A Still Mind

“To the mind that is still the whole universe surrenders.”

-Lao Tzu

“People sure do surprise the hell out of ya, don’t they?” We had just left a friend’s house, my betrothed and I. We were to be wed tomorrow and in a shock move her roommate decided to leave the apartment to the both of us for the night. I guess it was a test to make sure we were positive we wanted to go through with it tomorrow. I can’t speak for her, but I knew, without a doubt, I had found the rest of my life.

“Mhmm,” she said as she clasped her hand in mine; then she turned to look up at me with a smile, an odd smile, that at once shined brighter than the full moon (as if to reassure me that she too had firmly made up her mind about the two of us) but at the same time looked as though it masked something deeper that may have been on her mind. I’m probably mistaken though. I was never very good at getting behind the meaning of things.

We walked most of the way in silence, but I didn’t mind. I enjoyed it even. It was just another reason I knew that we were perfect together. There never existed an awkward silence between us. Instead, I took in the scene before me. She was wearing a single piece sleeveless white dress, the skirt coming just down to the knees. She shimmered and glowed amongst the golden streetlights and the silver moonlight, and with each step her skirt danced with the warm breeze, and simultaneously my heart. I kept just one pace behind her, keeping the perfect vantage point for the show, and what a show she put on for me.

We reached the complex which her, rather our, apartment was a part. There were six buildings; five formed a sort of pentagon surrounding the sixth building in the middle, the building which we resided in. At the gate of the complex she pulled my arm and stopped me. She stood directly in front of me and peered deep into my eyes, looking for something I imagine, though I couldn’t tell what. I was just terrible at that sort of thing, figuring out the hidden meanings behind looks and gestures. She knew this though, and generally told me afterwards.

“You know I hate, detest, and can’t bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appals me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies—which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world—what I want to forget.” I looked at her searching for clues behind the statement. I knew where she got the line from, she said it many times before, but never once so stern and with such a straight face, only jokingly at moments where she was sure she caught me in a lie. I didn’t say or do anything and couldn’t imagine what provoked it however.

“Conrad…right?” I asked, though I knew full well that it was the answer. I just needed more clues behind the statement. She moved only slightly, nodding and blinking, affirming my statement that it was Conrad. Then she turned, grabbed my hand and led me towards the apartment.

We took the elevator to the fifth of ten floors. She looked at me again with that same stern expression as she said, “When we get inside…I want to play a game with you okay. You have to agree to play however before we go inside. I won’t let you in until you do. You still don’t live here yet…not till tomorrow.” She looked at the floor as she said that last part.

I was confused. I wasn’t sure what to say. What kind of game did she want to play? Was it really a game? She certainly didn’t look to be in any sort of festive mood that I associated with any game playing.

The elevator stopped and we got off and walked towards the apartment door. She walked very slowly and deliberately, clearly waiting for an answer, clearly serious about not letting me in unless I agreed.

In front of the door she stopped and barred my entrance. Her eyes and expression asked me what my answer was, whether I would play the game or not.

“What kind of game exactly? What do we have to do?”

“It’s easy, I’ll explain in more detail when we get inside, but basically each of us is going to tell a story, and the only rule is that no matter what is said we don’t interrupt each other until we are both done.”

Easy. So easy it didn’t make sense. What provoked this? The whole day, the whole week, the whole 2 years we have been dating she has been in great spirits; all day she has excitedly talked about the threshold we would tomorrow cross, the brand new life she would be building for the two of us, and especially her roommate. I don’t know why, but I suspected her roommate had something to do with this. Maybe that is why she left the apartment for us tonight. I knew from the moment I saw them that she wasn’t just my fiancée’s roommate. I thought it was just a joke, that she was embarrassed to have had a daughter so young and not have the father around. But to this day the two of them have always referred to each other strictly as roommates. I figured it was only right to play along. But this game…something strange was going on. The mood was very ominous, but I was just so bad at figuring out those hidden things that lay underneath the surface. In the end I picked what was clearly the obvious choice. “Alright, let’s play.” And I smiled the biggest, brightest, most comforting smile I could manage to try to show her that I fully supported her in whatever it was this was.

