Non-fiction / in decision

The charcoal slowly engulfs every clean surface, infecting the room like a cancer. The clean linens of the ultra white bedding will never be the same. The stain will forever mar its smooth high thread count hems and brocade. I myself was stained with the dark medium; it was ground into my skin with sweat and lotion. My forty dollar manicure cracking under pressure from the pencils, the cuticles packed with fine black powder. Even the drop cloth is failing to bind the dust from settling into the carpet. I am in one of my “fits”, the artistic drive to create and destroy compulsively until your mind had freed its mediocre image and delineated the point, so that only you yourself understood. I have been locked in here for two days of no sleep, staring into a sheet of medium weight sketch pad burdened with a heavy dose of charcoal. All except for the spot that will not let the chalk infiltrate its borders. One small spot that got wet, the dime sized aberration that will never give in to the masterpiece and the spot that would not let me choose a new page.

It was a phone call, preceded by some three dollar ring tone that echoed the Cure’s “Love Song”. A ring tone kept for its masochistic remembrance and jilted expectation. A song from the only phone I hadn’t destroyed. The ring tone I yearn for in the night when insomnia will not let sleep in and obsession will not let the closet organization end. A dirty little secret only I was compelled to keep. The phone on the other end of that ring tone connected to the center of my “fits” and “tantrums”; a voice that could pause the thoughts that made me turn the lock on the door. I stared at that mechanical dinosaur as it began a new underwater chorus of my favorite song. One breath, two breaths, hold it and answer. The voice was not the one I expected to hear. I am in shock.

Overwhelming calm, bright burst of light, then darkness. I had forgotten to breathe.

Coming back “home” was never my idea, nor had it been a choice. I can only imagine who called James, the first of everything in my life. Who may have cared enough to try to expel me from a life that was an accident or who hated me enough not to care about the consequences? I don’t remember the weeks before or even after the day I came home from high school to find my bags packed. All I remember is James in the living room of a run down apartment complex. Out of place in a tailored suit and tie. Movements almost spastic symptomatic of the ADD that afflicts every twenty something male.

He stands in front of the thrift store sofa, engulfed by one of the many tenants that make this place affordable. James veils his disgust at this apartment housing 6 instead of the two it was designed for. It was what we could afford, or barely afford if we didn’t waste money on the luxuries of food and clothes. The apartment was the cleanest 300 sq ft in the Mesa ghetto. The cheapest we could get while still in the school district. It required my sister to drop out and work full time and my cousin to take on two jobs while 8 months pregnant. We were misfits and pitiful, we were too thin for our frames and relied on a five finger discount to keep us in clean clothes and school lunches.

This is not the girl James took to the airport 2 years before. This was not the girl who was part of cotillions and dinner parties in Louisiana. I am the outcast. Yet he stood there as if my hand me down clothes and two years apart didn’t matter. His eyes still held the affection of a teenage proposal and confused puppy love. He was my knight and shining armor, and if this was a fairy tale this is where the story would end. I am clichéd.

Something smaller and frightened left that apartment on Country Club Dr. and 8th Ave, and everyone could see it. I am broken down.

The story of my fall from grace was on everyone’s lips when the plane landed. The whispers reached my ears on the car ride from the airport to James’ family plantation. My cell phone, now replaced with a high tech gadget I could never figure out, James’ first action in bringing me back to reality; was alight with phone calls. No reprieve, my arrival had set off a chain reaction and I was about to face the world I had been cast out of the day my father died, and middle class became synonymous with poverty. And my escape to a wedding I hadn’t planned for. I am new again.

After the three bites my shriveled stomach could handle that morning, the word engagement was in the air. By lunch, which I was not used to having and forewent, a wedding was being planned. By dinner my wardrobe housed a number of brands that could have helped my sister make the rent. The guest bedroom I now occupied was bigger than the whole of my old world. My rescue came with a price, a price that James acknowledged and I would ignore as long as my bed was warm, my clothes were clean, and my body did not remember hunger. I am the charity case.

White gloves lay at my feet, out of reach as the lacings draw closed at the back. Sympathy from a flower girl was my only reprieve from the mortification of falling from my pedestal. Layer after layer of fabric and boning confusing my shape and a framework that just wouldn’t give. “Shallow breaths through my nose focus until the rib cage adjusts and breathing can resume. Shallow breaths through my nose…” Recitation helps you ignore the pain when you are tight laced into an Edwardian corset.

Twenty eight minutes and thirty three pounds of ivory silk, lace, crinoline, wires, seed pearls and rhinestones; I still could not breathe. My throat burning, vision blurring, lungs aching and I had already adjusted to the confines of the corset. I am a caged animal, surrounded by pale pink wardens circulating around the door barring all escape. I am trapped.

“Focus on the outcome, not the actions until then. A second chance, family, security and maybe love; it is worth it, I know it is.” Talking yourself into something is a terrible conversation; your mind hears itself quaver and instills doubt into any chance of decision. Just like one finds a flaw with their perfect appearance or the perfect spouse; that doubt gives us the reality; a reality that is written on the face in the mirror before me. That is face of a girl who needs to be rescued, saved from her own destruction; a girl of sixteen who is forcing a man to sacrifice his happiness for her safety. Could anyone love something so broken? I am the bride.

