She sits alone under the carport, a shield from the downpour that surrounds her. She’s older, but not elderly, and “slightly overweight” – something she says her recent back surgery caused. I’ve talked to her once before, and she explained that the pool gave her relief from her pains, both physical and emotional.
“Floating supports my back,” she told me, “and going under keeps everything in my head quiet.”
A couple of months ago she told me about her mental state and how her ex-husband had pushed her to driving a shard of glass into his stomach. He survived, and she was left with a scar in her palm (she held her hand up to show me – there was no scar). Psychiatrists had prescribed her a number of pills to take daily, but according to her they’re doing more harm than good. She says they add voices, rather than remove them. Her family is the root of her problem, she tells me, “The bane of her very existence” — having cut her off from grandchildren and financial support. She now lives with her daughter and grandson – the only two people that haven’t yet abandoned her. She explains that were it not for them, she would not be alive today.
She once told me that this, her current existence, is hell.
She sits under the carport smoking one cigarette after another after another. Even from my spot, some twenty feet away, she appears blank. Maybe it’s the gloomy weather, but she seems more depressed than usual today. On occasion I’ll see her outside smoking, usually standing and pacing – today she’s sitting in a purple lawn chair, staring into the many thousands of raindrops falling in front of her.
Four cigarettes, and she consumes each one down to the butt. Hot orange tip after hot orange tip.
After she finishes her last cigarette, she reaches for another but the box is empty. She sets it back down on the little square table to her left side, and proceeds to dump the ashes into the little patch of grass that would – I suppose – be called her front lawn. It’s no larger than three feet wide by five feet long.
Even without cigarettes, she remains seated for the next ten minutes, staring idly into the rain. When she attempts to breathe in, her first real breath I’ve seen while watching her, she coughs. Hard enough to make her bend over and hold her chest, but not hard enough to make her go inside. I rarely see her outside, so I’m not sure if the cigarettes are what’s killing her or if, ironically, it’s the fresh air.
The People Watcher 