THIS NEIGHBORHOOD

By Annie Connole

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN ZIMZUM, 2018

On the afternoon of the presidential election, I walked across the street to visit my neighbors.   Folks on our street often gathered in the afternoon to chat, have a cigarette, and sometimes hold baby animals from Dave and Nancy’s hobby farm.  I spotted Dave in his yard and handed him a bag of chocolates over the fence.

“What’s this for?” he asked.

“Things might get a little tense today and chocolate always helps.”

I had been feeling elated all day — we were going to see the first woman elected president of the United States.  Offering Dave and Nancy chocolate was a gesture of peace since they were Trump supporters.  But I could see Dave was distracted and troubled by the divisions this election was creating; he’d seen people break off longtime friendships over support for a candidate. Just then his wife, Nancy emerged from of the house.

“Are you talking about the unspeakable?” she said.

“Just brought chocolates over. That’s all.” I said.

As I started home Nancy yelled, “Trump! He’s already ahead in three states.”

When I reached my yard, I called my Dad for reassurance. “I’m fairly confident that Hillary will win,” he said, although there was a touch of doubt in his voice. As we talked, the sad, sweet sound of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” wafted over from Dave’s truck.

***

I put on a shirt with the words “THE FUTURE IS FEMALE,” and went to the Joshua Tree Saloon. Inside, people were laughing and playing pool, glancing at the election results coming in on the TV. My friend Eefje and I saddled up to the bar.  A young man bumped us with his pool cue a few times, but we ignored him and talked about what it meant to be a woman living in America on this day. Our musings came to a halt when we saw Florida turn red for Trump. Could it be? And Pennsylvania, North Carolina?

As the night wore on, we shrank in our seats. Social media was awash with panic and disbelief. A friend texted, asking what the mood was like in Joshua Tree.  It’s always the end of the world here, I said. After Michigan and Wisconsin went for Trump, we paid for our drinks and left in a haze of dysphoria.

At home, my three house rabbits were also distressed, bouncing around their pen, gnawing on cardboard and sticks. I lay on the couch next to them; trying to comprehend a Trump win felt like two freight trains smashing into each other in my head. One of the rabbits, Thunderclap, ripped up a box he normally used as shelter.

I turned off the lights and went to bed.  A whirling mass of chaos hovered over my body. I woke up, took some Xanax and stopped by the rabbit hutch. Thunderclap lay in his litterbox, an unusual spot for him to spend the night. He was a sensitive rabbit; I sometimes called him Mr. Tenderheart.  It seemed like he was feeling my anxiety, but was too small to hold it.

***

By the time the sun rose, Hillary had conceded. I went to check on Thunderclap and jostled him, but he barely moved. Taking him in my arms, I thought of calling Dave. Dave had been through many trials with his rabbits and would know how to assess Thunderclap. But I hesitated. It felt nearly impossible to go back to our neighborly conversations after this. I couldn’t mask my anger. This wasn’t a sports game where we’d all shake hands and wish each other well. A Trump win was an assault on everything I believed in – my values, my womanhood.

But I needed Dave now, more than anyone. Thunderclap and his siblings were born at Dave’s hobby farm the day I moved in across the street a couple years before.  I’d come to the desert seeking solace as I grieved the sudden death of my partner. In those first few weeks, I’d walk over to Dave and Nancy’s almost every afternoon to hold their baby rabbits, which was the only thing that eased my pain. Eventually, I adopted the three rabbits and became friends with Dave, Nancy, and the other neighbors on Fascination Road. I traded chocolates for farm eggs. When I talked with old friends on the phone, I’d tell them about my new life and my neighbors who were the kindest I’d ever had. Living out in the country, 20 minutes from the center of town, off dirt roads, my neighbors helped with pets or a car stuck in a storm, even shared a hot meal or pie. We watched out for one another.

I took a deep breath and picked up the phone.  Dave arrived within minutes, examining Thunderclap. “Call the vet and tell them you need an emergency appointment,” he said. I nodded. Ten minutes later, we were in my car with Thunderclap tucked carefully in the back. As I drove, Dave gripped his wrist in pain.          

 “What is it?” I said.

“Nothing, a nerve in my neck is pinched,” he said. “My body’s broken. Nothing new.”

As long as I’d known Dave, his body would periodically freeze up or go numb from the damage accumulated during overseas deployments with the Marine Corps. He’d been waiting years to have back surgery at the VA Hospital. Just days earlier, the hospital decided his nerve issues weren’t related to his back and the surgery was canceled.

 As we drove down the dirt roads to the hospital, my jaw tightened. The last thing I wanted was to do was talk with Dave about the election. But as we waited at a red light, he broke the silence. “I didn’t even decide who I was going to vote for until yesterday.” I knew this wasn’t true, but didn’t say anything. Last May, Dave started using the language of the Trump campaign, “I want to see someone meltdown Washington.”

