by Gray, Amelia
Jeannie serves me fajitas at the café.
Jeannie serves me onion soup at the café.
Jeannie serves me quesadillas at the café.
Jeannie serves me chicken fried steak at the café.
Jeannie serves me grilled cheese sandwiches at the café. Jeannie serves me steak and eggs at the café.
Jeannie serves me baked potato at the café.
Jeannie serves me tomato soup at the café.
Jeannie serves me pork chops at the café.
Jeannie serves me cheese crisp at the café.
Jeannie serves me ham and cheese at the café.
Jeannie serves me fish sandwiches at the café.
Jeannie serves me chicken salad at the café.
Jeannie serves me corn dogs at the café.
Jeannie serves me tamale pie at the café.
Jeannie serves me vegetable soup at the café.
Jeannie serves me macaroni at the café.
Jeannie serves me chili at the café.
And one day, I come home to find the Virgin Mary sitting at my kitchen table.
“Hey there,” she says. She is eating mints from my favorite pyx.
“How did you get in here?”
“I try doors. Aren’t you that guy from the fountain?” She offers me a mint.
My hands are huge and I am concerned they will flatten her in the course of my reach. She watches my awkward progress with careful pinhole eyes. When I touch the pyx, she snaps it closed.
“What is life?” she asks.
“Alive,” I say, “and well.”
She nods once, grandly. “I thought you might know, if anybody did.”
DIARY OF THE BLOCKAGE
DAY 1
I am hesitant to talk about it, but I’m the kind of person who turns off the television when the newscaster starts in on colon cancer. Therefore, I must say this delicately: it so happened that I came down with a mild stomach virus, hopefully gone by the morning but tonight was difficult and in the course of my time in the restroom I succeeded in expelling most of my dinner save for one small and stubborn piece which managed to lodge, it seems, between my esophagus and windpipe. At three in the morning I was crouched in bed and swallowing chronically, painfully aware of the foreign mass that will not move up or down but only vibrates unpleasantly. In the morning, I will call the doctor.
DAY 2
I did not call the doctor. I went so far as to find my insurance card, but I could imagine the remember Miss Mosely, well she has had a thing lodged in her throat all within range of anyone with half a mind to be within earshot of the office window. I feel very sincerely that bodily functions have their place, but why would the toiletries and makeup and personal privacy industries all be such multimillion dollar successes if the place for those bodily functions was in public? To say otherwise is to disrespect culture. Meanwhile, the object makes itself known whenever I swallow or cough but is otherwise not troublesome. I can’t decide if it is disintegrating or I am growing used to it. I think it is a piece of hamburger.
DAY 3
It is not disintegrating. It is much like a jilted lover: when it heard its presence in the world was becoming bearable, it revealed itself to be living down the street, to frequent the same local eateries and second-hand stores once enjoyed on peaceful solitary afternoons. I have changed my diet. I avoided hot coffee with my breakfast though it left me useless and squinting at the turn arrow against the sun. I brought a tomato from home for lunch because the thought of my usual hamburger out was distinctly unpalatable, but I realized too late that the acid of the tomato plus the salt I sprinkled on it (the only way to reasonably enjoy a tomato) stung my throat and left me pitiful and nearly in tears, crouched in my cubicle. I have begun meditating. I can picture the fleshy walls of my delicate throat, red and raw, with the blockage the size of a small fingernail touching two sides of the void, vibrating with my vocal cords when I speak and avoiding, by some cosmic misfortune, the tomato and milk and corn chips and yogurt I send to destroy it.
DAY 4
Office meeting today. Mr. Wallace brought in hot coffee and orange juice. During the meeting I discovered I can widen and collapse my palate around the blockage. It requires a slight back and forth motion of the head (imagine a small bird) and dominated my efforts over talk of redistricting, distribution, advertising, human resources news, 401-K plan changes. I picked out of obligation the orange juice believing it to be the lesser of liquid evils but of course it goes down like murder. I consider the possibility of a very successful diet: allow yourself to chew and enjoy the taste and texture of many foods, but at the point of swallowing, simply spit out the morsel and replace it with a healthier alternative such as a vitamin pill. In my case, something easier on the throat-parts such as ice water. I wish to patent this diet and to advertise its concepts in small checkout counter books across the country.
DAY 5
Worrisome creaking sounds and feelings from the throat. I feel a moment of judgment or shame: the reason for my stomach flu of Saturday night was perhaps exacerbated by the drinks I had out at what I surmised to be a singles’ bar, drinks that would have been far less troubling to my long-term health had I not seen my first husband, who suggested with his own meaty-fisted drink that I had not yet had enough and who am I to deny a challenge! (The blockage encourages me to feel this way.) I can admit that yes, the confrontation may have been a part of it. I sit on my couch and cough for a satisfying amount of time before falling asleep to the sounds of smooth jazz.
