Chapter 12
12.
I kind of like being at the mercy of the fm radio. Most of the songs seem to relate to me. A love lost, a love found. They're all singing my song.
I was changing the station when my car was rear ended. I felt like I was watching a movie in slow motion as my head hit the steering wheel and then bounced back against the head-rest. I just kept thinking, "This can't be real. This can't be happening." Though it felt like I must have left half of my face on the steering wheel, there was no blood. I rubbed my head for a few seconds, until I realized that rubbing it made it hurt more.
The guy ran up to my window. I focused my eyes on him, but when I blinked he got blurry again.
"Holy shit, are you okay?" He asked.
I closed my eyes and nodded.
"You don't look so good. Your forehead is swelling up. Do you live around here? Can I give you a lift home?"
I tried to shake my head, but it hurt. "I'm driving to Florida... I'm fine."
"No. I'm going to take you to the hospital."
I figured out how to shake my head. "Mmmm Mmmm." It said as it shook.
"Well, what about a hotel? I can at least put you up for the night."
"I'm okay..." I offered, but he had already opened my car door and started lifting me out. Once settled in his car, I looked at his bleary face. "You could be a mass murderer." I said.
I guess I fell asleep before he responded.
I awakened in a poorly lit room. He was sitting in a chair that he had pulled up to the bedside. He was handsome, thirty somethingish, and obviously very concerned.
"Oh good, you're alive. I was so worried."
"Yeah, I'm alive. My head kind of hurts though..."
"I'm just glad that you're okay." He said. His brow was wrinkled, but there was an air of relief about him. "I was worried about you. I'm going to go get you something to eat."
When he returned, with danishes, juice, and aspirin, I thanked him. He just smiled and we sat on the bed eating and talking.
Accidentally, I kissed him. It just seemed the thing to do in a hotel room with a kind stranger. I'm a creature of habit. Maybe he felt he owed me that much after ramming the shit out of the rear of my car. Maybe he wanted a secret to keep from his wife, to reduce her to nothing more than an inscription on the inside of his wedding band. Maybe he was using me. I don't look at the teeth of gift-horses.
He held me through the night, his breath falling evenly over my cheek. And when I closed my eyes, he was Ezra, he was Nina, he was my mother, he was the boyfriend. The arms of the boyfriend, arms that are brown and salty from love, were the first to hold me. He was the first.
He lay next to me, snoring. And although I see shadows in every corner of my room, admitted by the lazy light of almost-dawn, I am not afraid. My fears of the unknown were erased last night. Last night when I was a virgin, briefly. I lay on my bed of flowers, all doe-eyes and unbleached purity. I lay in my blissful ignorance with all my flowers, all my fears, around me.
He rolls over in his sleep and pulls me to him. I feel safe here, in his arms. But as I lay in the arms of my boyfriend, I quietly plan my escape.
I will remember this night for the rest of my life. I will remember the night that my blemish turned into a rose. I will remember the night that he made his virgin into everybody's whore.
I lay naked on his bed. My body is beautiful and warm in the hazy light of almost-dawn. The sheets are tangled about my feet, still damp with sweat. The musk of sex covers me and keeps me warm.
We have made love.
The first sensation was that of being hit by a train. I died under its weight. I died an ignorant virgin. All I could do was hold fast. Hold on and pray that the Lord would end this pain, the pain that seared through my body with a sickeningly steady intensity. 'This must end, Lord, because it can't go on, Lord, it hurts.'
I had lost control of the experience. I had lost control by saying yes. I was dead, a lifeless, motionless form caught beneath the weight of this moving vehicle. I had sacrificed my body to the love.
I felt myself looking down from above. My body was splayed at an awkward angle. My eyes were closed, a white sheet over me. A man's body over me. But the scene grew more and more distant, clouded by the smoke of the cigarette we shared.
It was in this haze that I was reborn as a goddess.
I lay beside my lover. The weight of his arm has become obnoxious. I lift the dead weight, slung carelessly across my body, and I rise to go to the bathroom. I rinse my mouth and gaze at myself, at my body in the mirror. They are now one. I am marked with change.
