13 Lessons From A Morally-Wounded Woman: Chapter 8

Read all the chapters at this tag. 

......

Chapter 8
“Delusion always helps when you are trying to escape who you are.”


It’s a beautiful and clear morning, I pace around my room as I hear the morning trains come in. I’ve been up all night and I feel that special form of nausea that is reserved only for people who do stupid things like pulling all-nighters past the age of thirty. Behind me Number 3 is still snoring in my bed, she looks like a corpse as the faint rays of the sun illuminate too much of her face and too little of everything else. I stop and stare at her while I try my hardest not to take stock of what I have done.


…….



Last night, My Only Friend left work early because The Boyfriend was finally returning from his trip. His trip has, as usual, been an exercise in futility but it was the sort of futility that stings because you have to pay someone to represent your empty words. It’s not that he can’t afford it at all, he is a manager at one of those shiny companies and wealthy enough, but no one likes to pay people to draft petitions they don’t understand that lead to nothing. After she left, I sat working in the office with The Assistant, we were working on our annual report for our donors which is due next month and we are hoping to be able to increase our funding by 10%. Numbers aren’t really my friend’s thing so I was even a little glad that she was off doing something she loved so she wouldn’t interrupt me every seven seconds with suggestions for what else we could do. Last year I had to finish almost the entire report by myself at home because whenever I started talking about the budget, she would suggest we check out escape rooms or play scrabble. I fucking hate scrabble. I don’t like any games or sports. That’s why I run, it’s the most efficient form of exercise and you can do it anywhere so long as there is terrain of some sort.

I sit down on the chair next to the window marveling at her ability to remain asleep while someone else wanders around the room. I am not being loud but my insides are so loud I can’t believe she can’t hear them. 20 years. That’s how much younger she is than me. That’s not even the worst of it, age is just a number that reflects itself in muscle aches from coughing too hard and soreness from lifting your own purse, but she lives in my job. She is my job and I have just fucked my job. I fucked my job for four glorious hours before it fell asleep with its head on my shoulder. I had stayed to work for just a little bit longer after The Assistant left, she invited me to join her and her friends for drinks but I declined. I don’t drink and I don’t like going to bars to meet people I already know. I worked until I heard the faint sounds of screaming coming from the somewhere in the house. I immediately ran towards the screams and they take me to the stairs that led to The Teacher’s room.

I reached just in time to see The Womanfriend tossing one thing after another off the balcony, I dodged a watermelon before I screamed out that I would call the police. The second watermelon was aimed at me. The Teacher is obsessed with watermelons. She eats even the engineered crap you get off-season; she usually cuts them in half and eats them with a spoon. At any given time, you can see her with a watermelon in her hands, sometimes she even has one on the table while she teaches. She’s a very healthy eater for someone who smokes as much pot as she does. I made my way up the stairs and I saw The Teacher standing right behind her partner, she was red-faced and disheveled but there didn’t appear to be any bruises on her. The Womanfriend screamed at her and then at me while The Teacher broke into stoic sobs.

“Go inside and lock the door,” I told her while grabbing The Womanfriend by the wrist and shaking the bananas she was holding out of her hand.

I don’t know why she went after the fruit but I suppose rage does not discriminate as to what is throws. It just throws whatever is on hand and in The Teacher’s room there’s a lot of books and fruit.

“You need to leave,” I told The Womanfriend while she shook me with the weight of her entire body, “You have two minutes before I call the cops.”

She tried to throw a punch at me and I could tell that it was her first real punch because as soon as it hit my mandible, she shrieked in pain and retreated to the far end of the balcony and fell down grasping her fist. My face has the resilience of steel but that doesn’t injure a wrist, the assumption that there is no skill to the acts of violence, does. Violence might show itself in blues and purples on the skin of victims but it doesn’t spare anyone it touches. Not even the one who wields it. I laughed, I couldn’t help it, it was the first time in my life that the reality of the punch was so much milder than the anticipation of it.

“You really don’t want to go down this path with me,” I told her helping her up to her feet, “You’ll die of exhaustion before you manage to make a dent in me.”

I know she considered going for it again but downstairs all the women from the house had gathered and the guard was running towards us bringing up the rear.

“Leave now,” I told her, “And if you come back here, I will call the police.”

“Fuck you, you fucking bitch,” she said to me, “Fuck you all.”

