An Account of Being Inhaled

            And so, we walked together, off the skinny dirt path and into thick, green brush. It was humid in there. Sticky. There was life there. All around. Moss started creeping up my legs if I didn’t walk fast enough and little, blue moths kept landing on my eyelids when I blinked. I lived too slowly for this forest.

            She walked in front of me, chopping down the wild, ever-growing-twisting-creeping brush. I stayed close to her and when I looked over my shoulder, I saw the forest becoming dense again behind us. It was like one of those mythical creatures whose heads, when hacked off by a prince’s sword, would be replaced quickly by two more heads. Then two more. And two more. How would he ever conquer it?

            Her dress had belt loops and I held onto one of them with my hooked index finger. She had taken her brown, leather belt off in order to fashion a sort of headband out of it.

            “Keeps the mess out,” she had said. The mess? Out of what? Everything about her was confusing and vague, like a leaf caught in the breeze—twisting and falling, and suddenly rising above you without warning. Eventually she would spiral to the ground, right? What goes up must come down. Right?

            I hated her. She tricked me. How? How did she make me love her? She walked barefoot and I wore shoes, that’s how. She wore white and I black, that’s how. She could fend off the rain with one look. Once, she even ate a butterfly. She just grabbed it out of the sky, opened her palm, and popped it in her mouth, as someone would a pill. Then she licked the shiny, yellow dust from the sweet, salty middle of her palm. And I hated her for making me love her.

            I was so tired. I must stop, I must stop, I thought. But I knew that we couldn’t. I would be devoured by ivy if I sat even for a moment. I had dropped my pen a while back and had walked backwards, watching as it became covered in moss. Then little, pink flowers had grown out of the skinny, green lump. I had stolen that pen from my friend’s father’s office when I was young. Now I felt as if the forest was taking it back, teaching me a lesson.

            Her dress was cotton, but strong, new. I could tell. White cotton. She had a little pocket over her heart, like a man’s shirt has, and she kept a handkerchief in it that looked like a map when you folded it out on a dusty, wooden table. What was it a map of? I forget. Somewhere with water. An ocean? A lake? There were yellow stars for capitals and black dots for cities. Every once in a while, she took it out and rubbed the sweat off her forehead with it. But with her right hand, she never stopped hacking at the dense forest in front of us. Isn’t your arm tired? I dared not ask.

            She told me she would whistle if she sensed danger, or if she simply felt happy and was in the mood to whistle. I would hear her chirp out one little note and I would become terrified, so cold in that hot hot place. But nothing ever happened. Why does she wish to torment me? Sometimes she even turned around and smiled at me. That big, rectangular smile with so many teeth. Glistening teeth. White and shiny with saliva. Like animal teeth. Like the teeth of a kitten when it bites your hand and you let it because it is too weak to really hurt you. But it might. It might hurt you. It might be stronger than it looks. But it tricks you with its charm and delicate features. And when it does bite you, hard, you find yourself cursing yourself for trusting it, more than the kitty for biting you. My head spun when she looked at me like that. As it does today when I think of it. She made me love her. I am innocent.

            Suddenly, she stopped. I bumped into her back. I whispered a sort of mumbled apology, but she didn’t hear it. Either that or she ignored it. I looked around. We were standing within a huge, circular clearing. There was a red string that circled all around the perimeter. For some reason, I felt safe within this red circle. As if the selfish, ever-expanding forest respected this place. She turned to me and sighed. Her shoulders went up and down, dramatically. She shook her head. But she smiled a small smile. There was pity in it, and shame, but at least it was a smile.

            She then walked over to a big, metal tub, steaming with hot water. She began to undress. And then to bathe herself. I was overcome by embarrassment. I tried to find other things to stare at. A ladybug on my shoe, a big cloud in the sky. But it was hopeless. I was the moth and she the flame. I wanted to go—I needed to, for my own safety. But there was something glowing and magnetic about her. And also something very earthy and stable. How could she be so many things at once, and yet be so simple? She was water, and fire. She was invisible, and yet, you couldn’t miss her. She was wings, she was breath. She was everything and yet, she was just herself. She had secrets and she was honest. She was laughter and sudden bursts of light. She was so frightening, yet so comforting. She was lonely, but needed no one. She was color and simply black and white. She was as quick as a wink, a clap, but she was also slow, like an underwater dream.

            I was forgotten because of her, but I thrived off of her. I was sand next to her. I was a jagged fingernail. I was a cold wind, a whimper in the dark. I was a desperate wish. I was a hand reaching out as the body connected to it fell into an emptiness. I was the emptiness.

            “Do you want coffee or tea?” she said. She was dressed and drying her hair with a cream-colored towel. We walked into a tiny cottage (that somehow I had not seen when we had first arrived). There was already a fire going in the stove and a kettle about to whistle. How long had I been lost in thought?

            “Tea. Please,” I whispered.

            We spent the rest of the afternoon drinking tea from wooden cups. All I could sense was the soft, smoky wood of the cup. I couldn’t even taste the steaming mixture of dried roses and lemon rind within it. Was there a mint leaf? I can’t recall.

