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I am collecting sunlight from the air and packing it into this sturdy paper bag. The apples are smooth and whole, fit into my hands firm and cold. My feet are submerged in fallen apples. Brown and slippery, they crumble under my weight, and I struggle to balance. Bees drink the scent of fermenting cider, and their buzzing sounds like people. “I’m tired of Macintosh,” a woman complains as her sneakers squeal against slippery red skin. "We need some variety,” she says to a man. The underside of the apple she stepped in is a puddle of yellow mush. To me, the apples have no names. They are simply red, green, purple, smooth, glossy, sweet, mealy, firm. Some, especially the pale yellow, feel like the skin of a baby exposed to the cold. A group of young men descend on my tree. The colors they wear match the falling leaves, brick-red and mustard-yellow thermal vests and hats, dark brown and navy corduroy pants that slouch off their waists. Their cheeks glow from the cold. For them it is a race, a game, empty steps of a childhood ritual.
Live stolen apples are transplanted into my honey-wood fruit bowl. Potatoes, the color of winter, hang in wire mesh baskets in the doorway, their eyes sprouting knots. Faint mold softens the air: forgotten laundry, cat dander, and a smell like crumbled, dusty cereal. Cold white light pours through the bay windows into the living room, but doesn’t reach the far wall where random antique photos hang in colorful glass and plastic frames. A mountain of green leaves and spines on a table by the window blocks the light. Some are fat, succulent, cactus arms like elephant ears, and others as thin and spindly as spider legs. In my bed, the sheets are crisp against my skin. I squeeze a deep red apple as if it were something warm. I am not sick, but took the day off because I threw up this morning. My arms and legs prickle with goosebumps. A feather the size of my pinky nail floats up when I adjust my pillow. In the bathroom, running water and Joe’s electric toothbrush hum. He thinks I am sleeping. Somewhere outside, a crow screeches. Our cat, Bella, runs in circles under the bed and I hear her claws slide on the smooth wood floor. Shadows like cut paper line the ceiling, and Joe’s hurried footsteps clomp toward the door. The arms of his puffy red jacket swish as he puts it on. The sound always makes me shiver, like fingernails on a chalkboard. Beautiful, blue eyed, chubby cheeked Joe, off to the state house to stand and hold signs, full of hope. He thinks he can save the dolphins, the whales, the trees, the humans. Yesterday he went door to door, all around the neighborhood collecting signatures to send to senators about fuel conservation. I signed, but wouldn’t go with him. When I hear his car pull away, I go into the bathroom and pee into a white plastic cup. Exactly three minutes later, the plastic wand has two pink lines in the windows. I must have done something wrong. I can’t tell Joe until I know for sure.
It is still dark when the alarm goes off at six in the morning, but there is at least the misty, blue promise of light. Joe pours his Cheerios into a big white bowl with blue daisies around the rim, and keeps glancing up at the clock. As I pour my coffee, he takes one of my apples and rinses it. “Are you going to be home tonight?” he asks wistfully, his tone verging on whining. “I feel like I haven’t seen you forever.” “Yeah, I miss you too, ” I say, but I know it’s my own fault. “I’ll be home at six.” He takes one of my apples and holds a knife to it. Before he cuts into it, I scream. I don’t know why. “What’s wrong?” he asks, startled. “Nothing,” I say, snatching the apple from him. “I have to get to class,” he says, sighing loudly, then abandons his cereal on the counter. “Sorry -- I just...never mind,” I stammer. I want to tell him I’ll be back to normal again soon, that I don’t understand this “outburst” either. “Outburst” is Joe’s word. Instead I just follow him around as he puts on his shoes and his jacket. I don’t want him to go. He keeps looking at me, expecting me to say something. When he reaches the door, I kiss him heavily, in the middle of his heart-shaped mouth, the way I used to, but he pushes me away too soon. “I’m running late,” he says, but I know he is early. Then he kisses my cheek and darts out the door. I watch him drive down the street until he turns at the stop sign. I want to wash his cereal bowl so he won’t remember his frustration with me when he gets home. But I don’t. Instead, I sip my weak, lukewarm coffee, with painful deliberation. The cream is slimy in my throat and I have to make a conscious effort not to gag. I think of the apple skinned and sliced into his cheerios and raisins and then drowned in milk, and feel like I’ve rescued someone. Why did I pick them if I don’t want them to be eaten? If we don’t eat them, they’ll go to waste. I set up my oil paints on the yellow linoleum kitchen floor and arrange an apple and a potato on the lumpy, pretty, cobalt blue plate Joe made in his ceramics class last year. One final still life