A Girl Becomes a Comma Like That (21 page)

“Chicken or vegetable. I make tomato, too,” he said.

I shook my head.

“I want to help you,” he said again.

“Are you a doctor? Because that's what I need,” I said.

“I'm not a doctor,” he said weakly.

“Then you should just go.” I looked around the room at the empty desks. I looked at the floor, what the students left behind: an empty Coke can on its side, a cupcake wrapper, and three balls of rolled-up yellow paper. I thought about the trees that made the paper and the students who couldn't find the trash can.

“I won't tell anyone, Rachel. It's just between us,” he said.

“I know,” I said.

Daniel stood up. He took a blank piece of paper off my desk and wrote his phone number down. “Here,” he said. “Call if you need me. It's not the worst thing in the world, Rachel, to need someone.”

“Just go,” I said again.

“Okay,” he said, gathering up his books, stuffing the books in his backpack, tossing his backpack over his shoulder, and leaving the room.

6.

The night before Rex went back to London we'd met up at a diner on Second Street. It was ten P.M. but he was eating breakfast. He'd found a place with bangers and eggs, his favorite. He was telling me his ideas about art and what he planned to work on when he returned home. “Chickens rotting behind Plexiglas, a hamburger on an exceptional plate—anything can be art,” he said.

I smiled, but in my head I was thinking that art like that isn't art at all. “Interesting,” I said.

“Ah, ‘interesting,' that's the word reserved for pieces that are not interesting at all.” With noticeable skill and help from his fork, he fit a whole banger into his mouth. He chewed and chewed. He looked at me. The grease was visible on his lips and I smelled the banger from where I sat. Maybe it was fine that he was leaving in the morning.

I drummed my nails against the side of my coffee cup. I tried to smile and said, “Where do you get the chicken?”

“The grocery store, Rachel. I wouldn't kill a bird for a project. I hope you know that. What sort of a man do you think I am?” He lifted his cup of tea to his mouth, held it there, but didn't take a sip. He was waiting for an answer.

“A fine one,” I said.

He didn't believe me; I could tell. “Maybe this is separation anxiety—how we're getting along now,” he said.

I wanted to change the subject. “What do you do with the chicken's legs?” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“How's the bird sitting or standing? What
do
you do with it?”

“The legs are pinned back,” he said, and then he leaned over the table and held one of my arms, pinned it back so that it touched the plastic booth. He was gentle, playful, whispering sweet things about my mind, which he said was sharp. “Going to miss you.”

“I hate it when people don't use pronouns,” I said, pulling away from him. “'Going to miss you' isn't the same as ‘I'm going to miss you.'”

“I disagree.”

“It's insincere,” I said, knowing that I shouldn't go too far with my theory, but unable to stop myself.

“Bullshit,” he said.

“I'm telling you, it's the pronoun that makes the difference. Ever notice how people who don't quite love you, at least not yet, they might like you a lot, they might really, really like you, but they don't love you, they're the ones more likely to say ‘love you' or worse yet ‘love ya'?”

“I hate ‘love ya' too,” he said. “But it's the ya I hate—I'm not so sure it's the missing pronoun.”

“It's important, identifying yourself in a declaration.”

“I hate ‘gonna' too,” he said.

“And ‘see ya,'” I added.

“Yes, that's right,” he said, happy that we were finally agreeing.

“It's not just the ‘ya' though, it's the missing pronoun, too—it's admitting things and being honest. It's adding yourself to the statement.”

He sighed. He shook his head. He stabbed a yolk with his fork. “I don't know about you,” he said.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Where's
your
pronoun, Rachel? Who's sorry?”

 

Later, in his rental car in front of my mother's apartment building, he kissed my neck and shoulders, and I was imagining that grocery store chicken behind Plexiglas, rotting, its legs pinned back, but still, when he stuck his fingers into my underwear, I came with a cry, and it seemed I could come forever and cry forever there in the front seat with his hand half in and half out of my skirt.

7.

