Belly Up E-Book

Rita Bullwinkel

• Herausgeber: Daunt Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 286

Beschreibung

Belly Up is a story collection at the intersection of the real and the surreal. With the absurd always tethered to a recognisable reality, it captures the messiness of human behaviour as it ranges from the macabre to the tender, the playful to the shocking. Shapeshifting and enchantment haunt and propel these stories, as characters question the bodies they've been given and what their bodies require to be sustained: teenage girls morph into plants, gulag prisoners perform makeshift surgery and a child licks exposed electric wires, turning her tongue black. Visceral, cinematic and deeply human, Belly Up explores the simultaneous mundanity and singularity of the human condition – and reveals Rita Bullwinkel to be an audacious and original talent.

Leseprobe

 ‘Mysterious, strange and fearlessly funny.’ Lorrie Moore

‘Rita Bullwinkel has carved out a unique space in which the mundane and the strange cohabitate, and sometimes frolic. The sharp, precise writing and careful observations of the human condition in her excellent first collection Belly Up signal the debut of a major new talent.’ Jeff VanderMeer

‘Bewildered imagination finds a home in the stories of Rita Bullwinkel. Her writing is beautiful and poetic, funny, strange, heartbreaking and wise.’ NPR

‘Bullwinkel’s delightful, passionate stories of disturbance and worried words have the best kind of frenetic energy.’ Deb Olin Unferth

‘A profound talent has manifested, one that is experimental in the best sense.’ Los Angeles Review of Books

‘Heralds an exciting new talent.’ Paris Review

 ‘Creepy, deadpan … full of squirmy pleasures.’ Kristen Roupenian, New York Times

BELLY UP

STORIES

RITA BULLWINKEL

After Ann Bullwinkel

Contents

Title PageDedicationHARPPHYLUMBLACK TONGUEBURNGOD’S TRUE ZOMBIESWHAT I WOULD BE IF I WASN’T WHAT I AMARMS OVERHEADHUNKER DOWNDECORCONCERNED HUMANSFRIED DOUGHNAVEIN THE SOUTH THE SAND WINDS ARE OUR GREATEST ENEMYPASSINGMOUTH FULL OF FISHWHAT GIRL BUILTCLAMOURAbout the PublisherAlso by Rita Bullwinkel About the AuthorCopyright

1

HARP

3

A boy I dated in college had an uncle who worked for an oil company in Malaysia. The uncle was frequently gone to Malaysia on business. He died suddenly, and they found out he had a wife and family there. He also had a wife and family here. The boyfriend said the uncle had split himself clean in two. Perhaps he changed clothes on the plane ride over. It was hard to tell. Nobody ever went with the uncle to Malaysia and nobody ever met the Malaysian wife.

I remembered the story one morning during my commute. I have a long drive on a pretty highway to get me to the building where I work. When I first moved out of 4the city I hated the drive. But it grew on me. It became a time for me to be alone and listen to music my husband maybe wouldn’t have liked, or even to listen to music I wouldn’t have wanted my husband to know I listened to.

I remembered the story when I saw an accident. It happened just two cars in front of me, fast enough that I wasn’t caught in the back-up behind the accident, but had to swerve away from other swerving cars. When I looked in my rearview mirror I saw the pile up, and the front windshield of one car smashed in and two heads, one on the steering wheel of the wrecked car, unmoving, and one of a woman in the passenger seat. She was wearing a headscarf and her mouth was open. It looked like she was screaming. She didn’t look to the man next to her, the one whose head was on the wheel, but rather everywhere else. This is the Malaysian wife, I thought. That’s why she isn’t looking at the husband. Because her troubles have begun.

