I don’t know what I meant by that. Maybe I meant the way we love is all-the-way but still sort of innocent. I mean Baby sorta puts me on a pedestal sometimes, don’t he? So what if he knew I hacked TCD, HSBC, my own husband’s computer? What if Kenji found out I’m a schemer & then didn’t feel like “flattening the world” for me no more? If it’s got room to breathe, our love will stay complete. So it’s better that we’re not together all the time (& I can’t believe I’m saying this & it would’ve never got into my head if I hadn’t taught myself Python & made a bodiless girl!).
I didn’t say none of this to K. Baby looked like he didn’t know which way’s up all of a sudden, & his voice was so quiet, he said, “& what is that, Nabi? What are we exactly?”
Well, come on now, what kind of a question is that?! I mean it, Lord, I mean K really wanted me to answer! You could tell by his face, couldn’t You? So why not send a little spark my way?
I didn’t know what to say. All I could think was Lord have mercy get us off this subject. I smiled at K all gentle & foolish. I played with his fingers & said we’re both making too much of this. I said it’s cuz we’re tired, he’s not sleeping, so everything looks warped etc. I said if I saw my momma waving girt big ostrich feathers at me every night, I’d wonder about some things too. Kenji didn’t laugh. I laughed for both of us, just softly. It was mug to try a joke right then. I said, “Sorry, Baby, you know I’m just teasing. Come on, let’s get to work, we got a whole day together.”
He had his eyes closed for a sec. Praying for strength, like that. Except I know Kenji doesn’t pray.
What was that closed-down second, Lord? You want me to ask again tonight like I did last night, I’ll do it. I’ll ask You every night & thank You every day & praise You & ask You again the next night & the next: spare him.
Half a moment it hung in actual air. Our bodies, my MG, the parking lot, the stone buildings of the capital were all around it. Other people could’ve heard it if they’d been near enough. People opening the car wash, the fitness center. For that half-moment, the question was actually in the world. What are we? And so it was an opportunity. A soft mattress or a sword could’ve materialized to stop me falling through myself and in the next half-moment give me my modality once and for all; my how am I and am I really, all that ontological bullshit. But Nabi laughed, she laughed, which means the question fell on deaf ears, as good as never asked. Falling on deaf ears, a question keeps on falling. If I’m doomed to keep falling until I’ve dripped completely out of my particulars into the horror of a living emptiness, then the decisive question for this falling body is no longer What. The falling question, the prime mover, becomes How long?
I forgave Nabi for laughing. I watched the forklift and waited for a chance to slip outside. I went to my MG and helped myself to my on-the-go stash instead of walking in front of a bus. Then I went back to the forklift. And when Nabi smiled anxiously at me, my insides were downy enough that I could smile downily back. I remember that much. As long as I didn’t imagine it. I watched other people’s histories grind down to nothing.
We decided I shouldn’t be there when Martin picked her up. But the wrenching hour came and Nabi didn’t want me to go. She touched my face and I kissed her on the sidewalk outside Bull’s Head Shreds.
It was stupid. I know. The middle of Hamilton. Just a small kiss, not a protracted affair. Still, I know. But Zohytin made me reckless, I felt like everything was falling apart, Nabi was acting like she was out to sea in a punt. We had to grab onto something.
Nabi hung onto my arm as she walked me to my car. She shut the door on my MG, turned away with an enervated wave. Instead of leaving her to Martin and a bunch of strangers she didn’t even want to see, I should’ve stuffed her in the car, driven straight to the airport.
Cowardice? Maybe not. This time I had a halfway-decent reason.
When Nabi and I were on our way to the parking lot, I thought I glimpsed somebody at the end of the street, moving on a course perpendicular to ours.
It was UnDoreen. Or someone with her shape and haircut in a business suit. Or a hallucination due to stress and paranoia. Or a ghost. Either way, she knew my car. And I didn’t want her anywhere near Nabi.
