Nonfiction

Our second evening in Budapest, my need presses as if we are new lovers. I keep checking my watch for the magic hour, but it’s all magic: the wish, the tickets, the flight whisking us to this land where we thrive on cake and paprika. A breeze foretells clouds, drizzle, downpours. This is our last clear night, our last chance to see the panoramic shimmer that caught my attention in a magazine five thousand miles and many months ago. In the dusk I vibrate with anticipation and triumph. We are here, we are finding our way, it is as gorgeous as the photos. We pass regal stone lions and walk the great span of the Chain Bridge over the fast, deep Danube. As we make our way up Buda Hill, both shores of the city begin to glimmer. It’s impossible to say if we’re walking toward a fairytale, or away. On the hilltop, it seems a thousand candles have turned everything warm and long-shadowed: cathedral windows, stone columns, sculpted knights. I want to say majestic, but who talks like that? I settle for reaching for your hand.

At home, I have learned about the golden hour and the magic hour, even if the vistas I photograph aren’t often as splendid as the one we’re about to see. The golden hour, just before sunset or after sunrise, bathes the scene in the yellow of egg yolks and marigolds and is best used in nature photography. The magic hour, just after sunset or before sunrise, softens the night sky with pink and gold and blue hues. In a photograph, these hues somehow amplify and blend to make the most of urban settings, of a city’s architecture and lights. The golden and magic hours are misnomers; neither actually lasts sixty minutes. But magic—a power, a spell, an influence, a very pleasant or exciting quality—is the aptly named filter of my yearning. Though I know this city, like my city, like most cities, has a complicated, sometimes violent history.

High above the river, my scarf flutters loose again across my face, obstructing my vision. I can’t forget I’m a tourist in sturdy shoes, but here, in this place of parapets and turrets, I’m also a queen. In the semi-shelter of Fisherman’s Bastion, an ornate fortification built in the late 1800s on the foundation of a real castle a thousand years old, we find a nook out of the wind. Like dozens of people around us and millions before us, we find a clear view to the eastern shore. We wait minutes, and more minutes, for the Earth to turn, for the night sky to deepen, for time to tick. Finally, somewhere deep in the digital boiler room of Budapest, a switch trips. Electrons flow. Across the river a thousand lights begin their faint blooming, the bloom rising and rising until the grand buildings glow. In the glow would you kiss me if I waited? I have my way, as every queen will.

At home in suburban middle Tennessee, the river is lovely but shallow, the lush land is flat, the horizon’s often hidden by buildings and trees. In other words, it’s almost impossible to pull back for a panoramic view. Is this one of the reasons I long to travel? At home, if a bridge was destroyed like the Chain Bridge was by the Nazis, nothing in our city’s history makes me think we’d build it back as beautiful as before. Yes, our town square is quaint, and the arts center is in the marble-staired building that used to be the library that used to be the post office, but so much of our history has been torn down, paved over, replaced by apartment complexes and strip malls. Who are we, that we don’t invest in beauty, in structures that last? Who am I, that I keep living in a place that doesn’t share my values?

We stay on Buda Hill well into full darkness, then take our time finding our way back to Pest: a bus, a tram, a slow stroll to the hotel. Everywhere we look is a picture postcard, illuminated against the night. Still, I scan the sidewalks for a coin, a bottle cap, a button from some sturdy Hungarian’s coat. I’ll go home with hundreds of photos, but I want to pocket a souvenir, something real and unromantic. I want to ask, Could you imagine staying? But I stay silent. We walk hand in hand, something we never do at home.

The sky was bruised, and purple marks littered it. The sun had retreated behind a large cloud
of smoke that reached out to it; the smoke was desperate to hide the sun from those below.
Ginnie crouched behind a mound of rubble; the rubble had once been her home. She traced
her fingers across a small pile of dust, she drew pictures of her home in the grey ashes. A
dandelion had survived the attack, it was stood at an angle, its roots were buried deep
between the cracks in the pavement. Ginnie wondered how the small flower had survived
when her brother, Leo, had not. She didn’t understand how the world had cruelly taken her
brother away but had left a dandelion unharmed.

