Weather, We Must

You looked out the window and, not for the first time, thought about how wrong the weather forecast had been. No signs of a storm. It was a gorgeous Southern summer evening. Well, just right for the weekly social time you had set up with your friend Dee, a fellow inmate keeping time in the same graduate program. This Sunday, you had an unusual sense of well-being. A purpose carried you through the day from a morning workout, a healthy brunch, a good book, a phone call with mother and now a leisurely grocery run paced at a saunter. A day you lived to see end in a yellow sunset, your muscles humming, skin drenched, pleasantly high.

You haul the ridiculously heavy bags of groceries you have come to expect of your newly expanded appetite since March. Dee calls your lightness out, the person planning to carry two weeks of groceries across the park. You don’t have to try to convince her an assorted six pack of beer is a good idea on a beautiful day. You do have to convince her the flash storm with pass in twenty minutes. Dee glances at her phone on the storm, seeing the forecast you doubted earlier. You eyeball the single angry grey cloud lumbering over a mostly docile sky. One beer can’t hurt, yeah.

You scramble, bouncing two bags off your shoulders, following Dee up a slope. You like the spot Dee picks out on a knobby hill with the perfect view of the large group gathered around musicians with instruments. You realize these are the protestors who collect in the park every other day at 4PM. You heard them or about them in your apartment across the street from the park. They were now onto the entertainment for the evening, you notice the sky turning the slightest grey, dancing alternately to a brass band and a rock and roll ensemble. You think they sound too professional to be the high school band Dee thinks they may be. You know that sound, the burr of a trombone, reminding you of the trip to New Orleans you forgo when the shelter in place was announced. You flag down the train from moving onto thoughts of three other trips you cancelled for the year. Nowhere to be but right here. Sitting under oaks with Dee, witness to a short and sweet celebration drifting up from bodies on the grass, all of us under the bright sun.

The cloud will make good on its threat soon, you think, with a certainty you rarely feel except outdoors. But you don’t regret your claims to a brief downpour. You live in this adopted city, another immigrant. You have come to expect little spontaneity and no company over chores, beer or walks in your life. This evening was only improved by the serendipity of trombones. You feel the moment weigh in the humid air, a fleeting sense of ease. A respite from the lonely urbanity of sunny days free from plans. The luxury of a yawn.

You knew this to be a moment of rare insignificance – this was the right place, the only moment with no meaning at all. Soap bubbles reflecting sunlight, catching colors trembling to the bass of tubas, trumpets and trombones in the distance. Each tremor carrying rhythm from the dancing bodies down the hill from two not-so sober women making attempts to educate ourselves about fragility. Significant, ok.

The first drop splotched down and another fell on Dee. She opened her red umbrella and, as you pull on your blue raincoat, reached to put away her second beer. You both don’t mind the heavy drops hissing off the leaves on the ground. The musicians in the open space had noticeably upped the tempo. Maybe someone had checked the weather forecast, no point ignoring the signs of an honest tropical downpour. You watched the protestors fold their feet, the musicians released parting notes past your huddled bodies; two shivering transplants pretending to know better than to try seeking shelter from the storm. You traded tales of your brown-skinned Indian impressions for Dee's white-skinned Texan encounters. Both of you circling your great privilege to talk. Words underscored by the hopeful approach you took to imagine you could lessen the threat of violence posed to bodies you never could in truth live in. You wanted to attempt it even when you knew it is not enough.

You felt the moment the cloud broke before it split wide open five minutes later above the scattering crowd. You think the forecast had not been all wrong, simply prone to a different pace. You noticed the grit gathering on your toes and in your line of sight, a shadow appeared at the base of the slope. A man stood in profile holding one hand away from his body. You couldn’t see what he held without your glasses on your nose, only that it was something at his hip. You asked Dee what she thought and know the decision to leave had been made.

The next day, slightly hungover, you remember laughing as you stood with Dee at a nearby pub’s lobby. You both drank the rest of your beer while waiting for the storm to blow over. Your conversation was sponsored by a cheery, white, very high dude who harmlessly made your otherness gleam in the orbit of his attention. You are amused, too occupied with thoughts of the man under the tree, watching over muddy bags as Dee leaves to find a restroom. You decide the man under the tree was harmless too. He had whipped out his dick not a gun. You hope he finished. The thought makes you bark, laughing just as Dee returned. She looked up from her phone to tell you her boyfriend would drive us home. You were mean, calling out the “boyfriend card,” and Dee softly countered that it is her car. You feel a twinge of regret for your pettiness and the itchiness of old scabs. Because you have never thought to ask for an assist even when you had the choice. You think you know your way around fragility, but it shows in the teeth you bare, your bite.

The expected condition, the pervert in the park, is now another moment. You know such moral destitution is not personal. You gave up thinking of it as an invasion a long time ago. Never an invitation for pity from the self-appointed protectors in your life. You looked it in the proverbial one eye, refusing to blink. This delusion of safety was not for you, and yet the relief was revealed in the need to laugh. At least, you think, it was not a gun. Dee pointed to the mercurial sky, all clear now, and called off the car ride. You haul your bags, make your way home and watch the sky turn golden around you. When there are worse things to fear, you take the weather as it comes. You were right, the storm did not last too long.