he grass is growing longer by the minute. In the way that people practicing Zen meditation sit for hours and watch reeds and cane grow, some calming and therapeutic practice, I’ve been standing here for days, weeks on the cracked linoleum and creaky floorboards of the kitchen, chain-smoking my way through your horde of cigarettes, staring out the window at the thin strip of lawn separating our property from the neighbors’ yard. There’s a slight breeze which rustles the long-untended blades, now grown longer than my hair and faded from their former vibrant green to various shades of tans and yellows, and an array of weeds and wildflowers have begun to poke through everywhere like some cancerous growth or acne outbreak, and my vision has gone hazy from trying to focus through the sheet of microscopic holes that used to be a screen, now caked thick with varied brown and orange earthtones of dust, dirt, and rust.

But despite all these obstructions, distractions, I swear I can see it growing.

Longer by the minute.

It’s alive.

I guess there’s some comfort to be taken in that. All the virility, the life, of everything else around here seems to be withering away. Fading into oblivion. Ceasing to exist. Except for the thin black clouds of flies which seem to be swarming all about, the collective flapping of their wings stirring the air in a way I can almost feel across my wrinkled skin, their slight buzz and hum nearly constant in my ears, everything else inside these walls has gone still and silent. Everything within the confines of our invisible property lines, dead or dying. Without so much as a whisper.

The flies, they’re the only company I get. I’m starting to think of them as friends. Even if I could muster the strength in my deteriorating muscles and brittle bones to roll up a newspaper or grab a flyswatter, I don’t think I could find it in myself to snuff them out.

My heart sinks a little every time I mash a cigarette butt on the windowsill and flick it into the trash. There was a time when fire was some sort of magic or miracle to our species. That was a long time ago, but I don’t see why it should be any different now. Who am I to put an end to something so warm and crackling with life? But I’m sure some day that I’ll flick one of those seemingly-harmless cotton filter stubs into the wastepaper basket and leave it for dead, and some little speck of flame still burning will ignite everything around it, reducing this whole tinderbox of a house and everything inside of it to a pile of smoldering ash. Myself included.

Penance for my sins.

Nature always finds a way.

Or maybe that’s just another one of my futile fantasies.

And the funny thing is, I never even used to smoke. In fact, I hated it. The taste, the smell. The scent of smoke was always on your breath and in your clothes, its flavor on your tongue. It was nauseating. And I asked you to stop, for your health and for my sanity. Because I loved you. But you never did. Every time I brought it up, your habit seemed to grow. Cartons began to arrive daily in the mail, cheap generics you ordered from Indian reservations. Faster than you could have ever smoked them. They piled high in the closets, pushing out our linens and wardrobes.

Did you do it just to spite me? Oh, the lengths to which you’d go, just to prove a point.

Was it your own slow suicide? There were such better ways to take your life. Less costly, more efficient. But I guess you knew that all along.

Yet I never insisted you stop. As much as I may have wanted you to change, I never uttered more than mere suggestions. Not only because I felt it wasn’t my place. Not only because I knew it would fall on deaf ears. Not only because I knew it would drive you further into your habit, further away from me.

But because I loved you.

And now all I do is smoke. Cigarette after cigarette, morning until night. Smoking away your apocalyptic stockpile of tar and nicotine. Occasionally looking down at the warning labels for a brief chuckle. It’s the same warning on every single pack in the house.

SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Smoking By Pregnant Women May Result in Fetal Injury, Premature Birth, and Low Birth Weight.

That certainly doesn’t apply to me. I never could carry a child. And by now, my monthly blood has bled itself dry. So every time I see that warning printed inside its little white box, I laugh. And every time it reminds me of my fruitless loins, I die a little bit more inside.

Every time it reminds me of my fruitless loins, I hear your voice.

Did you do it just to spite me?

I stand vigil at the window and breathe the smoke in deeply, hungrily. I smoke because the house, the cupboards, the icebox are as barren as my insides always were. I smoke because the stench of cigarettes is more tolerable than the other odors which would likely be crawling through the house if I didn’t. I smoke because I just want to feel something inside me. I smoke because I’ve got nothing left.

I smoke because I loved you.

And for all the time I spend in this kitchen, I haven’t eaten for days. The food ran out almost a week ago today. It isn’t the money. I can afford to go to the store. But I can’t bring myself to leave this place. This house. To set foot outside. It’s hard enough to keep looking out the window, sometimes, but though I can manage blurred glimpses of the outside world, I don’t feel I can actually set foot out there. I’m just not strong enough.

But the hunger isn’t overwhelming. There’s the occasional cramp or pain, and I’m thankful for them, just to feel something. Nicotine is an appetite suppressor, isn’t it? I’m sure that helps. And ultimately, I suppose I just don’t care. I’ve learned to deal with these starvation stints over the years. I’ve realized how little one actually needs to eat to survive. I’ve learned that the body can withstand approximately one month without food before it shuts down and you die of starvation. I know my own limits.