She finally opened the door into the small two bedroom apartment. It was pitch-black. Though from the outside the design looked very nice, the architects didn’t conceive that little light would be able to get into the middle apartment during the day, or that absolutely no light would seep into the meaningless windows, which provided nothing more than pictures of red-brick that went on infinitely in every direction, at night. She flipped the switch and then paused, not moving from that spot. She was clearly thinking about something, but she wouldn’t tell me what. I waited for her next move, for the further details of the game, but they didn’t come. Instead she stood there for five minutes, facing the wall, her back to me, thinking. I decided then to walk over to the table and take a seat and wait. The sound of the chair against the floor took her out of her trance.

“Yes, good. Sit at the table. Okay, we’re going to play now.” Her voice was soft, and everything about her felt suddenly distant. Her eyes were pointed at me, but she wasn’t looking at me. She didn’t see me at all. And I in turn could not see her eyes. I saw deep wells of…I don’t even know. They were wells that were too dark for me to see into, or maybe this was just a further problem of my inability to delve beneath the surface.

“Okay, the game is simple. We’re going to take turns, each of us telling the other one the absolute worst and most horrible thing that we have ever done.”

I stared at her, waiting for more. “That’s it…?”

“Yes.”

“Well…what do you mean by worst? As in, something we did that really hurt someone, or like, the most embarrassing thing we’ve ever done?” This was an unbelievably loaded statement and I had no idea what she was getting at.

“Frivolous questions,” she said, shrugging them away. “Just whatever comes to your mind when you hear those words. I’ll let you go first.”

Great. Her game, her rules, rules which I don’t even understand, and she’s making me go first. No matter. I just have to think. I can’t think of anyone I really hurt badly, so maybe I need to tell her something that embarrassed the hell out of me. I thought about an event that happened to me when I was younger, much younger. It was the only thing that hit my mind so I just went with it. Maybe I would get the hang of things as the game unfolded.

“Okay. Worst thing that I have ever done, well really I don’t know if I can say I did it, it is just the worst thing that happened to me. Honestly, it’s really kind of funny to think about now, in fact I am sure you will laugh about it, but when it happened I had never felt more like an ass—well as much as a young kid can feel like an ass—in my life. So it was second grade (don’t laugh, second graders do have feelings) and my stomach had never hurt so much in my life. I thought I would throw up, and I remember telling my parents as much before we left, but they thought I was trying to skip school. I think about it now and I don’t know...I can’t imagine a second grader even being aware of the concept of skipping school. Anyway, they dragged me out and all the way to school where I spent the day in agony. I told the teacher about my stomach and she told me that maybe I could lay down in the nurse’s office. I went and did that, took a small nap, and afterwards I really did feel better. I thought that was the end of it, went back to the room and resumed my work. I forget what it was we were doing exactly, but it was some kind of free activity because I remember roaming around the room when it happened. The pain surged back to my stomach, and hard. I thought at that point that would be it, that I would throw up all over the floor right then and there. I must admit that I was quite considerate for a second grader because I did run to a spot where no one was sitting and hunched over anticipating the ensuing regurgitation. I was wrong. Immediately after I hunched forward I expelled everything from my stomach out through my ass in a violent, torrential diarrhea. It was so violent, and with such force, that it literally ripped a hole through my pants and left a puddle of smelly, second-grader shit on the floor where I was standing. And before anyone else could react, I did what any second grader would do in that situation. I bawled my head off until my throat was so sore I sounded like I hit puberty. The rest, I don’t remember too well, but for my parents it was a mixture of, ‘oh my goodness he wasn’t lying’ and, outrage at the disgusting mess I made of myself.” I stopped and paused for a moment to think. “Yeah, I think that that would have to be the absolute worst, most horrible thing that I ever did, if you could say it was something I did.”