At this point in my life, it is entirely possible that she had and I had just forgotten. I walked down the stairs with her leading her away from the group of women who yelled at her in every language spoken in the country. Even The Recluse had come out of her room. The Recluse was a middle-aged woman who spoke about 30 words a day and they were all spoken to God. She worked in the kitchen at a nearby Gurudwara and was set to leave us soon and move into the Gurudwara. We never really saw her because she went to the Gurudwara at 4 AM, returned for lunch, and then went back again at 4, returning only at nightfall after the evening prayers had been said. She was a domestic abuse case who was rescued after her husband tried to drill holes in her knee one particularly violent evening, she still walks with a limp but otherwise makes no mention of what happened.

“Curse you,” she said to The Womanfriend much to my surprise because she was in general the sort of person who only said things if they were positive and kind. She was the only person even The Seamstress never tried to rile up or chastise.

I told the guard to escort The Womanfriend out and I ran back upstairs and knocked on The Teacher’s door.

“It’s me,” I told her.

“I can’t come to the door now,” she said, clearly crying in a manner much more hysterical than before, “Can we please talk tomorrow? Please?”

“I just want to check if you are okay,” I said.

She opened the door and the room appeared to have been broken in by a monkey looking for food in a closet.

“I’m fine,” she said, “I promise, I just need to be alone right now.”

Half of that was a lie but she really did want to be alone. I told her to call me at any time and offered to take her home with me but she declined politely and asked if I could bring her another watermelon tomorrow. I wanted to scream at her for some reason but I knew that was coming from the wrong place so I left. I walked down the stairs wondering if there is any configuration of relationships where one does not wish to kill the other. When I reached downstairs everyone but Number 3 had left.

“Are you okay?” She asked me and I was surprisingly touched by the concern.

“Of course,” I told her, “We really need to clean up this mess, though.”

She laughed; I ignored it even though I found it quite odd. I began stacking up The Teacher’s books in a pile to take to the office and Number 3 helped me.

“You’re a nice person,” she said.

I smiled and continued cleaning.

“I’ve never met nice people before,” she continued, “All this stuff scares me so much, it scares me so much when they fight like that.”

“I’m sorry,” I told her, sometimes it feels like I am always apologising for everything in the world, especially things I cannot control, “Don’t worry, she won’t come around here again.”

“Can I come home with you, tonight?” She asked me.

I was stunned by the request and I was just beginning to decline when she interrupted me.

“I just feel so scared here,” she said.

“What about the kid?” I asked her, “Won’t he be scared?”

I knew even as I asked that question how stupid I sounded. The prospect of a child accustomed to sleeping in the streets sleeping in a house full of women to take care of him being fearful seemed as ludicrous as the prospect of her really being scared. Her request was so strange and unusual but I couldn’t figure out a single reason why it was wrong.

“Why don’t you go tell him then?” I told her finally, deciding that perhaps if I spent some time with her, I could make more headway with her than The Counsellor had, “I’ll wait for you in the office.”

I took the books to the office and tossed the debris of the watermelons into the mud in the garden. As I waited in the office, I wondered why no one had ever asked for what she did before and if that was the entire reason why it felt so strange. It did feel strange, most of the time no one in that house really wanted to talk to me. The Seamstress liked to complain, The Sisters communicated mostly in nods, The Recluse in blessings, The Teacher in rings of smoke, The Child in riddles and The Chef in demands. It didn’t seem so much like Number 3 wanted to communicate with me either even though I often caught her watching me but I watch people too, I watch people because their lives are an object of curiosity and it’s unfair to think mine shouldn’t be. I worried I was doing something wrong but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. She took over twenty minutes to come back and at one point I considered just leaving. When she finally came, she had changed her clothes and was carrying a bag. She was wearing a dark blue dress, and that colour suited her much more than the one she had been wearing the day I had met her. The dress was long and went down all the way to her ankles. It made her look taller than she is.

“That’s a nice dress,” I told her.

“I bought it that day when you sent us shopping,” she said, “It’s the most beautiful thing I ever had.”

There is an innocence to this girl that I do not trust at all. We have a tradition when someone new joins us, we buy them new clothes and encourage them to get rid of their old clothes in dramatic fashions. The older women mostly refuse to take part in this tradition but the younger ones love it. We had to ban burning the clothes inside the house when a couple of years ago one of the girls burned off half the length of her hair along with two old clothes.

