Hannah Tennant-Moore - Wreck and Order

“Bueno. Dime.”

“Jared? Why are you speaking Spanish?”

“52 °Clark.”

“What? Jared, it’s me.”

“I know, come over. It’s not a party ’til you’re here, doll.”

“Jared. It’s Elsie. I am in Sri Lanka.” The words are slow and heavy, trying to stave off panic.

“Elsie? Oh, hey baby. I didn’t recognize you.”

No, no, not this voice — sloppy, affectedly deep, unchanging in tone and quality no matter what I do or say. He cannot be in that state now. He cannot be unreachable now.

“I really need to talk to you.” I clutch the curtain in my free hand, twisting it round and round my fist.

“Now’s not great. I’m having this thing.” Girls cackle near him. A stereo blasts anthemic rock. Talking to Jared is impossible right now. I should not try. I should hang up.

“What thing?” I say.

“We’re starting an S&M club. Come over, baby.” These words are not Jared’s. They are spoken in a woman’s high-pitched bravado, the voice of a sexual aggressor who never gets her needs met. I smell her sticky red lipstick as she leans against Jared’s cheek, stealing our conversation with his consent.

“Jared,” I say, “if you don’t leave that room right now and find a quiet place to talk to me—”

“Jesus Christ. You are always mad at me. I’m hanging up. Good luck out there, Elsie.”

“Please, Jared, please, please.” I’m whining, digging my fingers into my cheeks, about to lose myself. I see it happening, cannot stop it.

“Jesus H. What is it now?” He sounds like an overworked CEO who has just been screwed out of millions of dollars. Alcohol, parties: This is his confidence.

“I need you right now. Please leave the party and talk to me.”

“I will be back imminently,” he announces to everyone but me. “Apparently I am needed.”

“I need you here, Jared!” the S&M woman trills.

“Get away from that bitch,” I say. “I need to talk to you.”

He sighs grandly, but I feel him walking outside. Silence overcomes the background hum. I can breathe again.

“Hi, love.” My voice is desperately sweet. “Thanks for leaving so we can talk. I hope you’re not sleeping with that awful woman.”

“Look. Just stop it. I am not going to waste another night hacking out your insecurities. It is so goddamn boring it makes me want to cut off my dick. You are always mad at me. Stop being mad at me. Just don’t ever call me again if you’re gonna pull this shit, judging me for every goddamn thing. I can’t take it anymore. Just don’t call me again. Leave me alone. Déjame en paz.” He laughs at his lisping Spanish.

My organs are losing their contours, melting, dripping, laughing at me as they ooze to the floor. Hard to hold the phone. “Oh no. Dear God.” I’m in a small, black room, cold, no windows, no doorknobs. “Please, God.”

“Are you praying?”

“Please, God.”

“Jesus Christ, what are you praying for?”

Someone to talk to, someone to say something that could change, even just barely, even imperceptibly, the landscape inside my head. “I cannot believe you’re speaking to me like this right now.” My voice is a stale whisper. “This can’t be happening. I can’t — I got raped.”

The lie is a relief for as long as it takes the three words to leave my lips. Then it is evil, the hopelessness of connection given language.

“Hey man,” Jared is saying. “Yeah, go in, I’ll be right there. Are you shitting me, Elsie?”

“Not really.”

“Not really. Jesus Christ. Did you or did you not get raped?”

“Not. I did not. I mean I did. I did get raped. I raped myself.”

“Okay, that’s it. You think you can say whatever the fuck you feel whenever you feel like it. I’m hanging up, Elsie. I told you this was not a good time and then you went ahead—”

“I wanted to talk to you about what happened!”

“—and say all this intense shit and I am really needed inside right now. You are not going to ruin my night. It’s not exactly easy to get this many cool people together in the same room. I’m finally feeling good and then you call me and say whatever the fuck you feel like saying and I’m hanging up now, good night, goodbye, I love you, be safe.” Click.

—

I am too weak to be involved. That is what I know, lying in this bed below the window with the wooden bars, two missing, a space large enough to admit clever monkeys and feral cats. But no life comes through. The lace curtain is yellow and frayed at the edges, sticking to the hot breeze. How many days has it been since I even imagined a human noise? The crying — treacherous, jagged icicles cutting my throat. Sucking my thumb again, even. I would be ashamed to recall that, except it was my only comfort. How did I think I could calmly withstand this pain, see it as just a temporary combination of thoughts, feelings, sensations — notice them, accept them, this too shall pass? The shock every time — of being hurt, turning to Jared (who else to turn to?) to soothe me, finding only more pain. How could he do this to me. God, I mean. Questions like that — old and dumb — barreling me down. Clutching my chest, hyperventilating on purpose in the hope that I might faint, hearing the dry heaves of my sobs as if they were coming from someone else, a child stuck on a movie screen, someone I cannot help. For days I have been reduced to that noise. There is no one else at this guesthouse, which is just a house with a sign in the yard that says ROOM FOR RENT. The owner thinks I’m very sick, brings me plain white rice and tea, which I eat lying on my side, grabbing handfuls from the bowl on the floor below me, dumping tea into my open mouth, catching some of the liquid on my tongue before it spills out the other side and soaks the pillow. The smell is nice. Sugar and plants.

Once there is nothing else to do, no other hope of ever leaving this room, I fold my stained pillow in half and jam it under my ass. My fingers are in my mouth, my spine curved, my head lolling and heavy, waste fluids pouring over my fist and chest and stomach. I rock, rock, rock until it is no longer I but my body that moves — the space between my breasts, the soft tissue inside the shell, pulling me forward and back. The movement releases me. I sit still until I can’t stand it any longer. Jump up, beat the pillow with my fists, toss the pillow on the floor, sit on the edge of the bed with my head in my hands. My best effort is not enough.

Show him that you care just for him. Do the things that he likes to do. Some popular girls performed “Wishin’ and Hopin’ ” for the talent show in tenth grade. It was supposed to be ironic: postfeminist girls with nose rings and perfect GPAs wearing ribbons around their ponytails and blue eye shadow and huge smiles, pretending they were making fun of their mothers and grandmothers, mocking the idea that “true love” is a woman who knows how to please her man. But the fantasy hasn’t much changed. The girls are more violent in speech and dress and behavior, but they are only exposing their ugly, rebellious complexity to get to the same old place: a relationship that works because the girl makes it work. That is her power. Once I’ve given my life over to helping him stay sober, once I make my relationship my full-time job, then he will be good to me. He just needs to be accepted exactly as he is. Only then can he stop being so angry. Once I fully commit, he will be good to me. Isn’t that what I’m hoping for, just like the dumb bitches in high school singing a lady’s love song they probably didn’t even know was written by men?

How gross it is that I am still thinking about this stuff. Men and women, how a penis erect transforms a man, how a woman is made to receive this transformation, what parts of herself take him in, what parts she withholds, what she has the power to withhold. How to protect herself without cutting herself off, how to be generous without being self-deprecating, how to be detached without being cold, how to be attached without being obsessed, how to get her own needs met without being demanding, how to meet his needs without being sacrificial, how to be gentle without being a pushover, how to be firm without being bitchy, how to be calm without being lifeless, how to be passionate without being enraged, how to be independent without feeling alone, how to be dependent without feeling alone, how sick I am of it all.