SHE KNOWS IT IS CHILDISH but cannot stop herself. Janet drove into her underground parking stall on Tuesday and saw the black garbage bag right at the end of her stall. Jumping to conclusions is her pet peeve about others, but she assumed that the bag had been placed there by the occupant of the right-hand stall since it sat closer to that side. She turned off her engine, grabbed her purse and her bottle of merlot, locked her Fiesta with her remote key, and then grabbed the bag and plunked it right down at the end of her neighbour’s stall. How dare someone dump their garbage on her! And now here it is back in front of her. She moves quickly this time. She puts the bag back in the right-hand stall and heads to the elevator before anyone sees her.
Inside her apartment, she takes off her boots, hangs up her jacket, and goes straight to the window. The window is where she goes to calm her nerves. She looks out across her balcony to the grove across the road, a small stretch of nature to the right of apartment buildings and between her and the strip mall. She spied mule deer foraging there in December. There is a hint of green on the tips of the trees. Maybe spring is coming after all. She ignores the apartments across from her. They extend more to the west. Windows are covered, curtains drawn, venetians closed; strangers are all trying to keep safe and secure, shutting out neighbourly probes.
She is cutting a chicken into parts and dropping skin and bones into her kitchen garbage when she suddenly wonders what might be in that black bag. She hadn’t bothered to check. She questions the state of her mind. When she cleaned out her car, after her granddaughters stayed, she put their wrappers and apple cores, along with cardboard from the trunk, into a black garbage bag. Has she forgotten that she set the bag temporarily against the wall? Is the garbage really hers? Is she losing a grip on her mind? No. She remembers taking it to the bins. It isn’t a difficult chore. So why would anyone leave their garbage to her? They are insulting her for sure.
If it happens again, if it is put back in her stall, she should open the bag just to see what is inside and look for clues about the owner. But as she imagines herself doing just that, she recoils and envisions herself with contaminated hands, with what she does not know.
Sure enough the bag is back the very next day, and this time there is a ripped piece of paper under her windshield wiper. Janet is heading to the South Health Lab, but gets back out of the car to retrieve it and read it even though she is running late. It is printed in awkward letters as though it was done in a hurry. This Is Not My Garbage! Do Not Put It In My Stall! She goes over a response in her mind. “Jumping to conclusions! It’s not mine either. Childish both ways you know.” She searches her purse at least three times so she can reply right away on the back of that paper and put it on the window of that neighbour’s van, but she can’t find her pen. Perhaps it is just as well. “Take your time this time,” she says to herself.
She is going to her appointment. She knows all about this routine, the callback, since she had surgery and radiation two years before. It is a different lab though. She has since moved from her house and neighbourhood of thirty years to an apartment further south. The complex is full of immigrants, including children and pets, who will move on to their Canadian dream homes as soon as they can, and young singles out of their parents’ homes for the very first time, plus a few like herself who have abandoned the dream and settled into apartment ennui.
The Health building is only three stories high, but it takes up a block in length and has more than one entrance. Janet is oblivious to signs giving her directions. She is still fuming about the bag. She parks and then once on foot she reads the signs and clips along to the lab at the other end of the parking lot, knowing she is late. Cool morning air refreshes her brain until she finds herself in the waiting room after all. She renews her angst over the bag of garbage. She cannot help herself.
She is used to stripping down to her waist and leaning against the cold metal machine while the technician positions each breast in turn between the parallel plates. The plates come together and compress the tissue as flat as flat can be until the buzzing sound tells her she is zapped by a remote with ionizing radiation. Experience comes with age for sure, but not with reassurance. She’ll treat this like any other day and deal with results on another day.
She heads straight back home and presses her own remote to enter the underground parking lot. Her neighbour’s van is gone. She could open the garbage bag and look inside, but she is repelled and cannot stand to touch it. She will go up to her apartment and get a pen. Better yet she’ll take the ripped paper upstairs and compose her response in a thoughtful way instead of her knee-jerk reaction.
Janet returns in the evening when she least expects direct confrontation. She places her polite reply—My Apologies, But It’s Not My Garbage Either—under the windshield wiper of the van, then notices the bumper sticker for the very first time. Thou Shalt Love Thy Neighbour As Thyself. Okay, she has a religious person on her hands. This was not on the van before. Is this little message just for her? Who does bumper stickers? Not anyone she knows well.
It is the Festival of Crafts at Stampede Park on Mother’s Day weekend, which Janet is spending alone. She is going to see the latest work of artisans and artists. She might pick up some exotic tea or a bag made from reclaimed leather or funky jewellery for her granddaughters. She has stopped looking at jewellery for herself. But first she checks out the paintings. Though she’s retired from The Gallery, she likes to imagine who she would pick for a showing. Next to a display of Rocky Mountain watercolours is a booth called Fun Laser Designs. This is not exactly art to her, and of all things they sell bumper stickers. She is not an impulse buyer, but this is pure serendipity. Starting on the left side of a sticker, This Is Earth is printed in blue letters. In the middle is the Earth orb with green continents and blue oceans, and on the right is Not Uranus. Keep It Clean. She whispers it to herself. “This is earth, not Uranus. Keep it clean.”
It is hard to explain her joy and urgency to go home and clean off her bumper. Maybe she needs new avenues for self-expression. She presses the sticker to the right side of her bumper as it will be closer to the van and more likely to be seen. She is aware that the bag of garbage is still on her side but decides to leave it alone.
