The Wages, An Illustrated Story | 23. Songs and Parables | Was This My Life?

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A tall drawing in colour shows the park filling with people. Trees fill the top of the frame with dappled sky-blue light shining through the leaves. In the background a line of people stroll along a sidewalk between tents, and a woman speaks to another woman on a mobility scooter that is decorated with a large yellow pennant waving in the breeze. Another sidewalk curves into the scene from the bottom of the frame, and a group of people walk away from us into the action in the park. Two Rastafarian friends are at the front, followed by a younger couple, and then an older couple with a bald man with a long braid of grey hair. A person stands to the side looking at tent with earrings. A man with a beard and baseball cap and a little boy in bright colours walk around Brandy to the left. The boy picks up to run, while man watches his outburst of energy. A woman and little girl, both with red hair floating in the breeze, walk past brandy to the right. The girl points to the yellow pennant and the woman holds her other hand and looks down to the girl with a smile. The overall scene is one of diverse people coming together for a cheerful and sunny afternoon. In the foreground, only Brandy faces the viewer, turned away from the joyful scene behind her. She hugs her purse to her chest with tense hands. Her dark hair blows across her face, but we can see her sad scowl as she appears to fight back tears, with the look of a woman has been subjected to or has found three conflicts in just a few hours at this beautiful festival. Brandy stands like a pillar in the wind, conflicted with herself. End of image description.

I was 41. I wondered; was this how the rest of my life was going to go? Dragging my sister around the country while we were one t-shirt sale from bankruptcy, getting abandoned, threatened, and insulted, and worrying about diarrhea?

Crystal was right. Something had to change. If I really examined my feelings, I was getting frustrated and felt like moving out to the edge of reality, ready to leap off of it. And then do what? Fall into nothing? Fly away?

But here I was wandering aimlessly through my supposed audience, when I really should have disappeared and protected what little was left of my stage mystique. I stopped, looked up, then closed my eyes, feeling the sun on me, hearing the people pass.

“God, please,’ I whispered, standing alone in the crowd, “I need some new kind of strength. I need to find some new place. I need a way to live. I don’t know how to get there. Amen.”

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