A few nice plastic folding chairs images I found:
o hello
Image by maureen_sill
this looks better if you enlarge it
being at school is incredibly weird, in a setting that feels terrible at times
a place with big stores and cars and people in nice clothes, isn’t this what i tried to leave in the first place?
i took the minibus home to my mama’s house and she was waiting for me on the porch
kissed me on the cheek and
brought me inside to the hiv/aids support group meeting
i did not sit in the corner, i sat on the couch in the middle this time, my sixth time
most of the same people but this time also
a man who came to the clinic today that stayed afterwards to talk to me
we sat on the porch, on flimsy lawn chairs
i watched a dog licking an empty plastic food container across the street
i watched ants crawling out of it
it’s ear was bleeding, on the side, a lot, it was dried a little, into it’s brown fur
no one was paying attention to it
the man who stayed after to talk to me was a friend of a friend’s, said mama
he told me how he was raped in prison, and this is how he contracted hiv
he went into very graphic detail and spoke very slowly, talking about the skin of the man that raped him
how it felt in his ankles, he told me it hurt his ankles
the way that the man was doing it
he told me how it felt with one syllable adjectives, in english, in seemlingly hundred syllable adjectives, in xhosa
i felt like my blood slowed down, the theme of this entire experience
he said, mama thandiwe says you take very good photos, like your pictures could be in the newspaper!
i said, she is just saying that because she likes me
you can take my picture if you want, for yourself
i said, it’s okay, i just want to talk to you if that is okay
i didn’t deserve to take his picture
it wouldn’t have looked right
i could tell it wouldn’t have been right, so i didn’t bother
i could tell, it wouldn’t have been what i wanted it to be, and it would have killed me
to show him as anything less than gentle, or sweet
he zipped up his jacket
i looked at the whiskers on his face
he said he went to jail for ten years for selling drugs, he said he never did drugs once himself
he said, the white kids in the nice schools, they love coke, and he said, the black kids in the bad schools, they love tick
what is tick, i said
he said, i think americans call it meth
i said, oh
then he made fun of my american accent and then
he said, what else was i to do
he drank a cup of hot tea that i made for him with milk and sugar
he crossed his legs very well and he said he did not ever feel sorry for himself
only for his country, in general
he said, now that the president of south africa has stepped down from his position this past weekend
because of charges of corruption and because of party pressure
you are going to be in for a very interesting time in south africa
(as if i wasn’t already, i thought)
he said, there might be riots
my mama said, some people are upset, but there won’t be riots
he said again, there could be riots, do not ever say there will not be riots in south africa, you will be selling the people short, there is a big protest tomorrow
i said nothing and got him some more tea
i pet the dog with the broken ear
mama said do not pet the dogs they will bite you
i folded the tablecloth
i re-filled the free condom dispenser by the front door
i did the dishes
i played twenty questions with nelisa
i don’t know
it’s very satisfying to me, to type or write "i don’t know", "i don’t understand"
a form of three word relief
Image by wakingphotolife
It was 6:30 in the morning and a Friday when my father woke me up. I didn’t sleep until three last night. That’s been the normal routine since the end of May. I suffer from severe insomnia and it gets dark outside much earlier these days.
He was standing in my doorway and shouting my name. "I spilled coffee in the kitchen. Hurry and come downstairs to clean it up before the ants get there, I have to leave for work," he said.
I was dreaming when he woke me up. I had a feeling that I had just reached the climax of my dream and she was about to say something so significant that it would stay with me long into my waking hours, but before she could, this is what I got instead, "I spilled coffee in the kitchen, hurry, before the ants come."
"Can’t you just clean it up with a rag?" I said.
"It’s all over the place, just hurry up and get downstairs before there’s ants everywhere. I’m going to be late."
I waved him off and put on a sweater. It was cold and like clock-work for this time of month, there were sheets of rain outside.
There were two floor towels by the bottom legs of the kitchen table, our dining table. A dish rag on the white tiles of its surface and another dish rag underneath the faucet in the sink. The faucet was turned all the way to the left a long tail of steam was rising from it.
Everything was pushed to one side of the table – a plate full of scrambled eggs and Chinese sausages, a plastic packet of sliced oven-roasted turkey breast, two slices of bread, and a bottle of ketchup and a cereal box. My father stood over the puddle towards the middle edge. There was coffee on the floor and in the tracks of the sliding glass door. There was a dark stain on the fabric of one of the chairs. There were splatters on the glass and along the vertical window blinds peeled away next to it. "Fuck you ah," my father mumbled and repeated, in English and in Chinese.
"Are you sure there’s just one cup?" I said.
"Yeah," he said.
"But how come there’s so much?"
"I said it was just one cup. I spilled the entire cup!"
I looked around to see if there were any remains of our coffee mugs. "Just calm down. I’ll clean it up."
He washed his hands at the sink and wiped them on the back of his black jeans. He took his jacket off the hanger by the garage entrance. I put a hand on his shoulder, "Calm down and drive safe," I said, "It’s raining outside."
"Tell Judy I made her a sandwich to bring to school," he said.
6:40 on the clock, I can’t remember the last time I woke up this early on a day without any work. I thought I’d be tired and sleepy, but I wasn’t. I thought I’d be irritated and moody, especially by my father, but I wasn’t. I felt content, as if I had just walked into the center of a storm and moved it back out to the ocean, while standing there with my hands underneath the steaming water.
