Across the Street in Van Nuys

The San Fernando Valley is a dry and convenient place where it doesn't take more than 10 minutes to reach a Target in any cardinal direction. Wide boulevards lined with strip malls are the bread and butter of this town, with a sandwich shop adjacent to a topless bar and a Watkins Family Optometry on the other side.

This is the valley in which I was raised and had a rather fortunate childhood. Proudly born in Van Nuys, I spent my elementary years managing lemonade stands and heroically saving the lives of stray animals. My big cousin (who could have ordered me to drink bleach and I would have gotten right down to it) and I strolled these marginally mean streets, passing one block lined with ranch style homes, and the next comprised of stuccoed apartments with balconies draped in lime green for rent signs. La Cucaracha resounded through the neighborhood several times each day as the taco truck's turnkey method of bringing in business. Across the street lived an older lady with thick yellow toenails and an elderberry tree in her ungated front yard. I'd pop in to visit after school or on a Saturday, and she'd feed me pineapple upside down cake and american cheese. Her home was dark and mostly brown. Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy were her dearest friends who lived in the front room with the shabby Victorian couch she'd spend most days on. She'd often have a clear beverage in hand with a massacred lime floating in it, and in my adulthood I've realized why she was so jolly.

One autumn day I ran over to present the dead bird I'd planned on bringing back to life and she spilled the special drink all over the front of her lavender muumuu. She then continued to lose her footing and fell into the glass-topped coffee table, causing a slight laceration on her right arm that at the time seemed like a watermelon that had been thrown off a high rise. After some struggle, she climbed back up on the sofa and adjusted her muumuu as I stood stiffly by the front door protecting my latest project. Luckily, the gin and tonic remained half full, and she proceeded to lift the glass and pour what was left through her thin withered lips.

Her name was Maggie. Maggie taught me that should I ever discover gum in my hair, no need to panic. The trick is peanut butter. Peanut butter and ice. She gave me permission to pick elderberries from her tree on the condition that I remembered that they weren't raspberries or blackberries, but elderberries. She let me explore her overgrown backyard with an empty pool, where once lay a rigor mortis cat down at the bottom, by the drain.