Ginnie’s world had been fractured overnight, cracked like a mirror that had been
knocked from the wall. The city was alive, just about. Last night, the streets had been filled
with the laughter of children, the chatter of women going to town, and the cries from market
stall owners as they advertised their goods. Then suddenly, the roar of jets pierced the air, and
trails of fire flattened the neighbourhoods and the lives of those she knew. Ginnie had heard
the hushed whispers from her parents and her next-door neighbours.

“Sovereignty,” they had mumbled. “Resources.”

The words were just empty syllables that fell off the tongue easily, they were as brittle
as the bones and infrastructures that were buried under the rubble.

Off in the distance, a convoy raced through the ruins; soldiers moved like shadows
across the derelict walls. They seemed faceless; they hid behind their clunky helmets, and
their weapons were slung carelessly across their bodies. To them, the power to kill was as
casual as carrying a bag of groceries home from the market on a Tuesday morning. Ginnie no
longer feared them: she had learned that fear required energy, energy that she no longer had.

She focused instead on small rebellious acts, such as keeping the dandelion alive against the
odds of the war. She could keep the dandelion safe, but not her brother.

A soldier stopped close to her, his boots crunched on the debris below his feet. He
looked at the dandelion, and then at Ginnie. There was a flicker of something in his eye,
regret maybe, but it flickered out as quickly as Ginnie’s house had been destroyed. He turned
his back to her, his radio crackled with faint orders from his higher-ups. Ginnie realised that
to the soldier, she was nothing more than a piece of the landscape.

Once night fell again, Ginnie picked the dandelion from its snug home in the
pavement cracks. She gently placed it in her pocket. Tomorrow, she would take it with her to
the bombed-out infrastructure that had once been her school. Children still gathered there,
they traded lessons in survival rather than in maths of history. Ginnie hoped that the flower
would remind her friends that life will always find a way to carry on, even when the shadow
of violence threatens them.

Ginnie stared out at the horizon of the now flat city, fires burned and army machines
crawled like a colony of ants. Ginnie wondered how long life could persist in this world
where it seemed like everyone wanted to erase her city.

The dandelion, which she now cradled in her palm, seemed to glow softly against the
darkness. Something small could bloom even in the ashes and rubble.

Thursday, October 13, 2022

Second assistant manager of a fast food restaurant. Not exactly a lucrative title, nor one that carries much weight or value in the adult world, and, yet, I felt differently. There I was, eighteen years old, not even out of high school and as serious as could be. For years after this point, irritability was a commonplace, and I never could get enough sleep. There was one thing which kept me going, and it’s the reason I have no regret in staying at Culver’s for as long as I did: money. So much working meant so little time. So much money that I had no time to spend. As such, there has been little issue in paying for my college career, and for that, at least, I am grateful.

It was a Thursday. Shouldn’t be an important detail, yet one which stuck to the minds of all involved like a starfish on glass. “Clara’s Thursday” as it would come to be known, started off poorly. From the clock-in of a 2:30 shift, the day was looking to be one of misery. Understaffed, of course, and there was no mystery behind that.

I wasn’t promoted to manager out of kindness nor out of a sense of ambition for the restaurant’s future. I was simply a replacement. Kirk, the scheduling manager, had chosen a strange and inconvenient method of quitting his job: not quitting. That is to say, he simply chose to stop caring, stopped putting forth any effort, and just waited to be fired or to find an opportunity to simply walk out the door. God only knows how happy I was to see another copy-pasted, half-redacted schedule on the wall that day, understanding that it could only get worse. Great sportsmanship on Kirk’s part if you ask me.

Despite the horrid scheduling, the day didn’t go the path I expected it to — it was significantly worse. An overflow of customers, three in-house registers, and a drive-thru all packed with orders going into a kitchen populated with no more than three or four teenagers. Refunds here and there, orders being forgotten, orders given to the wrong cars, and customers waiting upwards of twenty minutes. There were also complaints, many complaints, far more than would be expected of a day such as this, and aggressive ones too. These customers were dissatisfied, and there I was, a naive looking teenager ready to take it all with a nod and an artificial customer service voice.

