EVOL

by Cynthia A. Rodriguez

  “Hey,” she whispers. “Hungry?”

  “No.”

  She sits beside me on the bed and reaches for my hand. I endure the physical touch, figuring at least I could offer her some comfort.

  “Any pain?”

  She doesn’t know the physical pain is easy to ignore at this point. There’s only emotional grief left tying me to the tragedy.

  “Nothing any medicine can fix.”

  She squeezes my hand and sighs into the dark air.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  I pause, debating internally if I want to walk through this particular memory with her. But, fuck it. She asked.

  “Sleeping with Mom.”

  Sabrina is quiet, so I continue.

  “And that one time you accidentally dropped a dish.”

  This memory isn’t an easy one and the sound of Sabrina’s sniff is the only tell that not only did she hear what I’d whispered, but she remembered as clearly as I do.

  She’d found bread in the cupboard and placed a few pieces in the oven. I was watching her with a smile on my face as she pranced around the kitchen on quiet toes like a ballerina. I’d been playing with my doll on the table, making her follow Sabrina’s movements.

  I’m in this limbo between the past and present as Sabrina speaks.

  “I’d nearly gotten you fed,” she says as I go through the memory on my own.

  One of our only ceramic plates slipped from her grip and hit the floor with a loud crack, pieces scattering over the floor.

  We heard a grunt, the old mattress creaking from my mother getting up, and heavy steps toward the kitchen. As soon as she saw the both of us, she screamed profanities.

  “She was sick,” I whisper to myself in the dark. “They all said she was sick but . . . no one helped us.”

  Our mother snatched the doll I’d been playing with and hit Sabrina over and over, until she was tired and threw the broken thing across the room and stalked off back to bed.

  That was the first day I’d ever taken care of Sabrina, washing away the dried blood on the little lumps all over her face, arms, and head.

  “They didn’t know,” Sabrina answers. Even now, her anger is nonexistent.

  But I didn’t buy it. Yiayia knew the monster she’d raised. Saw the bruises on our bodies and our ribs poking from our hungry little bodies.

  “I would’ve been a better mother.”

  And there it was. My anguish wrapped in a pretty little bow.

  Women like my mother were having children every day.

  But I couldn’t even hold one in my body long enough to give it life.

  I reach for the phone beside me. It’s set to silent and I check it every now and again to see if Gavin called or messaged.

  Gavin: Good morning.

  He was up really early. It was nine o’clock here which made it six in the morning in Pakistan.

  Me: Good morning.

  He responds at once.

  Gavin: How are you feeling?

  My heart warms from the question. He listened.

  I wasn’t sure how honest I was allowed to be with him. Because there used to be a time when I could say exactly how I felt, when I felt it. These days? Not so much.

  Me: Mostly sad.

  He surprises me with his response.

  Gavin: I’m so sorry this happened to you.

  Me: It happened to us, Gavin.

  The need to remind him makes me feel a little nauseous, like my world is off kilter and I’m trying to keep my eyes focused on him.

  Sabrina is now lying beside me. When I glance over, I can see she’s fast asleep in the dim glow of my phone’s screen.

  Gavin doesn’t text me back.

  I fall asleep still wondering if I’m supposed to feel as lonely as I do.

  There is nothing

  Quite like the feeling of love leaving;

  Whether it tiptoes,

  Or slams doors.

  Day 330

  There isn’t enough sleep in the world to make me disappear.

  But I still try, hoping that if I sleep enough of the day away, it’ll be like none of this ever happened.

  When I sleep, there is nothing.

  When I’m awake, there is everything.

  There is longing and missing and wishing.

  Mostly, there is anger and loneliness.

  I can feel Gavin pulling away from me, my grief too immense for him to take on.

  The more he pulls away, the more I try to hold on.

  Save me, I want to tell him.

  This is our tragedy.

  But why does it feel like it’s mine alone?

  I try to find the elixir in your venom,

  And the hero in your villain.

  I look for the moon in your dark sky

  And the compliments in your insults.

  But the more venom and villain

  And darkness and insults I swallow,

  The more it all begins to swallow me.

  Day 327

  Pain.

  All I feel is pain.

  I sleep to hide from the pain.

  The emotional agony hits me seconds after the physical ache does.

  Because I forget. I forget it all until I’m conscious and the betrayal deep inside me makes itself known. In the form of the twisting discomfort as it releases the possibilities from my body.

  Not a viable pregnancy.

  I reach for my phone to message Gavin. I look for comfort in anything I can. Even from him, a world away from me.

  Me: I need to shower but Sabrina is running errands. Can you call me?

  I hadn’t even been able to use the bathroom alone, sobbing every time I was forced to pull my pants down.

  I drop the phone beside me, careful not to move or disrupt the rest of my body. When my phone vibrates, I grab it slowly, wincing at the dull ache the action causes.

  Gavin: I’m out with my friends at a show. Give me a minute?

  From the pain, a deep anger and resentment is borne.

  He can go to shows. He can be perfectly fine.

  My life has stopped. His continues. As if none of this ever happened.

