By ZoE
Date: 9 June 2000
pRAYING mANTIS
He parks the car in the middle of the grass, the dew has just fallen and everything is crisp
and wet. The tires squeak and the only noise is the engine sighing. It was that silence of
people that I loved about him. I wanted to steal it from him so I could have it for myself
and then for him to thieve it back, and we’d keep borrowing it from each other until we
didn’t remember who had it, and we didn’t have to. We’d never have to speak, just stay
quiet locked up together.
The night before I couldn’t sleep, I kept humming softly to keep myself calm. I sat
by the toilet on the tiled floor as beads of sweat danced around my neck. I thought to
myself that any embryo, any tiny face and hands that had swam into my uterus must be
dancing in the sewer by now and I hated myself for it. Hated myself for letting her curl
herself into my womb if I infact had.
In the morning he shuffled in at five o’clock like a praying mantis to find me
curled up against the washing machine in the clothes I’d been wearing the night before,
crying and shaking. He carried me to the car as if I were a baby, not wanting to look
straight into my eyes. I did not want to look into his. I was still imagining the fetus with
his face and angular chin. The red seatbelt felt as if it were choking me. The nurse, the
night before had said that the pills would take affect in twenty-four hours. “Two every
hour on the hour with food.” she’d said, but I couldn’t eat, because I felt too horrible so I
just vomited eight hours later. Every bump the car took made my body shake twice. “I
love you like the stars above, I love you until I die and there’s a place for us, you know
the movie song, when you gonna realize it was just that the time was wrong.” the tape
deck radiated. It only made me cry, because that is exactly what I had wanted to tell him
and him to me but neither of us wanted to or could speak and those lyrics were all we had
as an explanation.
Six o’clock at the drive through window of Dunkin’ Donuts, he asks if I want
anything. I realize it’s the first thing he’s said to me in the past two hours. I don’t answer.
He orders me a coffee. He parks the car and stirs it for me. “I always thought saying I love
you was pointless.” he says biting into a muffin, “If you love a person they can usually
tell, I mean I think. I think well, I mean you should. I mean a person should know.” I shift
in the seat and face him. I look at him for the first time today “You think it went to
heaven when it died?” I ask. He pauses “I don’t know, maybe.” but I know he’s saying
that just to pacify me. He doesn’t believe in heaven or anything he thinks doesn’t relate to
him. He wipes my face off, all the tears, and I think he wants me to calm him down too
but I can’t, because I don’t know what to say and even if I did I know my words would
come out all mangled and wouldn’t make sense. I am not in any head to think rationally.
“Do you want to go to Liz’s house?” he asks, wiping crumbs off his unshaven face.
That’s what he says whenever he doesn’t know what to say, because he thinks Liz knows
everything about women. Maybe she does, but I know I wouldn’t feel comfortable
throwing myself into her house with my grotesque body and crying eyes. “Whatever you
want.” he begins to back out of the parking lot. Fall is just coming to an end and the bare
trees I sense feel just as lonely as me. “Your here,but I feel like you are five hundred
fucking miles away.” This is the first time I’ve ever heard him swear and I cringe. I just
mumble something about looking like shit and change the radio station. “I’m kind of
relieved.” he says in his soft, gum stuck to the bottom of my shoes kind of voice as the
stoplight turns to red and he pulls my hair back from my face. I light a cigarette and think
if a baby was perched inside of me I’d never receive this dose of nicotine.“Yeah, I guess I
am too.” I sigh.
Liz’s house is on top of a street that is shaped like a hill. All the houses are the
same. All square ranch houses, most have dead grass. We stagger towards her door
looking as if we’ve just walked through hell and danced with Lucifer. Her hair is all tied
up and her skin is flawless. She’s like some demi-goddess. Her frayed jeans sweep
against the floor. She wraps her arms around me and I feel like I might be ok and that is
enough. And I cry and that is ok and that is enough.
Eight o’clock and I don’t want to go home. I want to be tucked away in his pocket,
safe, where I won’t be scared. “Ugly things aren’t keener, she reveals with a win; I am her
violin.” I wanted to say all this and have it be mine but is not mine, the poet had stolen it
right from my mouth. And I considered that I may be that ugly thing he refers to. And I
am his violin, an instrument at his finger tips. We drive in circles looking for some sort of
conclusion to have made this ordeal bearable or make it teach us something. At his house
I sit hunched over on the porch, my legs hanging off and I am smoking another
cigarette.He places his head in the curve of my neck and I shake (mostly from the breeze).
“Remember grade school?” I ask. “What about it?” he questions. “In grade school I
played hide and seek and named my pet rock. I imagined highschool being sort of like my
baby-sitter, Jessica. She was pretty and she wore dr.martins all the time and she dyed her
hair red and everything was simple. I never thought I’d be sitting in a clinic watching t.v.
and taking the pill.” I say. He sort of laughs and pulls his matted hair away from his eyes.
That’s what I always liked about you. “What?” I ask. “The way you say these
disconnected things like that. Most people would wonder what the fuck you were talking
about but I understand.” I hear crickets chirping as I fumble in my pocket for a lighter.
Ten o’clock we find ourselves tangled on my sofa watching Mork and Mindy.
We’ve seen every episode but it’s comforting that we know just what will happen. It is
parallel to our lives now. We don’t know how things will change and unfold. This is
called disassociation. I fall asleep to the buzzing of the radiator.
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