Will They Approve A Second Mortgage? I Am at Their Mercy

Week 81

The biggest snowstorm. The city covered in snow. Branches weighed down. I don’t go outside. I don’t go to work. I am afraid of snow. It hurts my bones. Windblown it hurts my face. All I think about is my debt. Still in the hole from paying for Ori’s defense and now, paying for his appeals. Even with movement lawyers. More so with a movement lawyer who could have come clean on his fees but didn’t. No longer the early days in the movement when legal defense was political work. Oppression proceeded, tightened, and the lawyers got older. Political crimes committed in the heat of a rising movement had to be defended in the chill of a repressed, oppressed demobilized movement. Waiting for the bank to call me back. Will they approve a second mortgage? I am at their mercy.
And I am all alone.
I lie in my bed the curtain drawn watching the snow come down. I think of Ori in his prison cell. Can he see it snowing? Does he know it’s snowing? Is it snowing wherever he is? Or do they have him at the (base)? I think of Machi wherever he is. At Solly’s? Or has be left the City which has been his longtime dream? Has he gone back to the Island? I worry about his teeth. What kind of a Mother am I who didn’t make sure he has good teeth. Bad teeth are the mark of being raised poor. The dentist was something my own parents never had money for. What a terror disaster it was when it turned out I had cavities and they had to scrounge money for the lady dentista from whom I learned the word “retentiva” meaning that the hole she carved in my molar with her drill could retain the stuff she filled it up with.
So no no no no. There was the terror of the drill going into my mouth , the terror of having no money to pay the lady with, the terror of hanging by a money thread. And since then that is how I live. Forever hanging from a financial thread.
And so alone. Lucha and I would sooner tell each other about our children’s drugging than talk about how much we make, how much we owe.
I lie in my bed alone dreaming of bear dens and wolf dens. Wishing myself curled up between wolves. Often this fantasy works to put me to sleep but not this night. I breathe in and don’t breathe out, catch myself holding my breath. I see the wolf scrounging for a hare to kill, a moose to chase, cracking a branch loudly and scaring off the prey, failing to tread through the creek to lose my predator. I am a hungry, frightened wolf too hungry to sleep. I wanted to be a wolf because my wolf mind wouldn’t know its own mortality. But in this terror moment I understand that my wolf body knows mortality.
I’m alone. Too alone. Terrified.
I let Machi’s dog come into the bed with me and curl myself around his trembling body. Why does he tremble? Is he responding to my fear? He’s a big gangly brindle dog with dark brown fur and stripes. Machi named him Tigger. I slow down my breathing. I wonder if together the dog and I can chase away the terror.
I’m at the mercy of the bank. I am afraid to be a bag lady. I am afraid of the IRS, afraid of the creditors, afraid of losing my job, afraid of money. Afraid. Alone. Cold.
It’s cold inside my den, under the ground. I can’t dig out through the wall of snow covering up the entrance. I need help but I don’t know who can help me.
And suddenly a shock of fury fists through the core of my body, wanting to volcano out of me. Fury at Ori. Ori and the revolution that never was. He’s secure. He knows where his meals are coming from. And I’m in the prison of the debt he left me with.
And just as swiftly I’m ashamed. He’s lost everything. He’s in debt of his whole being. He’s serving out a life term. And just as swiftly I’m afraid.
The wind is moving the snow laden branches and blowing the snow. Some snow is descending straight down and some is coming down at an angle and some is floating. Still. I notice the dog is no longer trembling. I feel my mind beginning to surrender to that place where debt doesn’t matter and sleep is possible.