The Ministry for Consensual Repair (2023)
Light dustings of dry white snow flew back and forth across the sidewalks on the morning that Minneapolis, Minnesota’s downtown post office woke up and felt somehow different.
The post office yawned and stretched her arms out far to the sides and then as far above as she could lift them. She rolled her shoulder in a circle. Her right shoulder had been bothering her for weeks. Deep inside there was a tight, twisty ache. Maybe she was finally beginning to feel her age. Maybe she had work that she’d forgotten about, and it burrowed deep under her collarbone and made a comfy home for itself where it could gnaw at her, and nag her, jabbing and jabbing.
She felt around the rest of her body, smoothing her palms across her stone columns, terrazzo floors, and her carved wooden counters that were worn so smooth that they felt like how the word perfection would feel, if you could rub its definition The condition, state, or quality of being free or as free as possible from all flaws or defects between your fingers. Her hallways and bathrooms felt the same as always. Cool, officious, calmly awaiting visitors.
Mornings of the past decade were the busiest part of her day. Many years before, she hummed and churned nonstop from open until end of day. People streamed inside of her, plunging deeper across her lobbies toward long teller lines, counters, and into the back offices for larger shipments. They fed her: money, paperwork, birthday cards and wishes. They all fed her something different, handmade, just for this one specific moment in their lives. They all also fed her something the same: faith.
This is for my citizenship.
My daughter’s first college application is in this envelope.
Half of the electric bill is here –Friday maybe I can pay the rest.
The people were worriers. They worried have I filled this out correctly? and am I late for work? and my daughter was clean for 88 days… could I have done something better to help her? where did she sleep last night? was she warm enough?
Sometimes a person worried in many different directions all at once. Will my little girl tucked in tight between the green and light blue sheets in the Children’s Oncology wing live until Christmas? at the same moment as if I miss more days of work, we’ll lose our health insurance and my husband will never forgive me for working while our daughter dies.
Despite all the things that people worried about, and their multitude, and their heaviness, the people hardly ever worried about her. They came and gave her all their hopes and total faith.
Their letters, in time, would get where they were going.
The post office loved them for that. She delivered.
* * *
Ah, she thought. There is the difference. The stone above her doorways, the serious ones, majestic, extra tall, that faced the downtown streets, moved. Her whole life so far her stones read P O S T O F F I C E.
Today they felt different.
She felt around the edges of her rocks. The bricks themselves, the same as ever. Same age and minerals, same leftover echoes of the fingerprints of her friends gone now who once upon a time stacked all her stone bricks together and freed her to roar to life.
Her body was layered with her builders’ dreams, their bosses’ dreams yes, but also theirs: a hot meal later. If I’m lucky, someone to eat it with. If I’m luckier still, children and all fed because of this stone I put here and the one I put down next to it. Between every stone in her body was the collective, overarching wish to connect people just a little bit tighter than space and time allowed so far.
This December morning the letters carved in the stones above her doorway felt new. The post office did the building version of what you or I would do upon finding a canker sore in our mouth or picking up a rock that overwhelms us with its smoothness. She rolled the change around between her teeth and ran her tongue across it. She held it up against her lips, and rubbed it back, and forth, slowly. She let the fine hairs on her upper lip wrap around the change like seaweed parting underneath the boat of two women who snuck away into the swamp to dream about a world where they could be writers, and artists, and in love, and live together in a beautiful mansion like Villanelle in Killing Eve. Only less killing, they giggled. And even more art! They splashed each other with water from the swamp and squealed, and giggled more.
Etched where her name had always lived were a few new words: The Ministry for Consensual Repair.
Okay, she thought.
* * *
It wasn’t as if she chose to become a post office in the beginning. The people did. They chose so hard that their choice moved mountains: Kasota limestone from Mankato appeared in downtown Minneapolis. Black granite from St. Cloud joined him at the jobsite. Seven hundred laborers and carpenters in baking heat and brutal Minnesota cold danced a spell for her. When all seven hundred builders completed their choreography, they crowned their princess with a three hundred and sixty foot bronze chandelier and blanketed her floors and hallways with terrazzo.
