Be Prepared, Vol. XI, Issue 2, June 2001
Writing from the Chicago Commons Employment Center and the Jane Addams Resource Corporation

This issue of JOT features writing from two organizations preparing people for work. Purchase a copy for $5.

This piece can be heard read by the author on NWA's first audio CD, "JOT Out Loud." Contact us for more information!

Be Prepared
by S. L. House

It had been a bad night all around. It’d rained for hours, then the restaurant was so loud I couldn’t hear Mark talking. I could see his lips moving, but had no idea what he was saying. I just kept smiling and nodding and he didn’t seem to notice or care. Of course, with the ugly black boxes all strapped with peeling duct tape that was the sound system, and the crazy mariachi singers with three trumpets, maybe he couldn’t hear me, either.

Then, the people at the table behind us got into a fight and one woman whacked the other with a bottle. A man chased the attacker out while she repeatedly slapped him, yelling, “Hijo de puta!” “Son of a bitch!”

When he came back and saw the other woman was bleeding, he shouted, “Call the police, stop her!” Waiters were running all around and everything was totally crazy.

“Let’s go.” I said to Mark. He agreed.

As we were leaving, an ambulance was wailing its way up Ashland, three police cars were parked in the street, and a fire engine was bearing down on us. “What’s on fire?” Mark asked. I didn’t know, and neither of us cared enough to go back and look. We went to the bus stop.

At least it had quit raining.

We got off the bus at Clark. Mark went south and I caught a bus north. At Montrose, I waited and waited for my connection, but I’d missed the last bus, so I decided to take a cab. I was tired, it was chilly and damp, and the night had been too weird.

It took awhile, but a cab finally loomed into view. I crossed the street to flag it before it got to Montrose. Instead of pulling up to the curb, the cabbie stopped in the middle of the street and when I went to open the door, it was locked. “Open this door,” I snarled.

Instead of unlocking the door, he leaned over, opened the window just a crack, and somehow got his lips up to the opening. “Are you alive?” he asked in a quivery voice.

“Of course I’m alive,” I snapped back, “I’m just old, not dead. Now OPEN UP!”

The lock clicked open and I yanked on the door’s handle. As I slid into the back seat, the driver said in a dark voice, “I’ve got salt up here, just in case.”

What am I? A nut magnet? “Yeah? Well, I’ve got salt in my kitchen just in case I cook something. Now quit acting like a damned fool and take me home.” I was getting really tired of difficult people.

Now there’s a big cemetery at the corner of Clark and Montrose, but in a city like Chicago, dead people are just about the last folks I worry about. However, the driver seemed to think differently. Once he’d decided that I wasn’t gonna hurt him, he cleared his voice and looked into his rearview mirror, “I hadda make sure you weren’t that there ghost that’s along here.”

Aha, how silly of me not to have thought of that. Resurrection Mary is supposed to have been a young woman who died on her prom night, or maybe it was her wedding night, or her confirmation. Anyway, she died wearing a white gown. She was young and beautiful. The legend says that she sort of drifts around that stretch of Clark Street, looking ethereal and lovely. She wears her white gown and sometimes gets into cars with men. She never speaks, just rides with the guy a little ways, then dissolves.

A comely, silent woman willing to hop in with some lonely guy has always sounded too much like a male fantasy for me to give it any serious thought. Yet, here was a cabbie, a grown man who makes his living allowing strangers to pay to get into his car, scared silly of me. I could certainly understand his fear. After all, I was a grumpy, middle-aged woman wearing purple and black, and fussing nonstop. It’s only natural that he’d mistake me for good old Mary.

But what was that salt threat all about?

Later, I told a friend who likes to read the ghostly legends of the area and she was able to explain the salt. “If a witch is chasing you,” she said, “you should throw a handful of salt in front of her. She’ll have to stop and count each grain before she can continue. You’ll have time to escape.”

Aha! A witch. He was a lot closer with that idea.

© 2001 Neighborhood Writing Alliance
All rights revert to the authors.