Part VI: Time Warp – Another (Chapter 99)
Oh, please, no, don’t make me do this, I just can’t, I’ll just die, please, God, just do it yourself, this is your decision, not mine, you’re such a fucking coward, you’d ask me to do this awful thing because you don’t have the guts to do it yourself, well, I don’t have the stomach, either. You’re a goddam, worthless human being, who doesn’t deserve her, you’re a selfish bitch, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you. I wish you’d die, and then I’d call Ma, and she’d take care of everything.
– A snippet of yellowed paper, typewritten,
found stashed within a packet of old letters from Uncle Charles’ Treasure Chest,
discovered years after the June 23, 1990, family reunion
I first become aware.
Yes,
more than half my life passing without knowing.
The
first memory of fat consciousness revisited, reflecting edited facts of our
lives.
Even
if the memory itself is false, I must wrestle with it, raise it to the surface.
That
moment when a blob of fat jiggles into memory, unblocking Jungian canals of
prehistory, a mirror image appears, a reflection with physicality: bone, blood,
skin – fat.
Fat-consciousness
mirrored.
Entities
in and of themselves.
We
pop from nothingness to wiggling amoebas to sudden human beings sitting on atop
a horse…
Merry-go-round.
We
face each other, I, facing the front of the horse, she, the back, our knees
touching, our feet wiggling, toes touching.
Giggles
and shrieks filling the air.
Then
a vacuum, vast and black.
Nothingness.
A
whoosh.
Our
collective breath catching us, as if someone has jumped from behind and
frightened us into existence.
Now, what?
Colors,
sounds, smells, touch, and taste flooding our bodies. Feelings – wild and
random and terrifying, like a sea of voices screaming in tongues, pushing us
under.
We can’t breathe!
Then,
something – someone? – moving through the canals of our brains – organizing,
filing, and deleting.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...AIR! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh...!
Not
dizzy as the merry-go-round spins around and around and around and our horse
pumping up and down, like a wave ebbing and flowing and ebbing and flowing...
Carousel
music!
David
Rose’s “The Stripper.”
Yes,
we’re quite sure of the Da-Da-Dah, DAH, Dah, Da, da!
Though
we can’t know this yet.
But
memory edits what it knows.
Around
and around and around we go…
Something
comfortable, two huge pink amoebas with red hair and three jiggling chins,
laugh, leap onto the carousel, each latching onto a pole, and hopping
side-saddle onto side-by-side horned horses. The platform sags and groans, but,
still, we keep whirling around and around and around, these new presences
singing from the depth of their guts, their words grooving into memory…
“You
can’t love me, I’m big and fat times two.”
The
amoebas climb off the horse and leap from the platform, disappearing beyond.
Where are you?
The
merry-go-round stationary: the rest of the world spinning out of control, a
spin-art menagerie of people, tents, balloons, vivid colors curving around and
around, enfolding us.
More
color!
The
blur confusing, our world here, not yet ready for the beyond.
We will find them, our amoebas, someday…
Barely
having language, but one word:
Why?
The
awe of touching our own cheeks and feeling something elastic, something soft
and warm, something giving way gently to our fingers, something mirroring our
touch. Simultaneously, we reach for the other’s cheek – the touch somehow the
same, yet different – I feel what she feels, but it’s different, more of an
awareness arising from a knowing, not
from neurons within the fingertips. Our blood co-mingles, links – for a split
microsecond and yet for an eternity – by one umbilical cord, our bodies
conjoined at important junctures: our hearts, our lips, our minds.
What is it?
Our
legs. Other warm elastic surfaces: we touch our legs, now seeing, for an
instant, white circles, pink giving way to our fingers.
Then
the folds in our legs, just below our thighs.
Curiosities,
places where we can poke our fingers, places where the skin holds the tips of
our fingers.
Captive.
We
like these places, they’re real, somewhere we can hold onto.
No
pinching and hurting.
Our
comfortable spots.
And
then we notice other surfaces, unlike the pink one: our sun suits.
The
matching suits, yellow with brown and purple dots, balloon at our bellies. We
pat them, but they’re different; indifferent, rough, flimsy, cool, not
mirroring our touch – no us on us.
Yet,
a part of us – they too have folds like the ones in our legs.
Very puzzling.
What about the horse?
Is this us?
What is us,
anyway?
We
touch the creases in its head.
We
recoil. Inelastic, cold, hard, uncomfortable.
Not us.
Otherness.
Some
things don’t feel back, existing otherly…
We’re afraid!
Something
familiar sitting in a sidecar next to our horse, its hands in its lap…
Who are you?
She
wears powder blue, her brown hair blowing in the wind, like dandelion fluff.
We
stare at her.
One
other in an ocean of otherness.
An
other who might stand up and walk away from us.
We
cry.
She
coos something to us; we feel a little better, but still…
Still
a vague fear she’ll leave us on the horse – no memory of getting on –
We don’t know how to get off!
Mother?
Not
Mother.
Who are you?
A
glimmer. A flash.
We know…
Memory takes a turn, morphing into nightmare.
No
soothing sounds:
The
other, crying, leaps from the sidecar, cutting the silver cord binding us.
Rips
away other me.
Jumps
off the merry-go-round.
Please don’t leave me!
The
horse pumps up and down, the merry-go-round carrying me far away and then
returning to the beginning, back to my other.
She
squeezes other me close, kisses her head, holds her out, up, hesitates –
Launches
her into the air.
Sobs.
Samantha!
Divided
umbilical cord, split bone, blood, skin, fat explode into spin-art of heart,
brain, lungs, liver, bladder, kidneys, pancreas shooting like space debris
destined for the stars.
Dead, dead, dead, DEAD?
Who
is she, this other, this not-quite stranger who split me apart?
This
other grabs me from the horse, holds me, her tears dripping into my hair.
I
await being hurled into the cosmos.
Instead,
she whispers into my ear, “I’m sorry,” her breath hot and intoxicating, sweet
like grapes, sour like vinegar.
For
an eternity, other me hurtles through the universe, around and around and
around and around, dual-consciousness coursing through prehistorical
tributaries, my other half once a certainty, now just a pinpoint speck, soon to
be fading memory.
“I’m
not going to hurt you,” she says, squeezing me to her breast. “I promise.”
I
hear the thump, thump, thump, thumping of her heart, a rhythm old and familiar.
It
beats fast and terrified.
The
other self disappears into a continuum of humanity, receding into a dark corner
of my psyche.
I
wrap my arms around my other’s neck.
For
an instant, I consider squeezing my forearms, tight like a vise, stilling
forever the drum beat of her carotid artery, but…
I
forget why I should...
A
veil of unknowing – a down quilt on a crystal January night.
“It’s
okay, Sammy.”
Sammy?
Where
do I know that name?
So
strange.
Now
safe, I want to know more about this other otherness, to know why I am.
For
now, I’m warm and comforted.
Sleepy,
secure, content.
Stomach
filled with milk, memory disappearing into an elixir of honeyed oblivion.
Unknowing.
A piece of me, dead.
A
secret.
That is, until far into the future –