She, Not I

First published in Fatal Flaw, November 19, 2020

https://www.fatalflawlit.com/unreliable-flash/she-not-i

My eyes have grown used to the semi-dark. I listen for the sound of his footfall all day, hoping to be brought up into the light. But too often it is She who comes, She with her voice so loud it hurts my ears, her cheer so blinding I want to smother her with her own jocularity. In my loneliness, though, I sometimes speak to her, just to hear a voice—if I’m in the mood. “In a mood!”, She sometimes complains to him when he comes home. May She die a thousand deaths upon the sword of her own making! Because once it was just he and I. Oh, those days! We two gazing at the sunset over the sea, I upon his right hand, a drink in his other, I stealing sly sips and laughing. Then She came and all changed. 

Early on, I made some effort to be nice. He who loved me, who’d held me to him for all our lives together, acted like any idiotic besotted man might. He left me alone, and worse, foisted me off on others, as though I was property to be shared. Is it any wonder that I became embittered? I am not ashamed to admit that one day I bit her. What choice did I have? She became wary of me after that, perhaps the only sign of intelligence I ever saw in her. She let me be, let me wait each day for the sound of his return, the smell of his beard, the strong shoulders and welcoming hands. I am watchful. I am eager. I am rage-full. How can he love us both? 

I take to my jail and wait and watch. I shriek my fury to the room where I spend my days, cornered—but hopeful! Yes, hopeful that even now, after all these years and years, he will hold me and know he was duped by She who chatters and strides about freely with nothing to bind her stupid, ugly terrestrial feet. She, who will never know true loyalty, who will never soar above the dull clotted ground. She, who came between us. She, not I.

Above me the door opens, and I see her framed against the light. With her naked elbow, she engages the switch that illuminates my room. I set the bars of my cage humming, drawing her down the stairs with small beats. Then I flex my wings, dander flying between cycles of my quickening breath as I scream, renting the stale air with my malice. Others, unused to such a sound, would cover their ears in terror. But She only tuts and says, “Oh Margarita, I see you there. How’s my pretty girl?”

I climb my ladder to wrap my talons around the cutting wire of my cage. I turn myself to stone. With her back to me, She busies herself at the washer machine. She is humming, then singing, as she pours out the suffocating detergent, her ludicrous hips swaying as she begins the cycle. But having the measure of her, I make myself enormous, the splendid green incandescence of my plumage is suddenly transcendent! It is blinding in its magnificence! I am terrible to behold! She turns and sees.

“Who’s a pretty girl, then? Would you like a peanut? Shall I get you one?”

Does my confinement make her complacent? I grow bigger still, shifting my weight from side to side with the grace of an egret, my eye locked on hers. 

She reaches into my food bag and, as though revealing a sacred treasure, draws out a peanut in its shell. I hiss with distain, yet I cannot help but glance at the peanut. I crave peanuts. And I hate her for that.

“Are you a good girl? Are you a sweet girl? OK, here you go!” She slides the peanut between two bars of my cage. 

I am lithe. I am more beautiful than She. I am feathered and beaked and taloned. I, like fast daggers move. I am air-born and born of air. I am his first and greatest love! 

The peanut is mine, along with a slice of her pallid flesh. Wailing, She runs up the stairs and extinguishes the light. I am again left in semi-dark, the churning washer my only company, reminding me of waves and of salt air and of thee.

you were going to tell me

Originally published in Cleaver Magazine, Summer 2013            Illustration by Andrew Lawrence Jackson

https://www.cleavermagazine.com/you-were-going-to-tell-me-by-russell-creger-barajas/

I’m sorry - you were going to tell me something shocking. I’m ready to hear it, but I may sleep instead. I know you won’t take it personally.

I’ve been listening to music. Tiptoeing across the albums of my recent youth, times so far gone they show themselves to me in crayon colors. Of late, it’s been 60s stuff, and my stereo serves up a docile, or raunchy replay of memories. Convenient, because as you’ve seen, I doze off so easily. I’m tossed back and forth from then to now without much warning. Sleeping and waking are so entirely alike that I scarcely bother to differentiate anymore. 

Reviewing my record collection behind closed eyes from left to right: Beach Boys, Beatles. Cream. Derek and the Dominoes… I drift past two decades and hear the Stranglers’ Golden Brown, that dreamy ode to heroin. It has new significance for me, wrapped as I have become in this velvety narcotic straight jacket. The thing stalks me at all hours, but if the pain is at bay, I’m content visiting old friends brought to life by whatever tune I happened to play.

