Here is a story from another Antique Land written by yours truly. Enjoy.
She imagined that her arm was broken.
Right or left, it didn’t really matter. The point was that it was broken, or at least might have to be, one way or the other. She just knew that bad things would happen otherwise.
And the only question she could think of was: how would she rather have it – quick and painless or embarrassingly drawn out? Because yes, it would be embarrassing.
Well exactly. Obviously the right thing to do would be to be done with it as quickly as possible. Sever, wince and if required repeat. Bring on the tears and then hope for mercy. Could it possibly get any simpler?
However.
However, however, however.
What if you were really looking for the sympathy vote, the look that negates all the wrongs in the world and makes you the epitome of empathic appreciation.
This was the dilemma that she had to consider.
She thought all this in the moment right before, or during or in the second right before she stepped into the house. The arm she had been contemplating was in reality no metaphysical arm. From the fingertips to the yet blossoming blemishes, all enveloped into that cursive and nurturing skin, held to its certainty by the very bones that she loved were not an abstract to her. Its presence across the classroom piano back in her convent pigtails and rolled up skirts composing chopsticks were not an illusion of Descartian reasoning. They all belonged to her.
And she was afraid considering the possibility of that arm hanging like a flaccid wrench caught between the spokes of her brother’s cycle or her mother’s sewing machine gave her no moment of comfort. Not the least bit. There was an almost sexual intimacy with which she loved her arm and it wasn’t a likely possibility now that she would ever love again.
The moment was taking forever and she was almost quite certain now that Sphinx was asleep. Not that if he wasn’t it would make much of a difference but the vaguest possibility made all the difference to her arm.
The moment of this crisis wasn’t in the present as she saw it. It was hours ago, nearly eons to dear old Sphinx. It was at its inception with an idea, like many terrible things are, and yet it didn’t seem so terrible at the time.
And it began with Sam.
Last name unknown. By her at any rate and consequently by anyone else privy to the incessant yammering of her mind.
She supposed someone, somewhere in this abyss must’ve known his last name – tagged him with an undeserving legacy (as all legacies are) and offered him a diploma in some school with it or spoke sternly to its effect at the dinner table or possibly even yelped during an insatiable tryst or illegibly scribbled into an application form for his health insurance. She knew it must’ve but it was just getting to hard to picture it at this point.
Sam, she imagined was a good five years younger than her. Which wasn’t a problem of course. Nothing wrong with that. He obviously still had a good, throbbing, gesticulating non severed arm in his future, maybe. But her immediate concern was once again ensuring that Sphinx was out of sound if not out of sight.
She danced down into the hall of the spacious apartment on her toes like a very graceful albeit old St. Bernard and looked around, very much again like a St. Bernard. Her tussled black tresses clouding her vision of the periphery of a once welcome home.
She wiped the flowing hair off her face and walked down the hall into the living room trying to listen intently. But whatever sound was coming from the outside or from the street would never really reach her brain, cause as careful as she was being her heart was working the jackhammer into her arteries pounding out whatever acoustic talents she might have had. Unknowing to her, the right hand had at that very moment figured out the Chopin Concerto in E minor.
Or perhaps there really was a jackhammer outside; digging into the street what she imagined would be her shallow grave, or her arm’s grave, if they have such things, or if she was allowed one. She would like that come to think of it she thought. A nice mausoleum to her arm, a memorial of talent spent on stupid things like…wait, we’ll come back to that.
She slid across the living room to the adjacent balcony making one final sweep for Sphinx in the family area of the house. Immediately a cool night drizzle accosted her face in a melancholy realization that the rains had arrived. Bloody brilliant she thought, rains finally and I won’t even be able to cup my hands to gather the dew drops for Sphinx. She wasn’t sure those were the kind of thoughts that would serve her best at that moment so she moved on.
