You See Me

I parked in the Struedelbach strip mall’s two-hour parking. It was four. Everything sat in rancid butter; a jellied yellow cast of rain that had fallen during sunshine clung to everything, creating an apocalyptic atmosphere.

I surveyed the row of shops I usually ignored on my way home. A travel bureau staffed by a woman named Potschka who had been sitting in the shop since she and my husband Hartmann attended kindergarten. Next to that was a coin-operated laundromat whose owner I had never seen. The phantom dryers and washing machines whirled on perpetual cycles with digital displays in front of an empty row of plastic chairs. An older man named Gruff ran a bicycle shop and had old posters on the window and door so you couldn’t see inside. Next to Gruff’s, a newly opened IT shop in what formally belonged to a hairdresser and an abandoned antique shop filled from floor to ceiling anchored the end of the strip mall.

The strip mall’s weathered facade needed a coat of paint; it had an eerie, hallowed outlook, holes were boarded up, and it sat on a fork in the road. All viable businesses had moved away. I didn’t think anything of the strip mall until my computer started blacking out as if it had been out all-night binge drinking. I sat in my car across from the IT shop as if on a stakeout.

These businesses were a way to see people without having to do anything for it. When my husband and I moved back to his childhood home in Strudelbach, every one of our neighbors thought he should buy me a little boutique or coffee shop so I would have something to do. They didn’t work in these places. They hung out all day to have encounters with their neighbors on the odd chance that something would happen.


I didn’t have the guts to drive to a bigger city like Frankfurt, nearly two hours away. I sat in my car watching two women on horseback heading up the street that had, at that moment, no traffic.

I practiced German with myself, repeating everything I wanted to tell the IT specialist. I checked my phone. It was half past four, and I looked in the shop and saw two men moving about, which made me groan. I preferred when I spoke German, with no witnesses. My stomach turned, and I drove home wanting to give up, but I needed my computer to teach online English classes in the morning. I had to log on or be penalized by the agency I worked for as a freelancer.
The computer cut out, or it would capitalize random letters. I had a growing graveyard of electrical products, tablets, desktops with dead plugs, and dated accessories that had been laid to rest on the junk heap of my closet.

To be creative with repurposing my old laptops, I gave my cat, Sybil, a tablet for movies. She batted at the birds on the display. A woman who cat-sat for her for a week when Hartmann and I were on vacation said she thought giving a cat a tablet was abuse. Soon after, Sybil would get frustrated when I set the tablet up because she couldn't reach the birds. She insisted on setting it up herself, scratching me if I helped, so I gave up. As I entered the house, she glanced up from napping on the couch, but I turned around and returned to the car.

I parked behind the strip mall, looking toward a field. Although I didn’t see any, I knew it was full of mice. It rained heavily for half an hour, and I was feeling overwhelmed. To calm myself down, I listened to my affirmations tape while praying the rain would drown the mice.

At five o’clock, I was feeding myself courage by telling myself I had no choice. I needed my computer; I sat up and focused on the challenge of starting an interaction in a shop. If anyone saw me in my car, they would have thought I’d been huffing paint. With my exaggerated breathing and wide eyes, I looked like a black woman possessed angrily in conversation with herself. Anyone who saw me would mention it to Hartmann when they saw him, adding to my lore as the mad black woman of Strudelbach. I do indeed suffer from an anxiety disorder, but I wasn’t completely mad; I couldn’t abide people, especially in Strudelbach. I was always brand new, and all the same things were said: Can I get a coffee, Togo? Ha-ha, Togo, African coffee. And you look like Tina Turner. I knew what would happen. That gave me the guts to get out of the car and go into the shop, fearing being seen just sitting in my vehicle conversing with myself. With the laptop under my arm, I strolled to the shop in the mercurial April weather, over the large pothole filled with brackish water in front of the shop. Overhead, the clouds had bunched up like underwear in a pair of jeggings. I was ready.

A large screen hung in the IT shop where a colorful menagerie of brown-skinned people danced. It could have been a wedding song and dance routine in the street. It was an all-Indian cast and music. It was Bollywood. I'd come into the shop when no one was operating the front and laid my computer on the counter. Cameras, towers, monitors, and laptops lined the room's counters and walls. It may be that they were for sale; they were arranged as if they might be, but none of them have signs indicating price. A phone rang, and a man in baggy khakis came from the back and pinned the curtain with his butt and spoke.
“ Yell low,” he said, then haggled about a price for a machine. The caller needed it fixed. He needed more time. He looked at me and then spoke with his eyes down as if trying to concentrate or pretend I was not in the shop.

“There's someone here, Ma,” The 30-something-year-old man said, his hand over the phone receiver, somehow managing three conversations simultaneously. He looked quizzically at me. I didn’t know why he told his mother I was in the shop unless she also fixed computers.

Strudelbach is primarily a mom-and-pop town, and maintaining local shops has devolved into a hobby rather than an entrepreneurial pursuit. Plus, everyone knows everyone, which makes it a little claustrophobic. You’re constantly being seen.

“Dahl,” he said. “Who?” I had no idea if that was his name or if he was addressing me as a doll. After he hung up, he wanted to know who I knew in the entertainment industry.

