Paula Modersohn-Becker: The Painter with Camellia Branch (Self Portrait). 1907. Public Domain.
Friday Afternoon
By Jenny K. Gilman
The view from my kitchen window has been interesting since the day I drove my trailer into this camp. Though I’ve only been here three weeks, some have lived here for years, like the woman who camps one row behind me and three trailers to my left. It is she who unknowingly drives me to watch through that window.
I hate to say it, but I think she’s crazy. Perhaps that’s a harsh word; I’m sure there’s something more politically correct for her way of thinking, but I’m uneducated in the field of psychology.
It’s mid-March, and she’s decorated for Christmas with barber pole garland winding up her awning, and today, she’s planted her Santa Claus figurine in the middle of her garden, which she’s digging from the alleyway alongside her early 1990s fifth wheel. I’ve never seen the truck that brought such a beast there to park it. I suppose her driveway is best used for vegetables, if indeed, that is what will come from her digging, rather than her hiding relics in the dirt for next Christmas.
There was a camp attendant who weaved through the trailers in his golf cart to warn the residents not to allow children or small pets outside, for they were soon to be spraying poison to kill the spring weeds now that they’re popping through the softening dirt at the park. Not five minutes later and they were spraying. They used a large tractor with five nozzles to the side and four more behind, drowning the land in poison.
If I had had more notice, I never would have been in my trailer that day. The walls are thin, and I felt myself choking from the acrid smell within minutes of seeing the tractor. The best I could do was to cover up my face with a kitchen towel and tie it around the back of my head to keep the fumes from scorching my nose. But as I did that, I caught the view of the mad woman through the window, and I laughed so quickly I surprised myself at the volume.
“What is she doing?” I asked aloud.
She brought a chaise lounge out to the road and reclined, wearing next to nothing. She was oiled up. I suspect she was trying to get a tan.
“Oh my god!” I said.
The tractor was driving the dirt road between us, the nozzles dripping and spraying heavily.
She didn’t flinch as it passed her. The driver had to swerve to keep the spray off of her, and yet I think it strange he didn’t stop the vehicle and ask her to move. Everyone ignored the woman in the chaise, it seemed, as if it were normal behavior.
After three tractor passes, I began watching her chest to see if there was the rise and fall of breathing. I couldn’t see it.
I tightened the towel around my face to go out to her, but then she wiggled her toes.