The scattered light of the stained glass distorted reality for a moment; a smirk grazed my lips and the picture of a happy spring bride was before me. That moment it didn’t matter how many “no’s” sounded in my head, I would go through with this out of gratitude, and love. I am not a romantic but had I never left this world I would have ended up on this pedestal, in this dress, with these girls and no family. My perspective on this moment was altered by a rash decision by a stranger, my right to be here would have still been intact if I had a say. “I belong here on the pedestal James put me on, I belong here?”

One step, two step, they all turn around. I fight the urge to look for the item of interest knowing it would be me. Urge is fought no more; I turn, finding nothing behind me but a door gaping open, taking a deep breath with my back still to the alter I drop the bouquet and run. No one followed. I thanked every God I had ever known for the lack of interest and relief of the audience. I ran maybe ten feet from the church before the corset tightened. I became overwhelmed with calm, light burst and all went black; I forgot to breathe. I am unconscious.

I woke up next to James, no emotion radiated from him; a plane ticket in his hand, a ring box cradled in his lap. He helped me out of my wedding dress, brought me clothes from my room, his tuxedo coat; he brought everything but his voice. Not a word, not a questions, no request for a “why”; we were silent at the airport. The only words he uttered to me, the last words I would hear from him and would be echoed in his suicide note, “I couldn’t save you” I am a bitch.

Three weeks for a wedding, a lot of planning; three days until a funeral, no time to breathe; six years in between. The happy events always take time, whereas the tragic catch by surprise and hit you like a train wreck.

The scent of sweaty money, stale wine, and incense can gag when you are not used to the stench. Churches set me on edge, every hair on my body stands on end when I cross the threshold. Awaiting the hand of their God to strike me down or cast me out. This is not where I belonged, and not where anyone inside belonged.  We were all murderers, liars and heretics; we would never meet heaven’s gates by grace alone and what currency did you use to bribe when you were dead. I am guilty.

This is my second trip into the exaggerated cathedral on the edge of the Garden District in New Orleans; the old church aging more from the passing of storms and high waters than decades of piety. The beautiful area was mildewed and wasted by floods and antipathy. But the grudge and forbearing I felt was not towards the building, its foundations, the storm, the hypocrites inside, or even the man I had come to see; the grudge I felt was against me.

Six years isn’t long when you have not changed. I wish I regretted my decision even as I walk back down this aisle. I wish I regretted my life, the pain, the loneliness or even the guilt. But in that moment I was selfish, and for the first time in my life, my decision was for me.

An ocean of black rises as a tidal wave to the Latin antagonisms of Catholicism. The ocean parting from the aisle, with a clear view of freedom; twenty yards ahead a mahogany casket is opened like a trap door to a parallel life. My feet fail me, my knees follow suit. Familiar hands bolster my body and my courage. Pulling me from the battlefield lined with unsympathetic audience. I am in a black dress.

Familiar cologne, words whispered too close to my ear, protection from the elements and I could almost forget that this was a funeral. In this moment I am safe and things are how they should be. As long as I don’t turn to the voice and see his face I will survive this. I am lost in the memory of him.

I leaned into him, my posture compressing inward like I could hide there. He understood the serenity his silence afforded me and sufficed to just breathe softly in and out, his exhalations caressing the crown of my head. The action lulling me to sleep as the priest droned on about bible verses and the point of all this. None of it mattered for now I could forget this was a funeral, and everyone here can ignore my presence.

In that moment the large Oak doors opened to the foyer and soft music began to play. I am back where I started.

My first steps tentative and following the procession. No running now.

My step falters.
My step slows.

Everyone is staring.
In Awe.
In Anger.

I arrive at the front, with no one to give me away, alone. My hand slides down his wrist, feeling the wax filled scars as I meet his hand; cold, polished and hard. His palms are down hiding a darker secret by his sides. I stand at the altar by his side, as I should have years ago. Years of pain, heartache, compulsion and tears; we were separated by the understanding that we would never know if this world was real. Anger in exhalation moves through the crowd, no one wanted to see me up here with him. They blame me for some contrivance or part in this haphazard ending. I became calm, spots crept into the edge of my sight, and I grabbed the edge of the coffin began to fall. James caught me before I fell, but then I remembered; these hands, the cologne, soothing voice were not James they were his father’s and James lay prostrate in a coffin four inches from where I kneeled. I am a widow.

Now the spot taunts me; a tear that was absorbed throughout the remaining pages of the sketchbook, never letting me forget the reality of the world. As I work through sticks of charcoal every drawing will forever be imperfect. I still long to hear my phone ring late at night, for it to be his voice. Questioning why I could not make it down the aisle to be his wife but stumbled down it as his almost widow, the spot is relentless in its “could’ve been” and “maybes”. Instead I lock the door and suffer my own demons alone in a cloud of charcoal and mistakes.

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