Though when I saw the accident I remembered that the Malaysian wife existed, I couldn’t immediately remember to whom she belonged. A decade had passed since the story had first been told to me, and I couldn’t place her with a person of origin until later in the day. The remembering of her wasn’t unpleasant as much as 5curious. I tried to remember what I thought of the story when it had originally been told to me. I didn’t call my husband and tell him about the accident or the remembering. It was too strange of a thing to remember not to be upsetting. Not that I was upset. But I just didn’t want to be forced into making words on the subject, especially since I couldn’t parse out whom I cared about more – the halved uncle or the Malaysian wife.

The day I saw the accident I got to work on time. I am a secretary in the music department of a big university. When I arrived, I went into the staff kitchen and put my lunch in the refrigerator, and then walked down the hall to get some water. On my walk to the water fountain I heard several harps tuning.

I know little about music, but I like working in a building whose sole purpose is to produce it. The classrooms closest to my office are mainly musical instruction spaces. I hear trumpets and timpani throughout the day.

The harps, though, were something new. Days previous I had seen them roll in a dozen of them. They were huge. A single person couldn’t lift one. They had to be transported with a wheeled cart. All of the harps’ scrolls had grand, circular, crown-like adornments atop them. Their peaks looked like small royal heads. 6

I have heard a harp before, but this tuning sound they were making as I walked past was completely alien. It made me feel like a different person – like I, the person listening to the tuning of these harps, was a different person than the person who had been standing next to the refrigerator in the lunchroom. I have had this feeling while listening to music before. Always, it was at some crowded concert. At these shows the music had always been loud and inciting, music that made me feel like I was the kind of person who could hit someone. But the person the harps made me into wouldn’t have hit anyone. I wasn’t sure the harp me would have any hands to hit with. It was as if my soul had been slipped into a new harp body, some shell that existed primarily in vibrations and could more easily mix with the objects and people it chose to surround. Listening to the harps I didn’t feel angry or sad or anxious or incited. I just felt other than myself.

Gradually, the voice of the harp professor rose and all of the harps stopped tuning. Hush returned and I continued the walk back down the hall. I sat down at my desk and thought about my harp self and the Malaysian wife.

Although I still couldn’t remember who told me the story, I remembered what I had thought when I had first heard it. I had thought about the Malaysian children: the 7children of the Malaysian wife and her halved American husband. I had felt sorry for the children that they would have to live a life without a father. I felt sorry for the Malaysian wife, that her husband – and, in my imagination, her main source of income – had died, and that now she was being left to fend for herself and her children alone in some Malaysian city. I did not conceive of the Malaysian wife as having parents or siblings. I assumed she was completely alone. I imagined she had been preyed upon. She had been a young, gullible woman – the kind of woman who always thinks everything is going to turn out all right. The kind of woman who would marry a man who spoke her native language poorly. Perhaps this tendency in her also made her susceptible to religion. Maybe she was devout. Maybe she wore a headscarf. Maybe she liked American television. Maybe the husband had looked like a famous American actor. Or, maybe he didn’t look like an actor at all, but he was American and that was enough.

I sat down at my desk and sank into the seat. I called hotels and made reservations for music professors who were performing abroad. I checked the faculty mailboxes and emailed the professors whose boxes were bursting. I emailed the department about an upcoming 8concerto. I emailed the department about a visiting lecturer. I emailed the department about senior recitals. I had lunch.

I ate my lunch outside on a park bench. I stretched my legs out and let them warm in the early spring heat. It was March, still the time of year when it was appropriate to wear tights, but I wasn’t wearing any. After I ate my sandwich I looked at the sun through the trees and, in a moment of daring, decided to lie down. I tilted my head back and swung my legs up and put my hands over my face to shield my eyes from the sun. A breeze wove through the leaves, and the hairs on my arms stood up. The longer I reclined, however, the warmer I felt. The sun beat on my face and my legs. I wished I could stay there, lying on that park bench, pretending that I was the kind of person who always lay down in public spaces, as if it hadn’t been an act of daring brought on by a morning filled with the remembering of the Malaysian wife.

