Rhapsody

Next I went up a steep hill, past boarded-up industrial buildings and shops that say “TAKEOUT” but don’t post a menu anywhere. If you shop there, you know what you’re getting. At the top is what used to be a Catholic church. The Protestants who bought it took out the stained glass and stenciled their meeting times on the door. There’s a grotto beside it, empty. I hope the Protestants gave the statue of Our Lady to somebody Catholic instead of throwing it away.  Most Holy Theotokos, save us. 

There are several paths up the wooded cliffside to LaBelle– trails and flights of stairs that used to be maintained by the city, but now they’re only tamped down by the foot traffic of people who don’t have cars. There are, apparently, drug dealers there, but I’ve never met one. Homeless people camp there– I’ve found their campfires and discarded clothes. There’s a whole anthill of foot paths and hiding places among the brush and Queen Anne’s Lace, an invisible world inhabited by forgotten people.

I wonder if the forgotten people of the cliff like the rain.

I chose a path at random–a shady, mossy lane, a tunnel that used to be an alley for cars, behind heaps of brick that used to be houses. I traveled in darkness for some time before I found myself at the Orthodox Church of the Holy Transfiguration, cat-a-corner to the highway. They’ve got an icon of the Transfiguration from floor to ceiling behind the iconostasis, but of course you can’t see that from the outside. Outside, it’s white clapboard with no decoration.

There I was at Elijah’s feet again. Help us. 

Then a sharp turn, across the tick-infested prairie grass and up the concrete steps. I always forget to count them– a mile of steps, a rusty metal banister, overhung by poison ivy and wild grape. Sometimes deer leap over the railing right in front of me. Sometimes moths fly in my face. This time, a gray rabbit was keeping watch on a step just a few feet from me, so still I thought it was a broken-off piece of the concrete.

I wonder if deer like the rain.

I came out at the very top, suddenly on the ritziest street in LaBelle where the mansions are. These are the people who do everything they can to hurt the poor they see on the hilltop, in order to inflate housing prices and make themselves richer and more “safe.” I wonder if they know there are poor people they can’t see, just a few feet from their houses, camping in the scrub, using the trails to get home from downtown.

I wonder what they’d do to us, if we weren’t invisible.

I wonder if rich people like the rain.

I walked back to the more modest part of LaBelle, to my house.

Quite a bizarre afternoon, in its way. A brief afternoon errand that suddenly became an exhausting trek through dark places, among invisible people.

It could be that everyone’s life is like this.

(image via Pixabay)