Driving around Detroit, I got another goddamn flat, and I was fine enough to get it to my mom’s, but I could hear the thunk thunk thunk, and it wasn’t no normal flat.
John, her neighbor, offered to help replace the tire, bless his heart. He’s like 80 years old. But, yeah, it was a struggle to get that thing off. It was Sunday, and even still, the tire shop guys helped me out right before they closed the door. Seems some kinda train part fell from the sky, and the viaduct under the rail got me. First, I thought it was the huge pothole, but nah. It was so bad they couldn’t patch it, something about tearing the interior sheet metal… Only God and Goodyear knows. I tried to mostly make out what they were saying from my broken ass Spanish.
I got home with the cheapest, out the door $65, Detroit’s unrequited love, a Spring Tax, the privilege of four wheels, and a job.
Get home, and the sink is full. We call it a magic sink. Don’t blink! Magic sink keeps giving what two growing kids dish out, home from school. Too bad the water main still broke, and it’s 100° F in June. Should I boil the water to do the dishes? I spent damn near an hour this morning, again, with Detroit Water and Sewerage Department. They assured me it was gonna be fixed Fri, but I know damn well it’s a holiday and they ain’t working, even if they’re on the street they on their damn cell phones scrolling most the time.
Tomorrow they’ll have to make a new ticket cause it still ain’t resolved even though they said it was.
The garden is dying under the heat. By August, the aphids and beetles will take over ’cause the heat stress is so bad, and no water to give makes plants weak.
I decided not to boil the water to do the dishes cause DTE costs been going up so high.
Photo Credit: Planet Detroit
These MFs been requesting rate hikes damn near every fucking year, and it’s making me itch. I am NOT giving them one more penny. They been saying on “the news” how some shit on AI is gonna make our bills high, but like crazy. Ohio folk got $25 surcharge on energy, A MONTH, from these things called Data Centers. I barely know what they do so I ask ChatGPT. Data Center are basically the computers that drive allllllll the digital shit in the world. It’s like worth a bazillion on the global market. Facial recognition, cyber security, cryptocurrency, Netflix, open AI. Artificial intelligence taking jobs, right? Nvidia making out like bandits. That’s why they make it look sexy, like hot tech future, digital girlfriends ‘n’ shit that don’t give no lip.
Apparently, these data centers are like super consumers of energy and water, sucking towns dry and forcing companies like DTE to build more towers, more wires, more power. Sounds like a SciFi Movie start of cyber warfare. In this drama, we lose against the machines. Don’t sound sexy to me when I can’t even get a good gallon.
$25. Hpmh. It reminds me I gotta decide, pay or cancel Netflix. Kids gonna be mad. Especially me and the kids got sick this week and we like watching Netflix to let the time pass. Should I take them to the doctor? I google it, ER with dehydration weakness? Hmmm. ER like $3000. So I guess I’ll be boiling the drinking water just in case and refrigerating it. Seems buying water is a choice between the micro plastics or rationing our own shoddy faucet supply. Slow death or short life?
I pour the water into a steel pot and set the timer. It’s 5 minutes roiling boil.
The front right burner is hotter than the others, so I run one pot at a time.
I stand at the window and look at the birds hovering over the June blooms. Flowers bend and billow in the wind, dry from the many days long drought. I’m seeing how the birds like the mulberries at the top of the tree, squirrels in the middle, and flies and pollinators on the floor. My babies can reach the lowest branches, and they love June mostly for all the wild berries. They look forward to it every year, and their feet get mulberry blue on the bottoms.
The timer goes off.
I put the water in a glass pitcher. It snaps. Fuck, rookie mistake. I throw the broken glass frustratedly in the kitchen sink. Still full of dishes, it’s now a mash of the shards, e.coli, hard ketchup, women’s work and another break-up note from Detroit’s unrequited love.
I look up to see my younger child disheveled and in pajamas, standing still as dead water, watching me hover over the mass. “You ok, mama?”
Tomorrow I’ll call DWSD. I wonder if it’ll be a human or automated system. I do not want to wait another hour on the line.
I sigh, shrugging deeply into generations of domestic labor, “Why can’t AI do the damn dishes?”
Michelle Martinez is a mom, a Detroiter, and an environmental justice advocate. She likes birds and gardens, and hates DTE Energy.