Daniel followed me all around campus. I saw him when I drank my iced tea at The Pub, standing behind a pillar. I saw him in the English building during my office hours, looking at a bulletin board for things I imagined he didn't need. I saw him on my way to class, and he offered to help me with my books. I let him. I was just that tired; I let a boy carry my books for me and didn't even try to hide it. I took the books from him once we were inside the classroom and thanked him out loud.

He played soccer for the university. A star player with broad shoulders and a small waist, with white teeth that spread from one end of his wide face to the other when he smiled. All the girls liked him. They stared at him in class, and he stared at me, a woman old and sad enough to be his aunt. He'd taken classes of mine before, class after class, sitting in the front row, writing things down, nodding at my points and laughing at my jokes. He'd left kind notes and rare books in my box. Recently he left a note card that said:
Sorry about your mom I know what that's like a mom sick and sore and you unable to fix a thing.
He didn't sign his name but I recognized his cadence and lack of punctuation.

After class Daniel followed me to my office. He stood behind me at the door while I fiddled with my keys. “Can I talk to you?” he said to the back of my head.

I was nodding, pushing the door open with my hip.

I sat down behind my desk. The desk was big and heavy, and I wondered how many trees it took to make such a desk, and if the trees were healthy or terribly ill, afflicted with something I couldn't pronounce. I played with a piece of string I couldn't remember finding. I didn't know where the string came from, only that it was in my hands, and that I was making tiny knot after tiny knot, and could barely look at Daniel.

“I'm older than you think,” he said, and he had his hand out and was waiting for something—what? I didn't understand.

“Are you having trouble with Anne Sexton?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“What then?”

“I read your book,” he said. “Twice.”

I made another tiny knot.

“My mom died of breast cancer, too.”

“My mom's alive,” I said.

“She died fourteen months ago.”

“That's terrible,” I said.

“Do you need a ride to the procedure?” he said.

“It's an abortion, Daniel—it doesn't bother me to say it.”

“I'm not going to tell anyone,” he said.

“I know,” I said, backing away from him, and my chair squeaked, and I thought that next week I'd bring in some oil, and I'd crouch down on my knees even if I wore my new shoes, I'd oil the goddamn chair. I'd fix it.

Daniel leaned forward. “I'm older than you think,” he said again.

“I heard you the first time.”

“It's not about sex,” he said.

“What's it about, then?”

“I want to spend time with you, that's all.”

“I don't believe you,” I said.

“Maybe I want to be your friend.”

“Please,”
I said.

He put out his hand, his open palm one more time, wanting something. I didn't understand people lately. I didn't understand myself. And I didn't understand the boy, what he wanted.

” What?”
I said, tired and cranky, the late afternoon nausea coming on strong.

“Give me the string,” he said.

“What?”

“The string,” he said. “Give it to me.”

And I did.

8.

Tonight after
Hazel
is finished and my mother falls asleep, I move from the chair to her bed and watch her for nearly an hour. Her beard is soft and pale, but above her lip are several darker, wiry hairs that are stubborn and grow quickly, hanging on and returning despite her repeated waxing and expensive creams. She's spoken to me bluntly, joking about
turning into a man
—the steroids and hormones meant to slow the cancer affecting her femininity—not only changing her appearance physically but deepening her voice. Finally, she feels me staring and wakes up. “You're still here,” she says. “Shouldn't you be asleep?”

“I'm not tired,” I tell her.

“You're not going to believe it, Rachel,” she says, “but my clitoris is growing.”

“What?”

“It's true,” she says. “It's bigger than it should be.”

“Than it should be?”

“It was one size and now it's another.” She looks like she's going to both cry and laugh at the same time.

“Are you sure?”

“At first I thought it was my imagination, but now I'm certain.”

“Maybe it's menopause.”

“It's the hormones. They said I might have to shave my chin. I thought I'd get a few stray hairs here and there, but no one mentioned this.” She props a couple of pillows behind her and sits up. “I hope Gilbert doesn't notice—that would be terrible.”

“Mom.”

“What?”

“I don't want to think about the two of you,” I tell her.

“I'm sorry,” she says.

“Maybe you should tell the doctor.”

She shakes her head. “They're trying to keep me alive.”

“And they
are,”
I say, trying to sound positive.