The builders built gilded cages for the backdoor people, elevating them in their positions, protecting them from the greater mass of people streaming through the front doors, offering them (some) privacy and (some) autonomy in their smallest cubbies and capturing them against their narrow wooden desks to provide their daily service. The backdoor people arrived every morning and surrendered for the hours ahead of them. They took the front door people’s wishes one at a time, shuffled them, pushed their own officious, expert, navigating energy along the edges of each envelope. They tossed each letter into a waiting bin, that another backdoor worker rolled away each time it filled, and further shot each envelope from bin to bin and room to room until in their most capable of opinions the wish at hand was deemed ripe and ready to sprout. Only then, the backdoor people handed stacks of post, neatly prepared to the futures: men and nowadays, women too and more and more of the new people (the ones who remembered how to be everything instead of specifically girls or boys).
In the beginning, she didn’t decide to be a post office. The people did. It had only ever delighted her to serve.
Consensual Repair, she thought. The people did not seem to be behind this change. When they painted her, outside, it tickled. She liked the painters. They were like the new people. The painters ‘opinions about right and wrong, and mine and not mine were somewhat more creative than most of the backdoor and front door people. In all respects, they were very creative. The post office admired them for making art where other people would punish them for existing too much.
So it wasn’t people who made the change. That’s okay, she thought. Her first incarnation had been perfectly agreeable. I’m certain this will be fine as well.
* * *
The first day nobody came.
The once upon a time post office and baby Ministry was unbothered. It was nice sometimes to take a little break.
* * *
On the second day the backdoor people arrived as usual.
They arrived, they groaned, they smiled, they grumbled not before I get my coffee. Coffees were gotten. Good mornings were said. The backdoor woman who gave up coffee bemoaned the struggles of life without coffee. She sipped her tea. The backdoor people danced into their golden cages, their beige offices, into place behind blue postal carts or seated in their clunky ergonomic black plastic chairs facing sleepy, satisfied desks.
The security guard unlocked her front door.
The first front door person to wrap her hands around the metal door handles and pull hard after the change was very young, maybe in her twenties. She had bright orange freckles and pink sunburned shoulders with peeling edges. Her sundress and leather handbag dangled from her shoulders. Everything about her seemed uncertain from head to toe.
The Ministry watched intently. She opened all her ears as wide as she could, and turned her head and all of her eyes to watch the girl as she walked gingerly across the lobby. The Ministry thought it would be funny to shake a little bit, but she didn’t. She was good. And the air inside her felt happy. The air could tell already something good is about to happen in here.
Um, the front door woman said. Hi. Um I’d like to say that I’m sorry.
The backdoor person at the first window nodded at the girl and chewed on a piece of cinnamon gum. This backdoor person kept a pack of cinnamon gum, always, in the top drawer beneath her wooden desk. She actually knew all the grocery stores and all the gas stations in the city where she could pick up a pack (or, a ten pack) of her favorite cinnamon gum. She enjoyed making good use of time and saving herself an errand anytime she could get her favorite gum and groceries or her favorite gum and gas, rather than stopping in two places. Sure, the backdoor woman said. How can I help?
How delightful! The Ministry thought. Exactly the same as always, the backdoor people knew just what to do.
Okay, the front door woman mumbled. Um, there’s a girl I worked with at Stanley’s. She was like new and she didn’t clean right at the end of her shift. But um, her cheeks turned the same color as the sunburn on her shoulders I think I did something wrong.
The tremble in her voice said things about the flavor of her worry. She didn’t have the worry of late to work like so many who once visited the post office or the stress of doctors never believing her when she said Something is wrong. She didn’t have the fear of borders or colleges or other things designed for keeping out the people who needed them most.
