Montclaire & Lead

Ilived on a corner with the perfect bathroom window for my orchids and enough space for a puzzle table; the concept of a death wish and the leaden-gut feeling of wailing had to have been imbued in the cement of the sidewalks. Before I was worried about the right potting mix for my Phalaenopsis philippinensis , I had nightmares about calling 911. What would I say ( I live at 303 Montclaire and I need an ambulance; I think someone got hurt ) and would they stay on the line with me ( Yes, they would. ). I felt oddly proud the first time I called, like I had a chip on my shoulder, like I had proof of my mettle.

As my first college apartment, that stop sign didn’t hold back for me; the cracking yellow of the curbs had something out for me. It began sometime around when that bird that blasted into my car windshield at the stop sign and bounced lifelessly and feathered off onto the road. Or when those kids threw a slice of American cheese at my car door, and it slipped and slapped on the ground and remained there for months, slowly trampled and moldy (I didn’t know American cheese could get moldy). Or at least somewhere around there was when the molting of a carcass became routine.

At 11:00 p.m. Grey’s Anatomy quietly droned on, and I heard screaming and brakes, and in the street was a girl halfway under a van. It’s always the same hall monitors that come out of their houses to survey the noises and give wary glances without doing much more than that. This time, it was to watch a woman clutching her leg and screaming. Unsurprisingly, when I saw the woman under the van (the kind with no candy inside,

Camila Seluja

the kind that I walk around with a wide berth when it’s 10:00 p.m. in the parking lot of the mall after work), my initial reaction was, Yep, she’s getting kidnapped...what do I do when I see someone getting kidnapped? I only know what to sorta do if I’m the one getting kidnapped. The man from the van was dragging her out from under the back tires and attempting to lift her up into the open sliding doors, and what can you do but stare for a bit? She was shrieking and slapping and pawing the air and her leg and her face and his arms. Ultimately, the mysterious van man decided she wasn’t worth the trouble, or heard sirens coming, and dropped her unceremoniously in the street.

Later, the talk with sergeants and EMTs revealed the neighborhood story of it all: One of those girls from those apartments in the alley, you know the ones, and they were having a party and what can you do when someone just gets so high out of their mind? Well, she wandered off, and a friend came to look and just didn’t stop in time, and whoosh: there she went under the car. Or maybe she was riding on top of it? When you’re that high, can you really fucking tell? Anyways, he says he was just trying to load her up to take her to the hospital.

As we meandered back to our doorways, the Republican across the street told me to holler if we ever needed anything. He couldn’t call the cops because of his parole, but he said he’d watch out for anything fishy. Kirk had the boots of a farmhand, and I trusted him intrinsically.

When I got back inside, Grey’s Anatomy had continued for two more episodes. I had to rewind.

Three dogs ran into the street, two of which my sister imploringly ran after to stop traffic and coax away from their imminent vehicular dog-slaughter. One simply ran in a different direction, bound to end up roadkill as on Central or some other unfortunate street. I could see them wandering behind the view of my bathroom P halaenopsis schilleriana blooming for the second time (no small feat, might I add).

Another time, I was holding on to my own sister’s dog while she attempted to cajole a stray. Standing with a squirming ball of fur in my arms who desperately wanted to go help her mom sniff out the interesting thing in the middle of the road, I watched as my sister hollered every time a car got too close and hurled between the poles of reaching for the animal and turning her head away when she thought the end was coming for it soon. Five minutes later, a man jogged past and asked if I had seen a dog; I gestured with the furry squirmer in my arms up a block.

Lastly, on a Wednesday morning at 8:00 a.m. a chunky little chihuahua who I immediately did not care for sniffed around and away from the calling of an older woman. Sometime between putting my backpack in the front seat and tapping for my keys, the animal-baby-talk turned to hollering, then wailing. I saw the dog limping and unable to stand after being struck by a morning commuter. It circled and circled and circled itself like Sisyphus eternally trapped, and its back legs were giving out in the sickliest of ways, and cars were whizzing past and screeching and ignoring. The woman moaned and held her dog like the Madonna and sobbed and screamed, and I simply had to get in my car and continue (I was late to class).

There was a bang on the floor next door, and I got up. I felt like I should have gone over right then, not that it would have really done much. But I remember that I knew I should be next door.

A knock came on my back door, and I knew it was my sister. She was asking her boyfriend to leave. He gave physical protest. I was reading, or eating, or scrolling endlessly, and then I was asking my boyfriend to come over, just in case, asking because we felt like the other man should leave, asking because when does a man simply leave?

My boyfriend and I stayed at her back door, Just in case you need us, you probably won’t but we’ll be here just in case. This partner of my sister’s started breaking bookshelves. And we went inside. And he pulled the butcher knife.

It was a psychotic break, apparently. Hadn’t taken his meds consistently. Decided to run a knife against the new paint and my sister’s computer and the bed sheets and her pillow.

I began watering the windowsill orchids after I showered, wringing the water from my hair onto their aerial roots.

I remember most about the little boy being hit was the woman in the Mustang. At a bend in the road, she had attempted to dodge the boy in the middle of her right-hand turn. Her door was wide open, her face peeking out of heavily tinted windows like The Scream — hands pressed to cheeks and mouth open with silence just as bloodcurdling. What would you do, coming home at 5:30 p.m., rushing a bit but no more than usual when the day has been long and it’s getting dark sooner and you’d rather change, and you hit a child? Her hands were shaking, and, removed, I realized she should be a case study on shock for medical students.

The boy had been running from something. He was no more than ten, wearing his pants inside out and had no parents calling for him. He had come from the International District, and it was assumed something was wrong with his running. He was plugging his ears and muttering and running, and the mustang whipped his legs from under him and flung him to the asphalt, and he made noise for a while. And then he was lying there. My sister, who had briefly pursued medical school herself, assured me, It’s good he’s crying, that means he’s conscious...it’s good he’s gone quiet, the pain must be too much. I knew when he went silent though; I knew when the paramedics didn’t bother with a gurney.

My Zoom class cut off exactly as I was supposed to present (kismet, since I hadn’t written down the right German conjugations for the PowerPoint). I didn’t bother to go out for the sound of those brakes. It’s a drunk driver. The power went out. They just hit the line on the corner. Second one in three months. I wrote to the city a while back letting them know they really needed a light on this corner. No, of course, I haven’t heard back yet, you know the city council and their BS. I didn’t bother to go out for the sound of those brakes.

My reputation with orchids in that apartment brought my father over to donate three of his “dying” specimens to me. I made them all bloom. Don’t bother with the ice-cube-melting-in-their-pots trick, and a mix of perlite and lava rocks isn’t as valuable as humidity.

At this point, screeching brakes are my signal to go outside, worriedly and at a mixed pace. What