Around dawn was when Clara, an employee in the drive-thru asked if shecould go to Walmart. Claims of feeling sick were well evidenced in her voice, face, and mannerisms. It was just across the street, within walking distance, so with only slight deliberation, I sent her on her way. She simply needed some medicine to help with a headache. I agreed, thinking it would be unjust to disallow such after an undoubtedly stressful few hours. Proper night time was when the schedule of a Culver’s shift endured its harshest stress test. Beyond a certain point, the vast array of sub-sixteen-year-old employees were legally required to clock out of their shifts, at which point only the older workers, whose average age I estimate to be less than twenty, would remain. There were six of us. Two at drive-thru, two at front-of-house, and two in the kitchen. But that six soon turned to five, and then to four, and then to zero.

“Where the fuck is Clara!?” I heard. I don’t remember who said it, but the words surely could, and probably had, come from anyone working that night. We were a skeleton crew, and any further loss of manpower would be devastating, and, yet, she was gone. None of those in my vicinity did much about her absence nor did I. After all, there was little time to seek her out when the screens, grill, and fryers were as flooded as they were. Edith, however, felt differently and was kind enough to seek Clara out. Of the six employees in the restaurant that night, Edith was perhaps the worst person to have done so.

A controversial person — devising a pseudonym for Edith is little trouble — as I only remember her name as being a strangely religious one. Fitting as her name was, Edith’s evangelism was bold enough to discomfort even the Mormon coworker. It was not a kind boldness. “Sinner get ready,” “Sinners go to hell,” and other such rhetoric were Edith’s style and would present themselves at any opportunity, only occasionally and accidentally managing to appear polite. I know nothing of what happened to her and her job — whether she was fired — but I feel no envy for those cursed with her presence nowadays.

Naturally, Edith was the one who found Clara in the bathroom and spoke with her for thirty minutes. Not much is known by anyone about what was discussed during that time, but what I do know is that it was in some way religious. Some sort of attempt to convert Clara to Christianity. Perhaps a noble cause — if Clara were not actively dying during those thirty minutes. 

I had no idea of her intentions. Up until the point of the duo’s graceless return from the bathroom, the pills Clara had bought from Walmart had not even crossed my mind. And, yet, here she was walking out, having taken the whole bottle thirty minutes prior. I’d like to say I was proactive in the situation, that I took immediate action, but I didn’t. I and the others deliberated for some minutes, during which time Clara’s life could have been in danger. “Shut it down! We’re done,” I declared at last, after what could only have been too much time spent thinking.

“I’m fine,” Clara said as we seated her in the manager’s office, but her claims were ignored. With Clara down, I called the police. Meanwhile, the remainder made rushed, hasty attempts to close down operations while also making sure Clara was ok. I held the empty bottle in my hand, too stressed to have ever even read the dosage, and I relayed the information to the phone’s other end. “Holy shit!” I exclaimed without a moment’s thought or hesitation. Before my explanation was even finished, I saw the blue lights arrive less than three minutes into the call, and I was enveloped by shock and awe. 

Police and paramedics are professionals, so this was ironically the calmest period of the entire day. Questions were asked, information was given, and I was told that the total dosage taken was not enough to be life threatening for someone of Clara’s body type. Regardless, she was taken to the hospital to have her stomach pumped, from which she would be discharged the following day.

In a surprising moment of thoughtfulness, Kirk came into the restaurant, after all was said and done, to close it himself. He didn’t need help, nor did he want it. All five remaining subjects of “Clara’s Thursday” were allowed to go home. Clara would return to work that Saturday and would eventually be fired after bringing an Orbeez gun into the restaurant and using it to shoot employees. 

