MISCELLANY
XL FALL 2020
Miscellany XL
Fall 2020
The Literary and Art Journal at The College of Charleston Cover Art by: Tyler Horton
Letter from the Editors This year has been tough in many ways, most obviously in dealing with a global pandemic. While this is not the way we envisioned celebrating the year 2020, writers and artists from all around have taken this time to produce amazing works of art, using the experiences of quarantine and adversity to fuel their creative output. This is how we pulled together the theme for Miscellany this year, to celebrate the creativity that came out of such a troublesome time. We feel that one of the best things about art and literature is bringing people together, something that has been greatly needed these last months. We hope you enjoy reading through the Quarantine Edition of Miscellany, and that you will find solace and inspiration in the art created over the last year.
Mallory Berry Patrick Wohlscheid
Miscellany Staff Editor in Chief E. Mallory Berry
Managing Editor Patrick Wohlscheid
Submissions Manager Cora Schipa
Table of Contents Poetry Birth of a Reflection, After Caravaggio’s Narcissus
Aria Meixel
in which i bake an apple cake and think of you
Geneieve Clark
Now cracks a noble heart
Hannah Hanes
Prose Sam
Reese Walker
A1-Anon
Payton Conlin
Philip and Maxwell
Annabelle Harsch
Empty
Kacie Errington
Table of Contents Visual Art Insecurities
Taylor Bigelow
Insecurities Taylor Bigelow Country Cowboy Style Desmond Morrison Wedding A Cowboy’s Last Desmond Morrison Supper The Burden of Needing to Hannah Hanes be Small (Hamlet, V.II.373) Only Acting: Vivyana Audrey Robinovitz Only Acting: Tori Audrey Robinovitz
Sam
Reese Walker
At the foot of our bed is the only place I allow myself to cry anymore. Nowhere else. I’ve gotten to a point in time where I am able to make it home, stagger through the wooden door that still screams in agony when I open it and stumble towards our bedroom. My bedroom, I remind myself. There is an indentation in the shape of me on the shag rug. It’s a place where I comfortably collapse every day, unloading the crushing weight of you that exists in every space. When you left, you created your own gravity to bear down upon me, added lead to my shoes and eyelids. The worst thing that you left is a phantom, a shimmering image of yourself that seems so much more real through my tears because it blurs your edges that were already fuzzy. The only thing that illuminates you is a dingy light above our bed with a bulb that you never fixed. It flickers and so do you. Most days you’re draped across the top of my scratchy blue comforter, arm across the pillow that used to be yours, hands around a cold bottle of Modelo Especial. Sometimes I imagine I will get up from the edge of the bed from the spot where I have become your spectator and find a bottle missing from our fridge. From my fridge. When I am brave and stupid enough I rise up from the crowd that consists only of me and the dirt in the carpet and climb onto your stage. I reach for your beer like I used to, but lovingly this time. I’m not trying to rip it away from you for once, but just trying to find some grasp on the cold condensation that somehow doesn’t wet the duvet. You don’t bat my hand away, though. You don’t throw slurs at me in your drunkenness or toss your body to the side to edge away from me. Instead my hand passes through the porcelain, honey brown ghost of a bottle and I feel only the chill of a blanket that can only reach that temperature by loss. There is a static symphony from the TV that your ghost refuses to tear his eyes from and the sound covers my sobs. Now the space under your bottle is wet but I create the puddles. Around this time I go get my own Modelo to join you on the bed with, I always keep a full pack in the fridge for you, even though they killed you long ago. It feels right to do. This time I don’t stumble into the room, I walk slowly as if I’m a ghost myself. You look over this time, a bottle raised in a cheer before you down it. I watch your throat bob up and down. If it wasn’t for the way I can see right through you I would believe it was real. I could believe you were just my inebriated husband back on our bed, listening less to the TV and focusing more attention on the woman out the window, her silhouette undressing to reveal a figure I never had 1