I was never a heavy girl. I was never anything beyond “healthy” or “curvy,” the standards of beauty which I thought men desired. But it was never good enough for you. I realize now that the things you said, you probably didn’t mean them. I realize now, you were probably mad at someone or about something else. I realize now, I was probably just an easy target. And I forgive you. Not that I ever really blamed you in the first place.

But I forgive you.

You never knew about the little hunger strikes. You never knew about the big ones, either. I had a headache. I’d already eaten. All the basic excuses. I was doing it for you. All along, for you.

Because I loved you.

So I’d be thinner. So you’d notice my body. So you’d notice me, period.

Because I loved you.

And there were times when I’d give up, and break down in tears, and stuff myself full of whatever food I could find, emptying the kitchen cabinets into my shrunken stomach and skeletal frame until I was sure I’d burst. Then I’d drag my disgusting body upstairs with a large bucket in hand, and stand on the bathroom scale, and shove my fingers down my throat until I’d spewed forth the entire feast into the bucket, checking the place of the scale’s needle with every wretch until it rested at the same exact spot it had first thing in the morning.

The stench.

The last ounce or two, the last few fractions of an inch for the needle to move, all that comes up is ropes of spit and thick yellow acid. When your insides have already turned themselves out, and your back and your sides and your chest ache from heaving, and a migraine begins to set in and you feel weak and faint, my God, there’s such a stench. It chokes you and gags you even further. It fills your nose. Thick. Like smoke. And there were times that it made me pass out, fall flat on the floor, and I’d wake up minutes or hours later, curled up into a little ball around the base of the toilet, my mouth stuck shut and filled with the sour taste of bile and the metallic taste of blood.

But you never knew. All those years, you never knew. It was always cleaned up by the time you came home.

I was always cleaned up.

And you were never there to see it happen, because it always started the moment you walked out the door. The moment you pulled it shut behind you. The moment you were gone.

But I forgive you.

Not that I ever really blamed you in the first place.

The acid in your stomach burns the back of your throat the first couple of times. In fact, I guess it never stops burning. It eats away at all of those soft and sensitive tissues over time. But you only notice it for a little while. You become accustomed to it quickly.

Just like smoking.

And you stop noticing how it eats away at the enamel on your teeth. How they begin to rot. To die. How they begin turning yellow, like the acid itself.

Just like smoking.

People who make a habit of bingeing and purging, their teeth sometimes fall out altogether. I’ve begun to lose a few of mine, but not from that. Just from age, I suppose. And malnutrition. I always found it easier just to starve. To deprive myself. But the first teeth to go were in the back. My smile’s still intact, even though I don’t wear one very often anymore, and I haven’t for a while.

So you never knew.

But all things fall apart over time. When a tooth would loose itself and fall into the bathroom sink in the morning, I would think of fresh Christmas trees, the way we would get them before someone invented the fake ones, the plastic ones. The way that the needles would begin to drop long before the holiday arrived, and by the time of our Lord and Savior’s birthday, sticks and branches, the trunk, all were visible behind the layers of silver garland and shiny ornaments and strings of colored lights. Like the bones that stick out from beneath the thin layers of my ragged skin.

By the time the presents were opened, and the floor was littered with crumpled wads of brightly-colored wrapping paper, it was clear that the tree, formerly a mighty evergreen built to stand the tests of time, was nothing more than kindling. Just waiting for the fall of a father’s axe. Just waiting to be cut to pieces. Just waiting to be thrown into the fireplace.

Just waiting to go up in smoke.

And now, staring out the window, staring through the dirty screen, I see that holes are appearing in the living fence around our small yard. The bushes, the hedges, the vines that separate our property from that of those around us, they’re beginning to shed their leaves and needles, drying up in the hot summer sun from too much heat and too little rain. From not enough care. And I feel more vulnerable than ever. I see each little hole in the fence, in the armor, as a way for others to look in, instead of a way for me to look out. I could go outside to water them. Late, unseen in the dark cover of the night.

But I can’t bring myself to leave this place.

This house.

To set foot outside.

I’d always wanted the same things every girl wants. I wanted children. I wanted a white picket fence. A fence that wouldn’t shed and grow holes. A fence that wouldn’t leave me feeling so vulnerable, so exposed. But even wooden fences, the weather has its way with them. The paint peels and chips away. The boards rot. All things fall apart over time. And if I’ve learned anything over all these years, it’s that the best I can do is just accept it. There’s no use in lamenting all the things I wanted and never got. It doesn’t change the past. It doesn’t change the present. It doesn’t do any good for anyone.

And I feel the same way about the yellowing of my skin. I’ve noticed it with each cigarette I pull from the pack. The dirty hues of yellow staining my fingertips. Like a photograph left sitting in the sun for too long. And I’d blame it on the smoking, but even though the worst of it is on the tips of my fingers, the discoloration has spread all over my body. It could be from anything. Ultimately, I suppose I just don’t care.

The last time I went to the doctor about strange coloration on my skin, the groups of dark brown dots that began appearing everywhere, on the tops of my hands and up my arms and on my calves and between my breasts, and I thought that I had some type of cancer or disease, he told me not to worry. He said they were age spots. Age spots. Nothing I could do about them. Just a part of getting old. Just a part of losing your beauty. Just a part of becoming your mother, your grandmother, an ugly and haggard old woman.

