Creature (4 page)

There is my husband. He’s been with the same couple all night. I begin to admire him, the way the couple is very easily in his presence. I am usually rigid, and though many couples approach me, I have a hard time allowing them to stay. I make my excuses and go out to the terrace. I look down at the grass. Inevitably a couple comes and sits with me quietly. This is the kind of couple I am most suited for.

When we try to sleep that night my husband is like a dog or a cat, and I’m unsettled by it.

“A couple came upstairs,” he says.

“When?”

“After you had five glasses of wine.”

“What did they do up here?”

He paws at the darkness. “They wanted to see your study.”

“What did they think about it?”

“They said they felt at home.”

The next day it’s warm again, as it should be. The ocean is calm and it looks as if a shark will come out of it. Then my neighbor appears.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“When I look at you I see a character from a book.”

“I am not a character.”

“You are. An annoying one.”

She doesn’t leave. The water moves through its waves. “It’s you who looks like a character.”

“Which one?”

“The one who—.” She stops. “Dies.”

At home I ask my husband, “Where’s our neighbor’s husband?” I am sitting in his study among his tropical plants. There are so many of them. One plant blocks out one couple.

“I think he left.”

The couples and my neighbor and her children
, I write in my notebook.

“What are you writing?” my husband asks me.

“It’s too new to share.”

“Are you worried she’s lonely?”

“No. Will you play some music? Something pretty.”

He plays something stressful.

I like having to wear tights under my dress. It’s because of something inside me. Their hair blowing back lightly from their faces. You’ll never understand how angry I am. Today the plants are like a painting. It’s not a cry to writing, it’s a cry to a future novel. Always ignoring her. People have fucked in here. Here is a novel in which—I know them in a certain kind of way. Sylvie has picked up a rhinoceros and is hitting it against a wall.

“You’re writing in my study.”

“Is it okay?”

“Of course, you’re my wife.”

“When the couple’s in my study, can I be here?”

“Don’t you want to be in your study with them, to make sure they don’t mess anything up?”

“Can you see?”

“No, it’s too dark.”

“Hang on to this railing.”

“It’s so desolate here, like a corral. It feels like I’m holding on to something people tie their horses to.”

“It’s true. People bring their horses here. They’ve been bringing them here for decades.”

What were we doing in a corral? I had agreed to spend time with my friend; I hadn’t agreed to be in a place I couldn’t see. Lately he had been doing versions of this, asking me to participate in one thing or activity, and then putting me in another situation. I should have been used to it, but I wasn’t. To be in this place in the horses’ absence was … what? My friend knew this; it was why he had brought me here.

I tried to take everything in; I tried to be in this place. I think my friend wanted us to be in the place without talking, but I wanted to talk, so I did. “Last night I went to a dinner party,” I said.

“Really?”

“Really. The table was set up outside in the grass, not far from a hive. We sat there; we ate. There was a conversation about a book I had actually just read, but I didn’t join in.”

“Why not?”

“I liked listening. I thought it was such a nice coincidence, a long conversation about a book I had just finished; it was as if something or someone had brought this to me, said after you are done there will be a conversation for you to listen to.”

“Who would’ve brought it?”

“That doesn’t matter. After dinner I went to look at the hive and saw the bees flying in the air. They were so small. It was dark out by that time, but not as dark as it is now.”

I turned to my friend, but I couldn’t see him. I could see a shape of him. I stuck my hand out and hit his sleeve.

“What is the book about?”

We could see each other now; we faced each other, at a table. Lights were on.

“It’s about a man and a woman who spend time together, but in a way that most of us don’t spend time. He is repulsed by her because she is a woman. She doesn’t care; she wouldn’t trade their kind of relationship for another. Can I read some of it to you?”

I took the book from my bag: “The woman says, ‘it suits her very well, what she’s going through with him now. She wonders what she would have done instead if they hadn’t met in the cafe. It’s here in this room that she’s had her real summer, her experience, her encounter with hatred of her own sex, and of her body, and of her life.’”

“Did you like it?”

“I loved it.”

“What did the people at the dinner party say about it?”

“They thought it was funny.”

“How is it funny?”

“The female character puts black silk over her face and says she’s a writer. Listen to this part: ‘One night she asks him if he could do it with his hand, but without coming close to her, without even looking. He says he couldn’t. He can’t do anything like that with a woman. He can’t even say how he feels about her having asked. If he agreed, he might not want to see her any more, ever. He might even hurt her.’ But he wants her to be there, every night, just lying in that room. Just lying there.”

“Would you like to be in that situation?”

“Yes. Well, I don’t think I would like it while it was happening, but afterwards I would.”

“Why after?”

“Because from that safe distance I could appreciate what had happened.”

“What do you think would happen?”

“I would be intimate with someone in a new way. Or, I would at least recognize our time together as intimate, admit to its qualities of intimacy. I would experience those qualities.”

“Is lying in a room every night intimate, if you and the other person are strangers, aren’t even attracted to each other, and are possibly even repulsed?”

“It’s intimate because of the repulsion.”

“I don’t know if I see that as intimate.”

Later it was dark again. I thought I could hear the faint sounds of something, some animal, drinking water. I imagined its tongue making contact with the water. “Can you hear that?”

“No, I don’t hear anything. I think I was asleep. Aren’t you tired?”

My challenge is to relax with another person in the way I relax when no one is there. Sometimes I can’t let go when I’m with my friend. Some part of me stays stiff, and then that stiffness seems to expand over the whole surface of my body, even when I am moving.

Again I listened for the water, but I couldn’t hear it anymore. I thought, It’s already gone. Then I thought, Let yourself go.

I said out loud: “I’m trying to relax.”

“Is it working?”

“Yes, but if you weren’t here it would be easier.”

