The Comments Section

Nyrna Beckingham couldn't quite believe she was here, 30 miles from her home, sitting on a park bench. But that woman (at least Nyrna assumed it was a woman) gratebaker829 hadn't responded to her, not over the phone, not over email. Nyran disliked the anonymity of the Internet. She also disliked the speed, the accessibility, the promiscuity of the Internet, but when her youngest daughter made a cheesecake from allrecipes.com, Nyrna investigated. She evntually pasted her own recipe just to see what people would think - nothing fancy - potatoes lyonnais. She got encouraging responses so she continued with chicken fricassee, pot roast, meatloaf, stuffed cabbage, candied yams, and then kept going. Most of these recipes came from the First Unitarian Church Cookbook of Naperville, Il, passed down to Nyrna from her mother. That is, when Nyrna's mother died at 103 in her own home with no doctors present - "What do they care if I'm sick?" - Nyrna had taken it before her twin sister Myrna had seen it. Nyrna giggled when she thought of her sister's jealousy at family dinners. "I just don't know how you remembered all of mom's recipes." Nyrna demured and said, "Oh, I guess I just have the knack for it."

Maybe not for memory, but she did have a knack for cooking and Myrna could use 100 cookbooks and not outdo Nyrna. So when a commenter gave just one star to Nyrna's cabbage and onion casserole, Nyrna took offense. She responded on the web site and asked, politely, for some clarification, maybe there was a miscommunication. Gratebaker829 never commented again, so Nyran checked her profile, found her email address and emailed her directly with similar results. Her daughter joked, "Why don't you google her?" Nyrna wasn't so interested in finding gratebaker829, but in finding out whether she could be found. Nyrna typed in her email address into the search engine. Nyrna was introduced to peoplefinders.com. She balked at their monthly rate of $19.95, but a one-time search fee was only $1.95. "I'm not going to use this information," she thought. "I just want to see."

Three days later, Nyrna, who hadn't slept alone in 35 years of marriage, checked into a motel in gratebaker829's town and now sat - with a cooler that held a sample of homemade cabbage and onion casserole - on a park bench in a park catty-corner to gratebaker829's tony townhouse and tried to get a hold of herself.

She patted the cooler. A woodpecker pecked. Nothing happened yet. She leaned back onto the bench and clicked her heels like Dorothy. No one was in the green, triangular park. A few minutes ago, she had stood on the opposite corner on Greenwood and Vine with a head scarf tied around her bushy hair. The showercap in the motel room had had an unseen hole in it and her two-day-old set-n-curl was ruined. She bent and twisted her torso to see house number 829. She turned to the park, where a few nannies and their charges played on the marry-go-round. She had walked over to the park in anticipation of more people, but it was nap time, perhaps, and everyone had gone home.

Back in her own home 5 days ago, she made cabbage and onion casserole for her youngest daughter and her husband. Her daughter had thanked her mother after she finished.
"Did you really like it?" Nyrna asked.
"Uh-huh," her daughter searched her purse for car keys. "Can I borrow these?"
"Did you feel like it needed a lot of salt?"
"I don't think I used any," she said. "I'm staying at Rob's house tonight. I'll be back in the morning to take you to knitting club." She expressed her love to both parents and left through the laundry room. Nyrna's husband pulled out his reading glasses and started in on the paper. She pursed her lips, slid them back and forth like she was trying to unstick a piece of food in her canines. "Did you like it?" she askedher husband.

"You need to get gratebaker829 out of your mind," he said.

But, the next day, after her husband left for work, after Jane returned the car, she wrote a note:

I know this is unusual, but a friend from Naperville is in the hospital. Driving out there today. Be back by tomorrow night or Wednesday morning at the latest.

She had to drive to a few motels before there was one that let her use the staff's party fridge. She used the same excuse: taking food to a sick friend. She abandoned the leftover casserole in there and drove to gratebaker829's neighborhood. She encountered familiar precisely-measured squares of lawn, green enough to eat, houses with sprawling additions and renovations, cars hidden in organized garages. No traffic during the middle of the day. The residential speed limit was 20 mph. Nyrna rolled below that limit past 829, saw a set of blinds open halfway and sped up. She gasped, hit the brakes and just missed a child crossing the street on a three-speed bike.

Should be in school, she thought. She drove again. Nyrna, this is just what you get.