and never will. Somehow even as a ghost, you still don’t seem to think I notice. I still do, and I still say nothing because that is the only way you will stay here with me. Five drinks later I’m wasted, and I sprawl across the bed now, opening myself up to you. Move! My mind screams at you. My body is too sluggish to try to grab your shoulders, shake them until you respond. I only watch as I remember what it felt like to have your lifeless skin under my nails, digging into your back as I shout at you hopelessly to wake up. My eyes, now under a heavy Modelo glaze, look away from that horrific scene and up to our ceiling. Up to my ceiling. The air from the fan burns my eyes, but I continue to watch the blades rotate. They count time. Count your minutes. You’ll be gone soon, I recall, so I force my eyes back to where you lay against a headboard we never purchased. “Sam!” I scream, loud enough to worry the woman in the window. I swear I see her look up. My hand slaps you across your face but it does nothing but loll your head to the side, eyes still open in a forever gaze, staring right through me, just like they did when you were alive. Are alive. I force my heavy limbs to reach over to you, reaching for nothing now, but rolling my body so I lay inside you. It feels cold here. Wet from our beers. Five beers in, I know the last one sits in the fridge but I tell myself it’s in your hand. “Please” I whisper this time, the static from your TV is the only sound keeping me company. The woman’s curtains close on the gruesome scene she watches from her window. I don’t blame her. If I drink enough, I convince myself again, I will wake up next to you.
2
Insecurities Taylor Bigelow
3
Insecurities
Taylor Bigelow
4
Birth of a Reflection, After Caravaggio’s Narcissus There’s a young man staring back at him. He has never seen anything so beautiful, has never seen anything before this moment, and now the most exquisite being to ever exist has eyes only for him. When he woke that day, not that he knew what a day even was, he never expected to meet that golden boy and to be denied the pleasures of petal-soft and sun-warmed skin. Try as he might, he cannot break through the cool surface, cannot taste the poisonous air that leaves his beloved’s delicate lips. Time is the only thing they can share, days spent languishing with only an echo of conversations between them to keep them company. When fingers reach and silvered ripples tease unity, indifferent fate comes to snatch all hope away, and melancholy surrounds like the stars – ever-changing and ever-present, like everything he has learned. As beauty wilts, love will still bloom, even as all he has come to know wastes away, as his love drowns in the air above before his time is up, before he can know his own name, before his white-petaled flowers dot the earth like the stars above.
5
Aria Meixel
in which i bake an apple Geneieve Clark cake and think of you no summer days, no love poems, no ice cream dripping from your lips, no starry skies, no laughter at three in the morning. erase me from the picture. so i’ll return to my childhood home. youth and age both hold seat in one body. i am eighteen and a thousand, and soon i’ll return to the dust i started from. but i don’t think about it. instead i bake a cake-sugar to counteract bitterness. apple, caramel, brown sugar. look down and realize it’s not an apple i’m peeling but the flesh of my fingers, red blood and red skin, white bone and white fruit. it’s alright. that’s just another way i’ve been making myself bleed lately. who was i a girl ago? i wonder as the cake goes into the oven. where have those flower-filled fancies gone? all of my roses have wilted and all that is left is scorched and salted ground. the oven timer interrupts meif nothing else, i have cake. if the caramel tastes like pennies, no one says a thing.