I stopped and waited for laughter, but what I saw was the same emptiness that had imbued her being when we got to the apartment in the first place. In fact, I don’t think she heard a word I said. I looked at her and she was still deep in thought, still standing by the light switch, though this time facing me. She stood like that for five more minutes in silence before she made a move again.

“That sounded terrible. I guess it is my turn now. For my story however, I would like to turn out the lights.”

“Wha—“ And then just as she said she turned out the lights and we were shrouded in complete darkness. I heard a few footsteps and then the chair scrape the floor. Then I could hear and feel her breath in the space in front of me. She was sitting across from me. I didn’t move a muscle. I felt a twang of fear I had never known before. I am not one to be scared of the dark, but this darkness was different. There was something troubling. After a few more minutes, minutes in which I thought I heard a small whimper, she finally began her story:

“People really do surprise the hell out of you. You can’t imagine how hard this is for me to do, the kind of weight being pressed upon me right now, but I know that if I don’t do this then I am worth nothing. She is the one who brought this out, who brought this pain into me. Our daughter. I never saw it coming, it surged back into me so quickly, but I knew because of that that this problem will forever be embedded in me unless I acknowledge it and try to tackle it. She stood there so innocent, just as I was about to leave. She thought it would be wonderful if I got to spend the night with my fiancée alone in the apartment, so I brought her over to a friend’s house. She seemed to be as excited about the marriage as I was. I asked her as such and she told me, ‘Of course. It’s about time I had a father.’ I didn’t think that line would hit me so hard, but it did. I had erased you from my mind—what I thought was permanently, but just like that, with one word you were back, and I knew that the only way I could properly get rid of you is if I told the truth.

“For now, let us imagine that we are on board The Nellie. That will give me a good place to start I think. It is the only place to start, I suppose.”

Her voice was calm, slow, smooth but with a hint of urgency. I could feel my pupils widen trying to suck in any glimmer of light it could find, but of course to no avail. I tried to picture her face, floating in the space between me and…oblivion? I felt as though I could reach out and I wouldn’t feel her. She was no longer there. I was no longer there. I didn’t even know where there was, just that there included a voice.

“Do you remember when we first met? It was during my freshman and your junior year. I was taking an intro literature class and you saw me sitting at the library reading. It was Heart of Darkness. You don’t know this, I never let this on in some kind of silly naive fear that if my inexperience came through you would run, but you were the first boy to ever show any interest in me. I couldn’t understand it at all. There I was, Sarah Plain and Tall, in my white cotton shirt and a pair of jeans—my staple outfit—and you come in looking so stylish and self-sure. Then you decide to speak to me (you’ll be glad to know—maybe—that I have changed quite a bit since then. I don’t think you would recognize me on the street). I will never deny that you were an attractive man, that would be unfair, and the sight of you certainly made my heart jump, but physical attraction is never enough. I also think it’s the worst place to start.”

Did I start with physical attraction? And suddenly the darkness was broken, maybe. I began to picture her occupying the space in front of me. It wasn’t her I was seeing though, it was her dress. The white sleeveless dress, with a thin strap and a skirt that fell to her knees. It began to dance that same dance outside, in the moonlight. I don’t know how long it lasted, but I blinked and it was gone. I was gone. Her voice was back.

“But we didn’t exactly start on physical attraction, at least you didn’t. Heart of Darkness. That should have been a sign of things to come, of the horror to come, but I was so caught up in the now that I didn’t see the future. ‘Conrad, eh? Very tough book you’re reading there. How do you like it?’ you asked. I remember how flustered I was at first as I stammered about how ‘I..I..I l..l..like it very much,’ and thought that Conrad’s prose was terrific. You smiled, you thought I was crazy for liking such a dark and troubling book, but eventually you conceded that you felt the same way. How could such a harmless conversation turn into…that?

