Land of Afflictions

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For some, affliction is a badge. They have always worn it, affixed to lapel or strap. Their moans of pain could easily be mistaken for pleasure. Others make of themselves a house with different rooms. Here is my clawfoot tub, they say. Here is my bed. Here are my frozen legs or misshapen heart and they are here too, with the rest.

I am still figuring out the way I will cope here. I think I am acting as though I don’t have an affliction, which is how I’ve always acted. Sure, I’m here, but I’m not like the others. Possibly a mistake has been made. Look at my smile! Look at my glossy hair! Look at my legs, the grooves undulating between one healthy muscle and another as I walk!

Others have lost places and dreams and parts, children. They are strangely shaped and have scars on their backs.

My affliction is invisible, which is why I was able to stay away from here so long.

This is mine: I have a sick bird I carry in my chest. It is damp and does not sing. When it flaps its wet wings wildly I cannot pretend I don’t belong here. I cannot pretend anything. I can only hold my breath and the skin of my chest and wait until the flapping is over-the wind and thump the dank feathers make, the dander that coats my heart and lungs.

I don’t remember them finding me and bringing me here, but I’m told I was on the ground somewhere, coughing in a fog of gray dust.

Others here play along with me, that I am fine.

But the doctor does not play along.

Your eyes, she says. There is a gray bird in your eyes.

In my chest, I say.

One of her hands covers my heart.

Can I make it fly away? I ask her.

I don’t think so, she says.

Can I teach it to sing? I ask her.

Probably not.

I want her to take her heart-covering hand and reach down my throat and pull it out. Even if its wings choke me on the way. I want to see it fly away, free.

I hate to tell you this, she says, but the bird won’t fly away. The bird has to die.

This is terrible news. I am sure that if the bird dies, I will die with it. She is still looking in my eyes.

You have to kill it.

I imagine spears and daggers and bloody throats.

Not like that, she says.

I imagine kissing the doctor, her tongue full and warm in my mouth. I imagine her sucking the bird up and out with her breath. But she is staring in my eyes, so I stop, look away to the spines of her books.

Take these, she says, and retrieves a bottle of pills from her cabinet.

When her hand leaves my heart I feel only the drum of my pulse.

I take the pills and the bird lives. It still flaps its wings but more slowly.

Salt is kind of a big thing here. It is rubbed in wounds, used for baths. Mounds of it grace our tables at meals.

There is a specific time for every activity here. Walking time, eating time, doctor time, sleeping time. Then there is remembering time. I may not have mentioned this, but it is hot here. It is in the desert. And out beyond the garden of hardy plants the doctor tends, there is an expanse of dry earth and asphalt. A mile or so out there is a phone booth by the main road that leads away. When it is your time for remembering, you walk to the phone booth, close the door behind you, and pick up the shiny black phone. There is no sound or dial tone. You say your memories into the phone, as many as you can think of, and then hang up. Afterward, you wipe the sweat that’s collected on your face and drip it into a small bowl set outside the booth like an ashtray. By the end of the day, the bowl is usually full.

I wonder if the doctor is listening on the other end or if the line is just dead. I say a few things about her, things I think of at night when I can’t sleep like her antiseptic doctor smell and the peaks of her mouth.

I don’t remember when the bird arrived in my chest or how it got there. My memories are empty.

Others love remembering. They emerge from the booth refreshed, their sweat like buoyant seawater when they swab it into the bowl. Others prefer not to remember but they know it is good for them, at least at the approved time in the approved way the doctor has instructed. Others refuse to remember. They wait stiffly in their air-conditioned rooms.

I manage what I can about remembering what came before, the sick bird flapping violently until I am done. I feel more and more sorry for the bird when I’m in the booth. The sweat huddles at my lip like mold. On the way out I manage to dribble two or three drops into the bowl with the rest.

Are the pills working? the doctor asks.

They help, I say, unsmiling.

My hair is now drab. The muscles in my legs look wan.

Others have started to believe I belong here.

The doctor is staring in my eyes again.

The bird is still there, still sick, I say.

Yes, she says.

I tell her the pills don’t stop the bird from flapping, but they have stopped me from caring so much. I no longer hold my breath or the skin of my chest when it happens. I just sit still and wait until it’s over.

The doctor’s hands are on my knees. They are large, nails squared, skin smooth over thick ripples of green vein. They are the hands of someone who works with clay. I picture her hands tending her plants, marking files, driving home through the heat at the end of each day. I picture them distilling salt from water. The pills keep the thought of her hands climbing from my knees to my thighs from fully rising in my mind.

You’re stronger than you think, she says. Even if you can’t remember.

It is eating time. We are sitting at the heavy metal tables long enough for a kingdom.

I reach for a mound of salt, cup some to my mouth. Others stare at me. They use plastic spoons to retrieve their civilized pinches. I swallow and take another tangy handful. I take one after another. Saliva froths in my mouth and then pours from it. What looks like snow gushes onto the table. I swallow more handfuls, the crystals fierce chalk on my gagging tongue.

Others are stupefied above their bowls of soup and corn chips. I hear the word Heimlich. The doctor has been called. But I am already retching. It feels both wet and fuzzy on the lining of my passageways. It is a Nerf football in my mouth. And then it is on the table in a pool of slush. There is salt in its eyes and beak and feathers.

I am tired. The poor bird is so ugly. Now that it’s dead, I’m sure it is something to love.

The doctor is in the cafeteria now and I know I won’t be required to see her again, that I can leave. The empty space in my chest is a memory I will not forget.