  Me: I’ll just call Sabrina.

  I ignore the tears as I start to brace myself to rise and get my things together for a shower.

  I’m already crying. From the ache, from the idea of having no control over my life, from the fact that Gavin is perfectly fine.

  My phone vibrates, and I ignore it, grabbing a towel from my closet.

  It vibrates again, this time with a call.

  “Hello?” I answer.

  “Hey.” Just that one word, coupled with the sound of people having a good time around him pushes me further into my anger. “What’s up?”

  He sounds so fucking happy. Maybe even a little intoxicated.

  “I’ll just call Sabrina. It’s fine.”

  I don’t want to be the sad one, a cloud covering his sunny skies. And I don’t want to feel like I have to pull him to the trenches with me. Because I will.

  He sucks his teeth.

  “Stop it. I needed a minute to say goodbye. I’m not going to just get up and leave. That’s rude, Denise.”

  Rude.

  He’s been drinking, and he sounds so . . . bothered by me.

  I know my body is attempting to sort out its hormones and I went through something that I can hardly make sense of, but I boil over.

  “I don’t give a shit about your friends.”

  I’ve placed my phone down with him on speaker and started pulling my clothes off, ready to get this shower over with.

  “I don’t know what you want from me,” he shouts through the phone.

  “Don’t make me feel like your friends are more important than I am! Ask me how I’m feeling! Talk to me!”

  The only good thing to come of being on the phone, arguing with him, is that I’m too angry to focus on how my body feels and what it’s doing. But my nakedness makes me feel vulnerable, still, as I sho
ut and tremble.

  I haven’t been alone with myself, truly alone with my own body, in days. I feel like it doesn’t belong to me anymore; that I don’t know what it’s capable of anymore.

  I turn the shower on. Once I’m under the spray, I can’t do much to stop my body from shaking. The temperature change is a bit of a shock, but my emotions are getting the best of me.

  “I fucking left them to call you!”

  “Just stop it,” I say, my voice quieter, pleading, remembering a time when he was my peace.

  My hands cover my face as I sob into them.

  Still, he continues until I beg him to hang up the phone.

  “Please, hang up,” I cry out again, the water washing away my tears.

  The line is silent, and I wonder if he finally has. I cry into the showerhead’s stream, my shoulders shaking in my grief.

  “Are you still in the shower?” he asks, causing me to jerk and silence my sobs.

  “Yes,” I say. It’s near a whisper but I suppose he hears it because he doesn’t ask again.

  When I shut the water off after a quick scrub, my teeth chatter.

  Gavin is quiet on the line, but I can hear him moving around, making small noises that remind me he’s there. And I almost wish I hadn’t bothered him at all.

  Between his frustration with me and my own disgust with myself and the entire universe, this wasn’t something either of us could navigate peacefully.

  I reach for the towel, still shivering.

  “You okay?”

  His tone is softer, kinder.

  I don’t know how to react to it, so I tell him I am.

  He stays on the line while I pull my clothes on as quickly as I can, trying to avoid more time being so utterly exposed.

  Like maybe if I cover my body, I can forget that it didn’t feel like it was mine anymore. All while I struggle to dress as quickly as possible, I’m silent.

  My lips don’t know how to form the words, even as they’re lodged in my throat.

  Why are we like this?

  I walk slowly to my bed and Gavin asks what I’m doing now.

  “Going to lie down.”

  It’s his turn to be silent.

  Maybe he has words that he can’t find it in him to say, either.

  Maybe they’re too heavy and he’s worried I’ll sink right along with them.

  Maybe he’s trying to spare me the heartache.

  I sigh and settle into my bed.

  The only thing I’m certain of is this silence between us. And remembering a time when the silence didn’t feel like such a bad thing.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

  And I don’t tell him it’s okay. I don’t offer a forgiveness to anyone else when I can’t find it in me to forgive myself.

  We trust and trust and think nothing of it.

  You were gun-shy, and I was patient.

  But I was the one who should’ve trembled.

  The bullet narrowly missed my heart.

  You were gun-shy,

  But it was you who squeezed the trigger.

  Day 325

  The dull ache in my lower abdomen is persistent. When it stops, I feel hope, like maybe we’re fighting the odds and maybe we have a chance.

  But they start again within the hour and the more I worry, the worse I feel.

  Sabrina is quiet as she paces the apartment, calling more doctors for second opinions for the second day in a row, her voice in muted tones. She’s on the phone with a holistic specialist, the same one who’d claimed she’d be able to help, when I can’t take it anymore.

  I shut the door to the bathroom and sit on the toilet.

  My elbows are pressed into my knees . . . and I feel it.

  Part of me wonders if I’m dreaming; if this is really happening to me or if I’m going to wake up in my old life.

  I pull my pants down and am numbed by the mess staring back at me.

  A heavy sob escapes my throat, followed by another.

  Sabrina barges into the bathroom with her phone pressed to her ear. Green eyes assess the scene before her, and she drops the phone and rushes to me.

  “It’s happening,” I tell her over my tears.