6
A1-Anon
Payton Conlin
Phase 1 The girl’s happiest memory consisted of being thrown out of her father’s arms and into what at the time felt like a sea of endless depth. Of course, the depth, she remembered, ended at five feet, but to a child of height no larger than 4, it felt infinite. The water embraced her as she swam, carding through her hair and along her skin affectionately. When she surfaced, and all the sounds of the world returned to her, she remembered hearing the laughter of her younger sister as she waited for her turn, seeing their mother’s smile from a chair on the patio. The girls older sister, being five years senior, chuckled at the image of her younger siblings flying through the air, splashing in the water, sending droplets of cerulean to catch in the sunlight lining the sky, then to rain down in an iridescent downpour. The girl swam for a bit, worrying about nothing but the breath she took before she dove back into those depths. She swam until the sun began to fade behind the stars, setting the water into a flowing fire. Exhaustion rang clear in her small bones, eyes burning from the chlorine, arms and legs stiff from the constant push and pull, dive and jump. Her mother’s voice rang clear through the summer sound of cicadas, calling them in for a late supper. They jumped out of the depths, towels wrapped around their arms in an instant to shield them from the breeze. Ripped from the depths of molten water, the summer air stung their skin, its warmth only existing within the water seemed to pull it out of the sky. As the girl entered her home, a two story red brick suburbia of its own, she was reminded not to bring in any water, to make sure she was fully dry and that all of the dampness had left her. Once she did, she was welcomed in, asked to sit at the white oak table while her mother brought over the porcelain and silver dining ware she’d be expected to use. Once the five, mother, father, two sisters, and the girl, had surrounded the table, plates filled with green beans and mashed potatoes, pot roast and gravy, they clasped hands. The eldest daughter closed her eyes, and the rest followed, “Dear Lord, thank you for today. Thank you for mommy, daddy, and the babies. Thank you for our food. In Christ’s name we pray, amen,” The girl never kept her eyes closed through it all. They let go quickly, whether it was out of rumbling stomachs or discomfort, the girl never quite knew for sure. When her mother let go of her hand though, she 7
supposed it was of hunger. She supposed. As they ate, they spoke of trivial things, laughing and becoming full. Phase 2 The first signs were obvious, but the girl was in her first years of primary school so how was she to know? Her father would start getting home from work later, eyes glassy from exhaustion, or maybe something else, she wasn’t sure. Her mother seemed to hardly care and scoffed at her daughters incessant questioning of when their father would be home. They would still eat dinner every night together at varying times, the conversation remained static, basic, unfamilial. After dinner, they’d all go their separate ways, the eldest sister going to her room where she seemed to solely exist, mother cleaning the kitchen, father watching television on the pink floral couch that contrasted so heavily with the olive green carpet below it. The girl and the youngest sister would be in the playroom, where their toys and games were stashed away from everything else. The girls would play spies, pretend to save the world, only for it to fall into disarray, time and time again. It always would. Around eight or so, when the two youngest were beginning to tire, the mother and father had found their way out of the house. This wasn’t a new occurrence, it’d been a few months at that point where they’d both leave a few hours after dinner, in separate cars, and return in the early hours of the morning, after the children had long since been asleep. The girl didn’t understand why they wouldn’t be there to tuck her in to bed or why it was the sound of her older sister’s TV that lulled her to sleep every night instead of the gentle hands of her parents. She wouldn’t understand until years later. One particular Sunday morning, after her father had left for a place the girl did not know and her older sister went out with some friends, her mother loaded the two younger siblings into her car, strapping them in and leaving without much thought. They drove for a bit, the girls singing along to the quiet radio, they’d ask their mother questions on occasion, and she’d indulge them the best she could, her mind elsewhere. They stopped at a small place on the corner of a busy street, surrounded by other small shops, a gas station busy in front of it. Painted on to the door in a scarlet scrawl read, “Raggedy Annes”, the entrance smelled of smoke, the girl wrinkled her nose. Her mother led the two to a small table covered in red vinyl, 8