DAY 6
When I recall my behavior from that first night (there was a throwing of drinks and some shouting), I repeat a litany of self-assurances. I am kind, I am thoughtful and beautiful, I am clever, I am kind I am thoughtful and beautiful I am kind of clever and thoughtful and beautiful and kind though clever. I must perform the litany in a somewhat secret manner. I have taken to ducking my head under my desk as if I am looking for a dropped pencil and then I can begin my meditations. The blockage seems to grow—tinier pieces of food and digestive acid and saliva perhaps. When I cough or swallow, the vibrations seem lower and longer, more permanent. I don’t mind adding to it. Strange, how the disgusting becomes commonplace and then welcome. I wonder how long I would have to live with a parasite, a tapeworm or a leech, before it became a happy addition to the host of my body. I look at myself in mirrors obsessively.
DAY 7
Power outage due to hail storm. I wonder, has anyone created a candle wax remover with an attachment that allows the remover to make new candles? A kind of catch system with a heated core. The resultant recycled candle would be multicolored from the different waxes and in that way it would be wholly the property of the consumer and free of obligation to a consumer system. I have many good ideas. I find that when I lie down, I have consistent trouble breathing. Swallowing also grows more painful. I force down some of the cottage cheese otherwise curdling in the warming refrigerator. Through this pain I have decided I must learn a valuable lesson. In the night’s uncomfortable darkness, I consider my connection to the past and future of the planet. I take off my arch support shoes and remove my under-eye coverup gel when I undress for bed. I am quietly aware of my flat feet. Propped up on pillows, I touch the lump swelling gently on my throat.
DAY 8
A cloud to every silver lining! I have finally begun to internalize the blockage—it feels strange even to write “blockage,” because I forget what exactly it was blocking and why I felt so constrained. I found the plunging neckline shirts in the back of my closet and wore one out to lunch. I allowed the stares and gestures towards me with cool disregard. I sat at a table in the center of the room. For lunch? Ice water, ice water, ice water! Later, I drink a protein shake out of desperation and collapse on the kitchen floor, sobbing.
DAY 9
My delicate condition has brought me a kind of daily transcendence as I move through the world. The girl who argues politics in front of the coffee shop has gaps under her fake n
ails where the real ones are growing, and she’s waiting for the problem to get obvious enough to do something about it. The young man who listens to her has a piece of hair that never lies down flat. He is very disturbed by this and will lick his fingers and slick it down when he thinks nobody else is watching. I am very interested in necks, and how their owners handle them. People mostly ignore their own necks, except for very nervous girls who hold them while they talk as if they are trying to keep their vocal chords from exploding and splattering across the other person.
DAY 10
I have a very interesting theory in terms of my condition: I am fairly sure that it never existed—never in any real, physical form. Can I conjure a physical event out of darkness? Could I imagine my toenails shorter? Could I create, using my mind, an object that has never existed before, anywhere in the world? Is such a material, at this very moment, within my throat? Tenderly, I carry within me the first invented treasure known to mankind. My body is the first supernatural wonder of the world. I am careful when I cough, afraid of disturbing the gestation period, protective of the mass.
DAY 11
I have considered feeding myself intravenously but I worry that medical professionals would realize the unique quality of the blockage, and would conspire to take it from me.
DAY 12
Mr. Wallace called today to ask why I haven’t been coming to work. I had been a model employee in terms of attendance and grooming. I wish I could press the appropriate button and confirm that yes, I was feeling fine, that yes, I would like to keep my job, that it would be nice if everyone understood that I was doing something for the benefit of the world and that my duties as a paper-mover would have to wait. The colors in my body have moved and centralized at my throat. There is a terrible pallor in my face and hands but I am heartened by the growing darkness around the strange, wonderful object.
DAY 13
The swirling patterns behind my eyes confirm what I have secretly felt for days, that it is time for the blockage to finally emerge, the gestation period has concluded, the suffering is nearly through (though it has not been true suffering and we will never know true suffering), that which will most closely resemble joy is prepared to leave my body and move into the world!
DAY 14
I am wildly aware of the feel of everyday things. My body feels wholly perishable against the tile and dirt and ground it touches. I set out the silver bowl I once received as a wedding present (so long ago, such strange emotions!) as well as a set of silver spoons and monogrammed hand towels. My plan was to expel the Object into the bowl, but when I attempted the expellation (hunched over the bowl on the floor, which I chose to be the easiest method for both myself and the Object) I was greeted by a sharp, shocking pain. My nose bled into the bowl and I hunched nearly blind with emotion but the blockage screamed OUT and my grasping hands touched bowl, towel and finally spoons! And gratefully I took a spoon in my shaking grip and fully formed ideas flashed before me, Stop the bleeding! Save the Object! And I do understand that this will be a difficult labor, indeed!