is due in my painting class next week. I open the window and place a long, tangled, old jade plant next to it and begin to paint, starting with the potato. Lying on the floor, perched on my left arm, I get through a few small canvases examining different angles. The prickle of crumbs and the slight stickiness of the linoleum distract me. I am disgusted, but not enough to move. In the fifth exercise, the deep red shade of the apple is perfect. The shine is real. The potato is loosely sketched in and the eyes look like dimples. It is alive. If I finish it I will kill it. I can feel the paint becoming muddy and flat. But on Thursday it won’t matter if it’s alive, only that the canvas is covered and the light source is identifiable. The clinic opens at 9:00, so at 8:50, I brush my teeth and throw on purple fleece sweatpants, a black sweatshirt, and sneakers, and tuck my frizzy hair into Joe’s white college lacrosse hat. I don’t want to leave. I can’t seem to brace myself to face the idea of needles and sterile white rubber gloved fingers prodding my skin, because I’m too preoccupied with the mirror images of the apple and the potato on the plate. The whole outfit feels like a lie because I haven’t actually been exercising. The purple is a lie because I don’t feel as expressive as purple. I am content with the black sweatshirt because it is old and comfortable and warm and makes no statement. When I arrive, the protestors are out. They wave pictures of bloody, mangled, three-foot long fetuses in the air. “Baby killer!” A woman screams at me. “Make the right choice,” a man stage whispers, staring into my face. The sky is clear and blue, and the moon looks like a small cloud. I should have gone to my regular doctor. I am not the slut they think I am, or a teenager. I just happen to be a few weeks late and probably need to switch pills. A young woman is in the waiting room with a toddler who is sorting out puzzle pieces on the floor. The woman smiles at me as I fill out the papers. For the emergency contact, I write Joe’s name and our home number, except I change the one to a seven. When she finishes the puzzle, the toddler climbs into her mother’s lap and pulls on her shirt. “Only at bedtime,” the mother snaps, and brushes the little girl back onto the floor. The girl cries and clings to her leg, and the mother hands her a cardboard book with a bunny on the cover. The girl throws it down, and the mother sticks a pacifier in her mouth. “I’m trying to have another one,” the mother tells me, “But on days like this, it seems crazy. But Kayla wants a little sister, don’t you Kayla.” She doesn’t look at Kayla, she looks at me instead. I nod. “My husband wants a boy. You know, they say breastfeeding decreases your chance of conceiving. It’s been proven.” “I’m just switching pills,” I tell her even though I don’t need to, just to clarify. “I tried the pill once, my husband would kill me if he knew. But I put on ten pounds and then they told me I couldn’t smoke, so I stopped before the first month was up.” “So you don’t want another baby but your husband does?” I ask, “Usually it’s the other way around.” “If he went through what I did with this one, he wouldn’t want to do it again either. But he wants a boy.” I wonder how many times Kayla’s heard this and how much of it she understands, if she feels unwanted yet. I reach into my bag and pull out the lollipop the bank teller gave me yesterday. “Is it ok?” I ask the mother. “Kayla, do you promise to eat your lunch if this nice lady gives you a lollipop?” She asks. Kayla nods, pacifier pulsing in her mouth, and I hand it to her. Her light brown, curly hair is pulled into pigtails so tight it hurts to look at them. Her elastics have translucent plastic purple balls on the ends. In the office, a heavyset, middle-aged, bored nurse is scanning the forms I filled out. I want to tell her that the seven should be a one. I feel as though I’ve lied to her personally. “Emily?” she asks, and I nod. “So, you’re two weeks late and have experienced some stomach-upset this past week?” She asks me. “Yes. I think it’s the orthotricyclene though.” “That’s unusual if you’ve been on it for a year like it says here,” she says, pointing to my stack of papers. She hands me a pee-test wand. “I’ve already done this. Are there any other tests I can take?” I ask. “This one is only ninety-nine percent accurate.” “Only?” she asks, raising an eyebrow. “There’s the urine test and the blood test that both detect the same hormone that’s released when you’re pregnant. The blood test can detect a slightly lower concentration of the hormone, but if you got a positive result on the urine test, you should assume you’re pregnant. If you get a negative result on the urine and the blood test but still do not get your period, then we do an ultra sound. Would you like to discuss possible options if you are pregnant?” I hate the liberated, arrogant tone of her voice when she uses the words: Stomach-upset, Urine, Hormone, Pregnant, Option. Then she says, “The blood test is more invasive.” I agree to take another urine test. Positive. I am not surprised.
