Little Boxes

Ashli Wilson

I hate little boxes. All of those dull yellow walls keep leaning in over my shoulder to see me check the little box no. No, I don’t have health insurance and these quack-tail doctors don’t care why. I can’t stand these visits to the doctor’s office. I come in tired of visiting and leave tired of visiting. I get tired of thumbing through the same raggedy Highlights magazine from spring 1979. I get tired of that little receptionist lady not remembering me—and she know that nobody else come up in here with a big old broach like this on. The broach got a big old “B” on it and her slanted little eyes fall right on it every visit. What I’m most tired of is the chemo. Lawd Jesus this chemo make me tide like momma used to say T-I-D-E, tide. I hate the doctor’s office and these little boxes cause they make my mind tired.

So many little boxes make my mind tired of remembering that the same animal that’s eating my body up ate my momma to death in ’79. I can’t stand these things like I used to couldn’t stand gum on the bottom of my shoe on those hot Yanceyville, North Carolina afternoons. Just like that gum, these little boxes are lint-covered and catch everything as each day goes by. Little boxes are sticky and I can’t for the life of me escape them things. It’s just so many of them, one after another.

Dr. Soriano try to do his part and make my visit pleasant. He grip all those metal tools in his little Asian palm for a few minutes so that I won’t jump when he poke at me. He leave me in the room for 30 minutes rather than 15 so that Miss Bea can get good and ready in her paper dress. Dr. Soriano don’t make me put my clothes in no corner either. He let me sit them on a counter right in front of me, especially my broach that momma gave me. He ease his palm around my body to feel for lymph nodes and swelling and the whole time his spirit whispering, “Even if you scared, I’m here to help.”

It’s those little boxes at the end of the treatment that makes me feel some type of way about life. I feel so drained after my treatment that I hardly can finish that survey. I am kind of curious about those breast cancer survivor groups and how powerful those ladies look after beating this mess. Technology is going to carry man some way cause everyday something new is coming out. I didn’t believe that the doctor had all of those “real looking” fake titties. Lawd ha’ mercy on my soul! The nurse bust out laughing when I clench my eyes touching them saltwater sacks. I clench my eyes ’cause I remember clenching them 20 years ago when I seen momma with that lamb’s wool stuffed in the left cup of her bra. I clench my eyes because I ain’t never want anybody to clench they eyes at seeing me. That cute light-skinned nurse remind me of them girls at the school that I work at. She say, “Miss Beatrice, prosthetics are only a consideration. That’s all, just a consideration but we’re gonna beat this.” She so cute and she from somewhere citified and crazy. She pronounce my name Bee-At-Trice, I try to tell her how to say it but we just fall out laughing and she end up calling me Bea.

My nametag at the job just say Bea too. The little box at the job hurt me so much some time. The little box is like my window to they world while I wait for their plates and scraps to come on down the belt. Sometimes I see some real high model-type pumps. Then other times I see a girl just eating a cucumber and some water. All that good cookin’ we serve and they just waste it. They send the mashed potatoes and gravy back on the belt but sneak fruit for days out in their designer bags. My momma would roll over in her grave if she saw how little some of them eat. But I guess they trying to catch Buster while they in college. A lot of them probably come from them boxed-in places that I never seen. When I’m on my break and resting my eyes in the back, them girls sound like the news talking so clear and proper: “Tomorrow, I am cutting red meat out of my diet! I feel so heavy!” I giggle to myself in hopes of catching a look at the skinny heifer yelling that mess. The strips over the belt don’t let me see they faces all the time but even when I do it’s something too exciting going on somewhere else and they attention go there. Some of them look me in my eye for a split second to make me know that the boxed-in group that they from is not used to meeting eyes with “the help.” I be thinking, “Don’t be shamed girl! We both got mouths and I know how to say hi!” Every once in a while one of them will smirk to kind of let me know she pleasant but for the most part I stay looking out into their little box from my little box.

When I was on the way home on the #55 bus, I dropped my favorite broach and it broke. The two parts of the B came together after breaking and it made a circle. Looking at that oval on the ground made me sad and happy at the same time. I was sad that I broke the broach and happy that I could see that oval. I was happy that, for once, life sent me a sign not in the form of a box. The oval looked like all of the world’s little boxes would look if I slipped my homegrown, fatback-fed southern hips in them. My broken broach reminded me that me, Beatrice did not have to fit into nobody’s little boxes. I remembered that I ain’t got to answer to nobody, not even the people who made the little boxes. My Lawd made the biggest box ever and he got room for all of us in it. Nothing can force me to live a little box life, not breast cancer, not chemo, not nothing. Bruce was driving that bus today boy! We sped down Main and I was smilin’ and cryin’ at my oval like I seen Christ himself! They try to play mind tricks with them boxes and try to make me feel like I’m outside of something. I don’t care anymore ’cause them boxes don’t have the real power to put me nowhere. Bruce turned his fan at a angle and said, “Miss Bea, you warm?” I told him no and asked him to stop me at the Women’s Center on 3^rd street so that I could go see what them survivor ladies was talking about. Maybe they would want to hear about the new Bea.

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