As the tense sweat mingled with the diluted rain acid burnt down her chest she felt a sudden dilution of everything sweeping over her at an atrociously torturous pace. An uneven cleansing of her sins, the smells and scars across her breast and neck. It was perhaps one of the nicest things to happen that day. It just occurred to her how massively pathetic that idea was but then again insisted that context is everything.
She wished she would just close the latch and light a cigarette. Not that she smoked but now would be a time as any to have an ambidextrous go at cancerous puffs, at least she’s be safe against arm cancer, if there was such a thing.
As she was turning the curve on the future of her arm and how it would never go to other countries and visit strange people or places she realized that the subdued jackhammer was no longer yammering anymore. It had withered into a soft, scraping, shuffling noise and was definitely not coming from her heart. That noise was most certainly external.
Someone was making an utterly hopeless job of coming out the bathroom across the hall. She fixed her eyes to the hideous door. Yes, there are hideous doors and she knew that the top notch designers can pull one of them from their britches first thing out of bed no problem.
She held her breath, feeling the nausea of the evening filling her lungs with the fruity bitter stench of her evening delight. Sam had promised her a fragrant free evening. And yet here it lingered on her tongue. She considered maybe it was just an illusion, only real within her and to the outside world as nonexistent as a real post-modernist novel or truly original music.
She knew she was being naughty for all that it was worth now in her head because afterwards she wouldn’t have a leg to stand up on. Figuratively speaking of course, legs are a lot sturdier than arms; they don’t break easy, so there’s no point in really trying for anyone, she hoped. She liked her legs almost as much as her arms, they had never been quite as talented but they always got her where she needed to go, not to mention they came with such comfortable padding for all those hard to sit places. She corrected herself; her mind was wandering again to escape the tension.
The hideous door (oh God it was still hideous) rattled a bit and didn’t open. She reached out in the hopes that before it ever did she would somehow make it to her room and give her arm at least a few more hours before breaking. Her parents were early risers. As she sprinted across to her room, she finally heard the whine. It was coming from the bathroom and was unmistakably that nurtured and practiced cry of Sphinx.
So there he was she thought. Best to leave him be she figured, not draw attention to herself in the morning or set up a time line of her excursions. Her parents slept at ten and she could claim she came in at 10-oh-five and maybe save the arm. Sphinx was no good at keeping secrets. He’d give a burglar the safe combination if he could yelp in primes (or they had a safe).
She closed her room door behind her and shook off all the moisture from her hair and dress. Turning to the bed she meticulously emptied her pockets off all the evidence; the baggie full of Lucy, the lighter and pipe. She couldn’t imagine a worse place for all of these things to end up at than here, perhaps the police station where Sam was keeping the night warm, but then again that would be worse for him, not her.
She opened the ally facing window and threw out the lighter and pipe. She was still not all together she thought when it seemed as if the pipe was taking an unusually longer time to hit the street four stories below. But it did go off as intended, soaring into the blackness and reverberating to the sound of a sonorous disappearance followed by that of the lighter and then the loud insane screeching of a car alarm.
The panic and irony were not lost on her. Only her mind was taking its own sweet time in coming around to the entire concept. A part of her agreed that she could panic; but another argued that it wouldn’t really do any good. Sam was right, that weed was some transcendentalist shit. If only it was Kantian she wouldn’t be in this mess.
She slammed the window shut trying to fend off the electronic serenade of polyphonic incrimination that attempted to follow her. Things were going bad much faster than she’d anticipated. She had just started to look forward to the possibility of slamming her own arm into the window and claiming that she’d been at the ER with a kind stranger to get it repaired. Conveniently sidestepping the issue of her hanging around with a known college drug (in all fairness weed isn’t a drug she thought) dealer who’d had what seemed at the time to be an overdose, medically revealed to be a peanut allergy. The Absurdity of her evening did very much embrace her with a benign indifference. Camus would be so proud.