All the way home, I am thinking of my still life, of different combinations of blue for the reflections. I am looking critically at the sky and at the shine that bounces off the cars. I thought “pregnant” would feel different than this, somehow distinct. At home, Bella is perched on the windowsill, stalking a bug. Her eyes are bright yellow and wild with determination. Joe’s cereal bowl, still on the counter, haunts me, and his shoes in the hallway, and his Newsweek on the kitchen table. Knowing I’m pregnant with his baby, he flows through my thoughts like a wordless soundtrack. Instead of working on my painting, I clean. I’m afraid of exposing my 99% probable possibility of a baby to the paint chemicals. I want my baby to be healthy. I vacuum the living room rug and couch, dust the windowsills, touch every surface with a sponge, except Joe’s cereal bowl. Joe comes in through the back door, right into the kitchen. The first thing he notices is his bowl, on the shining, spotless counter, and he laughs, patronizing. I am almost offended, but relieved. “I’m sorry,” he says, smiling. “This morning I had the meeting with the dean for the grant proposal. That’s all I’ve been thinking about these days, you know that. I didn’t mean to be grouchy.” “How’d it go?” I ask, looking elsewhere. It is comforting to hear his voice, calm, flat, assured, rattling off facts he knows. But I don’t retain the information long enough to ask the next question and turn this interaction into a conversation.
The apples are soft and brown in the bowl, they are melting. They are starting to stink. I wish we had eaten them. We’ll have to throw them away before they grow mold. My painting is done. I did all I could with it until it was overdone and wrecked. The professor said he liked the composition, but suggested using “whiter whites” to bring out the details, and he loved the potato. After his final judgment, it felt done. There was nothing left to think about. I miss the apples themselves, their cold, clear, healthy presence. The paintings are my only evidence of them. A trip to the supermarket would recreate the visual life of the apples, but I wanted to capture more. I pick up a brown-green apple and let it dangle by the stem and it sags, a partially deflated balloon. I drop it back in the bowl and the wooden surface dents it. Joe is watching the six o’clock news. “Tomorrow it's going to be sixty,” he says aloud, more to himself than to me. “Joe, I’m going to go for a drive,” I tell him firmly, as if warning him in advance of some minor inconvenience. “How about a bike ride after the news?” He asks. “No, I don’t really feel up to it, and it’s getting dark. I’ll just go for a quick drive and then I’ll pick up dinner. Ok?” “I’ll go with you,” he offers. “No, it’s ok,” I say, rushing out the door. The minute I am alone I feel my baby again. I am too sensitive to Joe, and his ignorance blocks my view of my baby. I don’t want to be around anyone who prevents me from believing that my baby is healthy and perfect and meant to be, anyone who doesn’t see the pure, perfect tadpole swishing around in my stomach. Joe is too practical, he would think of her in terms of us, of situations. The way he thought right away that the apples were to eat. He would talk about “options,” then go out and check the price of diapers and talk about space for a crib. Those things don’t matter to me yet. I love her enough so those things won’t matter. Joe would call her a mistake, but I am calling her fate. Everything happens for a reason. I don’t want any negative thoughts associated with her conception, and I don’t have any, but I know Joe does, even though he doesn’t know yet.
