Cecilia hadn’t seen a man hold an umbrella over a woman like that in a long, long time. Hand on her lower back, getting half his body wet in keeping his lady dry.
It was a thing of old movies and first loves. Little girls like her watched tall men with dark hair and glittering smiles walk home with their beautiful pixies of girlfriends, giggling in the rain. Every now and then, the man would say something to make the woman blush, and if it was dark enough out, he’d pause in the middle of the sidewalk and kiss her, his hands cupping her face. The woman, startled, would bend back at an acute angle and pop her right leg, perfectly aware of how beautiful they appeared to onlookers. Afterwards, he’d walk her home, and maybe she’d invite him upstairs and they’d make hopeful love, gasping for breath in her poorly ventilated apartment, humid with its possibility.
She contemplated on whether her God was a just God, as she wanted to believe these gentlemen still existed for her, that somewhere there was a man out in this storm just like she was simply on his way to walk her home. For a while, she sat on the wet cement, hypnotized by the unchanging thud of the raindrops and their shiny mirage. She stayed put, waiting for the weather to lighten up or for a man with an umbrella. She waited too long in the rain, perhaps, and very soon, she would never have to wait for anything ever again.
A homage to “Gospel” from Edward P. Jones’s Lost in the City (201).
Siri Ranganath 