            I sat on a big, white cushion on the floor. She was above me, preparing things in wooden bowls and copper pots. Sometimes she hummed to herself (she sounded like a wolf howling, or a whale singing, far away). I would suddenly hear something popping and frying in the pan. The little room got warmer as she cooked.

            “Are you here to erase me?” she said, finally.

            I couldn’t think of the right words. The right answer. What does she mean? Is this a trick? A riddle? What was the question again?

            “That is absurd. You are inerasable. I would be a fool to try that.”

            She laughed, loud. She threw her head back and tossed her arms in the air. When she finally calmed down, she was bent over at her middle. She did not stand up, but looked straight at me.

            “I never said you weren’t a fool.”

I hung my head. It was like always. She found my compliments silly. She could snatch my weaknesses out of every sentence I spoke and throw them back in my face.

She spoke so smooth, like pink fondant melting over a tiny cake in a bakery window. She oozed and you stood by the window and fogged up the glass. You gave up. She was too sweet for you anyway. She’d spoil your dinner.

            Then, suddenly, she would laugh with a cackle. Sharp and quick like glass breaking and lips parting. She was unexpected. Inerasable.

            And I was somewhere else completely. I bored myself, I was so predictable. I ordered chicken broth at every restaurant. I had water without ice to drink. The only times I had tea were with her—and that was not very often.

            I looked around the little house. There was the room I was in (a kitchen and a space with pillows on the floor for eating) and the room in the back. The door to that room was open and I could see a canopy bed with a red canopy and white bedspread. The canopy shivered. There was a breeze through the house. I turned around and the front door was open. I looked around the kitchen and she was gone.

            “Damn,” I whispered. I had lost her again.

            And then, she appeared. Like the sun from behind a cloud. Or like a cloud moving in front of the sun. She carried a bucket of dirt in one hand, a bucket of water in the other, and, on the ground in front of her, she kicked a bucket of cut grass through the front door. She had changed clothes and was now wearing tailored khaki pants and a white blouse. She was still barefoot.

            That night we drank. For two hours she brewed the ingredients she had carried in. She added nothing. Not a drop of alcohol or ancient spice. But by the time night fell, I felt as if I had been somehow snuck a bottle of rum. Her brew tasted like Sunday morning lawn mowing at home and summer cartwheels down hills. Like soccer in the rain. It tasted like the smell of my skin—earthy and starchy.

I staggered. She sang. I remember being on the floor. I saw her above me, glowing and doubled. There was the real-her and the ghost-her. The ghost-her stood on her left and copied everything she did. The real-her talked and moved her hands. The ghost-her did also. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I heard music from somewhere else. Was there a radio on? Did she own a radio?

            Then I was outside. I was so hot. Cats at my feet, rubbing my legs, begging for attention. They were white. I couldn’t find the words to shoo them away. They were making it very hard for me to balance. Then they were black. No, still white.

My hands! I stared at my hands as they grew bigger and then shrank. I hid them in my pockets.

Then I saw it. In the distance, beyond the red circle of string, was the ghost-her. She was standing alone. She was a shadow of a person. A blurry photograph. A bent reflection in the back of a spoon. She blew me a kiss. I blew her one back. Where was my ghost-self? Had it escaped too?

And then I awoke. It was morning. I was on the wooden floor of the kitchen, where I had started. There was a rooster crowing on the window sill. I threw my watch at it and it flapped away.

This time, she was really gone. But then, a speck of hope! A small, blue and white toy boat on the floor next to me. A clue. A piece of her puzzle.

            I got up, wiped off my pants, and yawned. I felt wonderful. Not a hint of a hangover! I had been drunk, hadn’t I? I had been in a strange alcoholic stupor, right? A dream.

I walked outside. I carried the little toy boat in my left hand. I held my hand flat, palm skyward, at about the level of my heart, as if I was ready to offer it to someone as some sort of gift, or explanation. I saw the path from which we had come. But there was another too. If our original path had occurred on the red string circle at twelve o’clock, the new path occurred at four. I decided to take it. I had some sort of unfamiliar new vigor inside of me. A confidence I was not used to. I let it lead me. I trusted it, as I did her. They were very similar, really.

            This path was marked on each side by parallel lines of red yarn. I had no reason to worry about the all-encompassing brush. I was protected. She had chosen to protect me. But she had also chosen to leave me. Why was she such a wandering soul? Why was she so restless inside every decision she ever made?

            I walked from that moment until sundown. I never slowed. I never put my hand down. Isn’t your arm tired? I dared not ask.

            And just as I thought I would not be able to continue, simply due to lack of light alone, the path ended and I was standing in sand. I was on the beach. The woods were behind me. Everything was behind me. And then I saw it.

            A boat. Blue and white. It was maybe a thousand feet away, and moving farther every second. As always, I had been too slow, taken too long. My decisions had not been quick enough. My confidence not strong enough. I could smell her perfume in the air. Coconut and carrot. Did she make it herself? Or did she buy it long ago, in some ancient Roman port city, before any of us were alive?

            I shook my head, stared at my feet, and then at the boat, now almost impossible to see. I smiled to myself and shook my head some more. Just like it always happened, I had no choice but to go home and wait until she erupted again, like a volcano from the depths of the ocean. Wait for her to strike me like lightning. And I would wait. This I had vowed long ago.