When I start up the car, “Lola” is playing on the radio, by The Kinks. As I sing along, I feel my baby, an external presence. I feel certain my baby is a girl, my Lola, until she is born and I name her for real. She is mine, not Joe’s. He doesn’t want her. He might try to say he does, but I know he doesn’t. I think of my friend Andrea’s three month old girl Olivia: the way she tucks her into the crook of her arm and waits for her gummy smile, or straps her into the stroller, stuffed with pink padding, then runs until Olivia falls asleep, the way everything Olivia does is precious, and everything Andrea does is at least indirectly for her. I think of the blue suction cup that sucks up baby boogers, and the aisles of disposable diapers, each with slightly different prints or types of Velcro. I can picture a little girl with Joe’s blue eyes and rosy cheeks. I can’t yet bear to hear anyone say, "That’s going to be hard," or "What about school?" or "What about art?" My life, already, is secondary. I want a cigarette, but feel guilty even thinking of it. I don’t want to pollute Lola with nicotine and my addiction. A police car glides behind us like an eel. I stiffen up and slow down, even though I wasn’t speeding. The lights glare through my back window, too close, like someone breathing down my neck. When I look around, I realize I don’t know where I am. I stop at the light while it’s still yellow. Nothing is safe. The police car, or any car could hit me any time, and I wouldn’t be able to protect Lola. I believe that we’ll survive the drive home, but faith isn’t enough. The toxins in the air could be suffocating her with every breath I take. I turn back onto the main highway. I have to get home. It’s the safest place I know. Pulling into the driveway, I realize I forgot to pick up dinner.
“The truth is so great that I wouldn’t like to speak, or sleep, or listen, or love… All this madness, if I asked it of you, I know, in your silence, there would be only confusion.” When I come in, Joe is at the sink, dropping the rotten apples into the garbage disposal. I’m glad I won’t have to. He looks up at me and glares, on edge, expecting me to yell. But I don’t. He drops another one into the hole, looks at me again, his eyes cold and stubborn, then turns on the grinder. I want to thank him for dealing with the apples. I want to hug him and apologize. I want to admit defeat, a truce with Joe, to make my life simple and happy and open again. I want to hear him deplete Lola, tear her down to “options,” and “$2.39/ gallon of milk,” our “sacrifices,” our “fears,” and my “hormones.” I want to give the choice to him. But she is something else entirely. She is a person. I turn on the TV so we don’t have to talk. Tony the Tiger bounces and grins with a spoonful of Frosted Flakes hanging out of his cartoon mouth. Joe puts a Tombstone frozen pizza in the microwave, and doesn’t mention that I forgot dinner. I won’t eat anything called “tombstone,” so I dig a chocolate Balance bar out of my purse and, without turning off the TV, go into our room and eat it over my art history text. Chewy, cardboard chocolate against Frieda Kahlo’s bright Mexican prints, and severe eyebrows. Cheap, weakly colored prints of her self-portraits page after page: her organs floating in space and tethered to her winged, uni-browed baby by a disconnected umbilical cord. This is not Lola. I am no more disturbed by it than I would have been a year ago. I stand up and a wave of nausea hits me. I stagger to the bathroom, but throw up on the floor before I reach the toilet. I gag and cough and Joe comes running in. “Were you drinking?” He asks, “What’s wrong?” I shake my head and sit down on the cold, green tile floor with my back against the tub. Now I want to tell him. The secret is starting to feel like a lie. He gets a red towel and begins to mop up my puke. “Don’t worry about that,” I say. “I’ll get it in a minute.” But he’s already done.
At night I dream that I’m bringing Lola to my parents’ house, but the house is all wrong. There is only one room, where my father is raking leaves and my mother is on her treadmill. All the walls are yellow, and there is a big bowl of yellow apples in the center of the room. “Emily!” My mother shrieks, running to Lola, who is sleeping and packed neatly into a car seat, swaddled in pink blankets like wrapping paper. For some reason they can’t see me. Then Lola screams and kicks off the pink blankets. Underneath, she is bald and wearing a football sweatshirt. “You traded her in for a boy!” I yell at my father, but he doesn’t hear me, just keeps raking the leaves into a corner of the room. “Joe,” I whisper, sitting up. His hand twitches as he drools into his pillow. Lightly, I touch his cheek, and then his blond, furry arm. He is pink and warm and creased in his sleep. I take his hand and guide it onto my stomach. His fingers are curled and loose. I want him to press so he can feel Lola. I love his clean, square fingernails and soft hands. He flips his hand and I press his knuckles into the fleshy pouch under my bellybutton. “Joe, this is Lola,” I whisper. Then I slide back under the covers next to him, suddenly shy, hoping he didn’t hear. I slip my leg between his, and his arm fumbles and lands on my chest. His eyes flutter open and he looks at me, then flops his head onto my chest and goes back to sleep. I love Joe’s warm, fuzzy body, the rhythm of his heart and his breath, the sexless, familiar comfort of sleeping with him.