Upstairs she prepares frozen shrimp for her stir-fry and listens to “Black Magic Woman” by Santana. She lifts each shrimp out of the bowl of cold water, pulls off the legs, and peels back the shells. Heads snap off too. Then she holds the bodies and pulls off the tails. What would an x-ray of a shrimp look like? She cuts down the backs with her paring knife and pulls out digestive tracts with a toothpick. Sometimes she has trouble getting it all. Each time she drops refuse into the kitchen garbage she envisions the bag down in the parking lot. What would an x-ray of that bag reveal? She puts on Harry Nilsson’s “I Can’t Live” instead of Santana, pours a glass of pinot grigio, and sings along while she throws shrimp in proper turn with veggies into the sizzle.
On Sunday morning Janet goes to her car, though she does not have a destination in mind. Nothing has changed in either stall. The bag still sits in hers. She might as well go on to the drive-through at Tims to get a French-vanilla coffee. She is drawn to bumper stickers on cars as never before. The Mazda in front says Pay It Forward, and the driver lives up to its slogan. Her coffee is paid for, says the girl at the window. “How nice,” she mutters and lurches forth, then realizes she could have repeated the favour.
As days go by Janet has to remind herself to pay attention to traffic, as she is now compelled to look for and read every bumper sticker on the road. And each time she pulls into her stall she is reminded to do something about the bag. For one last time she sets it right on the dividing line. It could belong to either side.
She is not disappointed. The van responds. What Would Buddha Do? The background is a rainbow of colours, and a green Buddha sits on the left of the white letters. But wait. The last message came from the Bible. Where is the conviction?
Janet heads out to the location for Decals and Signs. She found directions on the internet while ignoring the mail that sits on her counter. It is mostly impersonal anyway except maybe the one from Diagnostics. The shop is in a light industrial area, and the woman behind the desk is mainly taking calls or working the computer. She looks up at Janet in surprise.
“I’m looking for bumper stickers,” says Janet.
“What did you have in mind?”
“Well, that depends. I’ll know it when I see it. I thought you would have some on display.”
“We have a catalogue. You can have a look. What kind of business is it for?”
“Not exactly a business. A project, I guess you could say.”
She sits in the one leather chair by the window and flips through the pages. There must be some logic, some kind of catalogue order, but Janet is unable to figure it out. And she can’t bring herself to ask for assistance. She is about to give up when she reads the motto, Never Give Up with the line underneath, Hope-Love-Care, punctuated with a pink ribbon. Okay, she will continue a little longer. Perhaps this is a sign.
She writes three possibilities down, along with their order number. If You Change Nothing, Nothing Will Change is printed in bold black letters. Don’t Believe Everything You Think is in purple italics, and the third sticker has Caution printed within a yellow triangle followed by This Vehicle Is A Transformer. That last one could be perceived only as a reference to a toy, and the neighbour may miss her meaning, so she strikes it out. She settles on getting just two.
“You’ve made a choice?”
“Yes.”
“Good. How many would you like? They come in bundles of fifty but are cheaper by the hundred.”
“Oh.” She is embarrassed to back out. “I guess I’ll just take the one in a bundle of fifty. Number six three oh five. Don’t believe everything you think.”
“Pardon me?”
“The sticker says don’t believe everything you think.”
“Oh,” the woman laughs and Janet laughs too.
As soon as she reaches her apartment, she opens the package, gets two rags, one damp and one dry, and goes back down to buff her bumper clean, especially on the left side where she affixes her new sticker, Don’t Believe Everything You Think, right next to This Is Earth, Not Uranus. Keep It Clean. It feels good to accomplish things each day. The black bag still sits on the border.
It is the next afternoon and the van is still parked. The bumper already has its stickers but above, right next to the licence plate, is a new sticker: I’m With Nietzsche! But how does that fit with a Christian commandment and an allusion to the teachings of Buddha? Is this an accusation of false ethics? She knows she has been childish and maybe a little crazy but never with mean intent. She moves to open the bag after all, in case it holds some wicked truth, and then she will take it to the bins. How could she know that once her mind was made up the option would be gone? How could she know that the bag would be gone?
This Easter Janet is cooking a stuffed turkey for her daughter and granddaughters and some old neighbourhood friends. She will extend her table for the first time since her move to this apartment. It is a day that she hopes they will cherish. She has sorted her jewellery to give to the girls instead of what she might have bought at the Festival of Crafts. She won’t explain her affair with bumper stickers.
It is late morning. She pulls out the heart and the liver and kidneys as well as the frozen neck and drops them into the kitchen garbage. This is typical North American waste, but she has no patience for cooking parts that were repackaged in an otherwise empty cavity. Her hands are cold and have a touch of raw turkey juice on them. She washes them under the tap with dish detergent. The letter from Diagnostics is still unopened on the ledge above the sink, and she has yet to return her doctor’s call. She is listening to Procol Harum. She never remembers all the lyrics but joins in on a certain repeated line about a ghostly face turning pale.
She suddenly remembers that she has left a package of sage on the passenger seat of her car, so she takes the elevator down to the parking lot. Her neighbour with the van is gone for good. Strange that they never met. A couple with a Kia Soul hatchback, fixed with a toddler car seat in the back, parks there now. It has one small bumper sticker. Albania. She guesses they are starting a new life in a new country but are missing their old home. Now what can she do with that?