Your hair loses its color too. And it becomes thin. And it falls out. And you find it in clumps on your pillow, or in the shower drain, or between the teeth of your comb. And you don’t see a doctor about that.

Nothing to worry about. All things fall apart over time.

Maybe my liver or my kidneys have given out on me. Maybe they’ve failed. Maybe toxins are pouring into my system as I speak. Does it really matter? It’s just a part of getting old.

Or maybe it’s just the dirt, the filth. I haven’t bathed in days, weeks. And while I used to have the occasional accident, due to losing control of my bodily functions, which I’m also told happens with age, lately I haven’t even attempted to make it to the bathroom. Just like in the old days, the bingeing and purging, a wave of nausea washes over me if I even set foot near the bathroom. I don’t have it left in me to purge again.

It’s the stench. And the hot summer sun hasn’t helped.

I find myself instead just relieving myself wherever I happen to be at the moment when the sensation to do so arises. Spilling out pools of yellow on my legs, on my clothes, on the furniture, on the kitchen floor. My skin and my surroundings all taking on the same saffron tinge.

And the stench would be unbearable, I’m sure, if it weren’t for the smoking. The stink of my sweat, the stink that drips off of me and forms a film on my yellowing skin, the stink that rises almost visibly into the air like that from piles of garbage or dogs’ excrement on hot summer days, I’m sure it would gag me. If it weren’t for the smoking.

And I suppose I could shower, bathe. Wash myself clean. But I can’t step near the bathroom without wanting to get sick. Without almost fainting. And how could I step into the tub, anyway?

How could I?

It’s the stench.

And I’m so afraid to face it. So afraid of what I know I’ll see.

And the only one who would be offended by any of this is me. And ultimately, I suppose I just don’t care. I don’t get visitors. There’s no children to call or drop by. I’ve outlived my entire family, and any friends that were worth having and keeping over all these years. The flies, they’re the only company I get. And they don’t seem to mind. They only circle me closer and closer, like vultures, the longer I remain covered in my own filth. It’s gotten so even the smoke from the cigarettes doesn’t keep them at bay. And it’s almost strangely comforting.

The only one who would be offended by any of this is me. And whoever it is that finally finds me here.

Someone always finds you, eventually. But I guess you knew that all along.

Did you do it just to spite me?

I’m so lonely. I’m so alone. And I’m just not as courageous as you were. Just not as brave. So instead I let myself rot away slowly. Kill myself slowly with your cigarettes. Because they’re all you’ve left me.

I smoke because I just want to feel something inside me. I smoke because I’ve got nothing left.

I smoke because I loved you.

And if I’ve ever been angry with you, its because of what I’m feeling right now. Where I am. Here. Alone. And it might be selfish. It might be because I just don’t understand. Because we were so old. Because we’d grown old together. Because I thought we’d die together.

Because I loved you.

But when I woke that morning nearly a month ago, and found the bed empty, found myself laying there alone, the only sign of you in the form of folded-back blankets and the impression of your head in the pillow, I just didn’t understand. And when I made my way to the bathroom to weigh myself, before going downstairs to look for you in the kitchen, and I found you in the tub, bathing in water turned scarlet from your still-dripping blood, your wrists opened as wide as your mouth and your filmed-over, empty eyes, your head hanging back limply, the straightrazor you used to shave laying grisly on the floor, I just didn’t understand.

And you left me alone. You left me with nothing. Not even a note. Not even a goodbye. No way to understand. Just cartons and cartons of cigarettes. More than you ever could have smoked.

And I suppose I’ll never understand. And that’s the worst part of all.

So I stand vigil at the window and breathe the smoke in deeply, hungrily. I’ll smoke every last one of them. Because I’ve got nothing left. And maybe this is some sort of meditation. Maybe, staring out through this dirty screen, an answer will come to me.

I know you’re not far away. I know you’re still upstairs, rotting in the heat of this hot summer sun, bloated, in the same gory pool where I found you a month ago. And I can’t even go near you. And it’s not just the stench.

I’m so afraid to face you. So afraid of what I know I’ll see.

It’s hard enough to keep thinking of you, of the entire scene of that morning, sometimes, but though I can manage the blurred glimpses of it in my memory, in my mind, I don’t feel I can actually set foot in there with you. I’m just not strong enough.

I want so badly to understand. I want so badly to have you back. I want so badly not to be alone. I want so badly for everything to have worked out differently. But if I’ve learned anything over all these years, it’s that the best I can do is just accept it. There’s no use in lamenting all the things I want and will never get. It doesn’t change the present. It doesn’t change the future. It doesn’t do any good for anyone.

I look through the screen, out into the yard, and see the array of weeds and wildflowers that have begun to poke through everywhere. New signs of life. Little patches of greens and yellows and purples.

I always wanted to have a garden.

Maybe some fantasies aren’t so futile after all.

 

[END]

© 2004 Jim Donadio - Contributor's Bio