The front door woman in the sundress carried around the guilt of a father holding a letter to a daughter he left behind a long, long time ago. Her worry was equal and opposite to the hope of I am so, so sorry. I let you down.
Strange, the Ministry thought. She went years between seeing visitors with that wish.
Well, we can help with that. The backdoor woman smiled warmly at the blotchy younger woman.
Okay, the front door woman relaxed her shoulders a little bit, straightened her neck, and lifted her chin slightly. Her eyes grew braver and sad. The new server was Black, so I just didn’t want to offend her, I guess? So I told the manager, when she didn’t do the cleaning right at the end of the shift. Like, it wasn’t really my job to show her…but we all have to clean. She exhaled and her exhale blew her bangs up off her forehead. She never came to work again. I think I might have gotten her fired.
The backdoor woman’s eyebrows were raised. Mhm. So what would you like? She punched in a few keys on the grey robot in front of her fingers.
I want to say sorry? If I can? I shouldn’t have done that. I could have just talked to her myself. I went and made it a way bigger deal than it needed to be. I mean, I didn’t mean to, but that’s what happened.
Mhm, the backdoor woman said. Let me look up the pricing for that then. She punched more letters with her fingers. The backdoor woman was fast at punching the letters but she’d never learned how to the way most of the other backdoor people did. She put the letters in more like a salsa dancer, with her two pointers, both thumbs and right middle finger leading around the keyboard. It was pretty.
The backdoor woman waited for the grey robot to write back to her. She put a few more letters in. She smiled – huge.
The Ministry leaned forward with great interest. The backdoor people never smiled at the robots, they smiled at the other people and usually only when they surprised one another or traded goofy jokes. There’s good news, the backdoor woman said, continuing to smile. You coworker had been waiting to hear about a grant, and she got it. She never came back to work at Stanley’s because she didn’t need to anymore. She’s a painter. The grant made it possible for her to just paint for the whole rest of that year.
The front door woman laughed and her eyes filled up with water. Really?
Mhm, the backdoor woman said. It doesn’t look like the manager even spoke to her. The only thing that happened is her dreams came true. It says here that at the end of the year, she was picked up by a gallery, her sales gave her enough money to move back home to California, and she’s still painting today.
The front door woman was crying now, which was a little funny and a little distasteful to the Ministry, because since she was wearing a sundress, she didn’t even have any sleeves, so she was just smearing her tears around her face with her hands. The Ministry herself maintained impeccably neat, well ordered plumbing systems. Then the front door woman laughed. Perhaps she thought the same thing.
Okay, she said. Okay, I’m really happy about that. She laughed more. Do I pay? It’s my first time. I don’t really know how this works.
The Ministry scooted farther forward to see what would happen next. The green papers the people preoccupied themselves with weren’t special or unique the way their wishes are. So many of the same! Five, five, five, ten – dull. It seemed to her that it would save half of the work of running a post office to do away with the green papers in their entirety.
No, it says here no charge for no harm done, the backdoor woman answered. You’re all set.
Okay, the girl said. She smiled, and the air that had gotten happier when she first walked inside was smiling all around her too. The air felt like she always felt about wedding invitations, when the grooms were really in love with each other and they both had amazing friends and happy families and everyone wanted to celebrate together.
The backdoor woman looked down at the front door woman. Thanks for coming in, hon. And hey – don’t do it again? It’ll save you an errand, if nothing else. I like to save someone an errand, if I can. And she did. The same woman who knew every grocery store and gas station where she could buy her favorite brand of cinnamon gum had always advised visitors as to where they could pick up or accomplish two or three things instead of just one.
Definitely not, the front door woman answered, exhaling and shaking her head. Thank you. She left, with her face in a big grin and her cheeks salty and damp and her nose a little bit stuffed up and her spirit brighter, healthier, and more ready to delight the rest of the world all around her.
Consensual repair, the Ministry thought appreciatively. She liked it.
