to her.

Joy was always on time. She was dependable and reliable. She did most things by the book, and she rarely took short cuts. She was an administrative assistant about three miles away from Bobbi’s job and she enjoyed the quality time they spent together during their commute back to Brooklyn every rush hour. Bobbi’s other half, Corey, worked evenings and he had an odd number of days off. His schedule was forever in flux. They shared one car and work was twenty-seven miles away from home. Joy lived three blocks away from Bobbi and even though they lived in close proximity, they didn’t get ample time to talk. Like mother like daughter, Joy did not know what “spare time” was. The twenty-seven miles was their metaphorical coffee date. It was in this car their friendship blossomed. Here was where they shared stories that were taboo to discuss between a mother and daughter. This was where Bobbi learned about her mother’s first date (where Joy fell asleep in the movie theater because she was accustomed to going to bed early.) In this little car, Joy shared the experience of divorce. “No one gives you bereavement when your marriage dies,” she would say. She expressed how you are expected to just move on as if you have not spent some of the best years of your life with the person you believed you would grow old with. For years, Bobbi watched her mother get up at the sound of the alarm, get dressed in the clothes she had laid out the night before, pour her coffee (light and sweet to taste), slice a piece of pound cake or a cinnamon roll and jump in that Corolla. She watched Joy go on as if her heart were still whole. She did not know if it was strength, numbness, or a protective layer her mother acquired but she often wondered if it was genetic. Could it be passed down? Joy endured the loss of a child, a recession, the transition of her maternal grandmother, a divorce after 20 years of marriage, the death of her mother, dreams of being an actor were deferred by motherhood, she suffered two miscarriages before giving birth to her miracle baby in her forties. Joy’s favorite uncle passed due to prostate cancer, and she triumphed through countless other casualties. She was not verbally expressive as a child and communication was an evolving skillset, still under construction. It was a skillset Bobbi and Joy worked on together in that Corolla each day. They built one another up. They befriended the children within them who were standing at the window asking, “Can you come out and play?” They encouraged one another and they shared parts of themselves, and they laughed at talk radio while sitting in traffic.

               Sometimes the conversations were not easy. They would discuss the things they had buried. Perspective was an impermanent construct based on moods, life stages, roles, and socio-economic circumstances. They were both there for the event, the memory, but they saw it from different angles. Those viewpoints would silence a car ride occasionally. It was not because of anger. It was because their individual lenses were clouded by layered emotions and the residue of time. That little compact Corolla could not always hold the weight of those memories. Yet, no matter what the topics of discussion were, Joy showed up at the end of Bobbi’s shift to do it again. Bonding did not have to be this complicated entity. Itinerary was not needed, and you did not have to dress up. Every so often, shared spirits could just be two stressed out individuals enjoying the “New Car Smell” air freshener fragrance. It was a cracked window, no sunroof, and no A/C (because gasoline was not to be wasted.) It was burrowing through the quiet with hearty laughter because they both laid eyes on the same driver next to them. A driver who was screaming the lyrics to, “I knew You Were Trouble” as if she were Ms. Swift herself.

Life was a little simpler in that Corolla on a Thursday. It was a comfortable booth in a crowded diner, it was a Catholic confessional absolving them of their sin of wasting time as if it could be printed on paper like money. Time was a tormentor that would continue to rob them blatantly and egregiously. So, they tried not to take these moments for granted. They did not discuss the possibility of absence between them. They ignored the inevitable and continued to gamble with grave odds. Secretly, Bobbi studied the rhythm and syncopation of her sweet mother’s breaths. She knew it would be a melody she longed to hear in the lonely moments to come.

That Friday Joy did not get up at the sound of the alarm, get dressed in the clothes she had laid out the night before, pour her coffee (light and sweet to taste,) slice a piece of pound cake or a cinnamon roll and jump in that Corolla. Joy text messaged her supervisor and expressed her apologies because she just couldn’t muster the tenacity to show up in the professional capacity she prided herself on for so many years. That Friday Joy was tired, nauseous and it was too hot for a headwrap and the matching earrings she had donned for the past few months of chemotherapy. It was too hot, she was too weak, her stomach was too unsettled, the day was too long, and she wanted to rest. She ran her self-manicured fingers over the stent scar from the intravenous treatments. She looked in the bathroom mirror and staired begrudgingly at the few strands of hair stubbornly standing on her head in solidarity. Who was this stranger looking back at her? Long straight hair cascading down her back had been her signature, most of her life. If it were gone, what other components of her identity would gradually depart from her? Her beautiful freckles still adorned her soft brown skin like stars in the sky of a densely populated city. You had to allow yourself to get lost in the allure of the light and avert your eyes from all distractions. Her teeth had begun to shift because her gums were weakening from all the medication. They were still mounted arrogantly knowing that there was not anyone who carried the mesmerizing smile Joy had. Her name was apropos. Her name fit her like a trusted little black dress. She put on her favorite almond scented lotion, but the smell caused a revolt in her internal organs. The waterfall of what her body could no longer store rose in her esophagus. “Gerald!” she yelled.

Bobbi arrived at Gateway Auto Sales fifteen minutes before her shift began. She “stole” her complimentary raisin bagel with vegetable cream cheese from the employee lunchroom and grabbed a Keurig cup of tea (she had given up caffeine), she waved her hellos on the way to her cubicle. Everyone knew she was not a morning person so there were no hard feelings aimed at Bobbi for not being particularly chatty. The glances laced with pity were overwhelming. Her three days of bereavement elapsed, and it was time to cold call and cry in the bathroom on her fifteen-minute breaks. The sympathy cards were still in her pocketbook, unopened. Their presence loomed over her like a hovering parent at the playground and she welcomed it. In no way was she ready to be back there in that building. She had exhausted all her paid time off with the week and a half Joy was in the hospital and the month of grieving needed just to get out of bed. In the end all Bobbi wanted was to be what her mother had been for her: on time, dependable and reliable. Towards the end, they still rode together to Brooklyn in a ride share and split the cost. After a while Joy could no longer drive. If Bobbi could have crawled in that sickbed with her mommy, she would have. Her vulnerability was inhibited by an impenetrable force she had been trying to emulate. It was not genetic because Bobbi felt transparent. The irony was, why hadn’t the two of them talked about Joy’s demise when she was still here? How could they just live on in this world of make believe as if cancer were not a villain who had claimed the lives of so many of their loved ones previously? Why had Bobbi lectured her mom about proper diet and sunshine knowing there was a visible change in Joy’s walk? She gulped loudly as she often did to avoid a stream of oncoming tears. She counted down…” six more hours to go,” she thought. She prepared herself for the Uber driver who would be waiting outside at the end of her shift. Bobbi crossed her fingers and toes as she giddily hoped it was a small silver or gray car. It was these little things that Bobbi became accustomed to using as motivation for existing. While a potential client unloaded a list of “requirements” for his next SUV purchase, Bobbi hummed the joyous melody she memorized for these very moments.