A
woman with a disability thought about the old mom and pop grocery
store in front of her
house. She needs to have a ramp built just to get in there to
evaluate what all needs
to be done or maybe someone could lift her up the back steps?
Community Center?
Coffee Cafe? Art workshop? She could be there when she could. A
barista of sorts?
Don't put the cart before the horse, she thought.
That
cold February morning Claire got on her laptop feeling like a very
bad girl, she hadn't
written in two days. She remembered commenting on the Democratic
Debate on Facebook
and posting a movie review of “Timbuktu”. That counts for
writing, she allowed.
She looked down at her dog Linus, who was antsy about going out to
pee. The black
lab face with grey hairs in his eyebrows and grey beard under his
chin. Brown eyes,
so confident and unfeigned.
This
is why I don't get any writing done, was her excuse. So she put on a
lavender fleece
bed jacket over her pajamas and zipped up her boots, rollerated over
to her power chair
and sat down. She hooked him up to his leash and started outside.
The
next door neighbors, a man and woman, were on their back steps
having a smoke. Linus
walked her over to the Sago palm and sniffed around. He looked at the
street in front
of the house and looked hopefully at her.
She
said, “This is just to pee, we're not walking now.”
He
crossed the driveway to the azalea bed and peed on the edge of it.
She looked up, the stray
pug was ambling around. Fearing a dogfight in her P/C, she thought,
dammit, I've
got to call animal control again. She pulled her dog back toward the
ramp hoping he
wouldn't
see the other one yet because with Linus, loud dog whining always
ensued. Think a dog's been caught in a bear trap. Her dog stopped and looked
over at the neighbors
and barked once.
“No,
you don't bark at people in their own yard.”
The
guy walked towards the pug as she turned around to start up the
ramp. Midway, the woman
laughed and Claire glanced quickly back over her shoulder. The pug
was trotting
away towards home.
She
had narrowly avoided the struggle with Linus where his whole body
tenses and becomes
like one of those statues you see in the park, only he comes alive
and starts trying
to run after the other dog like his life depends on it. Sighing with
relief, she hightailed
it the rest of the way up the ramp and herded him in the door.