Ghosts are everywhere. Don’t underestimate them. They take many forms. They can be words, they can be ikiryou. They can be things. Papers, fonts. Images.
A picture is a ghost of a moment that has disappeared. You take a snapshot of something when you want to trap its apparition in a bygone time. You freeze an abandoned building so you can savor its despair. Its hopelessness is a phantom which, captured by your lens, will never be torn down or repaired.
I bring this up because the picture that forms a turning point in Aetna’s journey—call it AS5—became significant to me when cracks appeared in all my structures. My relationship with that picture was never good. It defies my hypotheses by not saying anything at all. It’s like an outlying point on an otherwise perfect graph.
Can it be a suicide note without any words in it? But what are words before they’re words? Before we know how to read them? What are kanji but pictures, shapes drawn on a page? Geometry of the letter A: symmetry of a rooftop.
I returned to AS5 when I was out of ideas and beginning to falter. I’d considered the possibility that it belonged in tenth place, summing up everything. Or in first place like a cover. Neither seemed right. Aetna had an eye for symmetry. That’s why she chose ten. She would’ve integrated the anomaly into the structure at a point that would make the most of the outlier’s uniqueness. She chose that picture to represent her turning point in spite of all her literary work. When I revisited the Ten, my perspective reddened by frustration and vulnerability, I held that picture in both hands, determined to see something I hadn’t seen before.
I saw Aetna. Her self-portrait at the turning point, when she realized her wish to die wasn’t something she’d get over. It was a truth made in her, out of her, as tumors are our own cells. She accepted it, started making plans. That was her crisis juncture. I was so sure of it.
Her portrait in that moment is not a portrait. Rembrandt’s dusty Lucretias; those are portraits. Bags under their eyes, besieged by shadows, daggers in their pasty hands, aiming for their hearts. Millais’ Ophelia, looking radiant while floating downstream and staring deadly upwards, hands upturned in benediction and submission. Artists love self-sacrifice. Why not a muscled Seneca à la Peter Paul Rubens, bleeding into a tub while dictating to a scribe? A Davidian Socrates at the top of his game, lecturing with passion on the nature of the soul: “And another thing!” he says as he reaches for the hemlock. If she wanted a portrait of suicide caught in the act, she could’ve found plenty.
There’s no one in AS5. It’s a crumbling building shouldering its own debris with casurina saplings shoving their way through the roof. But it’s not a building either, or not just a building. As I wrote in my essay, AS5 materializes the feeling of wanting to die. It’s a ghost. The spirit of the feeling that would one day overtake her, an apparition of one of her last great convictions.
I recognized the building right away. Nabi and I used to drive by it on the way to the marina. She’d remark on it sadly. Hurricane Fabian gouged out the roof. Casurinas invaded. Despite the efforts of volunteers like Nabi, who formed an interdenominational repair crew, the building had no hope. They gave in and tore it down.
It was a United Holy Church. It was blue, and in the photo you can see the cross-shaped vent at the apex of the roof. It used to have a cedar door decorated with a carving of a ship surging through angry seas. Now it’s a vacant lot. It was called Faith Tabernacle.
The photo is absurd. Trees going through a church. A roof too weak to shelter. A tabernacle torn apart by acts of God. All paradoxes are absurd and necessary. A creature born with the survival instinct who would rather not survive. It’s a contradiction, it’s uncanny and beautiful, I am what I
am not—and no one can explain it. Aetna felt absurd too. She was like the trees, undermining every structure. And she was like the structure, stone on the verge of collapse.
One other thing. Aetna lived in St. George’s. Faith Tabernacle was in Somerset. An hour’s drive each way. And there’s no shortage of churches in St. George’s. There’s a United Holy Church out there on Water Street. And yet one church in all the world, one ruin, resounded within her.
I am her echo. Cracked, invaded, and absurd.
I held out little hope for Reverend Henry Cox, formerly of Faith Tabernacle, now pastor of Beulah Tabernacle. I called him and told him I was writing a book about a former member of his flock, Aetna Simmons.