On the way back to the hotel, she decided to check out and return home, but undecided when she was unsure of how to explain her early return to her husband. She would probably say, "Oh, they didn't need me," but her husband would suspect something.

He already suspects something, you twit. He had grunted on the phone and she wasn't sure if he said I love you. She decided to check out in the morning and go back without any more knowledge of gratebaker829. You already have too much. She shook her head and patted her hair. She sighed. Darn shower cap.

She had followed through with the first part of her plan, but found herself driving past 829 Greenwood Avenue, parking at the Shop-n-Save lot, getting out of the car, standing on the corner of Greenwood and Vine, seeing children playing in the park and sitting on a park bench, trying to get a hold of herself.

She took the cooler off her lap. She looked like she was early for a picnic. She took out two pieces of paper from her pocketbook. One listed gratebaker829's real name Yvonne Delancey, address and phone number. The other was the comments section for Nyrna's casserole.

gratebaker829: Salt doesn't do it for this one, everybody. Hope you have a bottle of flavor ready.

"Bottle of flavor," Nyrna muttered. "Is she trying to be funny?" Just then, a dollop of bird shit fell from the tree above her and onto her head scarf. Nyrna whimpered and sprung to her feet.

Nyrna clucked her tongue. You never know who might be after you online? Wasn't there that new thing out there – cyber-bullying or something? You had to be more careful. Was gratebaker829 going around leaving nasty messages on just any site? That's not safe. Nyrna sat erect. She looked around to see if anyone had seen her start, suddenly aware of her resemblance to a bag lady. She put the cooler back on her lap. And just look how easy it was for me to find her. I'm not even good at the Internet. She stood up. The cooler jiggled against her breasts as she walked past the empty park, past the empty driveways, past the empty road and placed herself in front of number 829. Nyrna's finger's suffocated the cooler's handles. Her lungs tingled; she breathed through her mouth. On the way to the doorbell, her heel got caught in a crack and she stumbled slightly, misplacing her orthotics.

A tall, tanned woman with skin the same color as her highlights answered the door. She smiled till Nyrna asked her, eyes shaking and shining, "Are you gratebaker829?"

"What the fuck," the woman said. She closed the door. Nyrna rang the doorbell again. She turned right and walked on the cobblestones in front of the tub garden. She peered in the bay window. She rang the doorbell again.

"I'm calling the police," the woman yelled behind the door.
"I just want to warn you," Nyrna yelled.
The locked clicked and the door opened. "Warn me about what?" She held a phone.
"There are lots of crazy people on the Internet," Nyrna said. "You have to be careulf the things you say because you can get found so easy. Do you know what peoplefinders.com is?"

Nyrna thought she heard the woman say, "oh my God,” as she slammed the door. She locked the door behind her.

Nyrna squealed and stamped her feet. "No. Darn it." Her misplaced orthotics pinched her feet as they carried her back to her car. She drove toward the highway and then turned around. It was best to confront the situation so the police would have both sides of the story. But when she returned her hands stuck to the steering wheel. She whimpered when the officer tapped her window.

They found Nyrna's papers with gratebaker829's address and comment highlighted in yellow. They read Nyrna her rights as she whined half-words and sentences. GB829 stood at the end of her driveway, legs parted, arms folded, and drew invisible horizontal lines with the tip of her nose. The little boy on the bike from the day before drove past. "Are they arresting her because she tried to hit me?"

Tears broke through her gnashed teeth. "Why isn't that boy in school or something?"

Gratebaker829 would not press charges, the police told her. Nyrna now waited for her husband and daughter to come pick her up. The officers wanted her to get home safe.

In the car on the way home, her husband told her, "You scared me, Nyrna."
"I didn't mean to," she said. "Who knew it could go this far?"
"It's just food, Nyrna," he said.
"But good food, that's all I got," she said.
"I've always liked that casserole," he said. "And Amy. And all the ladies at church. Isn't that enough?"
"I don't know," she said. "I don't know why it wasn't enough."
She pulled a pastic fork from her pocketbook, peeled back the aluminum foil that covered her casserole and took small bites. She didn't offer any to her husband or her daughter.


Aisha West is an actress and writer. After graduating from the Experimental Theatre at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, Aisha wrote, directed, and performed plays with Synaesthetic Theatre for ten years. She is currently writing her first novel about a teenage runaway who tries to hide during the age of self-disclosure. She lives in Brooklyn with three tuxedo cats.