“Sit by me,” she says. “Put your head here.” She pats her shoulder. “Come lean on your mother while I'm still a woman.” She is smiling. “A big clitoris, one real tit and one fake one—what a prize I am. I'm lucky he likes me.”

“Gilbert's the lucky one. You
are
a prize.” I lean my head on my mother's shoulder.

“I know you're pregnant,” she says softly.

“I'm sorry,” I say.

“You don't think I'm aware of these things, but I am.”

“I can't believe I let this happen.”

She touches my face, lifts it up so that she can see me. She holds my chin with two fingers, inspecting it. “Smooth and perfect, not one stray hair,” she says. She sighs. “The chemo ends and they promise me hair, those doctors. I grow hair, sure, but I wanted it on my head, not my chin. I didn't want a goddamn mustache,” she says, laughing.

“You don't have a mustache—not a full one anyway,” I say, teasing. We are quiet a moment. “Angela is taking me to the clinic in the morning,” I finally say.

“Angela's a good girl, a good friend. Claire, too. They'll be with you forever.” She pauses. “That boy, Daniel, called yesterday. Twice,” she says.

“He shouldn't call here,” I say. “I'm not giving out my home phone number to students anymore.”

“Maybe you should give it out more often.”

“He's a kid.”

“He didn't sound like a kid.”

I shake my head into her shoulder.

“He sounded very mature. We had a nice talk,” she tells me.

“Oh, no,” I say.

“About his writing, Rachel. Nothing else. It's your job. I wouldn't embarrass you,” she says.

“The medicine is working, Mom. You're going to be okay,” I tell her, wanting to believe it myself.

“Oh, hell,” she says, “they're turning me into a man. Just call me Mom
or
Dad,” she says, laughing and crying at once, and then the both of us are laughing and crying, and I am crawling into her sheets, and she is holding up the blankets, opening them wide, like a door or mouth.

1.

She bought the biggest bed she could find—a huge, king-size pillow-top from Mary's Mattress House. She charged the bed on a new credit card without worrying about the interest, then headed next door to Bedroom Outfitter to buy sheets. She stood in the back of the store and pushed her fingers through the packages' plastic windows. “Ah, yes,” she said to herself, finally deciding on a pale yellow 320 thread count by Stearns, “these will do fine.”

The bed arrived on a Friday afternoon. Angela asked the deliverymen to set the massive thing up in the middle of her tiny bedroom. Forget about a dresser or matching nightstands. Forget about bookshelves, fresh flowers, or a place for candles. Forget about a magazine rack, armoire, or reasonable light.

Six nights out of seven, Angela slept alone, and though she was five feet ten inches tall and a hundred seventy pounds, the big bed minimized the young woman's physical strength—in it, she was a small and unprotected creature.

In addition, it severely limited her mobility, and getting from one place to another in the room was a feat; she held her breath and sucked in her stomach. Thinking about each step she took, Angela balanced herself carefully, scooting between mattress and wall like a woman on the ledge of a building.

2.

She snored in front of Hunter early on. And everyone knows that a woman who snores too early in a relationship reveals too much—her hot breath, her slack mouth. In the middle of the night, the most curious men have been known to fall into a woman's open mouth and never be heard from again. Obviously, the threat of falling, a red tongue and quaking uvula, and finally, the dark highway of a sleeping woman's throat, is terrifying.

Her best friend, Rachel, warned her. “Asleep, you sound like a wounded animal, like something hurt or trapped,” her friend said, “something with a hole in its chest or a twisted leg, which should be reason enough to stay awake.”

“How can I not sleep?” Angela said. “What if I'm tired, drunk, or full of food or full of him—what if I'm so damn sleepy that my eyes close on their own?”

“Fight it,” Rachel said.

“How?”

“Think about things that trouble you.”

“The calories I've consumed trouble me. My allergies. The men I've slept with,” Angela said.

“But it's counting—don't count,” Rachel warned, adamant.

