ESSAYS
What We Were Waiting ForIOWA CITY, IOWA 06 June 2007 |
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That day I stepped out of bed into a cold morning.
Full winter. Stars still shining. Bright moon in the still-black sky.
Got dressed.
Ate nothing.
Took my winter coat from the hook and wrapped a gray scarf three times around my throat.
Pulled the coat on in the staircase. Turned the collar up outside.
There were street cleaners. Some drunks around. Bakers moving inside the locked boulangerie.
On the train, the heaters out, sitting by the window I tried to find something to look at in the dark. But with the light in the car and the blackness outside I was having trouble avoiding my reflection. Pulled the coat tighter but couldn’t stop shivering.
Leaned my head against the glass. Instead of sleeping tried to catch the expressions of people standing on platforms as we raced past. Stations with names I didn’t recognize. Towns I didn’t know.
Got there. Followed the stream of people rising up the escalators. Eyes swollen. Felt like I was swimming, the crush of commuters moving around me.
Stopped in a café. Stood at the bar. Drank a coffee.
Old men smoking cigarettes and reading papers. Stolid waiters and silent morning drinkers.
Outside in the cold air I found you waiting.
Saw me and pushed yourself off the wall. Raised your chin. Tough girl. Nothing to it.
And it had already begun days before.
The dying.
What did I know of your bodily chaos? Cervix softening. Dilating. Your dying decidua, your contracting uterus.
Placenta floating free. Suddenly useless vessel. An abandoned satellite.
Caught a taxi. Ten minutes gliding in the dark. Green radio glow. Your hand pressed flat against the vinyl seat. My hand on top of yours.
Long walk down an ancient stone hallway. There were echoes in the cold.
What lonelier sound than slow footsteps on stone?
“Christ there are nuns everywhere,” I said.
You laughed.
Thank god
who I don’t believe in.
Thank the nuns
creepy as they are.
Thank Christ
whose name I take happily in vain.
I thought,
Can you imagine the horror this place has seen? A hospital since the twelfth-century?
What are we, the two of us here, to the crowds of children who’ve suffered to death of plague and smallpox and hunger and cold?
Nothing to all those ghosts sweeping around the halls, past crucifixes and virgins.
Nothing marching along, us two, searching for our cell.
They took us to a small room. Table, four chairs, a bathroom. Two recliners in the corner.
We weren’t alone.
In one of the reclining chairs was a woman with long black hair and pale skin. A man sat next to her holding her hand. They were whispering to one another. He nodded at us.
She looked away.
I hung my coat on a hook in the corner. Windowless room.
Nurse brought you a pill.
You swallowed it.
We waited.
You refused to lie down. Tough as you are. So we sat at the table and tried to ignore the other two. Their whispers. Her short, sharp yelps of pain.
The other two left and we didn’t notice.
Seven hours passed.
We spoke little.
They served you a lunch you didn’t touch. I ate the crackers. Dry and tasteless in my mouth.
You allowed nothing. Didn’t cry. Barely a cringe. Just sat there reading a magazine. Smiling at me from time to time.
Then you stopped waiting.
Then you stood. Walked awkwardly to the bathroom. Locked the door behind you.
And behind that locked door, alone, bravely, you left what would have been ours.
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