Fortress

The Shulamite Girl

The Shulamite Girl Return, return, O Shulamite, return that we may look upon thee. —Solomon's Song The doctor with Lake Tahoe in his eyes has charts of an outlined, white-space man whose colored meridians strike his insides like the arrows of St. Sebastian. The large, cement-gray-suited woman who has driven with her son from Sacramento sits before the doctor and says she's the wife of Solomon. "I am the Shulamite Girl/' she says. 'And not only that," lifting her voice like a tin cup, "I know for a fact I am the bride of Christ." The doctor shifts his clipboard to the other knee. His pale assistant shoots some liquid into other liquid with a hypodermic, trying not to listen. "Twenty-four yearsago," the Shulamite Girl goes on, "they locked me in a little cell. No one came except myson. When I got out after a year with those crazy people, I told them I was still the Shulamite Girl and they locked me up again." The doctor has a mind like the wood floor. Her voice makes sharp, irritating sounds upon it. After a few more sentences he focuses behind her: the hundred little cloudy amber vials surrounding them like well-wishers, 5 the rolltop desk heaped with disheveled files of other schizophrenics; he watches a private plane scrape the green hills like a razor, his eyes wander to the charts, the mauve drapes— there is no remedy for the Shulamite Girl. You hover at the brink of nonexistence with your soul-destroying love, recalling the trees of frankincense, the poetry of spices: saffron, myrrh, and cinnamon; and after you've cross-referenced everything— mandrakes and the names of cities— you're still in the service of some abstract king and you say of yourself, I am a wall, knowing that even wrong dreams might bear some benefits; as he has two armies, you have the aquamarine canopy of your belief. 6 ...