“It looks great on you,” I told her, “What did you do with your old clothes?”

“I turned them into rags for cleaning the house,” she said.

That’s the least dramatic thing anyone had ever done to their old clothes in our house but it was also the most useful. I just couldn’t figure her out at all. We left together shortly after, and took a cab home. She sat beside me, in the middle seat, instead of at the other end.

“Are we going to the railway station?” She asked me after fifteen minutes of silence.

“I live near the station,” I told her and after a short pause and with some trepidation, “Can I ask you a question?”

She nodded her head.

“How come you want to come home with me?” I asked her, “I know you are not scared in that house.”

“I’m bored,” she said without so much as an attempt to cover up her lies from before, “Everyone in that house is so boring, but you are not, I just wanted to not be bored for a night.”

“I assure you,” I told her smiling, “I am extremely boring.”

“Then why am I attracted to you?” she said in an almost accusatory tone, “I am not attracted to boring people.”

I expected to be horrified at what she said but I kept waiting for the horror to show itself, instead I just felt calm. The driver pulled into my block as I contemplated my response.

“You’re not attracted to me,” I told her, “You are transferring those feelings to me because you see me as someone who helped you out in a time of need.”

“You’re attracted to me too,” she said, and it was one of the rare moments when I did not think that she was lying, “Aren’t you?”

“You’re 20-years younger than I am,” I told her and maybe myself.

The driver pulled over in front of my building. There were hundreds of people on the street around us, that’s just the kind of place I live in. There are always people walking around, there’s tourists looking for a cheap place to stay for a night, people whose trains are delayed or halting overnight trying to decide if they should get a hotel overnight or find a 24-hour cafe instead. My part of the city never sleeps. When the darkness becomes thick enough men who sell women troll the streets offering rooms by the hour in establishments that have no name.

“21 years,” she said.

“Regardless,” I told her, “You are not attracted to me, I am not attracted to you.”

“You liked it when that girl punched you today, didn’t you?” She asked, “I could see clearly from where I was standing, you smiled, I like that.”

Perhaps she was more perceptive than I gave her credit for, no one, not even My Only Friend could have made that deduction without me volunteering information.

“I smiled because she throws a lousy fucking punch,” I told her, “And you liked that because violence, as confusing and terrible an idea as it is, is not boring.”

The driver cleared his throat and I realised we were still sitting in there even though the car had been standing still for a while. I gestured to her to get out but I wished I hadn’t brought her home. I wished we had had this conversation by the stairs at the shelter so I could use better judgement than to lock myself in my house with an 18-year-old girl who liked that I enjoyed a punch.

“You’re so smart,” she told me more as a taunt than anything else, “But if you don’t want to have sex with me you should send me home now, if we go up to your place together, I am fucking you.”

If a man had said that to me, I would have sent him packing immediately. I told myself I couldn’t possibly have sent her home alone at that hour. I reminded myself that she was a young, confused girl and she didn’t know what she wanted. I was the real-adult and no one could make me sleep with someone I shouldn’t. I knew I shouldn’t. As the cab drove away, I felt the slightest urge to scream behind him and put her in there.

“Come let’s go upstairs,” I told her walking towards my building in the slowest steps I had ever taken.

Normally I walk like there is a murderer at my tail and jet fuel in my shoes. I think women just generally walk faster in the streets because even when there isn’t a murderer on our tails, there is an unseen threat of violence that follows us around all the time.

“Seems like you have made your decision,” she said walking beside me, in through the doors of my building.

“Nothing is going to happen between us,” I told her turning left towards the fire exit so we could take the stairs upstairs.

“Then why are you dragging your feet like a child about to be punished?” She asked, opening the door to the stairs for me.

I did feel like a child not because I was dragging my feet but because the longer we spoke the more in control she seemed of our interaction. I felt the helplessness of a child as she walked me up thirteen flights of stairs to my floor.

“Why won’t you just take the lift?” She asked panting as we entered through the door onto my floor.

“I’m scared,” I told her, “Of elevators, I mean.”

“You’re a weird chick,” she told me flattening creases out in her dress while my eyes followed her hands across her torso, “You walk right into people punching each other like it’s a dance floor and elevators scare you.”

