A particular raincloud would form habitually over East Harlem. This raincloud felt lonely, unappreciated by the creatures below who benefited from its services. Inside it was an ever-moist turbulent core of emotion that sometimes manifested itself in inarticulate, though powerful ways. Loneliness would flip without warning into misogyny, nurturing instincts into cruelty. Thus it should come as no surprise that this cloud hit upon a pastime that we might consider unseemly and petty. It gained emotional sustenance from a little game, and pursued that game with mindless disregard for the discomfort it was causing others.

    The focus of this game was Millie Scorbutico of East 112th Street. Out of sheer boredom more than malice, the cloud would watch in the morning as Millie left her tenement building for work as a cashier at Lamston's. She would appear at precisely 7:55 A.M. If Millie came out holding an umbrella, the raincloud would try to hold in its moisture and refrain from initiating precipitation for the entire day. The rainclouds would wait anxiously, crossing and uncrossing its extremities, holding its breath, for the entire day, not letting drop even one bit of water. Then upon Millie’s return in the evening her unopened umbrella in her hand, the raincloud would watch until she was safely indoors, and then, with a resounding sigh, it would pass water all over the earth, smiling contentedly as all the musty smells of the city gardens and weeds, rivers and oil pipes drifted up to mingle.

    On those afternoons the cloud billowed for hours expectantly above the train station. Today will she emerge from the train without her umbrella, mislaid somewhere along the way in those mysterious underground tunnels? That would lead to a far more entertaining scenario. For the first sight of such an occurrence and the raincloud would let go with a boom of thunder and a downpour the moment that Millie began her defenseless and umbrellaless wobbling steps home.

    Summer dawn found the cloud impatiently waiting above 112th Street. Sometimes Millie would bravely leave her house in the morning without her umbrella, full of confidence and unreasonable daring. In this case the raincloud's entertainment was easy. It would watch Millie as she started on her way to the subway station five blocks away. As soon as she had gone two blocks, or far enough not to turn back around for the foolishly left umbrella, the raincloud would gather up all the moisture it could and let loose with the largest precip it could muster at that early hour. In the afternoon it would watch again for Millie to climb up out of the subway and it would release its entire afternoon reserves of pent-up moisture. In both directions Millie would arrive at her destination pathetically drenched.

    Why the raincloud enjoyed this cruel game so much is a mystery. Perhaps it was the amusing way that Millie, the perennially grouchy, aging chain-smoker, would tell all who would listen about her bad luck with rain. On umbrella days she would come home unhappy, sour in her dryness. "Of course it didn't rain today," she would say disgustedly, "I schlepped this umbrella around all day!" The building super would nod distractedly, not at all convinced of her logic, and Millie would climb the stairs to her apartment mumbling, as outside the raincloud let go of its water with greatest pleasure. The more it infuriated Millie, the sweeter the cloud's precipitation.

    "My rain is as sweet as her tears are salty!" the dangerously emotional raincloud would say to itself as it tasted its own production.

    But weather conditions and human beings measure time with far different yardsticks. After what seemed to the cloud like a very brief period of time, a mere flash of wicked fun, years had passed by and Millie had aged herself right into hack-coughing retirement. The cloud would still try to catch her off-guard as often as possible, but either because of advancing age or because of her almost obsessive mistrust of the clouds above her, Millie stopped going out entirely whenever the raincloud appeared. The raincloud became so accustomed to passing its water without the old lady's presence, that her inevitable death came and went without the cloud even realizing it.

    Millie's disappearance did nothing to dry up the raincloud's enthusiasm for its game. On the contrary, it threw itself into the search for a new playmate with great intensity. And soon it had a brand new relationship.

    This it found in the person of Maria Carmen Rosario, resident of First Avenue and 107th Street. The game worked the same with Maria Carmen, who left her house at 7:20 each morning, wearing an elaborate hair-do and "tons" of make-up. But Maria Carmen had a far different personality, and she would not spend a lot of time complaining about the rain to other people. She was fun in a different way: in love with the sound of her own voice, Maria Carmen would let out a squeal of titillated anguish each time she got caught in the rain. She would break into a run so choreographed and sensual that people would jump out of bodegas and pop heads out of windows directly into the torrential downpour, just to watch her pass by.

    All the commotion, not to mention the large numbers of wet citizens, brought a great deal of satisfaction to the raincloud. It was beginning to coordinate its own pleasure with the pleasure of the people below, and to its surprise, this brought an added sense of contentment to the foolish cloud's mirth. Even timeless atmospheric conditions can do some growing up!

    One can thus imagine the raincloud's deep disappointment when Maria Carmen packed her bags and moved to Puerto Rico. There, it imagined ruefully, she'll definitely draw the attention of far more powerful rainclouds. It imagined its robust, healthy tropical cousins swimming athletically through the deep blue skies, rolling up almost daily to shower Carmen with warm, caressing water. The East Harlem raincloud felt lonelier than before, than ever before. So it took heart and began its search for yet another human playmate, this time valuing with more subtlety the varying reactions that different people have under the penetrating impact of watery precipitation. For some people it was not an assault at all, but an encounter, an invitation to interact and to commune.

    This dear, wrong headed cloud thus became as benevolent and bright as the fluffiest little nimbus or cirrus in the strata above it. I don’t know about you, but this story fills me with a great inner sense of humility; how can we take our cares and own foolishness so seriously? They can never match the grandeur and monumental eternity of the natural forces and their laborious folly.

 

THE END