Mlle Hazelwood (Home)

‘One who cleaves.’ The definition of the word ‘cleave’ is two-fold and contradictory: to cleave means both to split apart and to adhere. Perhaps one is not possible without the other. Perhaps we need to break open before anything can enter us. Or maybe we have to split apart that to which we cling fast.

Note the jutting hip bones. The high cheekbones. Collarbone swooping to her shoulders. Eyes, almost too large for her face. These, she hopes, are the beginnings of beauty, though boys sometimes still bark at her (actually bark!) when she enters a classroom. What a dog, they snicker behind their hands. She keeps her head up, her chin jutted out, her gaze insistently forward, though tears smart in the corners of her eyes. Acne blares on her cheeks and her chin, furious red cysts, a smattering of whiteheads across her nose. Her hair, only an hour into the day, already an oily smear across her forehead. Braces, glasses: the whole catastrophe. A dog. She had a dog named Sheba, a Great Dane, her coat sleek and brindled, the most beautiful creature on the planet. The boys whimper and yowl until the teacher, exasperated, finally tells them to shut up. The teacher says nothing to her, keeps his gaze turned away. No one, not even the girls who eat lunch with her on the playground, will meet her eye.

It’s not just the animal body I want, the mathematics of sex, the coupling; I want another heart, an extra one, a contrabassoon to echo my everyday pulse. It’s not my imagination. I hear it there, beating inside me. My bones pop and creak in their sockets.

As I dangle the dry sheets over the Laundromat’s metal table, I realize that I’ve never really dated before. I’ve always been transparent: approach me and you see inside. Touch me and I will open, like a door made of rice paper, light and careless. It’s difficult to remember the beginnings of things; was there always this dithering back and forth, this wondering, this not-knowing?
…
Now I have to weigh everything: to call or not to call. To wait three days, five days, six. To ask everyone who might know him for information, to take this information and form a strategic plan. I shave my legs and my underarms, I make an appointment for a haircut, a manicure, all of which will make no difference if nothing is bound to happen. I don’t know if anything will happen, but I plan for it anyway. I think about condoms, and blush, and wonder if he will buy any, wonder where they are in the store, how much they cost these days. I wonder about the weight of a man’s hands on my shoulders, on my hair.

Writing has always—and always will, I’m sure—scared the hell out of me. I’ll do just about anything to get out of it, and have been known to spend whole afternoons circling my desk like a dog, wary, unwilling to commit to writing a single word. What is so frightening about it? I still don’t know. Perhaps it’s the horrible knowledge that no matter how well you write, the resultant product will never correlate exactly to the truth, will never arrive with quite the melodious voice you hear in the acoustic cavity of your mind.