Monday, May 19, 2003
Here, at night, they spray for mosquitos. Mid 80's pick-up trucks rigged up with rust and metallic SuperSoaker sprayers, looking like the type of dream one might catch on a too-hot summer's day, misting the neighborhood with cool water and dishing out fifty-cent rainbow snowcones from the passenger's side window. But instead, the whishing hum of spray leaks chemicals up and down Washington Avenue, already strapped with decades of lead paint sealing windows so tightly that a hot day inside feels less like a Club Med sauna and more like an antiquated Southern-gothic tomb.And when the trucks pass, in those few minutes before sleep thinking, "Yes, I did set the alarm," and "No, I won't have time to iron that in the morning," while all the night's mental housekeeping comes to a close, I worry two things. One, I am sure the well-meaning mass distribution of chemicals will peel the paint off my car that remains casually parked on the street, perpetually safe from the speeding cars that pass not six inches from its side for hours and hours. And two, even though the windows won't open again in my lifetime, the overly efficient central air is quickly venting those same chemicals, the ones that will eventually cost me a bundle to restore the car's silver sparkle, into my bedroom. And while I drift off to sleep, I am breathing them in, odorless and benign, probably killing my ovaries or some other organ that seems utterly meaningless at the moment.
In lieu of worrying about my ovaries, which will no doubt only bring me trouble in the future, the trouble of husbands and babies and old issues of Redbook in HMO sanctioned doctor's offices, I worry about my car. And for the meantime I park it in the driveway, politely at the end, patiently awaiting my predictable departure at 6:40 a.m. again tomorrow morning as it has been every morning since August, at least three feet away from any potential city-sanctioned biological warfare that may or may not be killing my unborn children.
Heather at 8:02 PM