At the time, I didn’t believe my own neighbor and friend could actually support a presidential candidate who intentionally used misogynist and bigoted rhetoric to rally followers. As we sat at the long red light I suddenly wanted to know.

“Why did you do it?”

“Because it was better than the other option,” he said.

I was silent. As the tension between us grew he said, “But I’m scared.”

***

The veterinary clinic said Thunderclap needed to stay all day to flush out his system and replenish his electrolytes. They needed me to bring back rabbit food for his recovery.   

Dave and I drove to Tractor Supply to buy some hay.  As we walked in, Dave greeted the cashier by name who avoided eye contact. As we walked to the car, Dave said, “Did you notice how she barely said hello to me? She’s pissed.”

“The woman at the register?  Are you friends with her?”

“She’s a Hillary supporter. The manager told me he’s been giving her crap all morning.” he said, half chuckling. I thought about her, maybe 20 years old, going to work at a minimum wage job and being mocked by a manager for believing in the candidate that most believed in her.  My silent rage filled up the car as my fingers clenched the steering wheel.  Dave stayed silent too — perhaps confused, perhaps thinking about the young woman.

When I got home, I buried myself  under my covers, hoping the heavy blankets would keep me from falling apart. A friend had sent me a recording of Allen Ginsberg reading his poem, “America” and suggested that perhaps Thunderclap was “thunderstruck.” Surely this described the state of many of us that day. Ginsberg’s ghostly voice rose to meet me, “America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.”  I began to cry.

I returned to the clinic for Thunderclap. He lay on his side, motionless except for a faint heartbeat. I put my hand on his soft brown fur and said, “This is not how he usually acts.” The doctor rushed his little body back to the operating room but his heart gave out just as we reunited. He was gone.

That night, between sobs, I asked Dave to help me bury Thunderclap. He had done this once before for a wild rabbit I found dead last spring. So as the sun rose on a new day, I chose a spot under the mother tree in my yard.

As he began to dig the grave, Dave said, “My mother was a healer, my sister is a healer, but I didn’t learn it.”

“But you did, you are,” I said. Dave had helped his goats through difficult births, nursed the smallest baby rabbits in his pocket, and adopted neglected alpacas from a petting zoo. They trusted him. He used to tell me about his mother, of Cherokee descent, who was known for her remedies. She’d appear from time to time as a hummingbird fluttering around his newly planted trees. Dave tried to use his mother’s spirit teachings to heal himself from the demons and deaths that haunted him from childhood and years in the military.

            He stood over Thunderclap’s grave, uttering prayers in a language I did not recognize. As I gave thanks with my own grace and tears, I laid the body of my rabbit in the ground and covered him with leaves, flowers, and oats for his journey. Dave filled the grave and we placed my stone slabs from Death Valley over the spot to mark and protect it.

 After we finished, Dave hugged me and said, “I may not have much value, but I’m here for you.”

 “That is everything,” I said.

“Sometimes the things we love leave, and it is not up to us to say when it’s their time to go. The rabbits brought us together. They were born when you arrived and you needed them to heal. And before that, I was angry at the world, closed off. But when you started coming over to see the rabbits, I began to open up.”   

Around sunset, I went to Dave and Nancy’s house to hold Thunderclap’s mother, Nana. Nancy came out with a bowl of roasted vegetables for me to take home, which I appreciated in my state of ruin. She had a gift for taking care of others too, although she closed herself off more and more now, since she had been beaten by two mentally ill patients at a hospital where she was a nurse. They’d left her with broken bones, PTSD, and two missing front teeth. We sat out in front of the house as I held Nana, and without too much to say and watched orange evening glow disappear behind the mountains. I thanked them and went home.

I stayed in for three days, in a cloud of tears and rage. Finally, I went for a walk. Instead of ringing the bell at Dave and Nancy’s house, I tried to hurry by. As I turned my head, I saw their alpaca, my “soul sister,” looking at me, ears perked, from across the fence. I played a staring game with her, bending my fingers down like alpaca ears, trying to communicate without words. Slowly, a smile crept over my face – the first in days.

Dave emerged and saw me on the road.

“Are you okay?” he called.

“Yeah. No. I’m feeling better about Thunderclap, but I’m very angry about the election.” With my jaw half-clenched, I managed to say, “Thanks again to you and Nancy for all the support with Thunderclap. I really appreciate it.” Looking away, I turned back toward my house.

“Is that all?” he said.

I shook my head with a deep frown.

He said, “Just think of it like you were going into work that morning believing you were going to get a promotion, and then you showed up at work and didn’t get it. You don’t quit your job; you just have to wait.”

