any woman with strength, she hated, his woman if he ever finds her.
get rid of her now.
she curled up in bed for days, for weeks, sometimes it was there,
just around the comer behind her ear, sometimes it was on her,
somewhere, crawling, hanging as if in midair, just as she went to
sleep it would brush past her.
she wanted to be dead.
that summer she went to Europe and there she had become pregnant
for the third time,
who he was, she would not say.
what it had been like, she would not say.
bitter, was the truth,
short and sordid, was the truth,
unimportant, she wanted to believe.
the one she loved had talked with her often about having a child,
he wanted one, a son. it would be his. it would be nice to have a little
Che Guevara, he would say, I want a little Che.
she had seen herself as the mother of this little Che, honored,
special, different, that holy one honored through the ages, not
touched, not soiled, useful at last, the one who could give what was
wanted, they together would have this little Che and he would be different from all the others.
now this little Che was inside of her, not his, hers, she would have
this little Che. she would have this little Che and that would make
her different from all the others.
together, even though they were not together, for him, even though
he could not stand to look at her. for him, no matter what.
a woman who has killed her father can do anything, she thought. I
am such a woman, she thought, holding on to that, he doesnt know,
none of them know, wobbly inside, teetering inside, shrill and
screaming inside, festering, silent, lonely inside. I will have this
child, inside. I will make him sorry, inside. I will make him love me,
inside, this little Che will be mine, inside.
then, the bleeding started and the pain in her gut. each day,
nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, a running stream of diluted blood, runny, watery, whose blood, she wondered, mine or his. what is mine and what is his. his blood, his blood is seeping out of me, flowing
out. I will bleed him to death.
she continued working, growing weak, bleeding, then, like a leaking faucet, sometimes the blood sputtering out.
she went south to a university to teach a special class, alone in a
rooming house, blood, cramps, her whole midpart a solid aching
heaving mass, would she die, here alone, would she die. a woman
who has killed her father can do anything, she thought. I can do
anything.
who would be with her, someone, she must have someone with her.
his friends, this one and that one. one by one. she tried them out.
seduction, on her knees in front of this one and that one, smiling
prettily, smiling her seductive smile. I want you, she would smile,
you are different, she would smile.
I am a woman, she would seem to say. then, she would get down on
her knees and smile up at him, whichever one it was. I will be yours,
she seemed to promise, then, he, whoever, this one or that one,
would be on top of her. afterward she would whisper just barely, I
am pregnant but you are the one I love, no, they would say. each one
would say no.
alone now in her room down south, refused over and over again,
her insides seeping blood, her insides coming out slowly, bit by bit.
then, she called him. I am pregnant, she said. I am in trouble, she
said, oh, he said. I am going to have this little Che, she said, trying to
tease, maybe I will die, she said. I am bleeding, she said, no, he said
coldly, you will not die. please let me call you, she asked in a whisper,
all right, he said.
she would work in the day, distracted, sick, bleeding, at night she
would hide away in her room, bleeding, nauseous, her heart dark
and sad, the taste in her mouth bitter without end.
she would call him at 7, before he went out for the evening, she
would call him after midnight when he returned, she could hear the
man or woman he had brought home with him mulling around,
touching his neck, holding his hand, he kept his voice low and their
conversations short. I have found a way into his life, she thought,
now I am back in his life.
then it stopped, she did not call him. she did not answer the phone,
she did not go to classes, she did not go to the doctor. I will die here
alone, she thought.
she sat in her room, not sleeping at all. she bled, then, it was over,
she had vomited and bled and gagged and then it was over, she was
weak and alone, her insides cast out. no more little Che.
now she was pregnant again, her cup runneth over.
this time she would come to term, this time there would be a man
beside her. this time she would have a baby and a man and a place.
she was almost 40, no longer young, her face was taut and bitter,
now there were deep wrinkles around her eyes, her mother had died
the year before, sad, bitter mother, I have not become you.
she had died alone in her bed-sitting-room, she had died, her hat
on the sofa, she had died never looking her daughter in the eye. who
had that woman been, they had not seen each other in nearly 15
years, there was nothing between them, nothing, tons of food cooked
in a pot, tons of laundry washed in a tub, nothing, pennies for candy,
nothing, had she too come out of a mothers body, who was that
mother, her mothers daughter.
her mothers daughter, that was her anguish, her curse, the foul
smell in the middle of her life, the bad memory in each and every
dream.
she saw her mothers face in her own, no, dont look there, she
stilled her mothers voice every time it entered her own, what was her
mothers voice, why did she know it so well, the voice of a woman who
had lived in silence, who was this mother, there was a memory like
an old movie, frayed, a woman, bent over from work, bent over the
tub of laundry, bent over scrubbing the floor, that bitter grimace,
stony, silent, that penny for candy, nothing of her in this newer life,
almost 40 and she had found her place.
her man was rich and famous, thank God for that, a writer,
nothing of her mother in that, her man was distinguished and handsome. nothing of her mother there.
he was the closest friend of the man she had loved and would
always love, he was the lover of the man she had loved and would
always love, nothing of her mother in that.
