The Same Woman (14 page)

She tried to form her mouth to the shape of this name which had been a bad word for so long. They're just sounds, she told herself. Frankie, she mouthed. She could say it. She was physically able to say it. But that wasn't the point. The point was that she still couldn't say it without her teeth repelling each syllable, without the snakes in her stomach snapping at each other, each twist unbearable. Perhaps if she could not healthily say her name, it was a not a good idea to go busting into Frankie's hospital room.

She leaned her head against the wall. It had been such a long year. She turned her head, hearing the specific sound of individual hairs rolling across the wall. Random thoughts flitted through her mind. She had not called her mother once since she had arrived in the city. She needed to do her taxes.

On the table next to her was a stack of survey forms, and a little sign in a plastic case, tacked to the wall, asking people to rate the performance of the hospital. There was a shoebox full of the orange mini pencils Ruby was so fond of. Ruby picked up one of the survey forms and turned it over. She held one of the pencils, which barely spanned the width of her hand. She printed an “F” on the paper. If I can get to the end of her name without feeling dry-mouthed and shaky, then I'll go see her. She wrote an “R”. She started on the “A” but it was no use. Her hands trembled with heartache.

You can't undo so much damage in one afternoon. Ruby finished the name and then wrote, “I wanted so much to make it right, but I'm not able to fix this.” Her silent relationship with Frankie had been shattered like a bone, and nothing could repair the damage. She retrieved her bags. There was a recycling bin at the end of the hallway. She walked to it and dropped her note.

As Ruby made for the exit with her suitcase rolling sadly behind her like some burden she carried as penance, she heard a distant, muffled ringing. She cut across the tide of walkers and stopped by the wall to
take off her pack and unzip the top. Her cell phone danced urgently, perched atop a stack of messily packed toiletries. The display screen said “The Squat.” She pushed the IGNORE button and put the phone in her pocket. The automatic doors parted and let her out, back into the chaos of the entranceway. Where would she go now? She walked out to the sidewalk. Her phone buzzed again in her pocket.

She took it out and looked at it. It had been a birthday present when cell phones were still new, and as a result it was outfitted with the flashiest of features. The letters of the caller identification chased each other around the screen, glowing in the colours of a Las Vegas light show. As she watched the garish routine, she had an idea. There was something she could do. She opened the flap and said hello cautiously.

“Ruby, it's Dan. Ruby, I need you to come back. There's no one to work.”

“I have to —” but Dan talked over her.

“Whatever Ulli said to you, I apologise on his behalf, I promise you will never have to work with him ever again. I mean it.” Dan was desperate. He was playing sweet.

“I wanted to tell you I thought what you did was rotten.”

There was a short pause. “What's that? What did I do? “

“How could you just fire her like that? Do you know what a femur is? She almost died. And how could you send Aurelio to tell her? You didn't even have the decency to go yourself ?”

“I don't think I understand,” he said coldly.

“I will not work for you. I couldn't, not after you treated her like that.”

Dan's anger was a sudden, shrieking explosion. “But you don't even like that little bitch!”

Ruby squared her shoulders and stood up taller. “I don't like that word,” Ruby said thickly, “and someone has to stand up for her. We have to stick together.”

Dan was always ready to fight. He burst into rebuttal, as if he had been waiting all day for someone to challange his politics. “Oh my God, are you going to start spouting that sisterhood bullshit? I've had it up to here with you women. When are you gonna figure out that you have to look out for yourselves? No one else will. The reason
why no one is standing up for Frankie is because she's not standing up for herself, no pun intended.” The words clattered off his tongue like unceasing machine gun fire. “The person who invented this solidarity and sisterhood shit was one smart bitch — and I will use whatever word I want, so fuck your political correctness crap — she duped everyone else into holding hands and knitting tea cosies while she kicked them all in the balls, metaphorically of course.” He was on a roll now, and the only way Ruby could get him to stop was to hang up. But she wasn't finished either. “The truth of the matter is that women are born little backstabbing whores. We all know this. Sure, men are violent, but it's the bitches who will fuck you right up. You know why? Because they're mean. They are naturally mean.”