the chairs ripped cushion scratched at the girls leg, but she remained quiet, eyes searching the room. To her right laid several boards, they were circular and large in size, changing color between layers. She found herself wondering what the white numbers above them meant, or why there were so many of them, but she pondered to herself. To her left, several men sat in a row of stools, feet hanging off of the ground, their backs facing her, faces silhouetted in a pale red light. Bottles of different colors and sizes painted the wall in even lines, and the girl found herself encapsulated with the way the light bounced off of their contents, shining and glinting with every movement. The girls’ mother spoke to a man, he’d brought them water and their mother a red drink that smelled strongly, the light reflected off of it too. They spent a while there, their mother buying them some food while she nursed her drink, another, and another. Soon, she loaded them back into the car, and headed back home. The girl didn’t sing along anymore. After that, she’d see her mom twice a month, then once, then never. Phase 3 The girl didn’t see her older sister often, being in her first year of university. She didn’t hear from her often either, but why would she? Her older sister had gotten away, she hadn’t. The girl called her father, asking when he’d get home. Soon, he’d say. “What’s for dinner?” “I don’t know. I’ll pick something up,” He always picked something up. The girl walked around the house, clothes sticking to her damp skin, they’d lost air conditioning a long time ago. She grabbed her choir binder, practicing the various melodies and vocal arrangements she had to learn for competition. Her voice reverberated through the emptiness. The girl looked at the stairs, olive carpet now tinted with a worn brown. The youngest sibling and the girl never went up stairs anymore, it was too hot. Instead, they’d moved their mattresses onto the floor in the living room, in front of the old TV connected to a disconnected cable box. The two girls slept on the beds, their father slept on the couch behind their heads, that old floral pink couch. She sighed, walking to the pantry to find a snack. There were none. The girl felt resentful, angry, she knew where their money went, to his hab9
it. She knew he’d been lying again, again, again. Always again. It’d been a while since she’d last checked, contemplating for a moment before heading up those old stairs, muscles carrying her nostalgically. She knew where he hid it, it was always in the same place, his old closet stuffed under some clothing. Out of habit, she flipped the light switch, unsurprised when nothing came on. She treaded into the closet, anxious for what she knew she’d find. She lifted up shirts that were, from the smell, dirty by wear, and closed her eyes. If she looked again, maybe the degree of her fear would change. She reopened her eyes, the degree remained the same. So the girl did as she always did, one by one she picked up the cans, most empty, some still chilled from purchase earlier in the day - those she emptied - setting them down on the bathroom counter. They lined the sink in row upon row; she counted as she placed them, 113, 114, 115. When she finished, she reveled in the ocean of aluminum, silver and blue cans glinting against the light peering through the window. She drew the curtains. She closed the door behind her wordlessly, not wanting her sister to see the way the light reflected off of the cans. She walked back down the stairs, eyes tracing her feet as she did, scared to fall. She hadn’t yet. She sat down at that wide oak table in the kitchen, mail and papers sprawled across it, picking up her pencil and grabbing her homework from her backpack. She waited in silence for him to come home, and when he did, he stayed through the next day, and the next. She’d found an empty bottle of vodka in his briefcase, and threw it away. He stayed home.
10
Cowboy Country Style Wedding
11
Desmond Morrison
A Cowboy’s Last Supper
Desmond Morrison
12
Philip and Maxwell
Annabelle Harsch