and now she was by this famous mans side, now she went to the
theatre with him, to parties, took long walks, now she was carrying
his child, his little Che.
she touched herself, she was real, this, this was real, she would
have this little Che and she would continue to be real, now she would
never be her mother.
their agreement had been simple, he was getting older, he was rich
and famous, he had no son. she would have his son. he would pay for
it and for her. each year she would have a certain amount of. money
for herself, he would supervise the upbringing and education of his
son. he would make the decisions for his son. she would
take care of
his son in his home, if she wanted to leave, she would not take his son
with her.
if a daughter were bom, he would give her a large lump sum of
money and she would raise the girl on her own. perhaps he would
continue to be generous.
for the 9 months of pregnancy he took care of her. he told her what
to eat and where to walk, he told her when to sleep and what to wear,
she vacationed on his farm, and in the city they were constant companions. he had many male lovers but she was the mother of his son.
this was her pride, this swelling in her gut. this was her safety, her
freedom, this swelling had bought her a place.
he was arrogant and self-centered, sometimes she recoiled just
from the memory of him. no, calm, smile, remember, no mistakes.
they did not sleep together now. they had been together only to impregnate her. it had been difficult, that time of coupling, at first her body had been a curiosity to him and he would touch it and feel it as
if it were a strange fruit or vegetable, he would force his way in only
to ejaculate, only to empty himself into her like target shooting.
and then, finally—there was a God—he had made his mark, he
had hit the target.
she had tried at first to interest him in their coupling, she had
stroked his face and his body, he had liked that, to lie there, a king
tended to by his consort.
he had wanted to see her do it with a woman, he had liked that, she
had done it in the manner of putting down a deposit on an item she
wanted very much, for him. to acquire him. as if she had saved up
the pennies to make the deposit on the coat that would save her from
winters cold.
it had been strange and bitter, so this is what we are like, she
thought, as her mouth tasted the salty sweet taste of the other
womans cunt, no, too painful, too strange, too close to something
buried too long ago.
she had refused a second time, squirming, looking embarrassed
and humiliated, he had liked that.
then one night he had spread her out naked on his bed. he spread
her legs as far apart as they could go. he tied her wrists to the bedposts. another man entered and sat on a chair at the foot of the bed.
whatever this was had been planned, choreographed, between them,
she did not know.
the second man was big, his arms laden with muscles, a square
face, athletic, all loincloth and sweat.
her lover fingered her cunt slowly, dispassionately, he was grinning. surprise, Ive taken you by surprise, the second man watched, she was red with shame, they both liked that.
then her lover mounted her and the second man mounted him
from behind, then her lover fucked her and the second man fucked
him. this double man on top of her, heaving, the weight of that cock
inside her driven by this double weight, this two headed, two assed
man on top of her, like a mountain, volcanic, erupting, on and on,
fucking and fucking, the sweat and the weight, drowning her in lava
and ash.
then, she began to swell, then, he did not want her anymore, only the
inside of that swelling, only if it were a son.
she had made her peace with this humiliation, not then, years
before, so long ago that she could not remember, so long ago that it
did not matter anymore.
still, sometimes it was hard to breathe, and saliva choked in her
throat, sometimes a kind of redhot shame swelled with the swelling,
then she would remember, this is life, remember, this is life, dont go
down, dont go under.
she would go with this man who had impregnated her to see the
man they both loved, she was in his life now. for that she would have
done anything, even this.
around her 6th month, this man whose son she was carrying began
to find her repulsive, he could not look at her or touch her hand or
see her naked without repulsion, at the theatre, at parties, at dinner,
he would look through her, call her parasite or whore, his pride was
in her size, he had done that, those were his fruits she would bear, he
encouraged his male lovers to touch the swelling.
sometime during the 8th month, early on, she was slit in the middle, a knife to the abdomen.
his head rose up from the bloody mess, indistinguishable from her
own inner slime, this was his birth, she was the vessel, success at last,
her 40th birthday came and went.
he was named after the writers father but they called him Che. she
was a queen, the mother of this boy, rich, safe, her place secure.
drugged insensible, shaved, cleaned, she had been slit down the
middle to remove this prize from her innards where he was tangled,
excruciating, you will forget, they said.
slit down the middle, her abdomen and pubis shaved, her gut
painted red with antiseptic.
slit down the middle, her blood pouring out of her right from her
gut.
slit down the middle, then sewn up again,
a tumor, no, no, a son.
slit down the middle, this queen, this mother of a boy.
his birth.
the tarantula was just behind her, as they slit her down the middle,
as her blood spouted out. what had become of her blood, mopped
up. mopped up the buckets of it. her blood, not seeping out but
flooding up from her middle,
her middle had been slit open and her blood had flooded out.
slit down the middle, her pubis shaved clean, and her blood
flooding out all over,
until there wasnt any left,
not enough for her brain or her heart,
never replaced, never given back,
just flooded out and gone, never enough left in her again,
she did not want to see the thing that had been untangled from her
innards.
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The New Womans Broken Heart Page 7