get rid of her now.
she curled up in bed for days, for weeks, sometimes it was there,
just around the comer behind her ear, sometimes it was on her,
somewhere, crawling, hanging as if in midair, just as she went to
sleep it would brush past her.
she wanted to be dead.
that summer she went to Europe and there she had become pregnant
for the third time,
who he was, she would not say.
what it had been like, she would not say.
bitter, was the truth,
short and sordid, was the truth,
unimportant, she wanted to believe.
the one she loved had talked with her often about having a child,
he wanted one, a son. it would be his. it would be nice to have a little
Che Guevara, he would say, I want a little Che.
she had seen herself as the mother of this little Che, honored,
special, different, that holy one honored through the ages, not
touched, not soiled, useful at last, the one who could give what was
wanted, they together would have this little Che and he would be different from all the others.
now this little Che was inside of her, not his, hers, she would have
this little Che. she would have this little Che and that would make
her different from all the others.
together, even though they were not together, for him, even though
he could not stand to look at her. for him, no matter what.
a woman who has killed her father can do anything, she thought. I
am such a woman, she thought, holding on to that, he doesnt know,
none of them know, wobbly inside, teetering inside, shrill and
screaming inside, festering, silent, lonely inside. I will have this
child, inside. I will make him sorry, inside. I will make him love me,
inside, this little Che will be mine, inside.
then, the bleeding started and the pain in her gut. each day,
nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, a running stream of diluted blood, runny, watery, whose blood, she wondered, mine or his. what is mine and what is his. his blood, his blood is seeping out of me, flowing
out. I will bleed him to death.
she continued working, growing weak, bleeding, then, like a leaking faucet, sometimes the blood sputtering out.
she went south to a university to teach a special class, alone in a
rooming house, blood, cramps, her whole midpart a solid aching
heaving mass, would she die, here alone, would she die. a woman
who has killed her father can do anything, she thought. I can do
anything.
who would be with her, someone, she must have someone with her.
his friends, this one and that one. one by one. she tried them out.
seduction, on her knees in front of this one and that one, smiling
prettily, smiling her seductive smile. I want you, she would smile,
you are different, she would smile.
I am a woman, she would seem to say. then, she would get down on