“The irony is not lost on me,” I told her unlocking the door to my house.

She walked in before me, almost edging me out to the side so she could get in first.

“It looks exactly like I thought it would,” she said as soon as she entered my house.

“Why were you thinking about how it would look?” I asked her, “Why would you even care about that?”

“You’re really stupid for a smart woman,” she told me sitting down at my one-person dining table and running her hands over the black-sheet covering it, “I told you, I am attracted to you, I like you. I think about you. I wonder about your house. I wonder about your skin. I wonder what you looked like when other people did things to you that I am going to.”

“How do you even know I like women?” I asked her as she wandered over to the floor to ceiling bookshelves in the living room and stood beside the ladder that was propped up against the wall.

“Aren’t you in love with your friend?” She asked, “Maybe not, maybe you just wonder what it would be like to fuck her.”

She was way off because My Only Friend is the only person I never wonder that about. I don’t want to know what it would be like to fuck her which is not to say I don’t love her; I love her very much and maybe more than I have ever loved any person I was fucking.

“I love her very much,” I told her, “I would do anything for her but that doesn’t mean I want to sleep with her.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she said with nonchalance, “I know you do want me, that’s what matters.”

She climbed up the ladder and sat atop it. I often do that too, and when I looked up at her she was pulling out books from shelves and flipping through them. She put them back in the wrong places and even though I have tried my hardest to make my peace with clutter like that, I cannot. I just cannot stand the idea that things and don’t have their exact place in the world; that we can just take one out of its place and put it anywhere we want.

“Stop moving things from one place to the other,” I told her, “It gives me a headache.”

She climbed down three rungs of the ladder and then jumped onto the floor right in front of me. On some level I was glad she was behaving in a manner so childish; it made me feel like i was the grown-up and I could rein her in anytime I wanted. Delusion always helps when you are trying to deny who you are.

“So, are we going to do this?” She asked, winking at me.

“No,” I told her ruefully, “We are going to order Thai food and eat it on the floor while we watch some funny guy be funny on that screen. Then we will go to bed and in the morning I will take you back to the shelter which is where you will remain until you get a place of your own.”

“You’re starting to piss me off,” she said before taking her dress off over her head in one fluid motion.

It fell around her like a pool of deep, blue water. She was wearing nothing underneath except a vast array of scars all over her abdomen and thighs. The scares failed to take away from her beauty, though, they did the job of tiny speck in her eye. Despite myself I stared at her. She had the most pronounced curve I had ever seen in a hip even though it seemed to jut out more on the left side than the right. Her knees were darker than the rest of her skin by at least five shades and so were her elbows. She walked towards me as I stood frozen in place as if I could disappear if I were immobile. She stood a foot away from me and reached over and put her hand straight between my legs, she didn’t grab at it, she held it as if it were the hand of a person you were trying to reassure. She leaned over to kiss me and for the first time in my life I didn’t move my head to the side. I didn’t reach over to put my arms around her, instead I kissed her back from half a foot away as we leaned into each other. I don’t know how long that lasted, I don’t know why the taste of her spit in my mouth made me want to reach in all the way down her throat with my tongue, I just know that when she pulled away there was no way I wasn’t going to fall in love with her.

She took five steps back and sat down on the couch I had had for fifteen years. I stood there, stunned, as if I had been shot but there was no blood. There was no pain. There was nothing except a silence inside my head that I had never experienced before for as long as I had lived. Finally, there were no words in my head.

“Take your clothes off,” she said, “Or are we going to pretend you don’t want me for a while longer?”

“We’re not going to pretend,” I said starting to unbutton my shirt, “I’m not going to pretend.”

I have become more uptight in the past five years but the wild, degenerate still lives inside me and once that takes over there is very little else to me. The people who know me as that wouldn’t recognise the sane, tame version of me that I take out into the world every day. The insanity doesn’t allow for me to just ignore a woman like her. It’s very easy to do whatever you want when you convince yourself that you have nothing to lose.

“Good,” she said refusing to stop looking straight into my eyes, “I would hate to slap you because I disapprove.”

I don’t know how I had missed this depth of violence that she had inside her. I don’t know how someone so young could make me feel so much by doing so little. I don’t know why I hadn’t crashed into her like a drunk driver into a divider the day we had first met. She stood up and walked to me, helping me out of my trousers as if I were a child who couldn’t take off its own clothes. She dug her thumbnail into my lip as she pressed up against me, and then as if only to add insult to injury she pulled away and slapped me across my face.

