Covid-Creature Roommate

I - The First Sound

It comes from underneath the bed. “Psp psp psp. Hello? Are you up?”

This is a problem because I live alone.

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II - How Does One Come to Live Alone?

The Covid Pandemic Era, 2020. It breaks out in late March. We’re told that it’s like a flu, but more contagious. And so, we all cross our fingers that it will go away in a few weeks. It doesn’t. Okay, a few months?

Fast forward to 2021. I’m living with Mom after having lived with roommates for the past four years. I go months without steady work, or routine, or hugs from friends. I become more and more engrained in the fabric of the household, to the point where it feels like I’m never going to meet the rest of the world. Mom makes one too many passive-aggressive comments about me visiting Dad, or my brother’s toxic girlfriend. I’ve had enough. She says “well if you’re so uncomfortable, then leave.”

I do. I find a one-bedroom apartment — a bit expensive but entirely necessary. Luckily, it’s month to month, because I can’t afford to stay the whole year. It’s my first time completely on my own.

Theoretically.

III - The First Conversation

The voice is faint at first, more like a coo, so much so that it might not even be there at all. I turn on the bedside lamp, and flip up the covers that brush the floor. Only darkness and dust bunnies under there, from what I can tell.

Back to bed, and wishing sleep into existence. But now, as well, I’m thinking about the little voice. It could just as easily be brain games, the cruel joke of insomnia: no sleep, and no waking hours of peace. I take a deep breath, and consider counting sheep.

“Hello? Taryn?”

It knows my name. Red flag number two.

I jump up. “WHERE ARE YOU? WHO SAID THAT?”

I don’t go back to bed this time. I stand with my back glued to the wall, surveying the room, so if anything (or anyone) moves, I can see it. Now, I’m mentally exhausted. It feels like there’s a frog in my throat, and an elephant’s foot on my chest. It’s 3:30 am. All I want to do is sleep, and I can’t.

I slide down the wall and melt onto the floor. I hug my knees into me, and let out a big, ugly cry.

And then, through sobs, I hear it: an equally broken, feeble little “I’m sorry. Are you mad?”

…..

“Who are you?” I ask.

“I’m Mango. Are you mad at me?”

“Your name is Mango?” He sounds small.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Are you mad? You yelled at me.”

Whatever the source…lack of sleep, stress, anxiety…here I am, talking to a shadow under the bed. I’m living out a full-blown delusion right now.

“Please don’t be mad,” he says. He’s crying too.

…What now? I try, “Can you please leave?”

“No, I have something for you. But I can’t come out if you’re mad.”

I pinch myself. I can still hear his crying. There seems to be no way out but through. I decide to play along.

“Mango, I’m not mad.”

“Promise?”

“Promise. Can I meet you?”

….He takes a step into the light. For a second, all I can see is his pebble-sized, brown lace-up shoe.

IV - Mango

This. Is Mango. I did my best to draw a diagram, but bear with me. I doodle sometimes, but a visual artist, I am not. Here are the main facts:

1) As shown, he is no taller than a standard hand.

2) He has a little black notebook, for…as he puts it, “making lists and sticking to them.” I don’t know why he does this. Perhaps it’s a comfort thing. I draw for fun; Mango makes lists. He carries his book around like a child might tote a blanket.

3) He appears to be dressed in an old, red sock. Yet, he seems professional, like he should have a job. Maybe some kind of secretarial work.

4) He is the least-threatening creature I’ve ever seen.

“I have something for you,” he reminds me.

“Right. What is it?”

He smiles a little and dashes back under the bed. I hear the floorboards lift.

“Why are you pulling the floor apart?”

“I live under there.”

“…Of course you do.”

He struggles. There’s an “oof!” and a tiny *thump!* I see a black handle emerge.

I extend my arm under the bed to help. “May I?”

“Yes please.”

With a bit of elbow grease, I pull out an old, tattered briefcase. There are patches all over it from around the world…Paris, New York, the Philippines. It looks well-loved, like in the fifties or so, it might’ve been new. There’s some weight to it.

“It was Will’s.”

….

“Mango, who is Will?”

“My friend.”

My heart breaks for him, in the same way lightning-shaped cracks extend from the chip in a windshield—suddenly, as if bumped. He doesn’t have to tell me that Will is his only friend.

“What do you mean, was?”

“He lived here before you. He left this behind.”

“ Well, we should send it back to him.”

“No, he left it for you. I can prove it.”

He opens his little black notebook to the front page. “He made this list for me. It was one of my first.”

V - Will’s List

The words fill up the whole page, as if a normal-sized person struggled with the size of the notebook while writing, but it’s legible, and direct:

Mango, when the time comes, please do the following:

1) Hide the briefcase somewhere safe. There are a lot of memories here.

2) Bring it out only when you know what’s inside can be used, and used for good.

