This is an original story written more than ten years ago when Hubby and I first moved to Las Vegas, which was–and still is–growing leaps and bounds. It will be offered here as a sub-page. For now I offer it here because–like Mabel and Girl in the story–it has no other place to go. This is my very insignificant twist on James Thurber’s “Walter Mitty” story.
Mabel has waltzed with her vacuum cleaner every morning for as long as she can remember. She goes through the same routine daily, wondering if she isn’t slowly being suffocated by her kitchen where she seems to spend an inordinate amount of time. Outside is another sunny day just like any one of some three-hundred other days exactly the same in that valley, blue sky day following blue sky day.
Somewhere around the sixth month after Mabel and her husband had moved there, after the house was all unpacked and everything put away, a comfortable yet dull consciousness settled over her like a shawl. She felt warm and sheltered, yet sometimes she can barely stifle the need to know what lies beyond the blue of that cloudless sky, the rim of those majestic mountains. She yearns to feel again that slithering shiver of not knowing the next move, that quick tightening in the gut that reminds you that you are still alive.
She knows the world out there is dangerous. She knows because she reads the paper and watches TV. Every morning of every day, she bobbles in and out of chores and all day news bites on Cable. She may be a housewife, but she is a housewife who is up to date on things out there in the world.
Her husband has long since finished his coffee and gone to his office. Long since taken the sandwich she packed him, the usual bologna on white bread with mayonnaise and leaf lettuce with one grilled onion slice next to the mayonnaise. Long since picked out the ripest banana on the rack, and stuffed them all, along with a 2 ounce bag of chips, into a recycled brown bag with Arby’s printed on the side to take with him. The peck on her cheek had dried even before he’d backed his car into the street and driven away to that world little known to her, corporate America. As he’d turned the corner he gave her a little wave of his hand, just as he did every morning.
She has finished the paper and relieved the kitchen counter of its breakfast and late night snack clutter. TV voices keep her company when her mind isn’t sifting through ideas for a balanced dinner. Or planning parties she knows she’ll never throw, because to have parties you must have friends. Her friends are always everywhere else but here.
The dog she calls Girl grunts her boredom, barely penetrating Mabel’s consciousness just as that commercial she hates comes on: the one where the obnoxious 30 year old “little girl” extols the virtues of her favorite grape juice. Sometimes she purely hated that television.
“All right, Girl, we’ll just go take your little walk now,” she says, giving the patient pooch a pat on the head. Girl jumps up and smiles a tongue hanging smile. “Then we’ll come back, have a nice little lunch and tidy up before Daddy comes home.”
The rhythmic scoosch scoosch noise her thick rubber bottomed shoes make as they saunter over the sidewalk are as familiar to her as the mole on her cheek, the baby fine hairs on her head. She feels no need to change her walk to a more refined one in this, the autumn of her Life. She plods ahead, confident her feet will take her where she needs to go.
Girl trots in front, happy to be free of the confines of the small house with the even smaller back yard. She knows she will be allowed off leash when her mistress is certain there are no bad things in the park, when no one is in sight who can remind her of the leash law in the city.
Not far from the entrance, Mabel passes a man engaged by the city to keep the landscape trimmed and in good repair. As she does every day, she bids him good morning. He tips his hat and nods, then whistles at Girl, who, free of her leash now, ignores his friendly entreaties and runs ahead, pausing here and there to sniff the base of every street lamp, every shrub, every wayward pile of doggie poop.
Next to the playground, the dog stops to scarf up a small piece of gnawed chicken that didn’t quite make it into the trash bin. Mabel scolds her for this errant behavior because it gives poor Girl’s delicate stomach gas. The scolding is paused abruptly as Mabel notes the staccato pounding of hammers pounding wood. Mabel and Girl simultaneously turn their heads towards the sound.
Every day new houses are going up along the park trail. Armies of dark, short men work-furiously pounding and sawing behind the walls lining the park trail. A new subdivision has begun, bounded on all sides by stucco fences, connected to other subdivisions that have their own stucco fences. Each one is gated and locked against intrusion by outsiders, but the park is open to anyone.
