Every afternoon at 4:12, this woman walks out of her house dressed like she is about to accept an award and checks the mailbox for a fictional government check nobody ever sent. Not might send. Not delayed in processing. Never sent.
There is no check. There is no envelope. There is not even a poorly folded letter explaining why there is no check. But here she comes again in a white lace dress, church hat tilted toward financial deliverance, marching down the walkway like the United States Treasury personally texted her, “Girl, we outside.”
I sit on the porch with my coffee and watch, because apparently this is my program now.
DAY ONE: HOPE
The first time she checked, I thought nothing of it. People receive mail. That is generally why mailboxes exist. She opened the door, looked inside, closed it, and went home. Normal behavior. No cause for neighborhood concern.
The next afternoon, she returned wearing pearls.
“Expecting something important?” I asked.
“My government check.”
“Which government check?”
She looked at me as though I had asked which moon. “The five thousand dollars.”
I slowly lowered my cup. A woman does not rush into a federal dispute before finishing her coffee. “Did they say they mailed it?”
“They said we were getting it.”
“That is not what I asked.”
She adjusted her hat and walked away. Fine. I minded my business. For eleven minutes. Then I searched the entire matter, because I refuse to let somebody be confidently wrong near my hydrangeas without documentation.
DAY NINE: PROCEDURES HAVE DEVELOPED
By the following week, she had created a system. First, she checked the red flag. Then she knocked twice on the side of the box. Then she opened it slowly, apparently to avoid startling the money.
One afternoon, she reached so far inside that I thought I might have to pull her out by the ankles. Her whole face disappeared into that rusty mailbox. All I could see was white lace, two skinny legs, and the determined backside of a woman conducting a federal audit beside a picket fence.
“Is it in there?” I called.
“No.”
“Perhaps it is hiding behind the other nothing.”
She ignored me. She checked beneath a grocery circular, shook a utility bill, and held an envelope up to the sun.
“That is from your dentist.”
“It could be the check.”
“Unless your dentist has joined the Treasury Department, open that at your own risk.”
She opened it. It was a cleaning reminder. She blamed the mail carrier.
DAY SEVENTEEN: THE NEIGHBORHOOD GETS INVOLVED
By day seventeen, everybody in the neighborhood knew about the fictional government check. Mr. Lewis from across the road began slowing down as he drove past.
“Come yet?” he would yell through the window.
“No!”
“All right, then!”
He did not know what we were waiting for. He simply enjoyed updates.
The children started taking bets. Miss Clara brought binoculars. Somebody’s cousin claimed his barber’s sister had already received hers, which is how American financial misinformation traditionally achieves legal status. I asked for proof. He showed me a Facebook post written entirely in capital letters over a photograph of money that still had the stock-image watermark across it.
“This is not proof.”
“It has fourteen thousand shares.”
“So does a video of a raccoon stealing cat food. Rocky is not Secretary of the Treasury.”
By then, the woman in white had purchased a new handbag.
“With what?” I asked.
“The check.”
“The check that has not arrived?”
“I put it on the card. I’ll pay it when the money comes.”
Now I had to put my coffee down, because the foolishness had become physically dangerous. “You spent the money before Congress spent the money?”
“They promised it.”
“Politicians also promise unity. Have you seen any of that in your mailbox?”
DAY TWENTY-EIGHT: I LOSE MY CHRISTIAN COMPOSURE
On day twenty-eight, she came running toward my porch holding an envelope above her head. “It came!”
I stood up so quickly I spilled coffee on my shoe. The neighborhood activated. Curtains opened. Mr. Lewis stopped his car in the middle of the road. Miss Clara raised the binoculars. Two children abandoned their bicycles in a ditch. This woman stood in my yard trembling as she tore open the envelope.
Inside was a preapproved credit-card offer. Not five thousand dollars. A chance to owe five thousand dollars at 29.99 percent interest.
She stared at it. I stared at her.
Mr. Lewis leaned out of his window. “How much she get?”
“DEBT, LEWIS. SHE GOT MORE DEBT.”
She turned the envelope over as though the check might be attached to the back, and that was when something inside me broke. “Woman, there is no damn check!”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know it has not been approved, funded, printed, mailed, misplaced, forwarded, blessed, laminated, or strapped to the ankle of a carrier pigeon. The check is a rumor with a flag pin, and you are out here auditioning for it daily.”
“Well, they said—”
“I can say Idris Elba is coming here Friday with flowers and a property deed. That does not require you to wait on the porch in lingerie.”
“This is lace.”
“That is not the portion of my statement requiring correction.”
The children scattered. Mr. Lewis drove away. Miss Clara lowered the binoculars but remained at the window, because she has never respected privacy when the story is good.
DAY FORTY-SEVEN: ACCEPTANCE
She still checks the mailbox for that fictional government check every afternoon. Same white dress. Same hat. Same ceremonial walk toward disappointment.
I no longer interfere. I sit on the porch in black, read the newspaper, and allow democracy to explain itself.
Yesterday, she opened the box and found nothing but a pizza coupon. She looked at me. I looked at her.
“Maybe tomorrow,” she said.
“Maybe Idris will bring it.”
She slammed the mailbox shut. I took a sip of coffee. At this point, neither of us can leave. She needs the check, and I need to know how the series ends.
This, my lovelies, is what I would like to call…Fuckcipation
So look at her. Look at Miss Thing by that mailbox. Dressed in white like she waiting on a proposal from the post office itself. I been sitting on this porch since Tuesday watching her anticipate.
Every morning at ten sharp, like the mailman signed a contract. Lace laid, face beat, standing at attention for an empty box. And that box? Spiderwebs and a coupon for mulch. But she’ll be back tomorrow. Tomorrow! Because she got a PhD in waiting on things that ain’t coming.
She anticipated a love letter, an apology, a sign from the universe — and all she got was rust and my good tea getting cold. That’s not hope, baby. That’s a subscription to disappointment with auto-renew to fuckcipation.
— Kimberly Ann Hawes
