Corner of the Dead

Chapter 2

[ 6 ] C H A P T E R 2 I A M S TA R I N G at the toast on my plate. The lightly browned texture reminds me of freckles. I carve a mouth by cutting a section from the middle, curve the empty space upwards to make a smile. After slicing two eyes I say out loud, Lulu is who you are, Lulu. Now I cannot eat her. The woman beside me moves away, taking her coffee, napkin and silverware. That was yesterday. I was on my way to work but never got there. It started after I dropped my daughter at school. I felt I was falling, that I could not stop but also could not land. This was when I pulled to the side of the road to see if I could put myself into some sort of order. I called the doctor. Meet me at the hospital at noon, she said. Sign in as a day patient. I imagine the hospital, a brick box with two small windows and many missing roof tiles. On the top floor, underneath a no-shingle part, the linoleum will be covered with rust-colored stains. Then I see it, a discolored mushroom rising from black tarry mud. Each day is like the one before. Slowly they introduce minute changes. [ 7 ] To teach us to manage uncertainty. I walk, but not to any one place and not for exercise. Up and around the hallway shaped like a box. When I have completed five boxes I spend as long as they let me just sitting. Beyond the grimy window, past the driveway across the highway, regular people are having lunch. A coworker is in line at the post office and the woman in the office next to mine makes a call home. I’m not hungry. Still I’m required to sit in the cafeteria with the others. The woman in the hairnet asks, what will it be? I pick based on color. Today it’s yellow. A hardboiled egg, butter and marmalade. In front of me is my plate of food. I move it around making designs. The way I conserve calories is to sit very still in front of the television but only if it is off. When they turn it on, I move my chair closer to the ping pong table. Then I shut my eyes and concentrate on the sound of the ball as it pings back and forth like the rain, the way I remember it sounding, in Perú. I am thinking I should not have gone back, not after what I saw the first time, but it was in the returning that I thought I could undo what had been done. So little had changed. Arye never left. Karl stayed until the end. I left midway. I am a coward. The rain seeped through our roof and dripped into the zigzag of pots we lined in a row. Karl says, your turn to empty. It has been twenty years since I have heard Karl’s voice but I haven’t forgotten it, or his posture, the way I would see him from our bedroom window, bent over the soil, pieces of corn [ 8 ] husk caught in the weave of his poncho. It is the end of the day and the air smells of burning eucalyptus, of fire and ash. I want to ask the doctors why the pain of remembering has not subsided. Outside the main office is a plaque that says this building was once a school. With my legs crossed and my eyes closed, I am able to imagine the children running through the corridors, their starched and ironed shirts untucked. When the doctors aren’t looking, I run my left hand along the back of my neck checking for cerebral fluid. I have never found any, which keeps me wondering how it might feel and what color it would be. Blue? But then it would be difficult to look at the sky. Garbage bins are aligned outside the window. Strewn on the ground are handwritten pages, empty pill containers, a torn hospital gown and a pink plastic tray from the dining hall. The handwritten pages in red ink spell the words that made the sentences scrawled on the stone walls outside our village. The crushed pill bottles are the remains of blown-up dynamite. The...