THE CUBE
The children who found the cube shrieked over it as children do. The adults couldn’t be pulled away from the picnic at first, and assumed that the children had found a shedded snakeskin or a gopher hole. Only when the Rogers kid touched the iron cube and burned his hand did the parents come running, attracted by the screams.
It was a massive monolith, wider than it was tall and taller than anyone could reach, wavering like an oasis in the heat. The Rogers kid wept bitterly, his hand already swelling with a blister.
Nobody knew what to make of the thing. It was too big to have been carted in on a pickup truck. It would be too large for the open bed of an eighteen-wheeler, and even then there were no tire marks in the area, no damaged vegetation and not even a road nearby wide enough for a load that size. It was as if the block had been cast in its spot and destined to remain. And then there was the issue of the inscription.
They didn’t notice it at first, between the screaming Rogers kid, his mother’s wailing panic to hustle him back to camp for ice, and the pandemonium of parents finding their own children and clasping them to their chests and lifting them up at once. The object in question itself received little scrutiny. Only when the mothers walked their children back to camp for calamine lotion and jelly beans did the rest of the adults notice the printed text, sized no larger than a half inch, on the shady side of the block:
EVERYTHING MUST EVENTUALLY SINK.
The words caused an uncomfortable stir among the gathered crowd.
“What about Noah’s Ark?” asked one man in the silence. “After the flood, the ark was lost in the sand.”
“What about buoys?”
“Given time and water retention,” said a woman who worked in a laboratory, “a buoy will sink like the rest.”
This was disconcerting news. Everyone stood around a while, thinking.
“What about an indestructable balloon?”
“Such a contraption does not exist, and is therefore not a thing.” “A floating bird, such as a swan?”
“It will die and then sink,” the first man said, annoyed.
One man made to rest against the iron cube and stepped back, grimacing in pain at the surface heat.
“A glass bubble, then.”
The laboratory woman shook her head. “The glass would eventually erode, as would polymer, plastic, wood, and ceramic. We are talking thousands of years, but of course it would happen.”
The group was becoming visibly nervous. One young man recalled a flood in his hometown that brought all the watertight caskets bobbing out of the earth, rising triumphantly out of the water like breeching whales. The water eventually found its way though the leak-proof seals and the caskets sank again.
Another man recalled a mother from the city who drove her car into a pond, her children still strapped to their seats.
A man and a woman walked to camp and returned shortly with a cooler of beer. The gathered crowd commenced to drinking, forming a half-circle around the cube. They agreed that many things would eventually sink:
A credit card
A potato (peeled)
A baby stroller
A canoe
A pickle jar full of helium
A rattan deck chair
A mattress made of NASA foam
They even agreed on alternate theories: everything that sunk could rise again, for example. One of the men splashed a few ounces of beer on the iron surface as a gesture of respect. The place where the beer touched cooled down and the man leaned on the cube. It didn’t budge.
The men and women grew drunk and their claims more grandiose (a skyscraper, an orchard, a city of mermaids). Eventually, the mothers came to lead them back to camp but they didn’t want to go, eliciting words from the mothers, who had been stuck with the children and each other all afternoon and were ready for the silence of their respective cars. Back at camp, they were throwing leftover food into the pond. Ducks paddled up to eat the bread crumbs and slices of meat and the children clapped. The Rogers kid stayed on his mother’s lap, picking jelly beans from her hand. A pair of siblings threw an entire loaf of bread into the water and watched it disappear.
The mothers didn’t talk much, preoccupied with children or ducks. As they sat, some thought about the children, and some thought about everything eventually sinking, but most thought of the long drive ahead, the end of the weekend, and the days after that.
LOVE, MORTAR
My love for you is like a brick. It sits silent in me when you bring out my food at the Dine and Dart, red tray aloft, your skin gleaming like grilled onions. My love is rough around the edges but solid through the center, fresh from the kiln. My love for you is heavy and dark, Jenny, it builds and breaks down, Jenny, it cracks the windows between you and me—you, mixing milkshakes for little league winners, and me, miserly with sandwich wrappers in my car. You, smiling down at the register like a woman with secrets, and me, in agony
over the golden arch of your eyebrow.
A brick, inert and dangerous. This love can be worn down but there is always substance to it, always heft, as when you struggle to lift the box of flash-frozen patties, that iced meat against your bare arms, the cold thickness of your flesh a barrier against the protected warmth of your lungs, your heart, your bones. When your manager helps you with that box, the brick grinds in my chest. Your manager, Bill of the blue eyes, Bill of the “no parking” policy, Bill of the fast food tie. He tucks it in his shirt as he walks to the bathroom. You might be kind and claim that Bill is a good man but what you’ll soon learn is that there are no good men, Jenny, none left at all. Not even me, though I’m good deep down, almost to the center.