After having silly, fumbling sex with Hunter, where, on the way into her, he accidentally (she hoped) tagged her asshole twice, she tried to stay awake. He was sleeping in the middle of her big bed, beside her, taking up more than his allotted space. He was not only snoring, but doing these little snorts that ended with puffs of air being shot out of his mouth. Angela, doing as Rachel advised, thought about various diets: the Grapefruit, Protein, and Pasta Magic. She thought about her third graders and she thought about Rachel's sick mother—how many months the woman might have left—but that quickly turned into the counting Rachel had warned against, so Angela started thinking about exercise and the indiscriminate number of laps she should do in the morning, knowing damn well she'd never see the blue pool, and as she was thinking about the swim she wouldn't take, Hunter's puffing grew faint, and Angela closed her eyes and imagined herself diving into that blue pool, doing the breaststroke or swimming underwater. She imagined herself coming up for air, and then, just then, she fell asleep and began to snore.

3.

Periodically, Angela suffered from anaphylaxis, a severe allergic reaction that made her lips swell to ten times their normal size.

It was after two in the morning the first time it happened, and she was startled awake by the strange feeling that her lips were being suctioned right off her face. She touched her mouth first, her lips like two pulsating pillows, then kicked off the sheets and blanket and jumped from the bed. She scooted between wall and mattress without giving a damn about knocking into things.

Finally in the bathroom, she looked in the mirror and gasped.

Angela called Rachel. “Help me,” she said to her friend. “I look like a fucking vagina.”

“A
what?”
Rachel said, sleepy, yawning into the phone.

“A pussy, a cunt, a twat—come and get me, Rach,” Angela said. “You won't believe what I look like.”

“Are you drunk?” Rachel said. “Is someone there? What's this about?”

“I'm alone.”

“Tell me what's wrong.”

Angela, despite her affliction, spoke slowly, deliberately. “My lips are swollen,” she said. “They're huge, ridiculous. I've got some freaky disease, I'm dying, or maybe it's an allergy. Help me,” she said again, starting to cry.

“I'm on my way,” Rachel said.

The two women rushed to the All Saints Hospital emergency room, where a pimply girl behind the counter smacked her gum and looked at Angela blankly. She pushed a clipboard though the little window and said, “What seems to be the problem?”

“Look at me.” Angela glared at the girl and pointed at her mouth.

After she had filled out the forms and answered the doctor's questions, it was decided that the offending substance was probably dust mites. When pressed, the doctor admitted that it was not really the mites themselves but the waste they leave behind.

“I don't understand,” Angela said.

“You're unwittingly ingesting it ,” he said. “We're going to give you a shot of epinephrine—your condition should clear right up.” He was smiling.

“You mean to say that I'm eating shit?” Angela asked, horrified, her huge, fat lips flapping.

“You could say that, yes,” the doctor said.

Angela, for the second time that evening, started to cry.

The doctor leaned forward and touched her shoulder. “We all do it,” he said. “We all eat their waste—only some of us are allergic, though.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Angela said. “Where's that shot? Get me that shot now,” she demanded.

4.

Angela believed that the last boy she loved who loved her back was smart little Larry J. from the first grade, and if she'd known that her relationships were going to lose power and depth from then on, she would have followed little Larry J. around forever.

After losing a game of tetherball to Larry J., Angela, leaving her brown bag of lunch on a patch of dry grass near the court, stuck her tongue out at the boy, called him a faggot without knowing what the word meant, and stormed off with two little girlfriends who'd been standing on the sidelines in matching blue skirts, watching the brutal game. All day Angela was hungry and unsettled, which she mistakenly attributed to leaving her lunch behind.

For the next hundred recesses she ignored little Larry J., and when it was time to pick partners for the spelling bee, Angela walked right by the smarter boy and picked a different boy, a lesser speller who didn't even know her name.

5.

Angela slept with Hunter before their first dinner date technically began, which Margot, her coworker, suggested, said was okay. Margot married the man she did that with, and she wanted Angela to have the same good luck.

“Look how happy I am,” Margot said in the teachers' lounge, during recess. “Look how fucking lucky.” Angela loved the word
fuck
, but wondered if putting it in front of the word
lucky
might be an omen, a warning against following Margot's suggestion. Still, she found herself unhooking her black bra and slipping out of her panties before she and Hunter made it out the front door, before they even decided where to go for dinner.