I didn’t know how to begin to tell him it was so much bigger than that. “Your candidate just decided to make a white supremacist the chief strategist of our country,” was all I could say. As I turned to walk away, my hands in fists, Dave muttered something about being beaten down all his life.

A few more days went by when I heard a knock on my door. Dave was holding a hat.

            “Is this yours?” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”  We walked out and stood by Thunderclap’s grave.

“Tell you what,” he said. “If you run for President, I’ll vote for you. I know you don’t believe me, but I will.”

“I do believe you!” I said. “You’re my friend! Of course, you’d vote for me.”

“I know you don’t believe me, but…” his voice trailing off. Small leaves from the willowy mother tree blew over the turquoise stones that mark Thunderclap’s grave. The sun came out. The desert has a way of reflecting light that reveals the world just as it is, unmasked. The sun forces us to be honest with ourselves.

I went to the store and bought “Pumpkin Brooklyn Babka” for Dave and Nancy as a thank-you gift. Nancy is from Brooklyn but hasn’t lived there since the 1960s, so I thought she might appreciate this gift. That evening, Dave delivered a bowl of vegan chili and warm cornbread, which he’d made for me and our other neighbor Linda, who was home sick with a cold.

December passed and we didn’t talk about politics. My rabbits and I missed Thunderclap dearly, but grew around the empty space of his absence like a tree. A baby alpaca was born and Nancy named her Noelle. On Christmas Day, a new litter of rabbits joined the family at the farm. During those weeks, rain fell in the desert nearly every day, carving small rivers through our land. For days the roads were nearly impassable.

The day before the Inauguration, I stopped by the farm see the baby rabbits. I considered adopting the little cinnamon-colored one for my mother as a 60th birthday present. I told Dave I was going to the Women’s March in Los Angeles on Saturday and asked if he was going to a march as well.

“I’m going to an Inauguration Day party. Invited by a Congressman. To represent veterans.”

“What do you want from this administration?”

“Jobs, economy, national security. Everything keeps getting more expensive. We need to pull out of some of the countries we’re in. I have a different perspective since I was in so many countries with the military.”

As he said this, a hummingbird appeared and began flying over Dave’s head.  It stopped mid-air, and flapped its wings vigorously about two feet from his nose.

“It’s your mother, Dave. She’s trying to join the conversation.”

“I know,” he said.

On Inauguration Day the rain fell in waves and it seemed we’d never see the sun again. I left my house to buy materials for a Women’s March sign. As I pulled out of my driveway, I noticed a dead bird in the middle of the road. Swerving around, I opened my door and peered out. It was a mourning dove in a soft grey coat, and an open wound near the heart. Two circles of blood stained the earth like roses at her side. In awe, I remembered I had been told by a wise woman to watch for bird omens.

A few hours later the bird was still in the road, its body waterlogged from the unrelenting storm.  Then dusk arrived, and the rain let up enough to gather the dove for a proper burial beneath the mother tree. As I dug a small hole below the willowy boughs, I told Thunderclap he would have a new friend. Sprinkling sage and rosemary over the dove, I laid her in the earth.

The deaths were bookends – Election Day, Inauguration Day. They haunted me. The despair and dread was so deep I questioned whether I should even go to the march. I whispered prayers as I painted my sign, “I BELIEVE IN THE POWER OF LOVING KINDNESS.”

The march brought me back from the grave, so I stayed in LA for a couple days.  While there, Dave sent me a text with an old photograph of his mother, with her curls, red lipstick, and a flower in her black hair. She looked at me with a shy smile.  He wrote, “This is my mother. She was a rebel and early feminist. She marched in LA in 1970 at the women’s strike for equality, with my sisters and I, in tow.  Please, never take my seeming indifference to modern feminism as a slight. I am fiercely proud of the select few women in my life. ‘I am a conundrum, wrapped in a mystery, buried in an enigma, and shrouded in confusion.’”

When I drove home the next day, I thought of Dave and his mother. What did it feel like to be a man with a broken body? To be crippled by memories of war, of the ones you killed because it was your job? What does it mean to be a veteran out of work with three trucks in your yard that won’t run?

I’m fortunate to have a car that runs, that can take me out of this end of the world place if need be. To where, I don’t know. But just knowing it will run, that I can run, is sometimes enough.

A few days later, the new president signed executive orders that hurt families and refugees and disavowed my American values. As feelings of deep destabilization and vulnerability ran like a current through my body and around the world, the birthing season for baby goats at the farm had begun. They arrived in pairs—fuzzy little bundles of hooves and ears and hearts that echoed the joy of places beyond. As I waited inside the fence to greet my tiny new neighbors, Dave emerged holding a cream colored newborn kid with a tiny pink nose. Holding it up to his chest, he said, “Amid all the debris swirling around our globe right now, there is just this moment. Just this moment.”