about everything except eating. Juice runs down his chin. Listening to him eat makes it easy for me to swear off food.
He cocks his eyebrow at my plate. As has become my custom, I push it away.
When he’s finished his meal, he rinses his bowl and concludes his speech. “I chose you, Blythe. I chose you.”
I laugh, softly at first, but quickly the sound gathers itself into one hysterical ball. I chose you. It runs away with me, this laughter.
He reddens.
I should shut myself up, but it’s all just so funny. Being chosen. Like I’m Mary, the mother of God.
“You think this is a joke, do you?”
I nod.
“Starving yourself is a joke, too, I suppose? Your big plot to overthrow me?”
I quickly grow sober.
“How hard do you think it would be for me to replace you with someone else—your sister, say?”
He leaves the table, goes downstairs. I rush to the center column and try peeking through the gap between it and the floor, but I can’t make out what he’s up to.
When he returns, I quickly take my place at the table. He puts an old-fashioned doctor’s case on it. When he pulls out a strange-looking pair of pliers with a long screw on the end, I start shaking all over.
Next, he lifts out of the bag a long rubber pipe. “Do you know what this is?”
I shake my head. It looks like what Gerhard uses to siphon the water from his fish tank.
“It’s a feeding tube.”
I scoot back from the table.
“Don’t think I’ve overlooked anything.”
That’s all it takes for me to take a mouthful.
“Tastes good, doesn’t it?”
I can’t look at him. I only nod.
IF I THINK about Mama too long, I lose my way, so I try not to think of her, but she finds her way into my dreams, or in the snatches of a lullaby that runs through my head from time to time. I have to shut her up, and that’s the plain and simple truth. Keys are what I have to think about. Mama’s no use to me here, but those keys—they are everything. I have yet to figure out how to get them.
The time I’ve wasted. Waiting for them to come; waiting to see if Dobbs is going to skid out of control and do me in; waiting for Jesus. Add up all the hours spent waiting, and what do I have? Nothing! It might as well be ten thousand years that I’ve been down here. How am I going to put up with one more day?
I am so bored that I have measured out this space in inches. He says each level is six hundred square feet. In total, the space of an average-size house. Of course, I don’t get to use the lower level. It doesn’t matter. To me, the whole thing is a crate. It doesn’t help to rearrange the furniture or set up a little writing nook where my poems are blank pages stacked neatly on top of each other. It doesn’t help to hang my sketches on the outer wall or decorate with the plastic junk he brings from the Dollar Tree just as it wouldn’t help to go putting up paper lanterns in hell.
I sit on my cot and wait for him to get done downstairs and come for supper. When we are done eating, I will come back to my cot and wait for him to leave, and then I will go to sleep sitting up. When the fluorescents kick on in the morning, I will straighten the quilt and then sit on the cot some more and wait for him to return or for somebody to come or for an idea about how to get the keys to drop into my head.
I’ve tried writing poems. Nothing comes of it. Sinking sand is how I’ve come to think of poetry. If I write about being in here or something about what I miss from out there, he’ll read it. Still, there is something soothing about a pen. Sometimes, to feel its comfort, I will pick a certain word or phrase and write it over and over again in as many different ways. Tabasco , for example. Or odometer or 100 percent cotton . I’ll flip through the pages sometime later, and, for an instant, it will look as if many people wrote in my book. Sometimes, I’ll write every name I can think of that begins with the letter D for the same reason. Because I
He cocks his eyebrow at my plate. As has become my custom, I push it away.
When he’s finished his meal, he rinses his bowl and concludes his speech. “I chose you, Blythe. I chose you.”
I laugh, softly at first, but quickly the sound gathers itself into one hysterical ball. I chose you. It runs away with me, this laughter.
He reddens.
I should shut myself up, but it’s all just so funny. Being chosen. Like I’m Mary, the mother of God.
“You think this is a joke, do you?”
I nod.
“Starving yourself is a joke, too, I suppose? Your big plot to overthrow me?”
I quickly grow sober.
“How hard do you think it would be for me to replace you with someone else—your sister, say?”
He leaves the table, goes downstairs. I rush to the center column and try peeking through the gap between it and the floor, but I can’t make out what he’s up to.
When he returns, I quickly take my place at the table. He puts an old-fashioned doctor’s case on it. When he pulls out a strange-looking pair of pliers with a long screw on the end, I start shaking all over.
Next, he lifts out of the bag a long rubber pipe. “Do you know what this is?”
I shake my head. It looks like what Gerhard uses to siphon the water from his fish tank.
“It’s a feeding tube.”
I scoot back from the table.
“Don’t think I’ve overlooked anything.”
That’s all it takes for me to take a mouthful.
“Tastes good, doesn’t it?”
I can’t look at him. I only nod.
IF I THINK about Mama too long, I lose my way, so I try not to think of her, but she finds her way into my dreams, or in the snatches of a lullaby that runs through my head from time to time. I have to shut her up, and that’s the plain and simple truth. Keys are what I have to think about. Mama’s no use to me here, but those keys—they are everything. I have yet to figure out how to get them.
The time I’ve wasted. Waiting for them to come; waiting to see if Dobbs is going to skid out of control and do me in; waiting for Jesus. Add up all the hours spent waiting, and what do I have? Nothing! It might as well be ten thousand years that I’ve been down here. How am I going to put up with one more day?
I am so bored that I have measured out this space in inches. He says each level is six hundred square feet. In total, the space of an average-size house. Of course, I don’t get to use the lower level. It doesn’t matter. To me, the whole thing is a crate. It doesn’t help to rearrange the furniture or set up a little writing nook where my poems are blank pages stacked neatly on top of each other. It doesn’t help to hang my sketches on the outer wall or decorate with the plastic junk he brings from the Dollar Tree just as it wouldn’t help to go putting up paper lanterns in hell.
I sit on my cot and wait for him to get done downstairs and come for supper. When we are done eating, I will come back to my cot and wait for him to leave, and then I will go to sleep sitting up. When the fluorescents kick on in the morning, I will straighten the quilt and then sit on the cot some more and wait for him to return or for somebody to come or for an idea about how to get the keys to drop into my head.
I’ve tried writing poems. Nothing comes of it. Sinking sand is how I’ve come to think of poetry. If I write about being in here or something about what I miss from out there, he’ll read it. Still, there is something soothing about a pen. Sometimes, to feel its comfort, I will pick a certain word or phrase and write it over and over again in as many different ways. Tabasco , for example. Or odometer or 100 percent cotton . I’ll flip through the pages sometime later, and, for an instant, it will look as if many people wrote in my book. Sometimes, I’ll write every name I can think of that begins with the letter D for the same reason. Because I
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