I often wake with the sun shining full in my eyes and on my turquoise bandana, from which my ears stick out, gaping wide astride the peach-fuzz. I know this because I’ve seen the effect in the bathroom mirror. Above me, the night’s bag of goop dangles from its hook, the rhythmic churning of its flow into my stomach ended until my next feeding. Did I wake you last night, by the way? I tried to be quiet – that sofa bed is so close to the kitchen. I keep a dishtowel folded on the counter to rest my head, because it takes a while, between pills and drams and falling asleep. All those medicines at once, and so often. I have a spiral notebook that tells me what, and a timer that tells me when. The glass of ginger ale is usually warm by the time I’m finished. Well, fuck me…

I wanted to tell you about something. But the windows need washing. I hate the way they look now. Far below I can hear the traffic pulsing, scurrying to get out of town, away from this irritable heat. Lying here on these damp sheets, on the bed someone dragged over here for me, I can escape the staleness by simply pressing the button above my arm and flying back to crouch in the recesses of my brain.

I visit all kinds of things. A pair of yellow pumps. The inside of my mother’s linen closet, my giggles muffled in the folded towels. A dead dog I once saw by the road, curled up as if sleeping, his red bandana still neatly around his neck. The hot feel of smoke down my throat, gnarled oaks clawing at an endless blue sky that glowers. My catalogue of failed art.

But where was I? You all come and go, cleaning up. Sometimes I fall asleep talking to one of you, and wake up talking to another. Usually I recognize who I’m talking to. If I don’t, I pretend I do – I’m sure we were friendly once. Hey, can you hand me that jaunty little chapeau? It is so goddamn sexy.

So yes, I wanted to tell you - about the CD someone left. I’d never seen it before. On the cover was a black and white photo of a young man, hardly more than a boy. He reminded me of something, a wish. It wasn’t that he stirred memories; he was what I never dared imagine when I was young and so spectacularly stupid, when I settled for the pimply adolescent plots of others. The photo in my hand showed long hair escaping from under a felt hat, smudged stubble brushing a turtleneck sweater. Calm aware eyes.

So I slid the disk into the machine.

He was revealed in small mistakes, charming, raw, and then, because he offered the songs to me pure and roughhewn, they became mine. Soft, untrained voice, coaxing fingers – like scrawled handwriting in a diary. I didn’t drift as usual, but stayed to listen. You will think me a silly schoolgirl, but I became joyous and giddy, my heart pounding as if, long ago, a boy I had a crush on had smiled. He sat on my bed. I tell you, I felt his weight next to me - callused fingers touching my face. 

So I lay, listening – and awoke a little. I looked inside the cover forcing my eyes on the words. 1970. Thirty years ago – no wait, more. I had been - two years old? Ten? I can’t retain a clear grasp on my age. The boy was now dead, which I already knew just by the sound of his voice. I searched the words to discover how he died, but past the delicacy of tone reserved for those of us who die before it is convenient for us to do so, it didn’t say. Drugs? I didn’t think so, though I bet he dabbled. Car crash? Too commonplace. Cancer? The face on the cover looked like it could suffer with grace, but still. Suicide, maybe. Maybe not. I think I slept a little then, because I found a ribbon of faded tickets in my hand, and breathed the sugar-smell of cotton candy at Field Day on the nubby blacktop of school. 

When I awoke, someone – was it you? - had raised the blinds onto the evening, and the lights of the city, yellow life-like eyeballs, peered in through the glass. I pressed play again. I wanted him with me, this boy who hadn’t yet died too young. 

This is what I wanted to tell you. That I cheated. I was cowardly and risked so little of value. I’ve dismembered more in my life than I’ve completed because I thought my imperfect hand showed too stupidly, too brutally. There were only a few relationships, and a few pieces of artwork that escaped my relentless euthanasia. Do you remember? You’ve seen them, I think, around the apartment. There had been problems, some had come out partially formed, twisted. I secretly liked them best but my vanity was suspicious of taking credit for anything born of mistakes. Such a fucking stupid old woman.

There they are, on the dining room table where I can see them - pelvises, scapulas, undulating vertebra. The filtered sun warms their patinaed surfaces, their pits and fissures, hairline cracks, bubbles of porosity - and I am undone by their beauty. Drowned. With these, you know, I wasn’t cheating, and they share me in sickness and health. The soon-to-be dead boy sings in my ear: Your legacy, your dowry, your endowment are these. They are you. But you always knew that. And that was a shocking thing to tell me.

I can hear that the traffic has lessened, and the streets have purged themselves. The city races through the night heat, through my window, up my covers and onto my face. 

The soon-to-be dead boy is singing as I look out. The music is over, but I listen, and wait as long as I can.