Her parent’s room started trembling and she could feel it in the wind chimes. Her father was disgustedly getting out of bed with a roar as he use to on Sundays when he had to go to the office. He was a kind man she thought, not a mean bone in his body. It was her mom she wasn’t sure off. Those Sundays were worse off cause her mom wouldn’t leave the house and maintain the disgruntling in lieu of her husband. The teamwork of righteousness could really get trying for a 17 year old girl.
Puritanicalism aside she figured her mom wasn’t all that bad either. She was just old fashioned and didn’t take kindly to secrets, lies and well anything else that was illegal. If only drug laws had been reformed she wouldn’t be forced to break her daughters arm. She wouldn’t do it of course, but somehow it’ll get done. The mommy mojo voo doo was strong in this house and no anomalous possibilities were out of the question.
As her parents room started stirring to life in the early Sunday morning (oh God why did it have to be a Sunday) she darted out escaping into the hall bathroom, abandoning whatever plans she thought she might have of salvaging the night.
She just touched down on to the toilet seat to steady herself that the door pounded her out of complacency.
“K.! K.! is that you?” her dad’s voice came creeping under the bathroom door.
“Yea dad! Just a sec…”
She needed more than a “sec” and she wouldn’t know what to do with it even if she did have them. The baggie of Lucy was still in her terror stricken hands and she was quickly running out of pretend pee time.
“K.! What are you doing at this ungodly hour? Mrs. Ghosh called! She saw you at the hospital, she saw you with a boy…”
Oh god, her mother’s voice was impeccably sharpened to the accurate syllables that would drill right into her weak delinquent wannabe heart.
“…and are you alright? You’re not hurt right?” her father’s concerned baritone filtered in filling her with guilt beyond all damnation.
She quickly paced around to the sink and saw Sphinx’s collar all meshed and tattered in its quiet frustration. It would be good to be that collar right about now, she mused. Where was Sphinx anyway?
Pulling back the bathtub curtain she saw as expected Sphinx rising up on his back in the tub slipping around like there was no tomorrow. A figure skating Labrador if there ever was one. And as much as she’d like to credit divine imagery to her salvation she dropped the little plastic baggie in front of the dog and tried to drown out the still screaming and calming of her mother and father.
She was a bad person. And she knew she was gonna pay for it. But Sphinx would be fine she assured herself, he’d swallowed a condom once (in circumstances strangely familiar to this) and she’d hounded him out on to the streets the next two days till he disposed of it without a hitch, completely undamaged and un-torn, the condom and himself.
She fixed up her hair and opened the door with all the grace she could afford herself, implanting a look of deep concern and ease onto her face.
“Mom, Dad, relax. I’m alright!” she gently but firmly answered much as she’d seen her mom do it when she knew she was in control. “Some friend of Percy from the village fell sick at dinner so we just took him to the hospital. He had a peanut allergy or something. Percy spoke with the doctors and he’ll be fine. Is Mrs. Ghosh alright? Why didn’t she come over and say hello?”
Her parents eased but she could tell her mom’s sixth sense wasn’t completely at bay. She nodded and hugged her daughter to reaffirm that she was alright. Taking in a deep breath of her hair and face as she pulled away, this forensic mommy was still convinced that a lack of odor was evidence of some other wrong doing.
“Is Sphinx alright in there?” her father asked “He’s been hell all evening, howling and yelping. Your mom thought it was an omen that you were in trouble” he added with a sarcastic wry smile on his face.
Her mom slipped past her into the bathroom to investigate and found Sphinx relaxed, lying on his back in the bathtub taking in the wonders of the ceiling tiles and how so many of them were like mystical diamonds crashing and dividing into each other against the deep blue sky.
She looked over her mom’s shoulder and saw Sphinx much like she had been just a few hours ago and couldn’t help smile.
Her mom glare back at her knowing something was wrong and the best that she could come up with in return was –
“Sleeping dogs lie, mom, let’s just sleeping dogs lie.”