The conversation was like a football game. Ruby saw her chance and dove in when Dan stopped to breathe.

“Women are not naturally mean! Women are mean to each other because everyone has so much to gain from them being mean to each other. You set us up. You set me and Frankie up.”

“I did not!”

“It's true, I had problems with her, but you scheduled us together on purpose. Why did you do that?”

And then he unleashed hellfire on her. “Who cares? The more you fought each other, the more money you were gonna pull in, the less you were gonna want to fight with me!” He was screaming.

“It's about control, you asshole,” Ruby said, even though she didn't like that word either, “and you know it. You have to divide us to rule us.”

“Don't spout that fake, revolutionary, ‘ooOOoooO-I-went-to-university-and-I'm-so-radical' mumbo jumbo at me. You hated that little whore before you ever knew me! You hated her because you're a little whore too!”

“I hated her, but it wasn't my fault.” Ruby was not cut out to argue. Furious tears started to back up in her throat, but she kept going, croaking over the obstructions. “It wasn't my fault. But you know what,” and she was addressing herself as much as she was addressing him now, “it's my responsibility to end it now — to change it. But it didn't start with me, it started with you and everyone else who is like you!”

Now they were yelling over each other but Ruby didn't care if he couldn't hear what she was saying, because she needed to say this for herself. “And I'm saying I'm done with it! And I'm done with you!”

She snapped the phone shut and threw it down on her suitcase. No one stopped to look over their shoulders here — it was a regular sight to see someone howling at a phone in this district. Ruby wrapped her arms around her as if trying hold herself together. It was like her body was erupting out of her face. She leaned against the steel body of the closest car and for the last time for a long time, she cried deep, shuddering sobs. Not for herself, not for Tariq — but for Frankie.

After a while, she began walking. It was now officially rush hour and the streets streamed with people on their way home. Ruby was travelling in the opposite direction of the crowd. Because she was walking against them instead of with them, she saw hundreds of faces instead of hundreds of backs.

The walls of the buildings that loomed above them were caked with advertisements. Ruby stopped at the lights of a gargantuan intersection along with a mass of other people. Over their heads a mostly naked woman whose air-brushed appearance was physically impossible in real-life, reclined her glazed, nubile body across a billboard. Her lips were parted wetly and her chin proudly lifted, but her face was empty of emotion.

The light changed and the mass moved forward like a flock of birds alighting from a telephone wire. As the people from across the street began to mix with Ruby's side in the middle of the road, she surveyed the live faces of the women passing her. They were cross, they were weary, laughing, perplexed.

What would happen, she thought, if I put as much effort into being nice to these women as I do into romance? What would happen, she asked herself, if instead of making comparisons, searching for ugliness, or looking for bitches in their faces, I looked for myself ?

Tariq and Ruby lay on their backs, on a mattress in the middle of the room, and discussed the ceiling.

“I can't decide if that looks more like China, or a duck,” he pointed at the misshapen hole in the ceiling where the plaster had fallen down, after the upstairs apartment flooded. The traffic going by illuminated it with slices of sporadic light.

“Maybe it's a Peking duck,” Ruby suggested.

“Boooooo!” He pushed her over and sat on her back. “This is a pun-free space!”

She wiggled quickly out of this hold, scissoring her legs strategically. She dropped herself on his stomach and he yelped helplessly. She stayed, squishing his intestine, and smacked the mattress three times to indicate that she was the victor.

“I am the undefeated pun champion,” she declared.

“You may have won this round,” he said, as she rolled herself into his arms, “but there will always be a re-match.”

“Always?”

“Yup, forever.”

“That's nice.” She lay against him, his body between hers and the bed. She could feel the distant vibrations of his body working. Could this really last forever? She watched his chest lift. She tried to synchronise their breathing.