The reverend sounded quite an old man. He paused for a long moment, thinking.
His words were: “Aetna Simmons. I know that name.”
“Really?”
“Well, that’s why you’re calling, isn’t it?”
I said I was just starting my research. I said I was having difficulty finding information about my subject. And I asked with anticipation twined around my throat if he had a few minutes to look at a photograph.
The good reverend said yes.
I was at his door in fifteen minutes. He had a cluttered study in the back of the church. He said, “You’re the one who called me on the telephone?”
I’d put him in his late eighties. Glasses like binoculars.
“You’re Barrington Caines’ boy. The younger one. No. The older one.”
You might find this amazing, but I didn’t. It’s the eyes. Once people see I’m too well-dressed to be a Filipino laborer, Masami and Barrington are usually their next guess. Every time, I consider saying no. But it’s no use. And Cox looked so proud of himself. I didn’t bother asking how he knew Barrington. Everyone knows Barrington.
“But you’re writing about somebody named Simmons?”
“Yes, Reverend. Aetna Simmons. She belonged to the congregation at Faith Tabernacle. I was hoping this photo might jog your memory about her. It was with her papers when she died.”
Reverend Cox brought the picture to his nose. Held it at arm’s length. Settled on a middle distance and a faraway voice.
“This is the old church. My first real home. Faith Tabernacle.”
Patience. “I’m thinking Aetna might’ve talked to you about this picture?”
“No no, lots of people took pictures, not me. I didn’t like seeing it like that.”
“It was important to her.”
“Aetna Simmons,” he said. “Well, the name’s in there somewhere. Give it time. It’ll come out. Lot of people come and gone through my congregations over the years. How’s your mom and dad? You work down at their office now of course.”
“Actually I have my own company. Do you know Myrtle Trimm? A friend of my family? I think she might know you.”
Not really. Another arrow thrown into the dark.
“Where’s she stay to?” he said.
“St. George’s.”
“St. George’s. No, don’t think I know her. Don’t get out that way too often. So you’ve got your own business and you write books too, that’s good! This lady Aetna Simmons would’ve been in my congregation when?”
“Recently. She only just died the other day.”
“Oh, she died. So I must’ve done her funeral.”
“I’m afraid not. She killed herself. Probably in the ocean. Her body never made it back.”
He’d begun to flip through a large-print day-planner. Now he was still.
“Suicide,” he said.
His chair turned on its axis. He folded his bony hands. Gave me a look that made me feel like a kid in Juvenile Court.
“Why,” said Reverend Cox, “do you want to write about that woman?”
“So you do know her.”
“I didn’t say that. Suicide is wrong in the eyes of God, you know that. It’s a trespass on the property of the Lord. Because our lives and our bodies were made by Him and belong to Him. We have no right to destroy what does not belong to us. You are not your own, said Saint Paul in First Corinthians, you were bought at a price.”
I didn’t say anything. Figured he’d wear himself out.
“It’s an insult to Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is a slap in the face after the sacrifice He made. Jesus died so that we might have salvation and eternal life. If you refuse that gift, if you don’t give Jesus a chance to save you from despair, then you’re saying all He went through was for nothing. Now, is that what you believe, young man?”
“No, sir.”
“That girl allowed the Devil to drive her to despair. Jesus offered her His help, no strings attached, and she ignored Him. You want to sell that story to the world?”
“Forgive me, Reverend, but that wasn’t the entire story.”
“She was not a member of this church.”
A slam of the door could not have been any clearer.
But he was still going. “My concern is for you. I know you want to write a good book. I’ve written books myself, oh yes. And I’ve read more of them than I can remember. Whether you’re reading or writing, a good book is a communion of the heart with the spirit of the words. That’s why we read the Bible. Because God is in His words. Reading the Lord’s words brings us much closer to Him. You’re going to have to live and breathe this woman’s self-murderous spirit. If you do your job right, and I know your family usually makes good on its ambitions, you will expose yourself to the Devil. Not to mention the rest of us you’re going to want to read the thing. Is that really what you ought to do? Is that, young man, is that what you really need?”
