by John Freeman
“Anyway, all of this is beside the point,” the woman said, seeing that I wasn’t going to explain myself. “I don’t really care what you think or how you choose to live your life. People do whatever they want—it has nothing to do with me.”
I kept silent, staring at her toes.
“It’s just that I feel strange sometimes, living here, surrounded by all the furniture you left behind . . . or rather, that I bought from you. It’s that strange feeling that bothers me. I’ve stayed in hotels for extended periods, but it’s not the same. Plus, this is one hundred percent my house—I’m not a guest or a tenant—I have nowhere else to live but here. But something strange is going on. It’s not that I feel guilty or pity or think you deserved what you got—in fact, I don’t think of you at all. Emotions don’t interest me. It’s just that . . . there’s something strange about the house itself. Maybe because I’m still new to the place, but I’ve grown used to living here. Surprisingly so. The furniture, the doors—I feel I’ve known them for years. It’s almost uncanny how natural everything feels. When I moved in and slept in the bedroom for the first time, I woke up feeling as if I’d spent countless nights here before. As if my body already knew the house and everything was connected to my memory. It was really uncanny.”
I didn’t know how to respond. I continued to stare at the woman’s toes in silence.
“I’m not talking about ghosts or anything like that,” the woman laughed. “I’m even less interested in that kind of thing than in feelings.”
“It’s just that . . .” the woman held her breath and looked at me. “There’s this scent. It’s overwhelming. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
“A scent?” I asked.
“That’s right. It’s not that it smells bad. It’s a peculiar sort of scent that’s neither bad nor good. It’s the scent itself that bothers me. When I catch a whiff, I . . .” The woman fell silent.
“Do you mean . . . the scent gives you a headache?”
“No, that’s not it,” the woman answered after a slight pause. “It just bothers me. The scent creeps in every day from out of nowhere, at random hours. Every single day. When I catch a whiff I become . . . confused. About what, I don’t know, but it makes me feel shaken at my core somehow. I escape into the bedroom, into the closet even, but the scent comes after me. I light an aroma candle, take a shower, cook, all to no avail. I was so desperate once that I asked an acquaintance to come over and check it out, but she couldn’t smell anything. I was at my wit’s end—then one day, I noticed you sitting over there in the park, looking over here. Do you have any idea where the scent is coming from? I’m not talking about flowers or plants.”
“No, I don’t,” I answered.
“Then . . . perhaps you’re the cause of it after all,” the woman snapped coldly. “It doesn’t make sense logically, but I can’t think of any other reason. It’s crazy that you can sit in this heat and stare at someone else’s house for such a long time. It’s not normal. Maybe the scent has something to do with it. I must be sensing some sort of physical danger, and my body is responding to it through the sense of smell. I’m not into superstition, but there’s no other way to explain it. Plus, you’ve committed a crime by trespassing. The thought of you continuing to hang around the house gives me the creeps. I get a headache just thinking about it. All of that must be connected to the smell. My head is starting to throb as we speak.”
I was still looking at the ground.
“So what are you going to do about it?” the woman said after a pause, sounding exasperated.
I no longer knew what to think. Why was this woman asking me what I planned to do? I knew nothing of the scent she was talking about, nor was I interested in it. So what if there was a mysterious scent? What was surprising about not feeling well? Wasn’t it simply that my house had not welcomed her? To state it more plainly, wasn’t it a clear sign that she had no right to live in my house?
I raised my head and looked around the living room. Nothing had changed. It was as if time had stopped inside my house. Everything was as it had been, from the sofa to the cushions to the curtains to the light that stretched across the floor this time of day in the season.
Did I not just come down from the second floor? Had I not been sewing a moment ago in my atelier? Was this not my house? The inhabitants may have changed, but things remained the same. Now that I had returned, everything could go back to the way it used to be. Like the garden just a moment ago. The house felt alive once more—I felt alive. These past several months had all been a mistake . . . and just like waking from a bad dream, I could come back.
“What’s over is over.” The woman’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “No matter how much you long for it, the house is no longer yours. It’s all over. You need to move on.”
“Move on?”
“That’s right. I’m being greatly inconvenienced here. You’re wasting my time as we speak. What you did was criminal. I could report you to the police, but I don’t want to waste any more time.”
I nodded in silence.
“You need to think about how you can refrain from coming here. Are you listening? You’re hung up. You’re still attached to the house psychologically.”
“Yes . . .”
“That’s right,” the woman continued. “In TV shows or in novels, people like to burn and destroy things to get revenge—but you don’t do that in real life. You’ve lost your house, and now it belongs to me. That’s a fact. Period. If you killed me now, the house still wouldn’t be yours. The only thing left to do, then, is for you to change. So the important question is, How can you make this change? How can you get over the attachment you have to the house?”
I nodded weakly at the woman’s words.
“Listen, this is something you should be thinking about yourself. I just want to resolve this as quickly as possible. What does it take for you to move on? If this was a romantic affair, well . . . you could have closure by having sex or a huge blowout—something that aims for a final sense of unity before going separate ways. Once you’ve given it your all, you can move on, or so I hear. How about doing something like that?”
