Garage Sale for Africa at Christ the King Church

For Africa they sell their bread makers and breast pumps. For Africa: ten blenders. For Africa, at three dollars, maternity clothes, cotton gathered at the breastbone to bloom over the baby as it pushes forward. Melissa, my friend, a poet living in Mali now, she works with children in her small house; she has melon and tea for breakfast. Because I have never been to Mali, I think of Melissa as I buy a gently used sweater from Banana Republic. A safari theme. Pockets for film the ways we once captured the savanna. A zebra handbag whose native habitat is Jersey. The imagined country, the imagined children, canvas shoes for their imagined feet. A bin of baby clothes, unworn bibs and booties from hopeful preparations. Melissa is a good woman, solid and sweet. I would trust her with my baby. She will hold a bag for a woman vomiting in a bouncing jeep if the bag needs holding. Here, this room of women who want to do good the way they know best: buying, selling. Melissa says we should tell our battle stories, not compare the scars, meaning pain is a liquid that takes the shape of its container: slings and packs and wraps and baskets, the many ways to carry a child.