her knees and smile up at him, whichever one it was. I will be yours,

she seemed to promise, then, he, whoever, this one or that one,

would be on top of her. afterward she would whisper just barely, I

am pregnant but you are the one I love, no, they would say. each one

would say no.

alone now in her room down south, refused over and over again,

her insides seeping blood, her insides coming out slowly, bit by bit.

then, she called him. I am pregnant, she said. I am in trouble, she

said, oh, he said. I am going to have this little Che, she said, trying to

tease, maybe I will die, she said. I am bleeding, she said, no, he said

coldly, you will not die. please let me call you, she asked in a whisper,

all right, he said.

she would work in the day, distracted, sick, bleeding, at night she

would hide away in her room, bleeding, nauseous, her heart dark

and sad, the taste in her mouth bitter without end.

she would call him at 7, before he went out for the evening, she

would call him after midnight when he returned, she could hear the

man or woman he had brought home with him mulling around,

touching his neck, holding his hand, he kept his voice low and their

conversations short. I have found a way into his life, she thought,

now I am back in his life.

then it stopped, she did not call him. she did not answer the phone,

she did not go to classes, she did not go to the doctor. I will die here

alone, she thought.

she sat in her room, not sleeping at all. she bled, then, it was over,

she had vomited and bled and gagged and then it was over, she was

weak and alone, her insides cast out. no more little Che.

now she was pregnant again, her cup runneth over.

this time she would come to term, this time there would be a man

beside her. this time she would have a baby and a man and a place.

she was almost 40, no longer young, her face was taut and bitter,

now there were deep wrinkles around her eyes, her mother had died

the year before, sad, bitter mother, I have not become you.

she had died alone in her bed-sitting-room, she had died, her hat

on the sofa, she had died never looking her daughter in the eye. who

had that woman been, they had not seen each other in nearly 15

years, there was nothing between them, nothing, tons of food cooked

in a pot, tons of laundry washed in a tub, nothing, pennies for candy,

nothing, had she too come out of a mothers body, who was that

mother, her mothers daughter.

her mothers daughter, that was her anguish, her curse, the foul

smell in the middle of her life, the bad memory in each and every

dream.

she saw her mothers face in her own, no, dont look there, she

stilled her mothers voice every time it entered her own, what was her

mothers voice, why did she know it so well, the voice of a woman who

had lived in silence, who was this mother, there was a memory like

Вы читаете The New Womans Broken Heart
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