My body is a goddess'. It is the body of a whore. And soon it will fly, flee, pausing only from time to time, from man to man, for sustenance. And at night these me will adore me. I will arch my back to hear their praise. They will seek, and find in me, an icon. A face that they can look upon with complete adoration and rapture. They will look to my averted eyes for forgiveness, for absolution from their sins. I will be their goddess, their patron saint. And they my humble followers. And at night these men will adore me. And though they will give me their possession, their warm, liquid love, they must know that I cannot be possessed. I shall fly by day. There is much to do. I must hear everyone's prayers.
The man lay in bed, naked, smiling at me. I wonder if every man will smile on the morning after I have made love to him. I return to the bed, to every bed, to every man. Will every man smell like this? I wonder. He puts his arm around his virgin, but she is no longer here. She is dead. At first I think to remove his arm again, to unfetter myself, but I let his arm stay around me. It will make him feel better when I am gone. He will be happy that he once held me. He will feel that he once knew me.
I really should feel sorry for him. If only I knew how. But all I know how to do is humor him and make love. All I know how to do is be a woman.
After a night of nightmares, I wait until dawn to disencumber myself. I wrap his shirt around me and silently step out on to the balcony.
A rose colored sun leans away from the horizon, casting translucent rays of amber and topaz over the ocean. The matte melon sky holds few clouds, while the near-silhouettes of two birds intermingle. On the water, a yacht sails away from the dock and under the bridge, where stark figures labor to the tune of their ringing hammers. The lights of the yacht gleam upon the water, making the boat appear to be a street from a city, just as rush hour sets in. The sound of the waves is muffled by the soft cries of the birds, the sounds of the workmen on the bridge, the sound of my own breathing.
I can hear my mother inside; the quiet hissing of the iron over watersprinkled clothing, her soft, frail voice humming harmonies to the music on the radio. I don't like knowing that she's just beyond the screen door. It wakes me want to run inside and throw my arms around her like I used to. But I can't do that because I have already said "I hate you". I don't like knowing that she's just beyond the screen door because it makes me realize how much I love her and how much I miss her loving me. The noises she makes are so familiar, so habitual, so motherly, that I hate her for making them. I can feel her eyes on me, boring holes into the back of my head. I can feel the love and concern in them, masked by her typical cool aloofness. I can feel the pain I've caused her and I hate to think of how much I hurt her, though I used to want to do just that.
I wanted her to be sorry. Sorry that she let my father leave us. What kind of woman was she if she wasn't good enough for my father? I knew, whatever she was, she certainly wasn't good enough for me either.
Maybe she didn't try hard enough, I used to think. It never occurred to me that maybe it wasn't her fault, that maybe it was all too much for him. All I knew was that if she truly loved him, if she truly loved me, she would have given or done anything to make him stay. I would have. I wrote letters to my grandmother to give to my father when she saw him, letters telling him that I would be such a good girl if he would only come back. No one ever answered them.
I turned sixteen the summer that my father left us, and we had a big barbecue on the beach. All my favorite foods, all of my favorite people and their parents. I never saw my mother look more radiant than that day. At least three of my friends' dads were with her at any moment. There was safety from jealous wives in numbers. I knew that they all wanted to sleep with her. And she knew it too. That's why she looked as if all the life had been pumped back into her.
There she was, my beautiful mother. Her hair in a bun, her long graceful neck. Her face, so lovely, so unmoved. A face that never showed her fury, showed her pain.
"Your mother is really beautiful." the boyfriend used to say after she left the room to wash the dishes. After dinner, we would go up to my room. We would undress and make love, just like the first time.
In the morning, my mother would serve us breakfast, either ignorant or indifferent to our premarital trysts.
"Your mother is so beautiful." he would say again as she left.
It was that image of her on my birthday that flashed through my head that night, later that same year, while I was in my room making love. I heard the sound of glass shattering as Mom shrieked from the kitchen. I raced downstairs, the boyfriend quick on my heels, only to find her kneeling on the floor next to a broken dish. Tears were streaming down her cheeks and her hair was disheveled as she sat there, wringing her hands.