I eventually got up and walked back to my building. I rode the elevator alone. I had been hoping that someone would be with me in the elevator – that I would run into someone I knew and they would say, ‘Hello, Helen, how are you today?’ and then I would be able to tell them about the accident. I wasn’t upset about the accident, but 9I had seen a person die, I was almost sure. The man’s head against the wheel had looked very dead. And I really don’t know how you are supposed to act when something like that happens. It is very unclear what is socially acceptable and what is not. Because I am a secretary for the music department, I rarely speak to people unless a professor seeks me out to make a particularly large round of copies. And even then, my interactions are quick. People have things to do. And I guess I do too.

When I got out of the elevator I walked down the hall that contained the new harp practice room. I looked through the small glass window of the practice room door and saw that the room was empty. I went in and sat down at one of the harps.

Up close they looked less like instruments and more like massive pieces of furniture – like some grand decorative hat stand or an unfinished shelf. Strangely, they also looked like instruments you could dance with, like how upright bass players sometimes swing their instruments around in emotive grooves. I wondered why harp players are always seated. Maybe the seated harp playing position was just some outdated invention of Western civilisation, like the expectation for women to give birth on their backs. Maybe a harp was meant to be played 10standing up. Maybe a harp was meant to be danced with. Maybe these people had it all wrong. I ran my finger along the spine of each one of the harp’s strings and fingered the carvings in the neck.

I went back to my desk and sat down. I put together packets for letters of admittance. I ordered several music journals for the department library. I stapled syllabi for several classes. I alphabetised the hundreds of scores contained in Professor Robinson’s filing cabinet. I cleaned the outside of the cabinet with a damp cloth. I called my husband.

‘Hello,’ my husband said. ‘How was your morning?’

‘My morning was fine,’ I said. ‘What are we eating for dinner?’

‘Pork chops,’ said my husband.

On the drive home there was no traffic. The budding trees overhung the highway and the black granite boulders reflected white light from the sun.

I passed the spot where the accident had happened. All of the debris was gone. I wondered where they took the body that belonged to the man whose head was on the wheel. I wondered where they took his wife. I imagined the morgue that the husband lay contained in, all the rows of file cabinet refrigerators. I imagined the file cabinets 11that were filled with scores in the music department instead being filled with dead halved bodies, the cabinets in Professor Robinson’s office pulling out into much longer trays than their dimensions contained. I imagined opening the cabinets and cleaning the space between the two halves of the bodies with a warm damp cloth. I saw myself closing the cabinets and going back to the harp room. All the students were in the room with me, tuning. I sat in the tuning harp sounds and became the harp me.

I arrived home in my car and went inside and took off my jacket and drank a glass of water. I took out my laptop and searched for upcoming harp performances and saw that the city orchestra was having a Celtic harp orchestra performance tomorrow night. I bought two tickets.

I wanted to take a shower before my husband returned home so I went into the bathroom and took off my clothes. The hot water pulled over my head and my eyes and I stood perfectly still. I like the feeling of being encased in water, and I like feeling the pressure of pumped water against my closed eyes. I tilted my neck back and let some of the water enter my mouth. I swallowed the hot water and thought about it travelling down inside of me while the other hot water traversed the curve of my spine. 12

In the shower I remembered who the Malaysian wife belonged to. The college boyfriend’s original telling of the story was all of a sudden clear. I remembered the colour of the couch the boyfriend sat on when he first told the story. It had been a deep forest green. We were with a large group of friends. He nervously leaned towards me and made a joke about his family. Then he told the story of the halved uncle and everything got very quiet and it almost sounded as if he was going to cry. I said the night was too deep in for these conversations and smiled encouragingly and asked him to walk me home. That night he slept in my apartment. I didn’t have a bedframe so my mattress was on the floor. When we went to sleep he was unusually quiet but I couldn’t tell if it was because he was drunk or because his telling of the story had upset him. I didn’t know his parents, so I didn’t know who he thought this story reflected on poorly. I wasn’t sure if he felt some type of internal guilt or responsibility for sharing blood with this uncle, or if he felt he had divulged something like a family history of insanity, and now thought I could never look at him the same. He lay in my bed with his back towards me. His breathing was steady so I couldn’t tell if he was awake or asleep. I pulled my fingers over his scalp and behind his 13ears and into the dent of his spine. I put both my hands into his hair and pressed my lips against the back of his neck. We fell asleep like that. I remembered waking up in the morning cradling his head.