“Should I leave?”

“No, that would be a failure.”

Relax, like the animal relaxes when it is drinking water. Relax, like I relax when I drink water. “Once you took me to a movie. This was years ago, when we first met.”

“I remember.”

“On the way to the movie it was windy, but the wind was warm. On the freeway, our hair blew around our faces. I remember the inside of your car, which was messy. From the lights on the dashboard I could see all the things you’d thrown on the floor. For me you hadn’t shaped yourself into a full person yet. You were someone I could introduce myself to. I know how to do that.”

“Do you know how to stay friends with someone for a long time?”

“I’m not sure.”

That night, while we lay in bed after we had finally stopped talking, I had a vision. Someone went crazy in a community, but was supported by everyone and everything around her. In the vision, the support was palpable in the green grass people walked through to get to wherever it was they were going. I could see her. And I knew she could see me.

Even though I don’t write stories I create them in my actions. I create a feeling I don’t believe in and then I act on that feeling. I wear my puffy coat out into the snow. I walk through my neighborhood and look at the antique shops. Snow and antiques are good together. I sit in a warm place to read.

The one time in my life I had to escape from something, I created a story about the longest February of my life.

Here, I want to show you something; it is several cats.

Like a creature that won’t get down from the bed, words are coming to me.

Here I am on the street with so many people. It’s beautiful to be alive, to go into a floral shop in winter and look at fine plants sitting darkly in their pots. To be among a crowd hurts me.

“Let me see this plant,” I say to the florist. And she lets me look at it for quite some time while she works in the back. It’s strange how long I stay there.

Now words come to me. I have not asked them. Sighing, I take my notebook out of my puffed pocket and write the words down in my best hand. Though I will never be a writer, the words allow me to study a certain kind of writing. If I close my eyes I will see my written self staring back at me. If I walk to the lake something will be revealed in the waves frozen up in their certainty. Did I tell you the waves freeze here? I will feel something I don’t actually feel. Then I will fall asleep in my bed like the waves.

So much happens when I am inside my mind, but I still haven’t left the floral shop. I have not left the fine plants.

Remember when I was kidnapped by our “master” and forced to be a part of his life in a way I never would have wished for? He took me to a dairy farm, expecting me to like it. He took me to a fancy party where the other women looked at me with rage and jealousy. How could they want that life?

My notebook is too modern. When I hold it up next to myself it contrasts greatly. Still, I am safe now. To look at antique furniture in shop windows instead of sitting on it. To know that no one will handcuff me to a wrought iron gate.

My desk is waiting for me. Softly, softly, the books. In my apartment, I draw the bathwater. I’ve been outside all day, with people, and now it is time for me to be alone. Taking baths has always been important for me, especially in winter. I am more receptive then. I can feel myself going out, and then coming back in. It’s hard not to feel connected to yourself when you’re in a hot bath.

I had good friends; I had you. We served food to the family we “worked” for. When you set the table or ladled out the soup, I looked at you lovingly. I looked at all of you this way. I wasn’t able to stop myself from doing it. Once I was beaten for standing there doing nothing while everyone else worked. “It’s just that I really wanted to see them,” I said during the beating.

The bath warms me. I will be able to emerge into the room as a warm person.

“They’re not your real friends,” my master’s wife said. Our “mistress.”

It’s too late, I thought. I know the warmth of love. I watched her pink face while she beat me. Then she pushed me onto the floor. Down there, all I had were pointy black shoes to look at. I hadn’t realized how many people, how many shoes, were in that room.

When you lie in a field with a friend and tell each other stories about your lives—when you have explored friendship—it’s impossible to forget. It comes back when you’re lying on a cold floor.

It comes back when you’re lying in the bath.

Lovingly
,
Juliet
,
blank page
,
edited by Anne, women of the rural areas
. This is written on a piece of paper on my desk. If you sit in my chair and look down at my notebook my words are waiting for you.

Myself, alone, in my bed, is a story.

What direction did you head in when we scattered from that house, like the bits of dry grass that we were?

I read books now to bring myself to a feeling. When I walk down the street I’m never sure if I interact with others, or if they interact with me.

I eat warm food, things other people wouldn’t consider eating. Even in winter the waves unfreeze, falling upon the cold beach. I wear one color to signify something. It’s been said that you can signal many things in this way, like the words you’re most likely to write down, and even your education.

My bookshelves reach from the floor to the ceiling, towering over my small apartment. A table sits in front of the shelves. This is where I prepare my food. The kitchen and the living room are practically the same. I want you to know where I am, what I look like when I am here. I want you to see what I look like when I eat.

Another time I was beaten, I was sick with the flu. Our mistress held me down while our master whipped me with his belt. This happened on the porch because she wanted their neighbors to see us. It was December and I was shivering magnificently. Later, our master spoke to me in hushed tones.

He said, “Next week I’ll take you out again, when you’re better. Would you like to listen to music? We can go to the mountains.”

He always played music with banjos in it. He was always trying to soothe me. The only one who could was another servant.

Only once did I see you being beaten. It was because you had tried to leave the house without permission. Our mistress asked a male servant to beat you, and he did. What else could he have done? Bloody, you sat on the back steps while a kitten tried to crawl up your leg. You let it, but you didn’t acknowledge its presence. I stood in the window looking out at you for a long time. Finally it got dark, and then I couldn’t see you anymore.

Those years hardly resemble this one, or the ones in which I was a child, but all of it equals my life, making one ragged crawl across time.

Now it’s morning. Here I am on a walk to the lake. This is real. I wear headphones to clear out the feeling I had in the night, and to change the lake to a softer place. I listen to music that helps me understand something about myself and about the lake. I want to understand the food I eat. And why I like antiques and snow.