I got to work on the coffee puddle with the rags and towels he left me. Each time, I’d soak them under the faucet, wring them once and press them back onto the tiles and table. I repeated this until all the coffee was gone and the only thing left was just water. When I realized that the spill was gone, I felt disappointed. Maybe I had worked too fast.
The phone rang, I knew the number on the caller ID; I could hear the mix of wind, traffic and rain. "Don’t forget to clean the blinds," he said.
"I know. I got it," I said, "Go to work. Drive safely."
"There’s a sandwich by the coffee machine. Tell Judy -"
"I know."
I had stuffed paper towels into the tracks of the sliding glass door, the one that led to the backyard. When I removed the paper towels, the creases of where I had folded them, the part that made contact with the metal, had turned black.
"Long! you’re wasting paper. Why didn’t you just use the rags," Judy said. She had just come downstairs.
"Look, it’s absolutely filthy there. I’m not using the rags. No," I said. I popped the lid of the trash can threw the paper towels away. "Do you know what happened here?"
"No, I was in my room when I heard dad say something about coffee," she said.
"Yeah. He spilled a cup of coffee and asked me to clean it because he had to go to work but it looked an entire pot."
"Well, maybe he did," she said. She made the motion of throwing her arm out like a stage performer.
"Were you up when mom was up?"
"No, I don’t think so."
"I don’t know. It’s all over the window too."
Victor came into the kitchen. "You’re up early," he said.
"Yeah. Dad woke me up. He spilled coffee," I said.
He glanced over at the water running in the sink, the pile of towels and rags, the chair with the damp cushion, the splatters across the blinds and glass. "Dad’s on crack," he said.
I didn’t respond. It didn’t deserve one.
I could hear the springs on the garage door groan as it opened. A few seconds I heard them groan as it closed.
I wiped down each piece of the vertical blinds. It wasn’t just coffee; they hadn’t been cleaned in a long time. In fact, the blinds had broke many years ago and the narrow rope that we use to pull to move them back and forth didn’t move it at all. I had forgot until I tried it and realized it was still stuck.
With everything finished, I gathered all the rags and towels from throughout the entire house – the kitchen, the bathrooms, the garage, next to the aquarium – and put them in the wash. I didn’t care if some of them were still clean or hadn’t be used. Then I had a bowl of cereal and read the news on-line.
The neighbors house was sold. We had been waiting for at least a year as it made its way through bankruptcy, foreclosure, a long pending status, real estate auctions, and when the official for sale went up, weekends of open houses with strangers suddenly parking on the sidewalk in front our driveway. I told my parents that my brothers and I should just go outside and fight, yell at each other in Chinese, and smoke on the lawn while wearing wife beaters and baggy sweat pants whenever there was an open house going on to scare any potential buyers and drive its value down.
We made a few offers, but the agent didn’t want them.
Wednesday of last week, a middle aged Chinese woman, along with her child, rang out doorbell and asked it the trash and recycle bin on the sidewalk were ours. She introduced as living next door. "Yeah they are. I think they city came and took them from the property a few months ago so you’ll have probably have to call them to get them back. Do you need the number?"
On the Sunday at the beginning of the week, some people came to replace the broken tiles on the roof and clean out the gutter and drain pipes. The high pressure water hoses they use sprayed debris and grime all over our walkway and exterior wall. My father went out to ask them to clean it after they were finished.
Thursday, when I got home from the library, a few men had chainsawed in front of their house down. They didn’t stop until it was time for dinner. I was trying episode of ten of Ken Burn’s Jazz documentary until I gave up. Judy and I went out to take a look after they left. "Do you notice something? All the Chinese families that bought houses on our street -"
"Chopped down their trees,"
"Yeah. Why are we such tree choppers?" I said
"Maybe because we all think that the roots will eventually dig up and crack the driveway?"
"Either that or we don’t care about the environment."
"You know the house on the corner. They said they were landscapers."
"More like landscrappers."
That night I asked my father if he knew how much the house had sold for.
"7,000," he said.
"That’s too much for a house like that," I said.
"Yeah. I told your mom but she still really wanted it. She doesn’t want to listen, but, we have a lot of things to pay for. Victor and William going to college, and Judy – "
"I know."
That night, I helped my mother with dinner. I sliced ginger roots and a slab of beef. Volunteering at the library made me want to be more helpful at home, if I could give my time and effort to strangers, I should be able to do even more for my family.
"You’re slicing them too thick. When they’re thick, it’s going to be spicy too eat," she said.
"Show me how then," I said.
"Like this."
"Why can’t I just use the julienne slicer?"
"Because ginger’s too hard."
"How’s this then."
"You got to angle your knife out more or cut straight down."
"You know, we father could have bought the house. Do you know why we can’t? We keep spending on small things that don’t matter. It all adds up. Tell me, how can those people who only have ,000 a month get by. How can they have a livelihood?"
"I know." I said, "What do I do with this one." I held one of the pieces of ginger. It looked old and was much darker than the other ones.
"It’s gone bad. Don’t eat it," she said. She picked it up and tried to throw into the trash can. Instead, it missed and hit the edge of the table and fell onto the floor. I looked up as I heard the thud but didn’t say anything and kept working until everything was finished.
Www.patiostore.comIch ‘m not sure p? Why not operated for? Ver darn link, but you can Copy / Paste? Gen:) 