The water turned cold in the shower. I turned off the water and heard my husband chopping vegetables in the next room.

I got out of the shower, dried my hair and dressed for dinner. I came out of our bedroom and kissed my husband on the cheek. He was making a grand meal. The salad had goat cheese and candied pecans and cranberries in it. The pork chops were seared and dressed in gravy. Mashed potatoes with scallions were on the side. I sat down and looked at my husband. I said, ‘This meal looks divine.’

‘Thank you,’ my husband said. ‘How was your day?

‘Well,’ I said. ‘It was good, but something upsetting happened to a coworker. Her brother died.’

‘Oh my goodness,’ my husband said. ‘That’s terrible. Was he young?’

‘Yes, quite young. He was thirty-seven. He was an oilrig engineer. He spent a lot of time working in Malaysia.’

‘What did he die of?’ my husband asked.

‘He died of a heart attack.’ 14

‘Did he die in Malaysia or here?’

‘He died in Malaysia. No one in her family knows yet who is going to get the body.’

‘Well we should offer to make her and her family dinner,’ my husband said.

‘You’re right.’

After dinner I cleaned the dishes while my husband read. I put on some music and tried to read as well but felt restless and eventually put on my tennis shoes and decided to go for a walk.

‘I’m going for a walk,’ I said to my husband.

‘Are you all right? Would you like me to come with you?’

‘I think I just need to take a quick walk alone.’

I put on my sweatshirt and closed the door softly behind me. I walked down our street and kicked some branches that had fallen into the road.

I thought of the boyfriend with the halved uncle and tried to remember what I thought of the boyfriend. We had not dated for long. I remembered him being very insecure and always trying to over-establish himself in conversations. He seemed to have a lot of feelings, but a poor system of making them known. He was only a boy when I had known him. Perhaps this tendency of his had changed. 15

As I walked in my neighbourhood it occurred to me that maybe he had lied to me. Maybe there was no Malaysian wife. Maybe it was a story he made up to win attention. He seemed like the type of boy who would do such a thing – the type of boy who, when he knew that a girl was no longer interested in sleeping with him, would make up a story about being beaten by his father just to gain her pity. The type of boy who didn’t mind appearing broken to lovers, and even hoped that his brokenness would entice new lovers to want to fix him.

I thought of his face when he had told the story and tried to discern if there had been any truth in him. I decided I couldn’t tell, or, at the very least, I couldn’t really remember his face. And then I decided the truth didn’t matter. Surely there had been a Malaysian wife somewhere, some version of her at least existed in my mind and, very possibly, in the wreckage of the car which I had seen crash in the morning.

I walked back to my house and did some laundry. I took off my clothes and read some of a book in bed. My husband came in and laid his body next to me. He went to sleep.

I sat in the bed next to my husband. I tried to sleep and then got up and got something to drink. I sat in 16our dark kitchen. The sky was clear and light. I drew a picture of my husband and me on a paper napkin. I tried to parse out who I cared about more, the halved husband or the Malaysian wife.

The thing about caring about someone is that it doesn’t necessarily follow that you agree with them, or think they are morally right. Caring is an act of interest. The Malaysian wife certainly did not have a good life. She married a man who gave her children that he didn’t care for. He left them and died. I supposed my interest in caring for the Malaysian wife hinged on her community. How she lived with the halved husband, how life was with him and then without him. Her predicament was terrible, but I decided it didn’t interest me. What interested me was the halved husband, and the methods and techniques he used for halving himself. Or, the heinous, looming idea that he contained – the idea that some humans might need to be halved. That true love towards a single lover is an inherent lie. So, I decided I cared for the halved husband more, but that I hated him.