Philip and Maxwell, the twins of Manor Drive, had never seen the girl-next-door. She went to the private school downtown; her bus said academy, not school district like theirs. The girl-next-door got home from school minutes after the boys did, but she always vanished too soon behind the too-tall holly hedge separating their houses, all the way down to the curb. The boys lived next to the girl-nextdoor for 10 years, but they’d never seen her. Yesterday though, Philip and Maxwell’s substitute bus driver drove too slow which means they had gotten to see her backpack before it disappeared around the hedge. “She has a purple backpack.” “Thanks, Max, that’s helpful. I know what she looks like, now.” Maxwell looked up from his over-cooked scrambled eggs and stuck his tongue out, allowing Philip to get a good glimpse of the yellow goo in his mouth. Looking at Philip’s eyes was like looking into his own. Mom said Philip and Maxwell got their Dad’s eyes; electric blue with specks of white in them, she said. Dad’s electric eyes flicked to the dining room table from where he was fixing and fluffing his wildly curly hair in the mirror hanging in the front hall. “Boys. Enough.” Maxwell drank deeply from his glass of milk, wiped off his milk moustache, and took a bite of his toast, chunks of Welsh’s grape jelly plopping onto his plate. “Anyways, she goes to private school so we can’t ever see her.” Philip shook his head at Maxwell in warning, blue eyes flashing. “Maxwell.” Dad said his name like it was two different words. Max. Well. “How many times did I tell you to stay away from the hedge and the neighbors? How many, Maxwell?” “We’re only guessing about her.” Maxwell shrugged, reaching up to his hair, as wildly curly as his Dad’s, to take a chunk of grape jelly out. “Where are you going?” “The store.” Dad mumbled, rubbing his eyes. “Stop talking about the neighbors and go outside.” Dad straightened his collar and jerked his thumb toward the back of the house, shooting them The Look. “Away from the hedge.” ... “Hello?” A tiny, girl voice. Like a fairy. The boys froze, unnatural, spaceship-colored blue eyes shifting between hedge and brother. Philip glanced at the hedge bordering the yard. “It came from the hedge,” he whispered, wringing his hands, casting shifty eyes at the screen 13
door. Maxwell turned his head, picking up the dirt, brown grass, the shadows, and the hedge, expecting a fairy creature with a purple backpack to be standing deep in the holly, tangled in the pointed leaves. That’s her, the girl-next-door. Stopping an inch away from the first leaf, Philip caught Maxwell’s eye and shook his head as if to say, I’m not doing it. I’m not talking to her. This time, Maxwell rolled his eyes but hesitated before calling out, “Hello?” From the hedge came the rustle of leaves and holly berries and answers and the same delicate voice, “Are you the next-door neighbors?” “Yeah, are you the girl-next-door?” Maxwell peered in the hedge for a glimpse of her face, her eyes, her sneakers, something, but the leaves were too thick for anything but the small, red berries to be seen. “I’m Moira.” From the other side, the leaves shook from their classified task of splitting the kids up. Maxwell asked the girl if they could come over and play. The hedge froze. “I’m not allowed to talk to you. You can’t come over.” Maxwell looked at his brother, shoulders slumping over, their combined dream of seeing the girl-next-door falling short. The hedge spoke again. “But we can talk through the hedge now. My mom isn’t home and Dad’s sleeping.” After casting a glance at the screen door for Mom, Maxwell dragged his brother closer to the dense, dense hedge and the other side and introduced themselves to the girl-next-door. ... Answers. I need answers. It was now or never. He reached under his bedsheets, found the plastic handle of his Fisher Price flashlight, and clicked the light on. His bare feet touched the cold, wooden floor and he had barely gotten out of bed when the light in the neighbor’s top window flicked on. Maxwell heard Philip from across the room. “I thought she was using a flashlight.” Before Maxwell could reply, both boys froze. The shadow behind the window was too tall to be Moira’s. Not a kid shadow but an adult shadow, staring Maxwell down from the window in the neighbor’s house. It knew what the boys were going to do. The shadow bored into Maxwell’s eyes and flew up his nose and down into his lungs, halting his breath. Philip gasped but neither boy got fully out of bed. Maxwell imagined 14
the perfectly still, adult shadow in Moira’s bedroom window fly out of her room and into theirs, bare its dripping, ugly teeth, and eat them alive. Hands shaking, blue, alien spaceship eyes never left the emptiness of the shadow. Maxwell clicked the flashlight off. The light in the neighbor’s top window flicked off. Moira. What if she’s caught? “Maxwell. We still gotta go. Just don’t turn the flashlight on.” Philip whispered from his side of the room, his voice slightly shaking. “Moira might be outside still.” In socked feet, they crept along the floor like crabs, made their way to the door, grabbed their boy scout bags and crawled down the hall, took the stairs one at a time, jumped over the bottom step because it creaks, landed on socked feet, walked around to the kitchen, unlocked the screen door and carefully opened and closed it so it wouldn’t squeak, all the while careful not to make any noise or else the shadow would find them. Or their parents. The holly was a dark monster staring at them, challenging