That was the first time I was slapped by a woman who wasn’t my mother.

“Do you want to laugh now?” She asked, “Was that a lousy slap?”

I didn’t want to laugh at all, I wanted to turn the other cheek, but I didn’t have to say that to her. It was as if she could read my body better than anyone I have ever been with. She attacked me with the ferocious violence of a rabid dog around water and before I could reestablish any semblance of control, four hours had passed and we were lying together in my bed. Every part of my body hurt from being held in her tiny little hands, and I could smell her insides in my hair. She fell asleep before either one of us could decide what to say but I stayed awake watching her. I spent most of the night alternating between trying to work in different parts of the house and trying to sleep but I could do neither. I cooked and I cleaned and by the time I returned to my bedroom it was already past time for me to leave for work. I showered, expecting that she would wake up before I was done but returned to her still soundly asleep in my bed.


…….



As I contemplate whether I should wake her up or wait for her to wake up herself, my phone rings. It’s My Only Friend calling. I answer the phone and walk out into the living room to speak with her.

“Did you take her home with you last night?” She asks.

I don’t know how she knows that but I can only imagine that either The Seamstress of The Child has told her.

“Are you at the shelter already?” I ask her.

“Yes, I got here twenty minutes ago,” she replies, “Why did she want to come home with you?”

“She said she was scared,” I tell her, “There was a little incident with the teacher.”

“Yes, I know, I hear you got punched,” she says laughing, “It’s a bit weird though, isn’t it? She doesn’t seem like she’s scared of shit like that.”

“Well, actually...” I begin trying to pluck up my nerve to tell my friend the truth.

“You didn’t!” She screams, “Oh god no, please, no. You didn’t, right? Please tell me you didn’t?”

I remain silent as she breaks into a string of curses. I love it when my friend swears, she sounds like a Russian pornstar and it fills my heart with joy when she loses herself completely in the emotion of the moment. I’m not surprised that I didn’t even really have to tell her what happened before she makes the deduction herself but I am surprised about how long she swears. It seems to go on and on, I have to change hands and finally I just put the phone on speaker and set it down at the table while i listen to her continuing tirade. It’s like a filthy song, a beautiful filthy song. She sounds like she is speaking in a foul-hymn. She finally stops as I cough my signal that maybe it’s enough.

“I don’t know how it happened,” I tell her, “Well, I know how it happened but I can tell you for sure that had you been in my place you would have done it too.”

“I’m straight,” she says and I can hear her rolling her eyes through the phone, “This is bad. This is so, so bad. She’s eighteen fucking years old and she’s your fucking charge! This is so bad.”

“I will figure it out,” I reassure her before reassuring myself, “I will. I’ll see you in an hour.”

“Wait, wait, wait bitch,” she says calming down a little bit, “How was it?”

I laugh. This is why I love her; she recovers from things so easily.

“It might have been the best sex I’ve ever had,” I tell her and I realise that is possibly true. I’ve never been unable to go to bed before because I wanted so much more.

“I want all the details,” she says, “You’re going to be the death of us.”

I hang up on her and walk back to my room determined to wake up Number 3 but she’s already awake and sitting up against the bed rest. I go over to her and kiss her; she kisses me back with the same enthusiasm of the previous night. Suddenly, all of my disgust at the concept of kissing has completely dissipated.

“You cannot tell anyone,” I tell her.

I feel like a creep. Like one of those men who have wives and families but need to pay hookers to spit on them and make them feel like garbage.

“You want me to be your dirty little secret?” she asks with the same even tone that fills me with thrill and shame.

“Not dirty,” I tell her, “But you will be my secret.”

We get dressed and take a cab back to the shelter. I sit in the middle seat, right beside her, instead of on the other end. Somehow it isn’t close enough, I miss her scent in my hair. I miss her fingers around my throat. I look over to her and she is looking out of the window, I can see her reflection in the glass. She moves her hand over to my lap and thrusts it between my legs underneath the bag on my lap. She puts her finger to her lips gesturing to me to be quiet. I struggle not to moan at the top of my lungs.

Some secrets are so hard to keep.

……..