Tina Hal - The Physics of Imaginary Objects

It is hard to describe the hole. Digging into a backyard is not enough. A tear in a shirt is closer to the truth, something that shifts, something you can see skin through. When people who don't live here come to see the hole, they always want it to be explained. The town council tried to raise money for a kiosk with a tape player and a recording, but they weren't very successful. We all knew it was only a matter of time before the kiosk fell into the hole, and some people didn't like to imagine the tape player down there. They thought it would be a waste of a voice.

For the news crew, I talked about the time my mother was a teenager drinking a lime phosphate in the drugstore and half of the building disappeared into the earth. I tried to tell it like she did, using my hands to outline the shape of soda glasses and wincing at the sharp taste of lime, but I added things like rows of licorice, black as beetles behind the counter, and the way she sat there to finish her drink, even the thick syrup at the bottom.

What I didn't say is how the hole looks when it opens suddenly, or what happened to the pewter-mouthed reporter. Other news crews came to town to discover what had happened to the first. Of course, I knew what happened to them; it is my business to know. And as with so many stories, there are two versions. In one, the reporter asks me to take some night shots by the hole, to act as filler for the interviews, he says. At night, the hole seems to breathe. And as I stand by the hole with the reporter, translating its burps and sighs for him, he, perhaps because I am the one woman in town not offering him anything, clutches my breasts and presses his eight good teeth against my mouth. I can't step back because the hole is behind me, and for a moment I am placid in his grasp, until I open my eyes and see the cameraman, still filming, those perfect lips curving. It is then that I feel the hole stirring, as if it is offended on my behalf. I unlatch myself from those unnatural teeth and hands and step to the side, and there is time while I'm inching away from the edge to say something. But I don't say anything at all, don't call out a warning, despite the reporter's microphone jutting toward me, the microphone which, by virtue of its cord, drags the cameraman down with the reporter as the hole suddenly widens. And I don't say anything about it to the police or the news crews that come looking for them because I expect they will pop up somewhere else if they haven't already, a miracle of teeth and lips emerging from the soil in Thailand or Baghdad, bruised and dusty but with the camera rolling.

There is another version of the story that I also don't tell. It is midmorning, during a lull between thunderstorms, and I am walking near the hole when a crow flies over it. The crow is so black and large I stop to watch it, and it seems for a moment that I can see the hole reflected in the shiny feathers of its chest. It is a beautiful bird. Just as it reaches the air directly over the hole, I feel the ground shake. But shake is not the right word — it is more a recoiling or a reaching, something involuntary. And when I look down at the hole, it moves. It is hard to explain; there is a hole moving somewhere, but it may not be the one in front of me. It may be a hole somewhere else, opening for the first time. It may be a lie or a thwarted desire or a deadline expiring. This is one of the reasons I haven't told the story to anyone, because I don't have proof. I can only say, one day I was walking after a rainstorm and saw a piece of a hole flying over me.

Another reason I don't tell the story is because tourists don't want to hear things like that. They enjoy tales of farmers pulling people out of the ground and bakeries being destroyed. I'd like to show them the birthmark spreading over my ribs when they ask for directions to the hole. I'd like to explain where a hole lives, how it can fit under a fingernail or inside a word. If I were making the recording for the kiosk, I would have it say a hole is something you give to someone you love, and a hole is a pear, and a hole is the bruise you got while playing kickball in the fifth grade until everyone understood. But the truth is that people can't believe as easily in a hole as they do in a lime phosphate. Even black holes, so strong they absorb light, seem like figments of our imaginations. And yet, some scientists spend their entire lives studying these faraway things they will never be able to touch or taste. The townspeople who side with my mother would like to fill the hole with tons of dirt and gravel. I've spent innumerable town meetings explaining that a hole is not something to be filled; there is no way to do it. The only thing to do with a hole is to take measurements and photograph it and tell it over and over. And to stand next to it, regularly, as close as possible.

Stand still. I am taking your picture.

The mission behind you, the sky paralyzed turquoise, the stop sign and the gleaming tourist cars, the way your hair is too long at the neck.

You said when you called, “It's worth a try.”

You have a voice so seductive men have ridden twenty extra blocks on city transit to continue hearing it.

I winced when you said “miracles.”

The chipped metallic green of your Plymouth. The sound the tires made on the smooth skin of the highway.

The four sentences in a row you started with maybe while I calculated mileposts.

The way you wash everything twice.

I have counted the moles on your breasts: 7. I have counted the moles on my breasts: 3.

As we hike up the hill to the mission, you are breathing too hard.

My grandfather used to bring me here at Christmas, at Easter, to pray to the saints even though we were Methodist.

The night we hid in your mother's pantry and ate jalapeno-flavored sea kelp crackers and told stories about the perversions we had tried so far.

I called you whore because you let men buy you things.

The thirty-two freckles that ring my neck. One for each year.

Blue line in the employee bathroom, ochre metal stall door, rotten sweet smell of discarded maxi-pads present like a charm.

On our drive here, I asked what you would wish for and you said, “anything.”

A plaque on the hillside that lists the names of dead nuns.

The first gift you ever gave me: a baby tooth I keep in my wallet.

When I told you about it, I said, “I nearly fainted.” I said, “But I was so careful,” and we laughed at how trite we had become.

The desert smells like creosote and gasoline.

The mission large and white before us. You stop to have a cigarette. I look for a pattern to the dark lines rain has left in the stucco.

The ghosts we saw that whole year we were fourteen.

The legend goes: when the cat that is carved over the door of the chapel catches the mouse that is carved next to it, the world will end.

You say, “Someday you can show her how I taught you to waltz.” You touch my wrist as you say it.

You smoke Pall Malls because your first boyfriend did.

On the dirt road from the highway, palo verde trees leaned to touch us.

A fry-bread stand. A gift store. A mission tilting in the background.

When you told me about your two dead lovers and your bleeding gums, I said, “So, get tested.” I said, “I'll go with you. I'll bring donuts.”

You pose me next to the fountain shaped like a fish, a pale blurred arc over the sand.

Virgin Mary coasters and powdered sugar.

You called me “slut” because I let men buy me things.

Last week, a man went out into the desert and shot holes into a saguaro until it fell over and crushed him.