End of Monroe
by Wendy BooydeGraaff
No one expected the phones to be the thing. Old school phones with curly cords and long white wires that plugged into the jack in the wall. The younger ones had to be taught how to squeeze that little plastic square so it would lock into the wall piece. Of course, we weren’t overdoing it, we weren’t telling everyone, because the little jack outlet at the end of the brick alley—well, not everyone needed it. We couldn’t let the line start getting long, make everyone think we’d found the new speakeasy, or the hole in the wall coffee place. The thing was, it was a hole in the wall. A tiny little hole in the wall with a direct line to God.
God is dead. We know. Of course we know. But there’s someone on the end of that line. Someone who is answering, dealing out little doses of healing and spiritual peace. Grace and mercy feel a lot different than those church billboards say on the highway. Loving kindness, all that corny crap. Someone is listening, though, listening hard and particularly, then taking a nice long think pause before dispensing a bit of wise advice, a bit of nonpartisan, non-selfish meaning, something to cherish, to chew on, to turn over and over, something that actually helps.
Tillia was the first one. She was tired and beaten down and she went down the alley to shiver and puke and cry. Her knees to her chest, her head leaning against the brick. Her fingernails cracking at the rough mortar. She heard something, a crackling connection in response to her moan, a small wave of hope. When she moved her hands from the wall, the connection went away. Hands on, faint connection. Hands off, nothing. She passed her fingers over the strange, recessed plastic square, no bigger than the tip of her pinkie. She pressed her finger in, felt the tiny steps. The small wave came back, this time with a staticky audio. She took Vera down there, because she thought she was going crazy. Which Vera did, until she took her own little pinkie for a walk.
We found the phones in our grandparents’ basements, wrapped with the cords around them, saved in case the wireless networks we set up failed them. We taught our grandparents about local area networks, and guest Wi-Fi passwords, firewalls and automatic updates. We told them to sell their phones to 1970s set decorators. They didn’t listen. Thank God, they didn’t listen. They didn’t quite trust all this wireless stuff floating in the air, didn’t understand how anything could work without a direct connection, were sure there was going to be an earthquake or a flood or a tornado and they’d have to plug their phones back in in order to call for help. Funny, how things turn out.
God is all around us, we used to sing when our grandparents took us to church. God is the air we breathe. Except, it turns out, He’s not. He’s on the other end of a landline at the end of the brick alley off Monroe.
About the Author:
Wendy BooydeGraaff's work has been published in Bending Genres, The Ilanot Review, Gone Lawn, Border Crossing, and elsewhere. She also writes for young readers and is the author of Salad Pie, a picture book published by Ripple Grove Press. She lives in Michigan. Follow her on twitter at @BooyTweets.
About Weekly Flash Prose and Poetry:
CutBank Online features one work of flash prose or prose poetry every Friday. Submissions are free and open year-round. Send us your best work of 750 words or less at https://cutbank.submittable.com/submit.