Mabel hates walking through this part. She hates feeling as though she’s on a gang plank, walking toward a roiling sea. She feels as though she’s a sacrifice to the scrutiny of common workers. Men who can’t speak English, much less read a newspaper or a book, or have an intelligent conversation.
A shirtless man stands high on the compressed wooden base of what will become a porch roof. She has to arch her head upwards to look at him. He props against the outer wall of the house, and drags languidly on a cigarette looking towards her. A car sits curbside beyond, its radio tuned up loud to be heard from the street. The shrill cries of crows vie with the radio for attention.
The workers all wear caps pulled low on their heads. Noses, ears and mouths are all that she can see. Above brown bodies in cut-offs and khaki work pants, sweaty teeshirts stretch tight across their backs. They speak to each other in a language she cannot understand. Laugh with a leer she doesn’t comprehend.
The one with the cigarette flicks it between his fingers, letting it fall to the ground still lit. Two men on the ground push themselves up from their work and turn toward her. One of them takes a tentative step forward. Another raucous comment comes from somewhere up above. More leering. More laughter, uproarious this time.
Mabel wonders how she would feel if it were dark now instead of the middle of the morning. She picks up Girl’s leash, and quickens her pace. The park bench that offers refuge to read her latest romance and dream of adventure in the exotic places in which the heroine finds herself is just ahead. Pebbles have drifted from the rocky landscape to litter the sidewalk. They seem to rise as big as boulders beneath her feet just as an invisible hand sweeps across the sky with a broad black brush turning Mabel’s world black.
Blanca means white in Spanish. This much she knows because of Casa Blanca. Her mind struggles with the incongruent spelling. It must be a mistake. Blanca is black! What a stupid thing to think of at a time like this, now that you’re about to be ravaged, a faraway voice shouts in Mabel’s head.
The hammering stops. She hears no sound other than Girl, barking from a distance. Hot breath scans her face as they come closer. Her visor with “state fair” embroidered on it in gold threads is ripped off. They toss it among them, some laughingly put it to their foreheads.
The one with the cigarette appears from the sky onto the ground now. He grabs the visor, puts it on and struts around singing in a taunting voice. He throws it at her feet and spits out, contemptuously, “Rich Bitch!”
Mabel feels her face grow hot as she hears the front of her blouse rip. A pearl button pops, propelling itself like a pea-sized cannon through the air. Now he will grab her brassiere and wrench her towards him with one hand while the other pulls at the zipper of her slacks. Such long fingers! He will hurl her to the ground in the midst of the other men, who are now circling around them chanting in wicked tongues.
Meanwhile, the workers pause, their ears assaulted by an earth shattering screech from the park below. EEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeee . . . if you’re going to kill me, at least kill me in English. They look down from their places on the rooftop toward the park trail at the white woman, now crouching on her hands and knees. She holds a pearl button pinched between her thumb and forefinger. A sun visor lies nearby.
Mabel, intoxicated by the enormity of her peril, thinks confusedly of Girl. Does Girl understand that her mistress is being raped by men using a language neither of them knows? What if they tie her up and throw her into the trunk of a car? The getaway car they will abandon in the parking lot of an airport, where she will call out plaintively every time she hears footsteps approach. Her cries will not be heard, of course. In time she will wriggle her hands from bondage and her fingernails, long and red, will claw through the spongy lining of her tin coffin. She will lie there, dying, yearning to hear speech she comprehends.
The workers continue to stand there blinking, looking sheepishly at each other, not knowing what to do. They do not understand English. To offer assistance, they will have to jump the stucco fence that separates them. Each waits for the others to make the first move.
Girl lunges forward, jumping on Mabel, making little yelping noises. Down Girl, you’ll muss my clothes. Mabel pushes Girl away. What will people think? She turns and glares at the workers, who turn away now in embarrassment, and go back to their hammering.
With some effort, Mabel pushes herself upright and rises, red-faced, from the ground. Nothing is broken. She reaches down and, with all the dignity a rich bitch can muster, she attaches the leash to Girl’s collar. She stands up, shifts her shoulders, straightens the front of her blouse, and walks on to the safety of her bench refuge.
