Page 76 of On the Ropes
Tabitha
Ihad an extremely adorable niece in my lap, demanding to watch a movie about me.
“About me?” I asked Juliet, my chin on top of her head. “Or a movie that I’ve made? I do have that one I made with all the rescue puppies in St. Louis.”
“About you,” she said.
I tilted my head to look at her, then gave her a kiss on the cheek. “I don’t make movies about myself, sweetheart. I make them about other people. For other people.”
“Show her the one you posted today,” Alexis said. “The one for the pocket park.”
By her wiggles alone, it seemed like my niece was highly amenable to that idea.
“You’ve seen it already?” I asked. Alexis and Eric were curled up together on Aunt Linda’s ratty loveseat, wearing pajamas just like me. Juliet had requested a “slumber party at Aunty Tabby’s house” tonight, so I’d pulled out all the stops—we’d had pizza delivered and played a rousing game of Twister and spent a pretty intense hour building a castle together out of Play-Doh.
Now we were on the get Juliet to fall asleep part of the night.
“Of course we’ve seen it,” my sister said, handing Eric a bowl of popcorn. “We sent it to all of our teacher friends. They were super excited to donate. As were we.”
I looked over at the lovebirds on the loveseat. “You guys.”
Eric shook his head. “Don’t you guys me, Aunty Tabby. You send me and your sister school supplies every year for our new students. And you very graciously edited that god-awful video I tried to make that one year about my classroom service projects.”
“For free,” Alexis added.
Juliet was playing with my keyboard, and I was trying to make sure she didn’t accidentally delete my hard drive.
“It was an honor and it was adorable,” I pointed out. “I personally think the world would be a better place if more people got to see how cute it is when third graders decide to make soup and sandwiches for nurses working the night shift at the hospital down the block.”
“And it was truly appreciated,” Eric said. “You always support our classrooms no matter where you are in the world. It’s an honor to support this.” He inclined his head toward the window behind him, indicating the now clean empty lot in its pre-park stage.
“Also, that video of Eddie and Alice talking about Annie in her Santa suit is pretty convincing,” Alexis said. “We showed Juliet before coming over here.”
“Mr. Eddie has a cat,” Juliet told me. “I want to draw a picture of her for him.”
I kissed the top of her head. “He would love that, sweetheart. Mr. Eddie needs a little extra help right now, so I think pictures would bring a smile to his face.”
Juliet nodded somberly at this task, in that way children seemed to so easily accept the concepts of both helping and being helped.
While she was briefly distracted by hitting the space bar on my keyboard one hundred times in a row, I slid my phone out and logged into the GoFundMe page I’d set up for the park. It had been live for only a day but there was already close to a thousand dollars in there. I scrolled down the list, recognized not only Alexis and Eric but a few of their teacher friends. Kathleen and my dad. Members of Kathleen’s book club. A couple local businesses and nonprofits. The Buddhist temple on Eleventh Street and the rec center where Rowan worked.
A surge of emotion got trapped in my throat. I was expecting gifts from social media followers and kind internet strangers. But, as usual, this neighborhood stepped up and supported itself. The lot was far from being a park or even an idea of a park. Weeks of work would need to go into pulling it all together, plus constant maintenance and caretaking.
Yet people could already see its potential, this splash of greenery the size of a postage stamp.
I set my phone down. Alexis was watching me closely and smiled as soon as our eyes met. I love you, I mouthed.
I love you too,she mouthed back.
I hugged Juliet tight. I was starting to get homesick for Philly, and I hadn’t even left yet.
“Aunty Tabby movie?” she said again.
“All right, kid, let’s do this,” I said, pulling up my Instagram and starting the video. It was short and to the point, with me expanding on the videos and “before” pictures I’d been posting, what the block had in mind and some of the supplies we were raising money for. Juliet’s face was sweetly enraptured, eyes starting to get heavy.
Her head lolled against my arm. She was still awake but starting to fight it, and I inhaled the peace of one of the quiet moments I’d missed so much of. She was only five years old, and I’d been living elsewhere for all of it. Time was flying by—my backpack was getting lighter even as my family continued to change and evolve every day.
Guilt was a strange beast. I carried so much of it for the lies and harm I caused my family. Carried so much of it for feeling like I’d abandoned them ever since I graduated from college. I was forever an outsider, yearning to be let in but wary of the consequences.