them, asking them why they were out of bed this late, but Philip and Maxwell walked around the hedge and into the neighbor’s yard by the light of their Fisher Price flashlight. It should’ve been that easy hours ago. Regardless, it was breaking the law, dangerous and exciting. Moira’s outside fort was magnificent. Bed sheets hung from tree limbs and swooped along the branches to the playset, where the bed sheets had been wrapped around the swing set’s poles and tied off with clothes pins. Moira had clipped artwork to the bed sheets and set a massive teddy bear as guard. Philip led the way toward the heavily guarded and decorated fort, his socks swishing through the more-grass-than-dirt grass. They stopped outside Moira’s fort, gave the password, and swept inside where their eyes narrowed in on Moira’s back. Maxwell guessed she was their age considering she was as tall as them and, through the soft glow of a camping lantern Moira had placed on a plastic outdoor chair, her bright red, curly hair shone, but when she turned to Philip and Maxwell…her eyes. Maxwell whispered to Philip, “She has alien spaceship eyes, too.” Philip’s mouth had fallen open when he saw Moira and all he could do was nod. Moira’s eyes were amazingly blue, like the color of an electric eel, like an alien spaceship, like the same blue The Man in the Yellow Hat would wear if he wore blue, the same color as Philip and Maxwell’s, the same blue as their Dad’s, 15
the same white specks in her eyes. It was a perfect match, the kid’s perfectly matching blue eyes. The skin between Moira’s eyes wrinkled. “Alien spaceship eyes?” “They’re the same as ours. That’s so cool!” Philip threw his arms up and the boys exchanged grins with their new friend. The blue-eyed children got to work. Hours later, the boys pulled the bed sheet door back and walked out into the night, Fisher Price flashlight in hand. Moira followed them out and they stood next to each other in silence, remembering the games they played, the alien spaceship eyes, the giant risk they were taking. Moira turned to them, her eyes in the dark no more blue than Philip and Maxwell’s and held her hand out. The boys joined hands with her, and they worked through their secret handshake they’d put together hours before. A success. ... Philip and Maxwell’s socked feet scuffed through the dirt and up the porch steps. Giving one last glance at the hedge, the hedge that keeps friends apart, the hedge that keeps the alien-spaceship-eyed kids away from each other, Philip and Maxwell held the plan they formed with Moira in their head, the plan that was strong, unbreakable, the plan that would remain that way until alien-eyed child met with alien-eyed child without restraint and fear of the parents.
16
The Burden of Needing to be Small
17
Nathalie Elwood
Now cracks a noble heart
Hannah Hanes
I am drowned by a willow From which soft fingers grow. The old crown upon my head Caught with violets in a fishmonger’s net. Intimate hands dropped them When I forgot myself. Who am I That my skin does not reflect The arms that made me? These falsities are strong Until they’re not; These insubstantial identities outlasted By forms crafted with thought and time. The beauty you sought for Is dying by a willow. Undrink the poisoned cup And bring me my crown, So I might recover reality. So I might live again.
18
Only Acting: Vivyana
19
Audrey Robinovitz
Only Acting: Tori
Audrey Robinovitz
20
Empty Kacie Errington Carefully, she rose from her chair, the cushions hardly wanting to release her, but she had to get up, she knew she had to. Softly, she glided to the kitchen. Her movements were more ghost-like than human. Her hands shifted across the counter, into the fridge, back again, but they paused, hovering above a knife. Splashes of red clouded her vision. A scalpel to her stomach, cold silence. She shook her head and gripped the knife, slicing into the peaches, peeling off skin as she went. Scooping them into a cup of yogurt. Fruit and dairy, good for the baby, extra vitamins in the breast milk. She didn’t know why she was following the books. It’s not like she needed that right? There were no vitamins to give, no baby to give them to. Alarms went off, beeping screeched in her head. “Baby’s in distress,” One of the doctors called from a monitor. “What? What’s wrong? Why is my baby in distress?” Cynthia was shrieking. They all ignored her; even her sweet nurse stopped stroking her hair. They turned into a machine. It shifted to a blur. “Wrapped around the his neck” “We’ll have to take him.” “We need to move” “Sir, you need to leave,” Drapes covered her, something was put on her face; she couldn’t see anything anymore, not past the blanket. “Why won’t anyone talk to me?!” The living room was scattered with evidence: baby magazines on the side tables, books mixed in with stories on the bookshelf, a