“No, I think you have me mixed up with someone who is from the West Coast, like Los Angeles. Stars rarely come to Indiana unless they can’t help it. This did not deter him. He went through his mental directory of American entertainers he knew as if he were expecting me to say, Ohhhh, her, I went to school with her.

I opened the cover of my laptop and began explaining the ghost in the machine. The laptop stood on the counter, and he randomly approached it and pressed the keys.

“What's your password,” he asked in English; then he flipped the computer over, looked at me, and said, “I like Tina Turner.” People said I looked like Tina Turner, but I don’t. We just both happen to be black. I said nothing but steeled myself, as I suspected he would claim I looked like her. He grunted as he peered at the display code.

He looked at my screen and said, “You know who you look like?”
I said, “No, but I’m sure you will tell me.” Shifting to rebalance on my right foot. My soggy shoes made a squishy sound as if I were wearing sponges on my feet.

He laughed, and I inhaled deeply because I knew what he would say. I had heard it before, not because it was true I didn’t look like Tina Turner, but because she was the yardstick by which I was judged.
“You look like Semala Cole.”

“Who?!" I laughed like a mad woman, shaking my head, taken aback.
"She is an African television personality. You've never heard of her?" He looked at me, and I wondered if he was joking.
“Can you fix it? It’s been turning off and on. Can you fix it today?" I said, returning to the issue at hand.


The curtain to the back room flew open, and a squat Indian woman came to the front. She was so short it was like I was looking at her through a funhouse mirror.

"Do you come to eat now? Dinner is ready," she said, brandishing a wooden spoon. I looked at Dahl. She came with a heated countenance; she definitely would not take no for an answer. I looked at her and tried to imagine what life was like behind that curtain.

“I was hoping you could fix it today. I have to work tomorrow morning,” I said, clasped my hands together, and let my head go limp on my shoulders.

"Would you like to stay and have supper with us," He asked, taking my computer and putting it on a side table.
"No,” I shook my head like I was one of those bauble dolls you put on your car's dashboard.
“ I was hoping I could have my computer today.."

“You still have to eat like everyone else. Don’t you?

Although I couldn’t see my face, I was frowning so hard I had the neck folds of a Shar Pei.

“What? Are you not table trained?” He said, laughing at his joke. His mother stood waiting for the outcome of our negotiation.
“Wow, I don’t know how this works. I’m sorry, I don’t speak German,” I was confused even though we were not speaking German then.
"Then please stay. We won’t speak German to you. My mother doesn’t even speak German." Dahl said.
“What if I let you eat and return in thirty minutes.”
“Stay!” he yelled as if it were a command. I was a foreigner. He was a foreigner, and this was a miscommunication. How could I fix it? I explained.
“This is a business. I’m aiming to get some work done. To get you to do some work.” I said, flustered but trying to make it sound like a joke.

“I’m sorry I don’t speak German,” I apologized again. I don’t know why I kept mentioning German; no one spoke German, but somehow, it felt like we were talking at cross purposes.
Dahl’s mother was angry. She said something in perhaps Hindu, I don’t know, but it was as if she were throwing up her hands. Relieved they were giving up, I began to apologize.

“Maybe another time,” I said, although it was beginning to feel uncomfortable. Dahl stood looking sheepishly at me over my computer. He was way younger than I first thought, perhaps twenty-three tops.

I racked my brain for what he could want from me. I was a black woman who had turned fifty in November. I felt unattractive, though Hartmann swore I was cute and that men were attracted to me. I didn’t think this was the case unless he had lived under the shop with his mother without human contact. He was attractive in an exotic way. I was sure he was seeing someone with his looks. He didn’t have any facial hair. He had rich brown skin and black locks that flopped around his head. He had a lot of hair. I admired its shine as I asked him again about my computer.

“Come on, you have to stay for dinner.” He said, then turned toward the curtain and yelled, “Maud-dee, she will stay.”
Then said, “Now you have to stay.” He did not look at me but hit the keys on my laptop.

“Why is it so important to you both that I stay?” I asked; I shook my head. Then, as if he were dealing with a cornered animal, he brought the temperature of their passion down a notch and said, "Or you can go and come back on Friday."

"So, if I stay, you can fix it tonight, but if I leave, you can't fix it until Friday," I said, rolling my eyes and exhaling.
"Because my priorities have to shift to whoever is here. You are here now, so you are a priority; my priorities must be reshuffled once you leave. No one is waiting for you at home,” he said, matter-of-factly as if this had been reported in the daily news.
“How do you know that? I could have someone waiting on me.” I became hyper-paranoid.
“You don’t. You have a cat,” he said, and I knew he had heard about me through the village gossip. Hartmann was on a business trip. I was home alone.

"You come and have food,” his mother came from behind the curtain and squeezed my wrist as if she wanted to cry, and I wondered what they had heard. Was I pathetic?

“What are people saying about me?”

“No one is saying anything bad about you. Dahl will fix your computer after dinner, come!” she said, then pulled back the magic curtain, and there was a table set for three people. I forced myself not to stare at the candles on the table set for a holiday. I had been hijacked, love bombed.

They had decided they wanted to know me. I didn’t see a shop. I was seeing their lives. She went to the table and began portioning out the food. I went behind the curtain. I looked out the window at the road; no one had passed, which wasn’t rare. Strudelbach was a small town, but they had seen me.