I thought then, for the first time that day, of the American wife. I thought of the apartment that she and her halved husband lived in, and of the TV they owned, and the water bill they paid, and the way they shared 17towels. I wondered if she could continue to love him in death. I wondered if she could love the half of the husband that had lived with her. I wondered how and when she got the body. I wondered if and how she held the ceremony. If I were the American wife I would cut the body in two lengthwise and send one half back to the Malaysian wife. Fair is fair.

In the early light of the morning I decided I didn’t hate the halved husband for widowing two wives and orphaning some Malaysian children as much as I hated him for being halved. This is the kind of hate people have when their morality is challenged, I thought. I hate the halved husband because he hates the way I live.

I went back into the bedroom where my husband was still asleep. I put on my work clothes and kissed him on the cheek. I whispered in his ear, ‘Professor Robinson called. There is an emergency. I have to go into work early.’

‘All right,’ my husband said. ‘Well, make them let you off at a decent hour. Tonight I want to make you duck and beans.’

I took some toast and walked out the door and into my car. When I got in the car I called my work. I got the answering machine, as I knew I would. I left a message. I said, ‘Hi Professor Robinson, this is Helen. I am sorry 18to tell you this on such short notice, but I won’t be able to come in to work today. My husband’s brother died unexpectedly last night, and I really have to stay here, at home with him. I should be able to come into tomorrow, but I will let you know.’

After I hung up the phone I drove into the city. I drove on the highway where the accident had been and sped past the absence of debris. Once in the city I parked the car in the underground of a mall. I got out of the car and went into the mall and into several stores. I tried on underwear and dresses and shoes and coats. I bought everything I wanted. I walked out wearing new earrings, a new dress and new shoes. I walked to the park and lay down on the park bench. The sun was warmer than it had been the day before. I got up and went to lunch in a nice restaurant. I ordered French onion soup and braised lamb for a main. There was a handsome man about my age sitting next to me. He said, ‘How is the lamb?’

‘Delicious,’ I said. ‘Would you like a bite?’

‘You know, I would. Mind if I join your table?’

‘Please.’

A waiter came over and we asked to have the man’s plate moved to my table. I took the man’s fork and cut him a piece of meat. 19

‘This meat is amazing,’ he said.

‘Wait till you taste the soup.’ I took a piece of bread from the breadbasket and dipped it in the bowl, making sure that the broth soaked up into it and that it was properly coated with cheese.

I handed it to the man, and he took it from me and said, ‘You’re right. The soup is better than the lamb. I could eat a whole lunch of French onion soup. Next time.’

We made plans to meet back at the same restaurant for dinner. I told him I had tickets to a harp show and invited him to go. We planned to eat dinner early so we could be on time for the harp tuning. I told him all about how I worked in the music building, and how listening to the sound of harps tuning made me feel so other, like another me, and that it was beautiful, I thought, and that I thought he would like it and we should go.

The man agreed to the harp concert and looked genuinely eager. He left and went back to his office and I got up and walked out into the street. Three blocks away there was a movie theatre. I went in and watched a movie that was essentially Hamletbut set in Detroit. Inside the movie theatre the seats were sticky. The fabric pulled up when I lifted my hand. The screen made everyone’s faces look blue and pretty. Inside the movie theatre I felt like 20I had nicer skin. If only I could be the harp me with a movie exterior, I thought. Maybe I could be.

While watching the movie I remembered the halved husband that I cared for and his wives. I wondered which wife he liked better. It would appear that because he married the Malaysian wife after the American wife he liked the Malaysian wife better. But maybe it was a relationship of geographic convenience. I found myself wishing that my husband was in the movie theatre with me. I wanted him to put his hand on my thigh in the dark.