playpen set up in the corner, a pillow to be used for breast feeding and playing on the floor. Cynthia sighed, shoving the pillow off her chair, curling into it. The yogurt tasted bland, even mixed with the fruit, and the television sounded like white noise. The fuzzy stillness was broken, when she heard a cry. It was sharp and clear and unmistakable. It was a baby. “Jack?” She called. The baby let out another shriek at the sound of his mother’s voice. “Don’t worry baby, Mommy’s coming.” She cooed. Her bare feet padded over to the child’s room. His little body was twisting; face red, toothless mouth gaped. “Shh, shh, it’s okay,” She held him close to her chest, and the baby seemed to be considerably calm, hiccupping occasionally for a breath. Cynthia hummed softly, 21
an old lullaby sung to her, and shuffled around the room, letting the small boy catch his breath. “Now, tell Mommy what’s wrong.” She uttered close to his ear. He let out another hiccup in response. “Oh, you’re dirty, huh?” She didn’t quite understand how she knew what the boy was saying. A mother thing, she figured, throwing the soiled diaper in the trash near the changing table. She shifted the baby in her arms, and walked back to her chair. The pillow sat in it waiting for her. Strange, she could’ve sworn she had thrown it to the side. She wrapped the pillow around her, using it to support her arms and Jack’s head. “Hungry, my dear?” She questioned, running her index finger over the baby’s mouth. Eyes barely opened, the little mouth opened and instinctively mouthed after her finger. “Little bird,” she mused, fixing the nursing shirt to feed the child. For a moment, everything was perfect. The baby fed quietly, the television played a trashy soap opera that was truly a guilty pleasure. A shrill ring cut through the room. Her lights flickered, and the television glitched with beeps and crazy red lines. Jack was snatched from her arms, and blood pooled from her lower half, a doctor grabbed her wrists, pulling her from the chair and pinning her to the floor, cutting open her stomach. She could hear her baby screaming. “JACK, JACK,” she screamed to no avail, they wouldn’t let her go no matter the thrashing she mustered. “MY BABY, WHERE ARE YOU TAKING MY BABY!?” She demanded to know, but they ignored her, only rummaging around inside her. Jack’s screaming turned to a deafening ringing, shaking her to her core. “JACK!” she screamed, bolting up in her chair. She nearly tripped on the thrownaside nursing pillow, and for a moment, was confused by the ringing that still echoed from the dream, why wouldn’t it stop. ... She found herself back in the kitchen. She almost fixed herself another cup of yogurt, but that hadn’t done much before, what would it do now? A piece of toast with peanut butter sounded wonderful, but the doctor told her to be careful. Jack could be allergic to nuts, so not to eat that till later, after breast-feeding, he’d lectured. But there was no Jack, so why care? Maybe even some wine, she mused to herself, 22
pouring some into a glass. As she wandered back to her chair, her breasts began to ache. “I must look ridiculous,” Cynthia muttered to herself, a breast pump latched to her like a mechanical child, a glass of wine in one hand, her half eaten toast in the other, and a rerun of cooking shows on the television. She began to laugh. “Utterly ridiculous,” she cackled. It grew to the point she could hardly catch her breath, tears streaming down her face. She wasn’t sure when the laughs had turned to sobs, when the bitter amusement shifted to bitter sadness. All she knew was that she couldn’t stop. “Fucking hormones,” she cursed. The sobs didn’t stop soon, by all means, they seemed to last forever, but eventually, they turned to simple tears, then hiccups, and finally, just a pounding heart, a need for oxygen, and perhaps a few more sips of wine. With a sigh, she drained the rest of her wine. Maybe she deserved this, she definitely deserved the wine, after everything, but maybe that wasn’t all she deserved. It’s not like she was the best young lady. Oh, how her mother had fussed her, wagging her finger like she knew best. Of course she did, but Cynthia never listened. Marcus was far from her “first,” not that he knew that. Jack wasn’t even her first pregnancy, but she never kept them. Had she killed Jack? Was this all some twisted sense of karma? ... “Our baby is dead.” She said. It wasn’t a question. Marcus nodded, grabbing her small hands in his. The next days were a blur. She couldn’t feel anything. They explained to her what happened. He didn’t have enough oxygen. His brain stopped functioning, his heart stopped beating. They’d done everything they could. Apologies were thrown around like it would make everything better, like it mattered. It didn’t of course, but Cynthia appreciated the attempt.
23
24