  We couldn’t make it stay.

  She tries to hold me, but I wrestle away.

  “No.” I let out a hysterical sound. “Just . . . stop!”

  She’s crying as she stands there, mourning me, watching me come undone.

  “I need . . . call Gavin!”

  The more I cry, the more I bleed, the more I die a little inside, the more I wish for him.

  She grabs my phone and calls him. After several times, she gives up and sets the phone down. All calls to him are unanswered.

  Sabrina doesn’t leave my side, even when I’m frustrated and angry, horrible sounds coming from my body.

  She calls my doctor to confirm the inevitable end.

  I beg her not to take me to the hospital, unable to be around anyone.

  Once I’ve lain down on my bed, a pillow between my legs and a painkiller starting to soften the ache, I fall asleep.

  I wake up a few hours later to calls from Gavin.

  As soon as he answers the phone, I forgo typical greetings.

  “Why didn’t you answer?” My voice sounds so tired and weak.

  “Sorry. I was out with friends and my cell reception was terrible.”

  I want to scream; to rip my vocal chords from my body because I could say something terrible to him right now and ruin whatever fond feelings there are here.

  “I lost it,” I whisper.

  He sighs and then there’s only silence.

  “I lost it and you weren’t here for me. You didn’t answer the phone. I was alone.”

  “Sabrina wasn’t there?”

  “This isn’t Sabrina’s responsibility,” I shriek just as Sabrina pokes her head inside the room.

  She watches me for a second, nods once, then gives me my privacy.

  “You weren’t here for me,” I tell him, my tone pleading; begging him to understand that I’d gone through life never really attaching myself to anyone for fear that they wouldn’t be here when I needed them.

  No one ever wants to need someone. It’s a paralyzing fear, leaving even a fraction of your happiness in their hands.

  “How was I supposed to know, Denise?” His voice sounds angry, as if my need was an inconvenience.

  “You shouldn’t be arguing with me right now! You knew what was going on and that I needed to have access to you at all times! It doesn’t fucking matter!”

  Gavin laughed tonight. He had drinks, he socialized, he smiled.

  All while I was here, something we created dying inside of me.

  Something we barely had the time to wrap our brains around and make plans around. But it still felt like I had a piece of me ripped, despite holding it in tight fists. And this disappointment surrounding it was setting fire to it all.

  It’s something tragic to love someone and to be heartbroken by them at the same time. I’ve loved Gavin for almost a year of my life.

  And tonight, a part of that love was now a broken thing.

  I knew, from then, I’d try my hardest not to need anyone ever again.

  In hope’s absence,

  I feel every bit of empty;

  Only full of holes

  I’d never noticed before.

  Day 323

  “Hey,” I say softly into my phone, setting the notebook I’d been scrawling in aside. “What are you up to?”

  I hear him groan as he stretches, and I try to picture what he looks like. The space between us does nothing to the imagination and I’d been blessed with infinite amounts of images of this man to last a lifetime.

  Every image makes me wish I could crawl into his bed and live there with him.

  “My mother wants me to go with her to the market.”

  He says it matter-of-factly, like his mother is this person that I’m allowed to wonder about.

  “Have
you told her?”

  Movement on the other end of the line tells me he hasn’t hung up, even though he hasn’t answered. I hear people speaking around him and then it’s quiet, like he’s gone elsewhere for privacy.

  “Not yet,” he says.

  “Okay.” I leave it at this. He’s already uprooted his life and having to tell his old-fashioned parents about his pregnant girlfriend back in Boston would be a lot to deal with.

  Neither of us knew what we were doing and, while the timing wasn’t the best, I planned to make the best of it.

  “Have you eaten?” His question makes me smile.

  “Strawberries and chicken pot pie.”

  He chuckles, and I miss the feeling of it vibrating from his core beneath my palm as I lay with my hand on his chest. I miss so much about us.

  “No fast food. Not good for the baby.”

  “Yes, sir,” I answer with a smile. “My appointments in an hour.”

  “I’ll keep an eye on my phone. Call me afterward?”

  I don’t say anything as I kick at the edge of my carpet. Because there’s something inside me that . . .

  “I’m still a little worried,” I tell him.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The cramps are still happening and I’m still spotting.” I rush through the dirty words, a small part of me truly worried.

  “The doctor said that was normal, right?”

  Sabrina walks into my apartment without so much as a knock. She walks past me right to my bathroom, her heels clicking against my wood floors.

  Once she’s out of earshot, I answer.

  “Yeah, but . . .”

  Sabrina called the doctor a few days ago, at my insistence, just to see if I had anything to worry about.

  “It’ll be fine, love.”

  The sound of that word, the one he calls me when he’s feeling sweet, calms me.

  “I’ve got to go but call me later, okay?”

  I nod and say goodbye just as Sabrina walks into the living room.

  “You two kids playing nice?” she asks, running her fingers through her copper waves. Her slate gray slacks fit perfectly, of course. And somehow, her fuchsia silk top matches the shade in the pattern of her pumps exactly.