* * *
The sky was already black and the streetlights and car lights lit up the rain around them on the evening when a new person walked through the front door of the Ministry. She’d been a ministry now for five full years. Since her transition, a lot had been repaired.
Very many parents apologized for spanking their children. It was easy. When parents visited to apologize for hitting children, thanks to grant funding Ministry staff provided the parent with two coupons: one for ice cream at Milk Jam so the parent could take their child out to apologize personally and one for $100 to open or add to their child’s education savings account.
The n-word, when used maliciously, was very expensive. Ministry staff sent invitations every year to every wrongful user to visit and submit payment: a full 15% of their previous year’s earnings. Her staff folded the payments received into cashier’s checks and forward them to the recipient of the wrongful usage. But this program, even five years later, had issues. Occasionally, the fee assessed was greater (twenty, twenty-five, and even fifty percent) – and no one troubleshooting yet ironed it out. Additionally, while the funds were used for wonderful things: vacations, larger birthday parties, extra loan payments, new suits for jobs where the front door people were respected, looked to for counsel, and genuinely cared for by their colleagues, even entire down payments on homes - it was still among the lowest rated programs in healing and satisfaction.
One reviewer commented “This is bullshit. I never asked to be called that, I never asked to be reminded, and I never asked for money. I gave it to the school, fuck you, don’t contact me.”
The Ministry cherished every wish, equally. She heard his and fulfilled it like every other.
For her, it was always an honor to serve.
The Ministry was proud of her work. The change, with its new challenges and new sensations pleased her. The sameness of sending hopes from where they started to where they wanted to be more pleased her too. She was good at what she existed to do. The people trusted her. She repaid them.
This new person was a usual sort of person. There were a lot of them. Mostly men, sometimes new people and sometimes women. They visited often when she was a post office. Since becoming a Ministry, she hadn’t seen any of them at all.
The Ministry was very happy to see them tonight.
The new person was tall and very pretty. They drank too much and smoked and it showed in their tummy and their aching knees. But their skin was still perfect. And their hair was long and dark and healthy and thick. Their curls were as dense as their arm and shoulder muscles and wild, and shining.
The new person was complicated. They were as hurt as they were scared and they didn’t taste good to the air, despite how pretty their hair was. The air tried running away from them, but she didn’t know how. She tried again, anyways. The new person thought about running away too. But before they could, the security guard did something new.
The security card sat up straight in the elevated black plastic ergonomic chair in the front left corner of the Ministry, hopped down off of the chair so that both of his feet hit the floor for just a second, walked briskly across the entire lobby and clasped the new person in a firm warm handshake and one-armed hug.
The Ministry’s eyes widened perceptibly.
Hola hermano, he said. Bien?
The new person nearly choked. They wanted to do everything all at once like: dying, sinking into the floor like quicksand in the movies, collapsing, hitting the security guard, hitting him with both hands, and then hitting him harder with their fist, sobbing on the ground, and also running like fucking hell out of the doors. They groaned and leaned forward into the security guard’s right shoulder. I hurt a woman they said. I’ve hurt people. I was so, so lonely.
The security guard hugged the new person with both arms, very tightly. Okay he said, taking a one-centimeter step back. Not far. Just enough for a little bit of air to hover around them both, together.
The new person was still a fight, but their fight was smaller. They still wanted to die, and run, and hit something, over and over and over. They wanted to hit themselves. They wanted to get hit. They wanted this hug. They really wanted to run. Help.
Okay The security guard said Okay. Amigo, we’re are just going to sit. The right people will come to get us. They know what to do. We will just wait for them to come and help us. Together.
The Ministry was satisfied.
She trusted the backdoor people. In all her lives, the backdoor people always ensured that the front door peoples’ dreams were sent along to the right places at the right time with appropriate renumeration.
Plus, with so many new things happening the security guard! Helping somebody stay inside the Ministry thought some other good changes might come too.
Maybe, soon, I will get to keep one of the paintings that the painters make. The Ministry always had a soft spot for the painters.