The Purple Mango Post |
Photographs, dispatches and writing by freelance journalist Corinne Purtill |
Photo: Cheryl Evans, copyright The Arizona Republic
I first heard of Stephanie Nielson and her blog, the NieNie Dialogues, when I was living in Tempe, Arizona, not far from where she lived with her husband and four children. (This woman had four children by the time she was 28 and still dresses cute - that alone blows my mind.) I started reading her blog regularly last fall after she was the subject of a beautifully-written profile by the Arizona Republic's Jaimee Rose.
London, England.
I spent yesterday rushing around preparing for a trip, trying to stay two steps ahead of that gnawing feeling that there aren't enough hours to do all that needs doing. Today, my flight was cancelled. Now there's nothing to do but write, cook, stay home and enjoy the intermittent rain outside. Sometimes a change in plans is an unexpected blessing.
Central Park, NYC, 2009.
I thank You God for most this amazing day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes (i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth day of life and love and wings:and of the gay great happening illimitably earth) how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any--lifted from the no of all nothing--human merely being doubt unimaginable You? (now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
e.e. cummings
Venus de Milo, Louvre, Paris.
"What do you do with a BA in English?" sings a mournful puppet in the opening scene of Avenue Q.
Latest update: I received a call this evening from a general manager at MTA who received my report. He was very professional, and very concerned about the behavior we saw. He is opening an investigation into this incident and apologized for what we witnessed (and overrode the bullsh*t "sorry, no badge number" response). It took a while, but this response makes me feel a lot better about MTA. (And from now on, no kid rides the subway with me unless he keeps a death grip on my hand!)
We were riding the southbound V train. The doors had just closed and the train was pulling away from 34th Street station when we heard shouting from one end of the car. A 5-year-old boy had become separated from his mother on the platform and had accidentally boarded the train without her. Now he was alone, and very frightened. I took his hand and my husband and I exited the train with him at the next stop, 23rd Street, so that we could seek help from MTA employees.
On the platform, several other passengers tried to alert the driver of the train that there was a lost child. Though there's no way the driver didn't hear a platform full of passengers shouting about a lost child and pointing to a very lost-looking little boy, he drove off without pausing to call for help. (Despite massive failure on the grown-ups' part, by the way, this little boy was a champ. He knew his name, age and mom's cell phone number, and hardly shed a tear the whole time.) We then walked through the turnstiles to the station agent and informed him that the boy with us was lost. The station agent’s exact words were, “What do you want me to do about it?” We asked him to call 34th Street station; he said that was not possible. He said that his only option was to call the police, something that he seemed very reluctant to do. The station agent was so unhelpful that another passenger overhearing the exchange, a father who later said he just kept imagining his son in that situation, walked to the pay phone and made the call to the police that the station agent was so unwilling to make. By the time that the boy’s mother had arrived at 23rd Street station to find her son (and the other passenger had nearly finished making his report), my husband was still unsuccessfully trying to get the station agent to call the police. From the agent's demeanor, I honestly believe we could have walked right out of the station with the kid and he would have done nothing about it. Lost children must be common within the subway system. Does MTA not have a plan to protect children lost in the subway, or did these employees not follow procedure? Neither option is okay. MTA's own marketing campaign urges passengers to contact MTA employees when a safety issue arises. We did, and were appalled by the response.
Shakespeare & Co., Paris
Meknes, Morocco.
No. Not tonight. I don’t have the strength. Come on, laundry card machine. Be cool. Just do this for me once, and I swear I won’t be back for another three weeks. Please. Please just accept this ten-dollar bill, and credit it to my card, and let me go wash my undies.
I don’t get what your problem is. You’re an 18 by 12 inch metal box in the basement of my building, the same color as the wall. Your sole function in this world is to accept ten- and twenty-dollar bills – only ten- and twenty-dollar bills! – and magically transfer their value to the little plastic card that goes into the washing machine. It’s not a hard job. You are not asked for much. And yet every three weeks I stand before you powerless, futilely hoping I’ve at last found a bill that meets your unattainably high standards. I run my fingers over them like they are the Queen’s linens, unfurling the corners and smoothing imaginary wrinkles out of Andrew Jackson’s visage, and you spit my money back out like a petulant child. Is this a power trip for you? Do you need to show the Coke machine that you’re a big deal too? What?
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. Please, don’t reject this one – damn.
You don’t know what I went through to get you this ten. Not to get ten dollars – this ten-dollar bill. I had three fives and four singles in my wallet. Enough for nine loads of laundry, by my count. But that’s not good enough for you. Only tens and twenties for my wall-mounted princess. I went to a Duane Reade, a CVS and two delis before I found someone willing to part with a Hamilton.
And it’s laundry day. Do you know how a bodega cashier looks at you when you roll up in your husband’s last clean undershirt and the gym shorts with the saggy seat, rambling on about a ten-dollar bill? Like you’re a crackhead. He looks at you like you want that money for illegal drugs. It’s not fun.
Looky here. This little sticker says that soon you’ll only take the “new” bills. Oh, that’s rich.
Okay. I am going to try this one last time. I am going to smooth this bill as flat as a new dryer sheet. I am going to take a deep breath and feed it to you one more time, edges perfectly perpendicular to your surface. I will accept the things I cannot change, and pray for the wisdom not to rip you from the wall if this doesn't work.
Oh my God. You took it. Thank you. Thank you! You don’t know what this means to me. I’m going to do my laundry. I’m going to stake out that corner washer, load it to the brim with socks and t-shirts, and God help anyone in this building who opens up the lid before the spin cycle is finished.
Except I just realized something.
I’m out of detergent.
Corinne Purtill is a freelance journalist whose writing has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Orange County Register, the Arizona Republic and Stanford Magazine. She has reported from Cambodia, South Africa and the Mexican border, and her photography has been featured at the International Center in New York and the Newburg (Mo.) Children's Museum. She is currently at work on a non-fiction book about one indigenous family's amazing fight for survival in the Khmer Rouge's Cambodia.
For freelance writing and editing inquiries, please contact corinne.purtill at gmail dot com.
Please view my photography gallery at RedBubble.
Why Purple Mango? In Khmer, the same word - svay - can mean either the color purple or the mango fruit.* To a journalist, it's a reminder that there are many different ways to interpret a single event, and that there are often surprising connections between us.
(*It also means syphilis, but that's less charming.)
Photo: Susan Whitney-Wilkerson
