The sense of nothing

The soursop sitting on the counter has started to turn brown. The skin is prickly in my hand, the brown spots like cowhide covering the green. Underneath the soursop sat a worm. A worm on top of the kitchen towel mats felt jarring. It’s not supposed to be there. A worm in the kitchen. A worm in the kitchen. There was a lizard in our bedroom this week and now there is a worm in the kitchen. There is a rooster, two of them, that have found their way up the hill and have chosen our yard to do the daily wake up call. My body reacts to the roosters crows as if I’ve been thrown into a freezing lake. My heart races. My mind tries to remember if I’m at home and if so, which home. Everything is upside down when the rooster crows. I told my husband that there was a worm on the soursop, that it might be rotten inside. He told me to toss it down the hill. I opened the front door, the soursop weighing down my palm, my arm preparing to throw the first pitch.

I used to play softball. I would throw the ball as far as I could, as hard as I could. My softball glove molded to my hand. My fingers were always sweaty whenever I removed the glove as if my body had begun to fuse with the object. I carried the red dirt from the field into my parent’s car, into our home, into my room. Tiny red altars of dirt gathering in the corners. Softball was one of my first glimpses at life outside of my family of six. It was all mine. If I remember correctly I was in seventh grade when I started playing softball. The team was called The Thunder. My coach always placed me in the outfield which was a mistake of course but he didn’t know that I tended to let my mind wander. That I was afraid to catch the ball because attempting to catch the ball also meant that I might miss the ball and if I missed then everyone would be upset with me. I understood how emotions could change the air from a young age so I practiced being smaller. I shrunk myself into books and then curled myself into a ball. I melted myself into the walls of school and looked down when people passed me. When puberty came, I became one of the tallest girl in my class. I hung my head low. I slid down in my desk like the boys did in class. I mimicked the popular girls who were always staring at themselves in the mirror, mouth open into an o-shape putting on lipstick. I was a quiet child, that’s what everyone said about me. Quiet. However, my brain was running 100 mph. I had all these thoughts and feelings but everyone kept talking. I wondered when it would be my turn to talk. Once people label you as a “good listener” it’s never your turn to speak ever again. So I slouched and barely spoke. During softball, I met a girl who stayed my friend all the way until we graduated high school. We talked like two horses running through a meadow. There was always more to talk about, to laugh about. She would make mixed CDs for me of songs I wasn’t allowed to listen to. We became good at softball and ended up joining the special team that got to travel to the Netherlands for games. We shared countless beds and road trip snacks. We both decided we loved rock music and decided to be punk which was okay because we weren’t popular and we could be anything we wanted to be. I would unwrap my permed hair in the morning and comb it so it I would look like Pete Wentz’s. I bought studded belts and skate clothes and my mom asked why I didn’t wear more girly clothes. We both ended up working at a banquet hall during high school with people that were in their 20s and 30s. Our boss gave us little cups of champagne whenever we worked the brunch shift. The older people we worked with told us stories about going out to the clubs and debated about the best way to cure a hangover. They were always hungover. My boss made me stand up straight, “You slouch darling, please stand up. The guest cannot see you withering like this, so young and scared. It’s just dinner service, it will be over soon. It always passes.” Whenever we had to set up for a party, the maintenance guy Rickey, would plug in his iPod and blast music through the whole building. We would all dance and push each other around in the shopping carts full of the warm perfectly starched linen. We spent hours polishing baskets of silverware. Setting the tables with a salad fork, dinner fork, soup spoon, dessert spoon and on and on. I felt like life was endless in that building. I held my friend’s hand as we ran down the hallway singing, our other hand full of money from all the tips we made, our backpacks and softball bags bouncing behind us.

I threw the soursop and it exploded against the pomegranate tree. The white flesh hangs like a ghost in the branches. The pomegranate tree won’t bear fruit this year, it has an infection of some sort and our landlord keeps forgetting to treat it. The tree will bear moldy fruit and fall to the ground like a burgundy rock. The worms, ants, lizards, and chickens will eat the flesh that hangs on the branches. The worm crawls around the drain for a little bit before it inches down into the shadows of the sink. Life always returns from where it starts.

T ❤

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