Pick It Up

Same woodchips I dragged my stuffed panda Ming Ming through for show and tell, same field I beat up a boy two years younger on for not picking me to play on his soccer team, same playground where I smoked my mom’s menthol cigarettes after school. White Center Heights was hardly white at all. An elementary school sitting in the center of two housing projects, its students were from all over the world, some refugees from third world countries. Back then, we knew poor folks came in every color. The projects were clean and simple. The scent of pork fried rice mingling with chicken enchiladas and kimchee was the only distinction in the rows of army green housing. I imagined bright colors on the inside walls. I imagined large families, brothers, sisters, cousins, fathers, mothers waiting for my classmates as I waved goodbye to them after our walks home.

Today, I walked alone. I had stayed after class to get my teacher’s help with my times tables and when I finished, all my friends had already gone home. I felt hungry, and then remembered the leftover popcorn in my book bag. I opened the crumpled popcorn bag and peered into it to find only a few half popped kernels left. I lifted the bag and poured them into my mouth, then let it float out of my hand to the grass, watched it travel from grass to gravel to sand and get stuck on a tetherball pole. I turned and headed across the playground, starting my five block walk home.

I made a detour to the Sweet Stop to spend my twenty five cents on candy.
I could have whatever I wanted on the bottom shelf: Now or Laters, Bit O’ Honeys, Jolly Ranchers, Tootsie Rolls. What I really wanted was a KitKat, but they cost fifty cents, so I picked up a handful of Lemondrops and went to the counter to pay. After shoving four pieces in my mouth, I left the Sweet Stop and a sound began to ring in my ear. It was a faint voice, just a whisper in my ear. I kept looking back to see if someone was talking to me, but the street was empty. I passed the old black lady’s house, hoping to find her sweeping her front porch like always, but she wasn’t there. Her windows were closed, strange for such a hot day. A breeze began to pick up, lifting dirt and trash into a tiny tornado in the middle of the street. I covered my face from the dust and walked on, hoping the voice would stop when I got home. I tried to quicken my pace, but my sneakers felt stuck to the pavement, making me stagger toward my street.

Finally, I turned the corner and saw my house in the distance. The voice began to shout at me from all directions, and I grasped my book bag for support. Had I slipped into a horror movie narrated by this disembodied voice? My neighbor, waving from her doorway snapped me back to the moment, but the voice lurked close by. I could almost make out the words…… As soon as I reached my house, I turned the key and pushed the door open, praying it would subside, but instead, the voice got clearer. It said, “Pick it up”- not just once but over and over:

Pickitup pickitup pickitup pickitup pickitup pickitup pickitup pickitup

Pick what up, I thought and who’s speaking? God? My mother? And then I remembered the popcorn bag. The crumpled up empty popcorn bag. I had dropped it on the playground without thinking twice, but the voice wouldn’t let me leave it there.



Sweaty from the walk home, I left my coat at the door and went running the five blocks back to school. How would I find the bag? What if it blew across the street? All the while the voice nagged, “Pick it up.” When would it stop? Would I have to live with this voice inside my head for the rest of my life? My only chance at peace was to find the bag.
I crossed the soccer field, and the woodchips, passed the big toy and ended up at the tetherball pole. The bag was no longer stuck on the pole. My heart pounded in time with the rhythm of the voice:

Pickitup pickitup pickitup pickitup pickitup pickitup pickitup pickitup

Then, from the corner of my eye I saw the bag, its red and white stripes nearly hidden by sandy gravel, the exposed paper fluttering. A large black garbage can stood nearby. I tiptoed up to the bag, afraid it might get up and run away. Then, with the quickness, I pulled it from the gravel, crumpled it up, and threw it away.