Afterwards, she asked him how he felt about his first name. “You know,
Hunter,”
she said, “what it implies.”

He looked at her blankly.

“You're a vegetarian, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, shrugging, his skinny shoulders coming up to meet his ears, which made Angela wonder why she did the things she did. “Forget it,” she said.

“Why's this bed so fucking big?” Hunter wanted to know.

6.

Angela helped Hunter put the condom on, which is something a woman shouldn't do, at least right away—and when he's putting it on himself, a woman shouldn't stare; she should seem disinterested in preparation—unless, of course, he's making her dinner, say, getting the salad together.

Then, a woman should rise from the couch and offer to help, telling him she's good at chopping things into pieces. Here, hand me that tomato, she should say. And when he hands it to her, she should let her fingers touch his fingers. She should hold the tomato up and marvel at its smooth beauty. A woman chopping that tomato should be sure to leave the oily seeds in, those slippery yellow stars. She should hum a song she knows he loves and try her best not to over-identify with what's before her on the cutting board—the fruit's red pulp.

7.

Angela stared too long at Hunter's bookshelves. She pulled a dusty novel from its snug position and ran her finger over its spine. She held the book like a baby to her chest, which made him fear that she was overly anxious to become a mother.

When Hunter found her holding the book to her heart, he said, “You're on the pill, aren't you? I love being an uncle, but I'd hate being a dad. I'm not dad material.”

Angela, whose lips had only recently returned to their natural shape and size, gave him the smallest smile possible.

“And you,” he said, “you don't seem like the motherly type.”

She was about to ask him what the hell he meant by that, but he was looking at the mantle at a photograph of his three nephews and one niece. “That one there,” he said, gesturing with his chin at the pretty boy on the left, “he's going to kill the ladies.”

Angela leaned forward and looked at the kid. She imagined him with a knife, a gun, or a fierce bare fist. She put the book back on the shelf and looked at Hunter. “What do you mean?” she said.

“A lady-killer, you know—a stud with the girls.”

“Oh,” Angela said. “Yes,” she said, “I understand.”

8.

When Hunter fell asleep she kissed his closed eyes, which scared him awake—and a man who starts his second morning with you, startled, who starts the day with your mouth that near his temples, always leaves without brushing his teeth or sharing a pot of coffee.

9.

It was their third date, and knowing Hunter was a vegetarian didn't stop her from ordering roasted chicken. When he talked about going vegan, giving up his leather shoes and jacket, giving up butter and eggs, Angela nodded. She picked up a chicken leg and ate right from the bone.

10.

She let Hunter see her drunk early on.

11.

She let Hunter see her weep.

12.

She let Hunter see her weep when drunk.

13.

She introduced Hunter to her now unhappily married coworker, Margot, who was also a vegetarian and whose husband was not, and let them spend time together in her living room, knee to knee on the couch. Angela put on music, a tape she'd recently made of Beth Orton, PJ Harvey, and Cat Power, and went into the den to call her mother.

Angela's mother, a woman who refused to forget the past, was talking about Angela's birth, some twenty-eight years ago. “Six weeks early,” her mother said. “You were
born
impatient.”

“You act like being premature was my first bad decision,” Angela said.

“Well,” her mother said, first as a statement, and then as a question. “Well?
Well?'

“Well
what?”
Angela said.

Soon, the women were fighting and Angela found herself ignoring her guests in the other room. She found herself yelling into the phone, knowing that Hunter was probably looking at Margot's legs and chest, and that even over the music he would hear Angela's angry voice.

As the argument between mother and daughter reached its peak, Angela pictured Hunter leaning closer and closer to Margot, laughing with her, believing each remark she made. She pictured Margot tossing her hair over a shoulder, expressing sympathy for rats and cows and bugs and wasps, and smiling at Hunter, and Angela understood, of course, that she was losing two people in the process.

14.

Angela said, “Sure, Hunter, go out with her, we're not exclusive,” her tone suggesting that exclusivity was far from her heart when really it was right there inside its red chambers.

15.