All these years later, questions still remain. Did she know that the dosage wouldn’t be lethal? What did her and Edith talk about? But there was one, which may have a strange answer, that was quite intriguing: Why were the customers so upset? While the sun shined and the complaints were most frequent, Clara was working at the drive-thru station, specifically, she was taking orders from customers. From breadcrumbs of information and a little reflection, it seems that Clara was quite rude to the customers during this period. Her sour attitude cubed the already exponentially disastrous service being delivered to an extent that I can hardly blame the customers for complaining — although my past self would certainly disagree. 

The final note is one of respect — respect to one particular subject of “Clara’s Thursday”: Arthur. Arthur, of course, being the heroic king of Camelot. Quite a fitting pseudonym since Arthur was the hero of that night. During Clara and Edith’s thirty or so minute absence, Arthur maintained his work and took over both of their stations by himself. At no point did he complain, nor did he make much of any noise at all. He suffered silently through it all and were it not for his honorable workmanship, my blood would perhaps have reached the elusive ocean floor level of pressure. 

The events of this night cannot be blamed on any particular person. The titular Clara is not the sole reason for this night of catastrophe, and ‘twould be dishonorable to depict her as some sort of culprit. I do wonder, however, how I would feel if she had taken a fatal dose. For one, I would be sad over her death, but would I blame myself? Would I assign unjust responsibility for having allowed her to make that trip to Walmart in the first place? These will remain perpetually unanswered, and, as time goes on, my memory of the events thin. The most significant question persists as well, and I will never find closure in an answer: Why did Clara down that bottle of pills?

Skyscrapers watch cars driving bumper to bumper, trying to snag the first parking spot
they see. They each move slightly forward, and gray smoke emits, clouding the sun just a little
more. In each car, every person sits there, grasping the steering wheel, smelling the burning
gas. Staring, dreading their life every second. They look around, no end in sight. They watch out
their window, people walking faster than their car could ever. A dandelion ready to have a wish
made on it grows in the cracks of a sidewalk while thousands rush to work, missing their wish.
Each person walks as fast as they can. Weaving between the city streets. Passing all
distractions. They know the smokers by the train station smelling the toxicness of their cigarette
butts crushed on the ground. They know never to drive because it would get them nowhere. The
way smoke doesn’t bother them, or the homeless begging for money. The way they walk by
protests without saying a word, the shouts of hundreds of people red-faced, holding signs
encouraging others to join mixing with police sirens and marching of the forces.

They watch hundreds of tourists make them late by lining up to take pictures by the Big
Bean. Walking past the family-owned businesses of different cultures and races, competing
over which heavenly smell would enter your nose first. The smell of pastries from Poland or the
ones from Germany. Who would guide you to have a bite of even the smallest crumb? Taste the
flaky pastry and smooth raspberry jam on top sprinkled with sugar like the first snowfall. It
warms their hands, a touch of a loved one, even in the white paper that holds it. As soon as it
touches your lips, the flakes gather on you, and the pastry melts in the mouth as the rest of the
golden brown flakes fall on an unexpecting person. Proving to everyone that they had indulged,
given into temptation. Faster not to miss clocking in, gum sticks to their feet. Who cares to look
down?

It sticks even after rubbing, scraping, dragging across the cracked sidewall. The gum
doesn’t care about them rushing there. It has the heart of Chicago in it. It slows each step,
stretching the mint gum. Dirt, bugs, ashes, political flyers, and stickers are all carried on the foot
of someone rushing to work. They don’t have time to care about this. This is the city, and if you
don’t move forward for one millisecond, you will get tramped. Everyone else will get caught by
scams acting as if they have no place to go while their Tesla patiently waits a few miles away,
already cooled down to a perfect 72 degrees. For all the city’s worth, there is no other place like
it. The obnoxious nature about it clashes with the tasteful side of comfort at the corner of any
street. The community that brings itself together and hides away in nooks that can only be found
by the brave. Everyone continues to go to work, running into glass towers that open up into a
new ecosystem. They all live their lives knowing the city, knowing everything, even the
wonders, but they forget to warn others about this great place. The people in this city do not call
themselves fools, but they all know in their hearts that they are foolish to miss the wishes that
are underneath their feet.