“I hadn’t thought of it in so many years, as I said I had rather effectively erased you from my existence, but now thinking about our first date still brings a smile to my lips. Talk about an absolute disaster. From where I sat, everything that could go wrong did go wrong: I spent so much of the first so many minutes talking incessantly of Conrad that you must have thought I was infatuated with the man. Then there was the food at the restaurant which was never really made to my liking—oh I was so picky then—but I was so timid, and I didn’t want to trouble anyone. Still you insisted it be sent back each time. Then I made us so late for the show you got tickets for that they wouldn’t let us in. I thought at that moment it would be over. But for some reason it was all okay.

“I wonder what you saw from where you sat. That is what is running through my head right now as I tell you this. I try to imagine what you must have seen through all this, and I can’t do it. I think I am scared, scared to understand exactly what you went through, scared especially of realizing, or rather agreeing, with the actions you took in the end. I am scared to find anything that would make all of your actions justifiable, and all of mine inexcusable. But on that day, you must have seen in what I did something that convinced you I was worth all of the trouble. I certainly thought that anyone who could stand my company after all of that had to be my knight in shining armor, my everything. Oh how blind I was back then…and you were the one that had to suffer. Was it really worth all that trouble in the end?”

I felt myself begin to slip in the chair. My knee hit the table and pain coursed from my knees through my legs. It was good pain. It was pain that brought me back into existence and place. The room took shape around me, contours and outlines began to bounce around in my head. I was in a small room, sitting on a chair in front of an even smaller table. And in front of me was…a woman? A voice? A voice as still and calm as the darkness. Maybe even a voice for the darkness.

“She doesn’t look like you. Our daughter I mean. It’s so selfish and horrible to say, but you don’t know how happy I was as she grew older when I realized that she wouldn’t look like you. She doesn’t have your hair, or your eyes, or your smile. She looks mostly like my mother honestly. I was just so happy that I didn’t have to look at her and see you every single day for the rest of my life, have to live endlessly with that guilt. But then, look at me now, so overcome with grief on what should be such a happy evening that I am spending it trying to make some sort of reconciliation with you. So did I really win any sort of respite? You know that line in Heart of Darkness, the one about lies that you loved so much and inundated into my head—your mantra really—well I guess I kind of appropriated that from you and have tried to live by it. That is why I am doing this, to shed myself of the stench of death. This lie, this horrible lie, was by far the worst thing I have ever done to anyone, and with it a piece of me is certainly dead.

“I am talking in circles, I know, but I am still so scared to get to the core of it. I do want you to know that it really wasn’t your fault. I know it’s such a huge cliché but I mean it. You were simply in the wrong place at the very wrong time. I think…if it were now then we could have been so happy together. My problem was, I think, that I was too scared to really know myself back then. I wish I could understand where it started, at what point I became so scared of what was inside of me, of what was outside of me, of what comprised me, that I completely shut it all out. But when you came along, you forced it all in. You didn’t intend for it to happen, you simply didn’t know. I was so caught up in convincing you—and myself—that it was love, that I did anything I could to prove it. People are supposed to look back on all those special milestones, the first kiss, the first time you make love, as such wonderful experiences, but for me they were the beginning of my nightmares. That first kiss, oh how scared I was. You leaned in and closed your eyes, and it was such a light kiss, but the whole time my eyes were open, and I could feel my heart beating a thousand strokes a second. You forced me to take a small glimpse in the mirror, and I hated what I saw.”

The voice cracked and sobbed, just slightly, but enough to disturb the calm. With the sob came a feeling of unbearable weight being pressed down. Something shifted, something moved. Then I felt the table again, but it wasn’t me that moved. The table was pushed from the other end. I heard the floor scrape, the same sound from when she sat down before. She was still in front of me, I was not alone. I felt the table move again, and heat emanated from some object at its side, her hands? Why did I feel the heat, why did I feel the table move? I too was holding it, tightly. My muscles were unbelievably tense, but I was no longer in control; my grip would not let up. I was also hovering over it, my face must have been within mere inches of hers, but with each word I felt that distance grow by miles.

“You were so kind through it all. You were so patient with me, never pressuring me. You let me set the pace the whole time, but I was never all there, never really in control. I knew the day would come when you would want to push things forward, and in my fear I would let you. It was only a matter of time I guess, before things really began to fall apart.