I record this small tirade because it came from someone in awe of Aetna Simmons. So much in awe that he feared her and hated her. And feared for me as I dared to try to know her mind. His fear transformed him, this absentminded, fragile little man, into the orator who hid behind his field-goggle glasses. She didn’t need Jesus to save her; she lived and died on her own power, frail and fallible as it was. Such courage was beyond the poor reverend’s comprehension.
After making clear my responsibilities to myself and the good people of the world at large, the reverend said he couldn’t force me one way or the other, but he hoped I would change the subject of my book. He bowed his head slightly, which I took as an indication that our meeting was over. Feeling cheated and put-upon, I thanked him for his time.
Then he said (offhandedly, but I think it was deliberate, that cheeky old goat), “Oh, by the way! I finally remember where I heard that name. It was from someone else. Someone else came asking about her. Not long ago, not long at all. But no, he didn’t come here. He called me on the telephone. What was his name?”
The old coot tapped his forehead with dried-up fingers. I wanted to shake him, but I was frozen in place.
“He wanted to know if I knew how to get in touch with her, this Aetna Simmons. He thought I was her pastor. Don’t know why. Don’t think he said. Tell me, Lord, what was his name? Guess he didn’t know that she’d passed on. I asked a couple women, happened to be here that day, but they never… Lord, what was that man’s name? Now, You must’ve been here too, Lord, are You listening to me? Throw me a bone. Was it Derek?”
“Erik?”
“Erik. Thank You, Lord. Now, was that so hard? The surname’s gone completely, I’m afraid.”
Erik. More annoying than surprising. My nightmares: of course Masami was out to get me. Just her luck her covert operative was dumb enough to get found out.
The only reason I didn’t give that little sycophant what he deserved was, you guessed it, Masami. Her strategy was obvious, but things were already precarious for me, I didn’t know how much she knew, and I couldn’t risk slipping her any more. You see, only someone who’d seen the Ten could’ve drawn a connection between Aetna Simmons and Henry Cox.
Now, I know w
hat you’re thinking. Aetna disappears, Clock-
tower and CAM send somebody after her. Her cottage, middle of the night—and there they are. The Ten. The infiltrator has a look, maybe takes pictures, leaves the notes where he finds them. Smart enough to leave no trace, he murders Myrtle. He tells Masami about the Ten, among them the picture of Faith Tabernacle. She gets Erik on the phone, but the reverend’s either clueless or a terrific liar. Anyhow, Aetna’s already dead.
Sensible, maybe. The sticking point was Erik. If Masami had to order something like breaking and entering, maybe end-of-life care for a nosy landlady, there’s no way she’d let Erik within a thousand miles of it. That bye has clouds for brains and a tongue like a hummingbird’s wings.
So I asked myself: if Masami’s information didn’t come from Aetna’s cottage, where’d she get it?
The obvious conclusion was, she got it from me.
Not me as in me. She hired some kid to get into my computer.
This is not a huge concern. My computer’s not involved in any sensitive business. (At least it wasn’t till I sat down to write.) It’s just the principle.
Anyway. Masami found the Ten on my hard drive. She saw the photo, thought of Cox, sent Erik. Less clear was when she did so and why Erik would ask how to get in touch with a dead person. Stupidity accounted for the latter. It meant Erik knew nothing. Masami sent him to find out what Cox knew about Aetna and me; but she didn’t reveal who Aetna was or what I was up to. She didn’t tell Erik what’s at stake, she just told him what to do, and for him that was enough. Erik’s a born flunky, a maestro of following orders. He lives only to earn praise from his august Momma-sama. That’s how he managed to rise so high at CAM. But this errand required too much subtlety. He botched it with a nonsensical question. And what did I do about it?
Drafts of a Suicide Note Page 20