Indelicacy

by Amina Cain

The house where I had grown up was crowded with babies and yelling. Imagine being on your own after that.

He looked at me, then looked again. Men looking at women like that are truly horrible.

No one cared I had homework; I was expected to take care of my siblings instead. When I tried to read, I was always interrupted, so I had to do it where my family couldn’t find me.

Occasionally a man would walk by and ask what I was doing. “A menu for a dinner party,” I would say. Or, “I am writing down my dreams.” When too many men had walked by with this same question, or some version of it, I said, “Your face looks like the butt of a wolf and it’s interfering with my concentration.” I was a rich woman now; I could say these things.

The garden was so dense and the leaves of the plants as substantial and alive as the ocean itself. It was good to see that plants too could have such presence. I understood how drugs were made from them, how they might transport people or keep them alive.

The problem was that it would make little sense to most people, and how would that work out? Everyone always wants sense.

Dullness was still everywhere. But there was fascination too.

It felt nice to be somewhere new, to be there alone.

We all carry our lives in us, not just our problems or nightmares, but something of what we were before.

I’m just as visible in my bedroom as I am anywhere else.

NOW THAT I HAVE so much time to myself, I wonder at my times of happiness, why I’ve been allowed them, even now when I am lonely. Why I can walk and how even walking, at the right hour, in this temperature or that one, the lights just coming on, or the sky lightening, I am able to love it. How much I am a person.

Life was happening everywhere; our bit of it was only a small contribution. Still, our lights joined the darkening of the sky, those other lights. I wanted this feeling to enter into what I was writing, but without saying it directly it was difficult to do.

We were born to die, but death can feel unreal if we’re comforted in the right ways.

SOON IT WAS SUMMER and I was again filled with longing and glad for that longing.

All of us do this, change the rooms we’re in.

When people look at me, they also see a stranger. In a way it is good, and I smiled at the thought of being a stranger walking down the street.

Why is empty space a comfort and a relief? It’s not because I project myself there; it’s because I can’t. It shows me my projections, but they haven’t left my mind. Empty space remains empty, always. And for a little while a small part of me can be empty too.

We cycle in and out of different ways of being, of appearing in the world.

The churchgoers took turns holding little Frederick, gazing at him, and talking as one does to a baby. Sometimes their voices surprised me. You never know what a person’s baby voice will sound like, or his or her pet voice.

I was sitting in the living room, a book in my hand, in tune, I thought, with reality.