this imploding heart

The Hole (for Chloe)

The thing about it is this. One started out as a crack in the sidewalk. The other started out as an oversized pore. The average passer-by wouldn't have looked twice. The average passerby wouldn't have even noticed that something was going utterly and completely wrong in a way it had never ever gone wrong before. The average passerby is not this nervous.

Part One: How I noticed The First Hole.

I shower three times a day. Once in the morning, once after my afternoon meal, and once before bedtime. When I was a kid, we had a small but vicious infestation of bed bugs, and that particular itch has never quite gone away. I clip coupons from the Sunday edition to pay the water bill. These things are important.

I had eaten a tomato on white sandwich that afternoon with a pickle sliced lengthwise and a glass of prune juice. Perhaps you think young people don't actually drink prune juice. You are incorrect. I am twenty three. A very very nervous twenty three. So I unfolded my noontime towel, (I have three on the rack at all times and I use them for a week, one for each shower of the day. This way, they have a full 24 hours to dry.), stepped from the hallway carpeting, one big step to the bathmat (I don't like the feel of lineoleum on my feet.), and into the tub.

It was conveniently placed just above my left collarbone. As conveniently as an unexpected body chasm could be, I suppose, but at least it wasn't at the back of my thigh or near my elbow, which would have made me sick. Don't ask me why. I can't explain how it is with elbows. It was the size of a thumbprint on the back of a cheque at a foreign bank, and not at all unlike the gorge made by a melon baller I tried to avoid it's filling with soap, but was generally unsuccessful. It worried me.

Part Two: How I noticed the Second Hole.

Like I said, I'm a nervous person. If you see me walking around, you'll notice me looking down and mumbling to myself. I'm not crazy. I have a job that I perform well. I have normal social interactions. I went roller skating and swimming just like every other kid. I just have peculiar nerves, and I find it deeply satisfying to count the cracks in the sidewalk when I walk certain places (see: The corner market. The newsstand. My office. Jonah's Bagel and Coffee Shoppe.) So one evening, shortly after finding the first hole, I set off to the newsstand to pick up The Atlantic Monthly. When I get to crack number 184-which has always been one of my personal favorites, as it tends to sprout flowers and grass in the spring,- I find not a crack, but a gaping hole. A hole big enough to get your foot caught in. A hole big enough to cram a small mammal corpse in. A hole certainly created by psychopathic bank robbers as a place to hide guns and masks and booty and other terrifying things. Between this unsavory occasion and the particularly unsavory occasion of finding the hole in my body, I was feeling more than a bit unnerved. Downright cranky, in fact. How dare psychotic bank robbers dig a hole in my sidewalk and aliens drill a hole just above my left collarbone! This is an outrage!

I stood there for a moment, lacking any particular action to take. I looked at the holes. The holes did not respond. I shouted briefly at them. They again chose not to respond.

I was rather flustered at this point. No. I wouldn't call it flustered, I'd call it wild with grief. I don't know why, but it just seems like there are so few things I really had in control, and I was losing them one by one. I fell to my hands and knees and reached up with my right hand to touch the hole under my collarbone. A popsicle stick, cherry, from the looks of it, had stuck to my hand. This was even worse. I fell to a crosslegged position on the sidewalk and began to wail like a child. I peeled the stick from my hand and jabbed it into the sidewalk hole. Instead of the sound of earth or old cement or robber booty, it made the sound of poking a hole through paper. Just what I needed. More holes. I pulled the stick out and a great rectangle of paper was attached. It read:

This is the mouth of the city cracked open to tell you something.

You're missing everything.

As far as the hole in your shoulder goes, we don't know. Maybe you should ask it.

Also, you love Chinese food.

I wiped my eyes with my sticky, sticky palms and re read the paper. There it was, clear as day. Unsure of what to do, I picked up the popsicle stick and jabbed the hole in my collarbone. Again, out came a piece of paper, much smaller than the other, but still legible.

You haven't danced in years.

I began to eat the rectangles of paper as though I hadn't eaten in days. They were pasty and sweet. When I had finished, I stood up, did a pirouette, caught my toe and broke my ankle in the mouth of the city.

It was the best I'd ever felt

Posted by Sonya at July 15, 2003 09:40 AM