Since I spread rolls of insulation in the attic after moving in, I’ve known the sub-standard quality of the materials used in constructing the roof of this house. Armed with breathing protection, a miner’s head-lamp and cumbersome rubber gloves, I spent hours pulling, pushing, coaxing the long pink strips into place between ceiling rafters. Each time I removed the gloves for a break, sweat dripped from the sleeves. The cone of the breather collected brown dust over my nostrils and mouth.
Long 2″x 4″ boards bowed under the pressure of heat and years. I felt the curves of them while taking brief breaks. I knew that at some point in my stay, there would be work done up there. My back panged and sang as I clambered around on the rafters, shifting the small plywood platform I knelt on to work. Even at the peak, only a child might stand upright in the space, so I’d just sit to break as I eyed the long curves where only straight should have been.
That was all done right after move in, and except for some brief visits to place mounts for ceiling fans, I’d not spent much time up in there. Beyond the confinement of the place, there was the fear it inspired. Between us and the world, just this small shield of wood, tar and paper. At each rain fall, I’d envision first a small spot of wet in the plywood, then the drip into boxes of magazines or clothes and the spreading brown stains in the ceilings above beds and heads. All the slow-motion horror of decay.
Then my back failed, in what felt like fast-forward. Home improvements became less important. Some money came of my decay between operations four and five and my mind fixed again on the way of things, the crumbling and degeneration. Sticks and bones break on their own and minds go crumbling after. We found a contractor to replace the roof, and a radiologist to inject my spine. It felt like progress and not just fingers in the dike.
In the midst of removing the old materials, the contractor discovered many problems in the structure: the framing was weak and inadequate, the plywood was brittle, destroyed by the heat of Florida sun–all needed replacement. So it began and progressed, from pallets of plywood dumped in the yard, to the cigarette butts of workers curled in the sand of the driveway. In the midst of it all, with me on a hospital bed, one foot came through the bedroom ceiling, and bits of trim came to rest all over the yard.
All is fixed now–new shingles and plywood on 2″ x 6″. More titanium screwed into the bits of bone in the middle of me. Some cigarette butts are still out there, and nails strewn about. Apparently, the magnetic clean-up of the yard promised in the contract was either neglected or ineffective. It wouldn’t have touched the cigarettes.
For me, there is a walking cane, a brace for support and the place they cut patched with strips of tape. It is still a bit bloody and bruised. I discovered after another fusion that the titanium does not set off airport metal-detectors. It is, perhaps, not even magnetic. I read yesterday that some people return fully to normal activities after fusion, to Olympic competition, even.
I welcome rain now. The world is awfully dry, just awaiting sink-holes and forest fires.
Hopeville Community Center 