It Chooses You (4 page)

Authors: Miranda July

Tags: #Essays, #Interviews, #PennySaver, #Film

BOOK: It Chooses You

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That night I wrote down: (1) Each day is a gift , and, (2) Look for the rainbow . Gift. Rainbow. Primila was a hellcat, breaking down doors and threatening officials with eternal damnation. She had adopted four kids and had three four-legged grandchildren. I crossed out clues one and two. These were obviously decoy messages. Of course the truth wouldn’t be sweetly concealed in a motto, because I wasn’t Hansel or Gretel. My inquiry was open-ended, but it wasn’t pretend, I wasn’t in a fairytale or a fable. I shut my eyes and absorbed the silent whoomp that always accompanies this revelation. It’s the sound of the real world, gigantic and impossible, replacing the smaller version of reality that I wear like a bonnet, clutched tightly under my chin. It would require constant vigilance to not replace each person with my own fictional version of them.

PAULINE & RAYMOND

—

LARGE SUITCASE
$20

—

GLENDALE

—

Pauline had been eager on the phone; she’d begun telling me about her life even before I asked the question or offered the fifty dollars. She lived in a pretty part of Glendale, my ex-boyfriend’s neighborhood. As I exited at the familiar exit, I thought what if it was the same street, the same house, what if it was him selling the suitcase, what if the suitcase was mine, something I’d forgotten, and what if I bought it and inside there was myself as a child or my dad as a child, or my child as a child, the one I hadn’t found time to have yet? But my ex-boyfriend’s name wasn’t Pauline, so we drove right past his street and parked on one a few blocks away. The house was big and grand, again. Pauline was in her seventies, and she immediately began showing me pictures and telling me stories about her amateur singing group, the Mellow Tones.

Pauline: We sang “Two Sleepy People,” “Hello Dolly”…

Miranda: What’s this photo where you’re holding the gun?

Pauline: Oh, that’s me — oh, yeah. Well, in other words, you could call me a ham. That’s my Cohan medley — I forgot the name of what I sang. “Hello My Honey,” I guess. I can still sing but I had an operation on my ear because of a little growth and it turned out to be two cancer cells. So they had to dig harder. And somewhere along the line, I lost some of my hearing and so it comes out foggy for me. I don’t know what I sound like. So I dropped out of the singing groups I was in.

Miranda: So it’s your suitcase that you’re selling through the PennySaver ?

Pauline: The suitcase? Oh, yes, I have it in the hallway. Do you want to see it?

Miranda: Maybe we should see it.

Pauline: Of course, that’s what you came for.

I nodded but shrugged, to suggest that my reasons for coming were ever-evolving and expanding.

Miranda: Why are you selling it?

Pauline: Well, when my daughter and grandson moved in, a lot of things had to be sold. She said, “Where are you going to make room for my stuff?” So I had to get rid of a lot of my books and condense everything. I’ve sold sheets — bedsheets — and mattresses. I’ve sold paintings. What else did I sell? The bed.

Miranda: How do you place the ads? Do you have a computer?

Pauline: I call it in. I write up an ad — there’s a special way of doing it, you get only so many words. The PennySaver will advertise your item for free if it’s under a hundred dollars. So that’s a big boost. But to sell one item at a time, it takes forever.

Miranda: And so when did your daughter and grandson move in?

Pauline: About two or three years already. Or four?

Raymond: Seven years.

This was Pauline’s grandson — he had appeared out of nowhere. He was in his mid-thirties and wore a hearing aid. A very skinny dog wearing a striped rugby shirt followed him into the room.