“Like what?” I asked. “Do what exactly?”
“That was just an analogy. I’m just thinking of ways for you to get over the whole thing. Let’s see . . . what’s your favorite thing about this house?”
“Everything,” I answered. As I listened to the woman, my mind became foggy and my head was beginning to throb. What was she talking about? Although I felt my head tighten, the pain felt abstract and my body seemed to become more and more remote with every minute. I could no longer tell what was real and what was not.
“You can’t say everything. Try to be more specific.”
“The flower garden,” I whispered after a while.
“The flower garden.” The woman became thoughtful and fell silent. Then, she looked straight at me.
“The flower garden . . . That might work.”
“Hmmm,” I said vaguely.
“It could be a kind of therapy. More practical, even. Why don’t you become the flower garden itself? Who knows if it will work, but then, one thing may lead to another . . . you might come out feeling better. It may be worth trying—becoming one with what’s most important to you, something you normally can’t attain unity with. Why don’t we try it while the sun is out? Who knows, it may even be connected to that scent I’ve been talking about. Plus . . . this is the last time I’m offering you help. Next time, I’m handing you over to the police.”
“But how?” I was puzzled.
“You become part of the flower garden,” the woman snapped in a cold voice, “by burying yourself. Next to all of your precious flowers. To reach a catharsis, they say you either have to burn it or bury it. And we can’t exactly burn you, can we? So instead, you can connect with what’s most precious to you from a different perspective, a different approach. You might have an epiphany. Or, who knows, you might lose interest in the h
ouse altogether. It’s worth trying in any case. I’m sure no other fifty-year-old housewife has done such a thing before.”
With a chuckle, the woman glided across the living room and opened the sliding glass door to the garden. She turned around and motioned for me to follow. I walked toward her, dragging my feet, which were nearly asleep from standing for so long.
The woman stepped into the flower garden and put on the gardening shoes. She walked over to the shed where the gardening tools were kept, and brought over a large shovel and spade. I stared at the spade as she placed it in my hand. The memory of buying the tools came back to me. How I couldn’t decide on the design of the handle. The first time I used them to dig up soil. How the ground was so tough because of all the roots. The sound of the soil being pierced through. Dirt crumbling. Digging up potatoes. Wait, wasn’t I a child then? The gardening gloves. My husband. He was busy with work and rarely around, but sometimes I would turn and see him watching me with a pleased expression as I poked around in the ground. The flowers are beautiful, he would say. Thanks to you, our garden is always in good shape. Yes, that was here. The two of us. When I let my guard down, when I let my thoughts wander, all kinds of memories came flooding back. They enveloped me completely. Where were they taking me? The spade was rusty. They came rushing back. What did any of that have to do with the shovel and spade?
The woman stepped on the bed of thyme. Pointing to the ground with the shovel in her right hand, she drew an outline just above the ground. “Is this big enough? We can’t dig too deep, so we’ll have to bury you horizontally. A rectangular shape, like a coffin.” I began digging into the bed of thyme as the woman directed. Because of the water I had just given it, the soil gave in to the spade easily and soon I could see the dark, moist part. In silence, I dug the edges of the rectangle, then began digging deeper. I dug and dug, in silence. The bed of thyme was shallow and came out without resistance, its white roots exposed and severed from the soil. All around me were piles of black soil mixed with green and white. After half an hour or so, there was a dark hole big enough for a person to lie in.
“Go ahead and lie down,” the woman said.
I sat down on the dark, moist soil and stretched my legs, placing my arms to my side. I breathed in the gentle smell of the soil. Stay still, the woman said, I’m going to bury you now. It was that voice again. I felt a cool sensation on the back of my hands, my arms, my neck. The voice began to cover me with the soil mixed with thyme. At first it felt light, then I began to feel the weight on my chest and thighs. After a while, I felt a new sort of weight fall upon me with a thump. It seemed that she had added compost she found in the shed. The voice continued to cover me with soil as I lay in the middle of the garden.
The summer evening sky extended as far as my eyes could see. When I opened them wide, the sky became wider with them. The sky became so wide that, curious to see how far it would stretch, I opened my eyes as wide as I could, and opened my mouth along with them. The tinted cirrocumulus clouds appeared faint and ephemeral in the distance, and I could see a small airplane floating among the clouds. The voice continued to cover me with soil. My limbs became heavier and heavier as the hands pressed down the dirt meticulously. The seeds, the bulbs, the roots. I could see myself tending to the flowers wearing my gardening gloves. May you bloom beautifully. May you take root. Each time I dug the spade into the earth, fresh dirt would fall upon my body. What have I done? One scoop at a time, I became heavier and heavier. Then, I became lighter and lighter. My limbs were no longer free and I could hardly breathe, but somehow, somewhere, I could feel myself growing upward toward the sky. What have I done? The voice, now silent, covered me with dirt. I could hear it breathing. Whose voice was it? I couldn’t see the face, but it seemed to be struggling. Whose voice was it? It covered me with dirt. I covered myself with dirt. Each time I breathed, each time the voice pressed down with its hands, I became heavier and heavier. One scoop at a time, I became lighter. Managing to shift my neck slightly to the side, I saw the leaves of petunia flowers. A water drop swayed and reflected the light. A newborn ladybug was about to spread its wings. I had a feeling that I had seen this moment long, long ago, but could no longer remember when. But I will tell him. When my husband comes home, I will tell him about the ladybug, about this tiny delicate creature ready to spread its wings and take off. Beyond the windows of my house, I hear the usual church bells ringing. I will leave my room, descend the stairs, and tell all kinds of stories. About these flowers that breathed gently, existing quietly in peace. About myself. About all that I can see from here. I will tell you everything.
