ON THE ELEVENTH
I don't want to imagine being ninety-five and still sleeping naked in the bed at a nursing home when it will no longer be charming. It seems important, where I am now, not to ever be ninety-five, or even sixty-five. I try to go to sleep wearing at least panties and a camisole, but they always comes off in a rage in the early morning and get thrown into the darkness. I held off as long as I could getting out of bed because of the bloody mess that was going to drip out of me the second I sit up, not leaving any space to get to the bathroom to avoid it.
I am dousing the white flannel sheets in the bathroom sink with hydrogen peroxide, which fizzes and actually becomes hot when it comes into contact with blood. Zuli shoots out of her bed and says Happy Birthday, Mommy. I run her downstairs and set a bowl of cereal out, and then surf to find a recipe for Valentine cupcakes online for her preschool Valentine's Day party. In order to remember how horribly wrong the day went, I am going to wave my red badge of menstruation like I know I shouldn't. The first day is a purging, and it's better not to risk eating, which plugs up more plumbing and reduces the effectiveness of painkillers.
The twenty-four Valentine cards, all signed with a backwards "Z", the repeated showers for Zuli who woke up with a plumbing problem of her own, her teacher reminding me after we got to preschool thirty minutes late, because of my anxiety to ice red hearts onto the cupcakes, that they no longer allowed cupcakes because of the mess the kids make with the frosting and didn't I get the paper sent out with the October newsletter stating this, the call from Freddy to say that he couldn't pick Zuli up from school because he had to work late, the rush to cancel my afternoon lessons, Zuli having diarrhea in her pants in the car after I picked her up, rushing off to teach evening classes in dirty clothes with icing on them and my credit card not going through the gas pump reader, going inside to tell the cashier to put $20 on pump number two and then going outside to realize that my car is at pump number three, asking the lady about to fill her BMW at pump number two to move her car please, driving 90 mph to make it in time and watching my side-view mirror first shake dangerously and then fall off and dangle by two wires and clack against my car, forgetting to stock my purse with advil, all these conspired to ruin my birthday. When I came home, late because my last student was nearly an hour late, Zuli greeted me with jumps and genuine love. Mommy, Mommy, we got your favorite!
Oh my god, I haven't had filet mignon in eight years I think. It is rare, and thick, and the knife moves through it like air. Freddy can cook. I kiss him. I take my first bite thinking there goes three dollars, and it is just exactly what flesh tastes like. It could be any creature's soft flesh. The blood runs into my salad.
Ever since being pregnant five years ago, I've had to suppress an increasing aversion to eating red meat. But I can't waste Freddy's love, so I slice off another very small bite, and then I actually gag, just like I used to gag at the table when I was seven and my mother forced me to eat overly cooked eggs fried to the consistency of plastic. The texture of the flesh in my mouth is too tender to be right, and the smell, and the smell of me, is too wrong.
I don't want to imagine being ninety-five and still sleeping naked in the bed at a nursing home when it will no longer be charming. It seems important, where I am now, not to ever be ninety-five, or even sixty-five. I try to go to sleep wearing at least panties and a camisole, but they always comes off in a rage in the early morning and get thrown into the darkness. I held off as long as I could getting out of bed because of the bloody mess that was going to drip out of me the second I sit up, not leaving any space to get to the bathroom to avoid it.
I am dousing the white flannel sheets in the bathroom sink with hydrogen peroxide, which fizzes and actually becomes hot when it comes into contact with blood. Zuli shoots out of her bed and says Happy Birthday, Mommy. I run her downstairs and set a bowl of cereal out, and then surf to find a recipe for Valentine cupcakes online for her preschool Valentine's Day party. In order to remember how horribly wrong the day went, I am going to wave my red badge of menstruation like I know I shouldn't. The first day is a purging, and it's better not to risk eating, which plugs up more plumbing and reduces the effectiveness of painkillers.
The twenty-four Valentine cards, all signed with a backwards "Z", the repeated showers for Zuli who woke up with a plumbing problem of her own, her teacher reminding me after we got to preschool thirty minutes late, because of my anxiety to ice red hearts onto the cupcakes, that they no longer allowed cupcakes because of the mess the kids make with the frosting and didn't I get the paper sent out with the October newsletter stating this, the call from Freddy to say that he couldn't pick Zuli up from school because he had to work late, the rush to cancel my afternoon lessons, Zuli having diarrhea in her pants in the car after I picked her up, rushing off to teach evening classes in dirty clothes with icing on them and my credit card not going through the gas pump reader, going inside to tell the cashier to put $20 on pump number two and then going outside to realize that my car is at pump number three, asking the lady about to fill her BMW at pump number two to move her car please, driving 90 mph to make it in time and watching my side-view mirror first shake dangerously and then fall off and dangle by two wires and clack against my car, forgetting to stock my purse with advil, all these conspired to ruin my birthday. When I came home, late because my last student was nearly an hour late, Zuli greeted me with jumps and genuine love. Mommy, Mommy, we got your favorite!
Oh my god, I haven't had filet mignon in eight years I think. It is rare, and thick, and the knife moves through it like air. Freddy can cook. I kiss him. I take my first bite thinking there goes three dollars, and it is just exactly what flesh tastes like. It could be any creature's soft flesh. The blood runs into my salad.
Ever since being pregnant five years ago, I've had to suppress an increasing aversion to eating red meat. But I can't waste Freddy's love, so I slice off another very small bite, and then I actually gag, just like I used to gag at the table when I was seven and my mother forced me to eat overly cooked eggs fried to the consistency of plastic. The texture of the flesh in my mouth is too tender to be right, and the smell, and the smell of me, is too wrong.