When the movie was over I walked out of the movie theatre and into the dusk of the city. I stood under a lamp post and watched the people pass by. I took my phone out of my pocket and called my husband. He said, ‘Helen? Are you coming home?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s a big disaster. I hope I don’t have to stay all night. Keep some duck warm in the oven for me. I’ll be home as soon as I can.’

After I hung up the phone I walked back to the restaurant. I was a half hour early for dinner so I had a drink at the bar. I wondered why I hadn’t ever asked the college boyfriend about the children. Had I believed that the children were beside the point? Did I always believe children were beside the point? 21

Sitting there at the bar, drinking my wine, I justified caring about the halved husband more than I cared about the children because the halved husband was a novelty, a rare two-headed snake to be brought up only late into the night at the most intimate of dinner parties when the conversation has got too serious and everyone is almost ready to go home. Orphaned children, on the other hand, are common emotional currency.

I wondered what my husband would think of the halved husband, though I, of course, had no intention of ever asking him. Many times what you think someone would say on a subject is much truer than the words that would actually come out of their mouth. My husband would probably be overly occupied with making sure all the parties were taken care of. If he could figure out a way to make the Malaysian wife and the American wife friends he probably would. What a rancid want. Who would want to meet the partial owner of a husband they believed to belong solely to them? My husband is the only optimist I know who would be blind enough to suggest such a meeting. I was glad I hadn’t invited my husband to the harp concert. He probably would have just made tiresome comments speculating on the manufacturing techniques employed to fabricate the theatre seats. 22

I put my wine glass down. The man from lunch walked into the restaurant and we sat at a nice table near a window. He told me his name was Huck, which I told him I found hard to believe.

‘Like Huck Finn,’ I said.

‘Exactly,’ said Huck.

Huck told me all about his day as a website designer. I told Huck all about my day as a secretary for a music department. I told him about the applications I had filed, and the staff-meeting notes I had typed, and the plane flights I had changed for Professor Robinson’s quartet.

Huck told me about his day writing code and tried to make it sound more important than it was, which I found silly. Huck became more enjoyable when he started talking about his family. His mother was an old Polish woman who lived in Queens. You could tell he loved her by the way he made fun of her. I asked him if I could come over for pierogi sometime and he said, of course.

We took a cab to the concert hall because the dinner had got away from us. We rushed to our seats as the first harps were being carted in. Slowly the musicians unwrapped them from their big jackets and started tuning. There were eighteen harps in total, which was 23absolutely grand. When the harps started tuning I felt the other me ecstasy returning. I wished I could walk around with these sounds for the rest of my life. While the harps tuned nothing was required of me. I thought of all the things my husband needs from me. I have to speak to my husband and cook with him. I have to use words to tell him what I feel. Sometimes my husband needs me to reassure him. The easiest thing I have ever done with my husband was lovemaking. That has never been tiresome or hard to do. I wondered if maybe I should suggest that my husband and I stop talking. Perhaps we should only communicate through touch and feel. Maybe that is a truer way to be with someone. Maybe my husband and I just needed to rid ourselves of words and then we could access something more intimate. I found myself truly resenting the pockets of meaning each word I hurled at my husband was meant to communicate. Why couldn’t I just take my raw feeling and give it to him? Why was I required to translate something within me into a symbol that an uncountable number of humans have used before me and will use again?

While the harps were tuning Huck wanted to keep talking.

‘Shhhh,’ I said to Huck. ‘I am listening to the tuning.’ 24

He looked confused but not altogether saddened. He closed his eyes and tried to turn into harp Huck but I could tell he wasn’t having a good time.

Eventually the harps stopped tuning and started playing in earnest. I liked the choreographed coordination of their strings as well, although it didn’t induce the same other me.

After the show I kissed Huck goodbye and told him next time we’d see a rock show. Then I started my long walk back to the parking lot under the mall. I crossed lonely streets strewn with trash and flyers. Every couple blocks I passed a waking bar.