“What are you thinking about?” She felt his throat vibrate as he spoke. She turned on her back so they were lying side by side. Those unspeakable questions that caked the inside of her throat like barnacles had started to loosen. She decided to let one out.

“Do you ever miss her?”

“Her?”

“You know.”

Tariq closed his eyes and opened his eyes slowly. “No,” he said. “I think of her, but I was so relieved — am so relieved — to have you back that I don't feel that, anymore.” He turned on his side now and propped himself up so he could see her face. He ran his finger down the veins in the underside of her arm till he reached her hand and then twined his fingers with hers. Her skin trilled.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

“For what?”

“Everything. Every single thing.”

“I know,” she said.

“I know you know. But I'm sorry.”

Usually after people say they're sorry, we say, “it's okay.” But Ruby didn't say that.

“Do you think of what happened every day?” She asked.

“No,” he said.

“I do.” He held on to her, pressed her as close as he could, as if he wanted to get underneath her skin. He felt, from his arches to his forehead, totally full of sorrow. She let him suffocate her for a bit, and then pushed him to open a little space between their bodies.

“It will always be here,” she said, patting his heart and her heart simultaneously.

“Yeah.”

“It's not going to go away.”

“I know.”

“We'll fight about it. We'll need to talk more about it.”

“I know.”

“I'll never get over it.”

“Me neither.”

She tangled his curly hair around her fingers, and watched the way it naturally wound itself around her bones.

“Look,” she pointed up at the corner where two of the walls met, “our first pet.” He squinted in the dark and saw a spider industriously weaving a criss-crossing web.

“Goodness,” he said, “A pet brings our relationship to a whole other level.”

She lay back and admired the splashes of moonlight that came through the window and made their room beautiful, even though it was a hole in the wall with a leaky ceiling.

“Buddy,” he said, “are you going to fall asleep soon?”

“Maybe. Why?”

“There's something downstairs I wanted to show you. But it will involve putting on clothes. We'd have to go out.”

“But these are my finest pajamas. Where could we go that these would be unsuitable?”

“It can wait till tomorrow. I was just excited. I bought you a present.”

“A present?”

“It's downstairs.”

“But we have to go out to get it?”

“Well, sort of.”

“I'm never too sleepy for a present.”

“Really? Because I can't wait to give it to you.”

“Okay, let's go.”

Tariq bounded out of bed, throwing jeans and socks at Ruby.

“You have to put on your best riding gear.”

“Is it a pony?”

“Yes, I bought you your very own pony!” Excited at the protocol-breaking prospect of an after-bedtime excursion, they giggled and whispered at each other as they pushed their way down the hall to the exit, their footsteps making the other apartment doors rattle.

“Okay wait. You have to close your eyes.”

“Are you going to mug me?”

“Just close your eyes.”

He walked behind her with his hands securing her eyes. She waved her arms in front of her, feeling the night air swooshing around her. He took his hands off of her eyes.

“Ta-daaaaa!”

It was a bicycle.

“Now you can ride with me,” he said, “instead of having to run alongside.”

“It's gorgeous!” Ruby patted the seat. “So spongy!”

“Do you want to take it out?”

“Yes!”

“Okay but this is the first and last time you go out without a helmet.”

“Okay Dad.”

“Don't call me dad, it's disgusting.”

At first it was hard for Ruby to figure out how to push down on the pedals without making them spin around. The cars seemed to come dangerously close.

“This way,” Tariq said, turning down an unpaved path that led to a park.

“Eeek!” she said, the roots of trees bumping her about, her fingers ready on the breaks. She was not used to this. She couldn't tell if the bike was going to hold her up or dump her in the dirt. Tariq rode on ahead, insensitive to her troubles. Frustration grew in her throat. But then the trees widened out and they came to a smooth, paved, bicycle path. She started to push down faster on the pedals, feeling the machine clicking in merry harmony with her body. Wind began to fill her ears, whooshing into those strange folded up places that are so rarely touched. She was flying on nothing but the strength of her own legs.