“If a kiss was but a glimpse in the mirror…well can you imagine what that was like? It was like being shackled in front of the mirror, being forced to stare long and hard at a person that I slowly realized that I despised. I really did not like what I saw in front of me, and with each time it happened I sank deeper and deeper into my own darkness. Maybe if I could show you what it was I saw, what I can hardly describe, the horror…the horror. I only wonder, did you notice? I know in the heat of the moment you didn’t, when my flesh became clay in your arms as you folded and kneaded lumps that I feared touching. And when you pushed your warmth into me—those gasps and moans that escaped my mouth—I know you took those as signs of pleasure as you began to further dip into a frenzy, thrusting with more force. If you only knew that with each thrust I felt myself slipping further and further away, trying to remove myself from my body so that I didn’t have to suffer through those pains. My goodness...your love, my sufferance.

“And can you imagine my relief when that summer came. What was it…a year and a half at that point? And how many times did it happen? I guess maybe a dozen, right? A dozen instances of pure hell, and then relief with the coming summer. You kept making all these plans that you would visit me at home, but I knew it would never come to be. You were too busy in your home, and it was such a long and expensive trip. It was exactly the kind of break I needed to sort my head out. But I didn’t do it, not what I should have. I blamed you entirely for putting me in that place and knew that you had to be removed if I were to get better. But what a quandary that was. I so easily gave into your every whim. I was so timid and scared, and as frightening as every moment of intimacy may have been, you were really like a rock that I could lean on. Dammit, I must sound like such an idiot, calling you at once my rock and my hell. But this should tell you exactly what was going on in my head. And then, I got what I thought was the worst news of my life.

“The first time I took that pregnancy test I was in such a state of despair that I almost killed myself. I holed up in my room the entire day with a razor blade and a note expressing my deep regret and sorrow to you. I don’t have that note anymore; I tore it up after I calmed down. My mother…she hardly noticed. I guess that says something too. Not about her so much as myself. We have such a strong relationship now though. I know I used to complain to you about how little we got along and how much of a nuisance she was to me, but if it wasn’t for her, my baby wouldn’t be here. I thought that when I told her she would lose it, yell at me, call me a failure; she embraced me, told me it would be okay, that she would help me through it all. She was of course shocked. You don’t know this, but I never told her about you. She didn’t know I was dating, or in any way sexually active. When she asked me about the father, I froze; I told her…I told her that I didn’t know who it was. She was disturbed, and there was a bit of a lecture that followed about promiscuity and safe sex. In the face of all that was happening I was able to take it in stride. It was at that point that I knew our ties had been severed and that I would be able to rid myself of you. I know now though that that lie was not a lie to my mother, it was just the first part of the lie I fed to you.

“When I first mentioned abortion my mother refused to hear me out. She told me that a life is too beautiful to be denied a chance. She said that no matter what happened, if I couldn’t take care of the baby that she would until I was ready. When she said that I cried so much. I felt like the most horrible person at that moment. I so easily ridiculed her and put her down in my head and to others, and here she was opening up a door for me to escape from my biggest responsibility. And you…I was hoping, praying for you to react how I expected every other man who gets their young girlfriend “knocked up” to act, but you responded exactly like my mother. You were so supportive, so eager to help out. Then, just like that so unexpectedly, you told me we would get married, you said that we would do it right. When I told you that I was thinking about an abortion though, that’s when you went insane. I don’t even think you realized it when it happened, I think you meant to calmly explain to me that you were against abortion fully, but you outright told me you could not stand the presence of any human being capable of murdering a child, and that to you that was what abortion was. I quickly hung up the phone afterwards.”

I started to feel heavy. Everything began to invade my mind, the darkness, the room, the table and chair, this perpetual space in this small room, and that voice. It danced around the room and on the walls, bouncing between the table and other furniture before settling in my ears. The darkness was calling out to me and I felt myself succumbing to its sweet song. I disappeared deeper into it, back into the womb, or forward into...

