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Brine
“These are the
seductive voices of the night; the Sirens, too, sang that
way. It would be doing them an injustice to think that they
wanted to seduce; they knew they had claws and sterile wombs,
and they lamented this aloud. They could not help it if their
laments sounded so beautiful.” -- Frank Kafka
We lived by the water, in the slums by the water where the
fishermen slammed their bounty on well-worn wooden planks.
Briny fish, some still flopping, but most glassy-eyed dead. I
used to pluck the eyes and string them, as if to make a shield
of seeing, but that never stopped anything. Just because you
see what’s coming, doesn’t mean you can stop it.
He worked at the market, hauling the loads and setting them
out in ice. He wore thick, floppy boots and a slick black
apron. When I think of my father, this is the image I have:
him leaning hard to the left after the day was done, against
the streetlight at the foot of the pier. A cigarette hangs
from his dry lips while the smoke rises with the wind to toss
his hair. Quite cinematic.
* *
*
“Have you been sneaking down to the pier, Alex?” my mother
said, her brow furrowed and her mouth pursed.
“No, Ma’am,” I said, eyes down, lost in the soup of cornbread
crumbs and marinara sauce, leftovers from dinner.
“Well, it’s something, girl. You smell like fish. Are you
not cleaning yourself down there?”
“No.”
Defiance. She smacked. I didn’t move. I had stained the
chair’s cushion from fear.
* *
*
At 13, I had the first of 3 abortions. Wire hangers, soapy
water, blood, cold tile.
Mrs. Tyler, a church friend of my mother, would lean over me,
caress my face, brush away my hair.
What a friend we have in Jesus. She
sang it like a lullaby, like a prayer. I almost believed in
God.
I
was just the little colored girl from the docks who kept
“getting into trouble” with the boys at the dock. That’s what
she thought, because that’s what I told her.
When she would wipe me clean, I forgot what it was to be
touched by him.
* *
*
In the pink carpet. The lacy curtains. The embroidered
pillow with scalloped edges. In the cream sheets. In the
pretty silk nightgowns my mother bought me for “growing up”.
In white school stockings. The starched white shirt with the
missing button at the top. In hairties. In the curls of my
hair. All my hair. Brine, salt, and cigarette. He filled me
with rotting fish.
What a friend we have
in Jesus.
* *
*
“I’m pregnant,” I said while my new husband choked on his
coffee. I was just twenty-one, and he was four years older,
already on the tenure track at Widecliff University.
“How far along? How do you know?” he stumbled.
“It’s pretty obvious. Stop bleeding and means something’s
up. I went to the doctor yesterday. I’ve an appointment
tomorrow.”
“An appointment?”
“An abortion.” It was as simple as that.
“Alex, what made you make a stupid decision like that? What
are you thinking?” His face had gone from red-faced surprise,
his hands open and inviting, to twisted anger, fists on the
table. So quick, the change of men.
The kitchen seemed small. I began to pace.
Apples on the table. One looks soft. Have to
throw it away.
“I told you when we got married that I didn’t want children.
I’m on birth control. You’re still wearing condoms after a
year. Don’t you remember two months ago when the condom
broke? I was in the shower for an hour. Didn’t you think I
was serious?”
Teapot pushing out
steam. It’s going to whistle soon.
“Of course, I did, but … sure, it’s not planned, and we’d have
to make some sacrifices, but we could have a baby now. I’m
earning enough, and you’d be able to spend more time on your
writing when it comes.”
Chipped tiles, chipped
tea cup. No way to fix.
“Sure, after I throw up every day for nine months, I’ll work
on my essays. While I’m changing diapers, I’ll be working on
my grand opus of poetry! How many female writers make it once
they have children, Robert? How many? I have no desire to
procreate and lose myself in the creation.”
“Well, we’ve procreated, so that’s that.”
I
picked up the teapot and poured the water into the teacup,
burning my thumb in the process. The smell of chamomile tea
hushed my scream. I rushed to the faucet for cold water.
“I’m going tomorrow. I don’t even know why I told you.”
“Why did you tell me? You know I want children. I told you
that.”
“And I told you it wasn’t happening, and you still married me”
“I still married you, although now I don’t know why.”
“There’s no way I’m having it.”
“Why? What did I do?”
I
turned to him, sucking my burned finger like a child.
“The world should have less fathers.” I caressed his back
with my other hand, while he stared into his coffee.
* *
*
I
went to a nice, white clinic for my third abortion. Robert
wouldn’t go. I had to take the bus. There was a pretty
little Black girl in the seat in front of me. She had this
beautiful curly hair, like mine but with red highlights and
pink bows. She must have been four or five. She knelt on the
seat to face me and prompt me to play peek-a-boo. We played
for a few minutes while her mother sat, collapsed beside her,
hugging a bulging bag of groceries.
“Don’t humor her. She’ll play that game forever,” she turned
to me, but we still played. When my stop came, I left. Her
eyes were closed.
* *
*
I think I killed my father and my husband. It was not on
purpose, though if I had known that I had such power, I would
have killed my father more viciously, would have gouged him
out of my body with scissors and barbed wire.
I
would have tried to save Robert. I would have given him a
goldfish, a pretty child, with enough life to twinkle in his
eyes. He’d never look for children in the arms of children.
I am fifty-nine now, and the halls are all
whispers: Professor Delacourt was
sleeping with a student, and now she’s pregnant. Only 19.
Professor Delacourt
may lose tenure. His wife wanders the halls. What will she
do now that the divorce is final?
Robert Delacourt loses tenure. Leaves wife of
over 35 years for younger coed. Soon-to-be father.
Whispers.
I
stand before the mirror often. First, I touch the glass with
my nipples and then I pull back to see the sagging flesh, the
pot belly that never held a child longer than a few months. I
see my father’s cigarette burns on my thighs, though the scars
are long gone. I see laugh lines from a life with my husband,
happy when he wasn’t out having yet another affair. I smell
myself: a mixture of strawberries and peanut butter. I touch
and do not fear. I am alone, and I am afraid.
Somehow I link all this together: the smell of fish, those
lost children, blood and non-belief, lullabies, my husband’s
affairs, the divorce, the whispers of my life.
I
think often of sirens. I am drawn to the mythology as I have
been drawn to the image for years: the woman on her rock,
combing out her hair, singing her songs of loves lost, let
go. I imagine the constant desire for a lover, a sailor with
his briny hair, a longing so manifest in song that he comes
sailing and many come to die suckling on her scaling breasts.
My breasts are empty sacks. They had bled in the teeth on
father and husband. They have bled, too, for those little
fish I still imagine swimming inside me.
I
will walk silent through the halls, where Robert once taught
and I remain. I clamp down my wailing. Who knows what would
come if I sang?
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