I am walking home from my art class. My first trimester will be over in two weeks. I have to tell my doctor and maybe go back to the clinic. I have to tell Joe or leave. This week we have been fighting more than usual. He stomps around the apartment, calls me “hot and cold.” I notice the beginnings of wrinkles around his eyes and his stubble and bland chubby arms, with the same harsh judgment of florescent lights. His face looks old and sad. But it doesn’t matter the way it would have before. Carrying Lola, I feel justified hurting him, lying to him, cutting him off. I am protecting her. He couldn’t say anything that would hurt me, except about Lola. About her, there’s nothing he could say that wouldn’t hurt me. Anything I’d want to hear, I’d know to be a lie. Wind rips through the air and tears brown leftover leaves and brittle branches off the trees. When I get home, I have to start a self-portrait. I have to finish it by tomorrow so I’ll have the rest of the week to study for my art history test. I expect at least one of my classmates to pose naked. I am thinking of the slides my teacher showed today, of Van Gogh’s self-portraits, and Freida Kahlo’s; the correlation between his brighter yellows and progressive insanity, and her obsessive, graphic, whole narratives of infertility. Insanity and infertility were the selves they expressed in paint. I want to somehow include Lola in my self-portrait. Not a strangled, winged infant with my face, like Freida's, but more subtle. I’ll have to find a color that suits her, or a kind of brush stroke. Without some little sign of her, I know my painting will be flat. She is as much a part of me now as Freida’s infertility was a part of her, and I need to acknowledge Lola if I’m going to paint an honest self-portrait. But where does honesty fit in to next Thursday’s assignment? There are no points for honesty, only for accuracy, but without that underlying sense of truth, there is no reason to paint, or see, or speak, yet I am tempted to lie. I pass by thin, suburban, sidewalk trees, and the new vintage bookstore. It is dark and crowded and dusty inside, with the comforting smell of decomposing paper. But it is too dark and I won’t have time to read until the summer anyway, so I don’t stay. “Dear Joe.” A letter begins in my head. “Losing me without explanation will be easier for you...” and it stops. I think of running away, of packing duffel bags in the middle of the night, of kidnapping Bella, who is mine, of dividing the contents of the apartment into Mine and His: the Newsweeks, the beer, the cobalt blue plate, the plants, the abandoned paintings, the silverware, the pictures of us, as if one of us were a criminal. The printed letters of his name blur in my mind. They become sand from the street, and swirl into my eye. The pain is a welcome distraction. An ambulance speeds by with its siren screaming. In the cold, I feel alone. Lola can’t dull the feeling the way she usually does. I miss Joe. I miss looking forward to seeing him. He is too soft and too young to be a father. Everything he does is still precious, down to the way he ties his shoes. A block from home, I turn left, away from home and toward the clinic. It’s a long walk, but I need the time. I need to take all those steps, and to feel out of breath and tired. I need to feel the wind whip my hair into my eyes. Direct contact with the natural world is the only thing that focuses me, because it is the only place where Lola is free. There are no words, it’s just light and sound and the persistence of our body against the cold. There is no hiding. The world is too cold and too forceful for Lola. It rips branches off trees. There is road rage and violence. People fall out of love and make mistakes. I am too selfish. I wouldn’t know how to protect her. Maybe someday I’ll be able to, but not now. I can’t even defend her from Joe’s hypothetical criticism. I want too much for myself. I am not ready to marry Joe or give my life to anyone. The most I can do for her now is to let her go before she feels unwanted. There are no words to tell Joe. I waited too long. The words have rotted in my throat, or dried up. At this point, nothing I could say would feel true.
I will have Lola for four more days. I am trying to feel her presence, free of the grief and guilt of her approaching death. I am struggling to get back the tangible, unbiased impression I had of her in the car, independent of me, of Joe, of the constraints this world presents. But when she comes to mind now, she is as blunt and practical as the sum of diapers and a crib. Because I have made up my mind to let her go, I cannot go back to the time and place in my head when she was perfect, even if I change my mind now.
Claire Sherba is an undergraduate at the University of
Rhode Island, studying English composition. Her poetry
has appeared in the URI Review and in poetry.com's
upcoming publication.
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