“I went back to Conrad, I always did with you. I think I could only conceive of the relationship in terms of Heart of Darkness—or rather in my own terms of Heart of Darkness. That’s where it all started for me, and so I felt that there was where it would end. And for two weeks—two weeks of ignoring your calls as well as shutting myself away from my mother—I thought about all the sort of implications, as if my mind insisted that the book had implications, on our relationship. I began to imagine we were all part of the book. I thought perhaps I was Kurtz, and you were Marlowe and that the relationship was the trip down the river. But that didn’t sit well with me, so I thought maybe I was Marlowe, you were the river, and our relationship was Kurtz. And that seemed closer, but ultimately I decided that you were Marlowe, I was the boat, and our future baby was Kurtz. In any case it all spelled out doom. But how could any relationship conceived out of that book not spell out doom.

“What would you have done had you known that the next time we spoke would be the last time we spoke? Did you have any hint or clue as to that being the case? You must have, I heard a tinge of fear in your voice. We ended the previous conversation on such a dreary note, then to have all your calls and attempts to reach me completely ignored. I never listened to any of your voicemails or messages you sent me. I will never know whatever it is you said in that period of time. I wonder if it would have changed the course I took. I think that it wouldn’t have.”

There was nothing more for me at this point. I had become…nothing. I was smaller than a point on a map. I had bounced between existence and nonexistence, between this room and some incompreshensible space. I had nothing left but this voice to hang onto, the voice of my wife-to-be. For the last time I felt myself slip away and my…soul? consciousness? carried away by the sound.

“I assure you that when I called what ended up being said was not the intention, something just snapped in my head when you said, ‘Hello’. Maybe it was the way you said it, maybe it was because after so long it was with that word that you decided to answer the phone, whatever it was flipped a switch in my head and without any warning I blurted out, ‘I had the baby aborted.’ It was the only thing I was able to say in the entire conversation. It is the last memory of my voice you have, a memory of me telling you that I had murdered your child. Oh how you yelled, and ranted, and cursed. And my last memory of your voice, ‘I never want to see you ever again, you hear me!’ I was free.

“I was still scared though, scared that perhaps you thought you overreacted and may cool down after a while, but you didn’t. You held true to your wishes and never called. When I went back to school you made sure to avoid any places I may have been. I did make it easier for you though when I decided to withdraw, I had to at that point, I was pregnant and it was beginning to show, and I certainly didn’t want you to know. I consoled myself that as angry as you may be that it was all okay because the baby wasn’t dead, isn’t dead. She’s an amazing girl, incredibly smart, and funny, and just so willing to confront life—nothing like me growing up. But that doesn’t matter to you because in the end I really did kill her. To you she’s dead, and that is all that you can see. I can’t say that I’m sorry I lied, because that would be a lie (you’re probably thinking, ‘what a fine time to start telling the truth’), but I knew that for my sake, for my daughter’s sake, for my upcoming marriage’s sake, I had to at least acknowledge that lie, and wash myself clean of it, and everything it brought to me. I hope you understand. I don’t want your forgiveness, I don’t deserve it at all…I just really hope you understand.”

She finished and sat completely still, I don’t think she even took in a breath, too scared to disturb anything in the room. The silence was stifling, but it brought me back into reality. I sat trying to delve deeper into the story. Was she sending me a message? Was she even talking to me? I could feel her presence again, was she here the whole time, or did she bounce between the boundaries of existence and nonexistence, like I felt I did? I felt as though something had disturbed the very core of my being, maybe hers as well. Was it the story? Did it have any bearing on tomorrow? I hoped not, I really think she is happy with me. Still, I know something changed, something shifted, something was lost that could never again be found. A bomb was dropped somewhere in this hole of darkness but I could hardly feel its effects, too caught up in…

This story destroyed something in her, but I felt that may have been her purpose. The silence resounded again and again, the darkness blinding me, everything weighing down upon me. I had never felt such a sense of awkwardness before. People really do surprise the hell out of you.