"I can't," she sobbed, "I can't. I can't..." Over and over she screamed this as she lay in a crumpled mass on the floor. She wouldn't let me touch her, wouldn't let me understand. She just sat there with tears streaming into her mouth, which was curled into a snarl. It vaguely resembled her smile.
There she was, my beautiful mother. I was glad the boyfriend was there to see it.
A breeze- one that blows timidly, disturbing nothing- wafts through the treetops. I can hear the click of men's shoes on the kitchen linoleum. The boyfriend has awakened.
I close my ears so I can't hear my mother greet him warmly, can't hear the clink of silverware as the boyfriend sets the table for breakfast, hear the clamor of pans as she starts cooking, hear the rustle of her skirt as she brushes past the boyfriend, neat and handsome in his Catholic school uniform, the one that he keeps in my closet. I can't hear them, but I can smell bacon frying.
I hate my mother for ruining what I smell, just as she has ruined so many other aspects of my life, effortlessly.
I hear my mother's clipped, slightly nasal voice say to the boyfriend, "Tell Emmanuelle that it's time for breakfast, please." I listen to the back door as it shuts, and the even, moderately paced sound of the boyfriend's metered steps as he walks around the porch to where I sit.
He sighs "Morning, Em, breakfast's ready. If you're hungry." I flare my nostrils in response. We sit there in silence for a while. He picks himself up and walks softly back inside.
I too go inside, and back to the arms of the stranger. I look at his sweaty, unshaven face. He is still very handsome. I do not love this man, and I am very glad of it. I think love is what screwed up my life, because I love too much. I nudge him softly and his eyelids flutter open.
"Hey buddy, I think I'm going to head out, okay?" I say with a false smile.
"Great. That's really great." he mumbles as he rolls over.
I get dressed and wash up quickly. My face is black and blue from the right side of my forehead, over my eye, to my left cheek. But is in the light of my newfound ugliness, my own gentle disfigurement, that I am finding my own beauty, crumpled in the corners of my mind. I unfold it, smooth the pleats, and I wear it like a tank top on the hottest of summer days. I strut my ugliness, cascading through the hotel parking lot like a moan of silk and sweat.
I think I understand why my father left us.
Back on the road. John Denver would be proud. My car makes funny noises, but it moves. I have to make up for lost time, so I drive without stopping until noon when I pause to have a milkshake in a soda shop.
Southerners sit around in a way that northerners never do. Aimlessly. How novel. I saunter to the bathroom, reveling in the stares I get. Sorry guys, I don't do the nasty during the day.
There is no mirror in the Ladies Room. Are these ladies so confident? They are no ladies. And they certainly can't throw up a milkshake the way a northerner can.
Twenty five cents in the jukebox gets me three country songs. I buy a diet soda and sit at a table outside on the porch. Rays of sun shoot through me, loving me, blinding me. Can the sun be much more intense than I? The shadows of leaves brush my face sporadically like the softest lips. Cool air whirls around my ankles in a foreshadowing funk. Trees stand tall like tough guys kissing, but not one another.
There are weights tied to my eyelashes. How not to feel perfect, how not to feel sleepy in such warmth. My myopic vision strains.
I am unafraid. I know, I know. I admit my mistake. I own it. But how not to love? How not to give myself with such rapture and abandon? I have washed up on my own beach. I am naked and cold and alone, though the sun still warms me. How typical. Circe doesn't send flowers anymore.
Passion, passion. Love's lost thread. I experience love in quick, heated bursts which quench my thirst like salt water. There was a little swan who fell in love with hope, the swan that now sits at the edge of the porch, on the brink of something, listening to a man sing songs of regret and loss. And she feels, and she misses, though there are only air and flights of whimsy to remember.
I sit with myself outside. My best advice to you, girlfriend, I say (though not too loudly), is to give up. Give up and surrender yourself to the facts. They're as plain as day, as exquisite as you.
