I laughed: What a ridiculous time to have wind chimes. The wind moaned, whimpered; doors shook. It made no sense that we lived here. We could barely afford this house, which was, in any case, a two-bedroom too small for a family of four. We had been entranced by the view of Silver Lake, and Atwater Village, and the mountains beyond them.
The air was newly animate, calling attention to itself, and I listened, interested. Many institutions emailed to tell us that they were watching and waiting but remained open. I walked my 5-year-old to school, racing and laughing down the staircases cut into the ridge, and we arrived to a surprising silence. The children were being kept inside. This was the "rainy-day protocol," a protocol with which we were not familiar because it had simply never rained on a school day.
At school, the children hang their backpacks on hooks outside their classrooms. I can marvel for minutes at the way strange-fruited cacti wind round one another like tangled hair, nothing like the fork-shaped plants for which cartoons had prepared me.
A house you cannot really afford is one that doesn't feel particularly yours, and so, are you tying things down? A friend asked, but we are not the kind of people who tie things down; we watch them fall.
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