I pause. “Mango, what’s inside?”

“Keep reading!”

3) If you can, make friends with the new person. It’s not as difficult as you might think.

Love, your friend, Will.

“ Okay, now you can open the briefcase.”

I unzip it. I expect to find some sort of continuition from the exterior...pictures, postcards,etc. But that's not what's inside. Not in the slightest.

I have no idea how much time passes. I sit and count. All of it. Mango waits patiently.

Finally, it's done.

"Mango, that's twenty-thousand dollars."

VI - The Dilemma

Mango stares at me, wide-eyed and curious. “Is that a lot?”

“ Absolutely and most definitely, that’s a lot!!! For me, that’s a lot. Maybe not for like…the Kardashians, but for anyone else — ”

“— who are they?”

I’m already onto other things. This is the most money I’ve ever had—ever held— at once. Some of the bills are crinkled when I unwrap them from their bundles. They’re thick. They’ve been in circulation. They’re real.

This could really help me. If anything, it would just give me some security to keep on going in a time where nothing is guaranteed, for the whole world.

But now, for the dilemma: In front of me, I have a very palpable twenty grand, mostly in twenties, fifties, and hundreds. Beside them, there’s…well…

I piece together a question, the only one I can think of. “Mango, are you sure this is for me?”

“ That’s what Will said.”

“He’s not missing this? He doesn’t want it back?”

“Even if he did, we can’t send it. Or meet up with him.”

“Why? You don’t know where he lives?”

“No, I do.”

Mango waddles over towards window.

“There,” he says, as he points up at the stars.

Oh…oh dear…

VII - Bless My Stars

I sit with Mango by the window. A few minutes pass before I say anything else.

“How did he go?” I ask.

“The bad flu. He was really sick. They took him away before he went up to live up in the sky.”

In selfishness, I’m glad he didn’t pass at home. The last thing I need right now is a gho—

“— Don’t worry. If he were a ghost, I’d know. And he’d be a friendly ghost.”

Together, we breathe in the quiet vastness of the night. I think of Will, and who he might’ve been. All that I really know is he probably travelled a lot in his life, lived alone at the end of it, and was a good friend to Mango.

"Did Will have any instructions for how he wanted the money to be spent? I know he said to use it 'for good,’ but that could mean a lot of things.”

Mango looks at me, with the brightest eyes I’ve seen all evening.

He doesn’t even have to say it. We’re going to make a list.

VIII - The Rest of the Night

We brainstorm until the sun comes up. I research charities, and Mango scribbles away in his little black book. We take a small break to hydrate.

“Tea?”

“I like juice,” he says.

I have a cup of tea, and he has orange juice in a shot glass. It’s the only cup that’s his size.

Around 8:00am, Mango shares his ideas.

IX - Mango’s List of Money Uses

1) Buy a chocolate-chip cookie.

“Will would get me a cookie every week. Is there enough money for that?”

“Yes. Many, many cookies.”

2) Buy a chocolate-chip cookie for someone else.

“It doesn’t have to be chocolate-chip, that’s just the best kind.”

I actually really like this idea.

3) Keep some money, so Taryn can stay.

“I’ve heard you cry about it at night sometimes, when you do sleep. You seem scared about how long you can afford to be here. Is that really what you dream about?”

“I guess so. Must’ve been a bad dream.”

“You seem to have a lot of those.”

I look over my own list. There’s some notes about various good-hearted causes, and some budgeting for maybe travelling abroad in the post-Covid era (Will’s briefcase inspires me). I tell Mango.

“I think he would like that,” Mango chirps.

We combine our lists to create the following…

X - The Final Money List

1) The “Cookie for Self” Fund

This part includes real cookies for Mango, of course. For myself, some is for travel, and some is for other little things. I plan to buy a few houseplants and line them up together.

Mango smiles. “Like a jungle!”

2) The “Cookie For Someone Else” Fund

Here, we'd donate to the charities I researched. Again, by Mango’s request, some of this fund goes towards actual cookies, but these cookies are for leaving on friends’ doorsteps, or in their mailboxes, when I know they need them.

Mango clarifies: “Just until you can hug them again.”

3) The “Friendship” Fund

Mango wants me to stay. I want to stay as well. So, the last bit of money goes towards being able to live in this apartment for at least a year. With a new spring in my step, I begin to look for work again, so I can afford to stay even longer than that.

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Not long after the list is done, Mom calls. She has a home-cooked meal she wants to drop off. She says she misses me, and asks how I’m doing. I look over to Mango, who is writing more lists in his little black book about who-knows-what. He may be here for a day, or a month. He may never leave at all. All I can gather is that he showed up exactly when I needed him.

I say I miss her too. I reassure her:

“Don’t worry. I’m doing well.”

And for the first time in a long time, I mean it.