Ocean Vuong was born on a rice farm outside Saigon in 1988. When he was age two, after a year in a refugee camp, he and his family arrived in the United States. He was the first in his immediate family to learn how to read proficiently, at the age of eleven. With Ben Lerner as his mentor at Brooklyn College, he wrote the poems that would become his first collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds. A Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry fellow and winner of a Pushcart Prize, he has received honors and awards from Poets House and the Academy of American Poets. In 2016 he received a Whiting Award. Ocean Vuong lives in New York.
Partly True Poem Reflected in a Mirror
OCEAN VUONG
i want to find a gun / and change myself / he said / in the dream only a week before his mother called / no hello only / her breath a windmill crashing slowly into my head / this face already changed since heavy rain left november too bloody / to read in a boy finds a bridge and becomes / everywhere and i decide against / tuesday / vandross on the stereo muted tv / the room pink / with images of a bloody dictator / my face the shade of strawberry icing / as i sit through one war / another hold / the page closer to the glass dammit / imagine yourself in / real life / there should be tears / there should be / a reason but all i have / is the voice: seventeen children are gunned down in afghanistan today / and i think: shouldn’t it be gunned up? / doesn’t the bullet / in a child / become an angel-seed / the beginning / of “heaven” / how dare you / i mutter to myself / and the face / is only a little “prettier” than yesterday / which is enough / so i step into the n train doors opening / the line break i finished / schuyler’s book / his grip still warm on my shoulder / words all blurry / the last time / someone borrowed him was may 13 1981 / which makes me sadder / than mondays in the library / reading all the heroes who killed themselves / trying to save / my life / but the pills were like / “the teeth of an angel” i said / into the mirror / said i’d make it / to 34th st. but now i’m not sure / what i smoked is working / i take long hits / cause i don’t have healthcare / a line here / and there keeps my hands from shaking / barely made it to brooklyn college / without palms wet again / clutching the seats i’m sick / and sorry / for the scar on your face even / at night the day brighter / as a memory / the young poet with a mustache / sitting in the dusty classroom says / don’t worry you have an edge / your friend died plus / you’re asian and i want / to take his hand and lie down in the room / lit only with broken glass / a coffee table axed to pieces / the statue of a plastic buddha / decapitated / and there no more prayers / at the prow of you / instead / i said have you ever been fucked in the ass? . . . no / no i don’t mean figuratively / you see / all this trouble / just to make some sense / just to make a ghost appear / on paper / so you can see me in this mirror and maybe it’s 8pm there / after all / this face already gone / maybe this is just to say / that i found the gun / and changed / the world instead / and now it’s just you and me / dear reader / meeting each other for / the first time in a room dark / as the insides of / our skulls / and look i’m sorry i’m reflecting / the two gashes in your face / i would stitch them up / but you’ll never see again
Heather O’Neill is the author of three novels: Lullabies for Little Criminals, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction; The Girl Who Was Saturday Night; and The Lonely Hearts Hotel. She is also the author of a collection of short stories, Daydreams of Angels
; and a book of poems, two eyes are you sleeping. Born and raised in Montreal, O’Neill lives there today with her daughter.
A Song for Robin
HEATHER O’NEILL
They’ve asked me to sing a song at Robin’s funeral. I’m going to do it, of course. Even though I haven’t seen him in a while. I know exactly what song I’m going to sing too. Let me tell you how I chose it.
My dad’s family business was robbing gas stations. That was what his family had taught him how to do. And he did it really well until I was born. His parole officer got him a job because he wouldn’t have known how to find one otherwise. His parole officer’s name was Martin. He said he thanked God every day that Martin had turned him from a bum into a man. He started working as a janitor at the train station when I was two and he’s done it ever since.
He said it was his job that made him happy. Like he would make jokes at the dinner table and we would laugh and laugh and laugh. We were always choking on our spoonfuls of Kraft Dinner. He stood up at the table once and did a Pavarotti impersonation with like made-up Italian words. “Oororosolomeoo. . . .” We thought it was so funny.
He would tell us all the dumb things that happened at his work. All the stupid-assed things people said. He would put on a sign that said the floors were wet because he had just mopped them. But people didn’t care and they still walked across them really quickly and then they would slip and all the papers would fly out of their briefcases. I know that doesn’t sound funny. But when my dad would tell the story, we would like die laughing. He would imitate their facial expressions right at that moment when their body was in the air and their asses hadn’t broken yet.