While I walked I saw two young boys playing cards in an alley. They were about fifteen, and surely lived in one of the buildings nearby. The younger looking one whistled at me. He looked like a young Huck and my husband combined.

When I got to my car I was tired. I had walked and been awake for so long. I got into my car and drove along the deserted streets. I weaved in and out of the city blocks aimlessly and then, when my lids began to droop, I found the nearest highway entrance and began my regular commute home.

I love driving on the freeway when everyone else is absent. I thought maybe I should start commuting at 25night. I sped along the freeway and passed the trees and the rocks that looked so stunning in the daylight. At night they weren’t as beautiful. Instead of feeling like a canopy from the sun they felt like a dark cloak. Their black arms reached over the road and threatened to engulf me. I put my chin over the wheel and leaned forward so I could see the foliage on both sides in one view. I fingered the stereo in longing and made a mental note that I had to find a recording of the harps tuning. Perhaps I could befriend the harp professor and convince her to make a recording for a charitable cause. Or, I could see her being the kind of woman who was suspicious of charity. Maybe we could become friends in earnest and I could tell her about the harp me.

As I neared the spot where the accident had happened I slowed down. Someone had put a cross and a bouquet of lilies on the side of the road. I stopped the car in the middle of the freeway and beamed my lights on the memorial. A long shadow pulled out from the cross and I saw that there were more offerings scattered about.

After sitting in the car for several moments in stark silence I decided to pull off and investigate. I drove the car off the road and under the overhang of a tree. I walked the fifty feet back to the memorial site. When I 26got there I saw that there were indeed many more flowers. Amaryllis and baby’s breath were scattered all around. It looked like they had all been a part of the same bouquet and then the wind had got a hold of them. In the dark the baby’s breath looked like clumps of cloud.

I looked at this memorial for the man whose head was on the wheel, the man who crashed and made me remember the halved husband. The man who crashed and made me remember the Malaysian wife. I tried to understand in what ways this memorial was and was not for the halved husband of my imagination. Could every husband be partially halved in some way? I decided I needed to seek counsel with the halved husband and sat down next to his memorial. First I sat with my legs pulled up to my chest and addressed his cross directly, but then I grew tired and lay down. I spread out all my limbs on the ground like I was making a snow angel. I tried to pull myself apart from the inside out. I imagined all my organs choosing a side and then willing my sternum open. I made harp tuning sounds with my mouth and sung into the split. I could feel the halved husband helping me form two new bodies. His hands gripped the inside of my ribs and pulled up. I kept humming until I could feel that the separation was finished. When I was finally 27halved and happy I put my two selves back in the car and started the engine. I turned on the radio and listened to a heavy beat. A great relief washed over me. I knew then I could do what I wanted. I knew then that the reason I hated the halved husband so much was not because he hated the way I lived, but because I envied him. Now that I too was halved I had no resentment towards him.

I got up and drove home and got into bed with my husband. I woke him early in the morning and we made love. He cooked me a hearty breakfast of eggs and bacon. Before I went to work I held him in the doorway. I put my hands into his hair and felt the back of his skull. I pulled his body towards mine and put my own head into the crook of his shoulder.

While driving back into the city I listened to music. I turned the radio to a classical station that mostly played Brahms. When I was two blocks away from my work building I was stopped by a red light at a big intersection. A couple stepped off the sidewalk and traversed the street. The woman was wearing a headscarf and the man was wearing a suit. They took their time crossing. When the light turned green they were directly in front of my bumper. They were walking so slow. I wished they would hurry up. Didn’t they know this was a city? People have 28to get places. I didn’t have all day to wait for them. When it became clear that they truly would take all day if the day was given to them, I honked my horn and made my eyes bulge out and look at them. Surprised by the sudden noise they jumped, stared into the windshield, and then hurried on.