What you don’t know Connie, what no one knows, is that in the middle of the night I go back to the pecans. I have a stash under my bed I harvested a few weeks ago. I know I said the squirrels ate them – I even cracked a few right there to prove it – but I lied. There you have it, I lied.
I keep them – two of them in my hand at night, just in case. Sometimes I just need to feel them, smooth mocha between my fingers. I like the sound they make when they glide across each other. It’s a sound like roller skates on a roller rink – wood on rubber. I imagine a binary star system, rotating around a center of mass and I’m gravity. If I can bring things together, I can certainly push them away. I bring my two hands apart – a nut in each – to rest on, protect my breasts. He always went first for the breasts. When he does come, dark and heavy, I think, this time I’ll push him away. I’ll lift him like a barbell, his chest lifting first. His legs will flail, looking for a fight. I keep thinking of my binary star system, my Merle and Pearl. The three of us, together, we might be just enough to make him leave. But then I see them, face down in my mint greet Cadillac. I couldn’t have been there more than five minutes, tops. You’re babies suffocated, Mrs. Albright. It a hot car with the windows closed. No air. It’s hard to see that happening in five minutes. And I think, I’ll let him stay if I can make her go away. Incubus. Fight it. He can stay if she just goes away. I roll them pecans faster and faster and I’m an ice-skater, skating away, faster and faster. Sometimes I skate too fast and one of the pecans pops out. Rolls on the floor. Merle this time, though it’s usually Pearl, and whether or not he’s on me that night, I can always spring out of the bed for them. I scramble, back pedal, like a mom on the ice rink with her two daughters and one of them slipped. Merle, though it’s usually Pearl and she’s crying and I’ve got Pearl on my other hand, her little feet trying to skate with mine. I try to juggle the most pressing concern: getting to Merle and making sure Pearl doesn’t fall too. I pick her up and together we glide quickly, but safely, to her sister. When I get to Merle we just sit there, the three of us on the ice. I’ve got one of them in each hand. And now it’s me crying, one in each hand, and neither of them know what to do about it. When I do get back in bed, he’s gone but the lion comes. It’s not really a lion of course. I know better. It’s Sal. Sal and her too long fingernails. Sal and her razor. She was always looking for blood. I hold the twins tight in my fist, squeezing whenever Sal slashes. At a certain point, my eyelids just stay closed. When I wake up, light is filtering in. Sal is gone and Merle and Pearl are cracked open. I peel their shell away. I put the nut in my mouth, close it and hold my breath. I want to feel what it was like for Merle and Pearl. What it’s like to suffocate. But my tongue always finds those ridges. Like a canker sore, tongue to ridge and my mouth pops open, like a pick to a pecan. Cracked. |