Man V. Nature: Stories
For my mom
They let me tend to my husband's burial and settle his affairs, which means that for a few days I get to stay in my house, pretend he is away on business while I stand in the closet and smell his clothes. I cook dinners for two and throw the rest away, or overeat, depending on my mood. I make a time capsule of pictures I won't be allowed to keep. I bury it in the yard for a new family to discover.
But once that work is done, the Placement Team orders me to pack two bags of essentials, good for any climate. They take the keys to our house, our car. A crew will come in, price it all, and a sale will be advertised; all the neighbors will come. I won't be here for any of this, but I've seen it happen to others. The money will go into my dowry, and then someday, hopefully, another man will marry me.
I have a good shot at getting chosen, since I'm a good decorator and we have some pretty nice stuff to sell off and so my dowry will likely be enticing. And the car is pretty new, and in the last year I was the only one who could drive it and I kept it clean. It's a nice car with leather seats and lots of extras. It was my husband's promotion gift to himself, though he drove it for only a few months before illness swept him into his bed. It's also a big family car, which will appeal to the neighbors, who all have big families. We hadn't started our own yet. We were fretting over money, being practical. I'm lucky we didn't. Burdened women are more difficult to place, I'm told. They separate mothers from children. I've heard it can be very hard on everyone. The children are like phantom limbs that ache on a mother's body. I wouldn't know, but I'm good at imagining.
They drive me away from our house, and I see all the leaves that fell while I was too busy burying my husband and worrying what would become of me. The leaves, glossy and red, pile in circles around the tree trunks like Christmas-tree skirts. I see the rake propped against the rainspout. The least I could have done is rake the yard one last time. I told my husband I would.
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I am taken to a women's shelter on a road that leads out to the interstate. They don't let us go beyond the compound's fence, because the land is ragged and wild. The night skies are overwhelmed with stars, and animals howl far off. Sometimes hiding men ambush the women scurrying from the bus to the gate, and the guards, women themselves, don't always intervene. Sometimes they even help. As with all things, there is a black market for left-behind women, most often widowed, though in rare cases irreconcilable differences can land one in a shelter. A men's shelter is across the road. It is smaller, and mainly for widowers who are poor or who cannot look after themselves. My father ended up in one of these shelters in Florida. A wealthy woman who had put her career first chose him. Older now, she wanted a mate. They sent him to her, somewhere in Texas. I lost track of him. The nearest children's shelter is in a different county.
My room has a sealed window that faces the road, and when I turn off my light I can see men like black stars in their bright rooms. I watch them move in their small spaces. I wonder what my new husband will be like.
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There are so many handouts and packets. We have been given schedules and rules and also suggestions for improving our lives and looks. It's like a spa facility on lockdown. We are encouraged to take cooking classes, sewing classes, knitting classes, gardening classes, conceiving classes, body-bounce-back-from-pregnancy classes, child-rearing classes, feminine-assertiveness classes, jogging classes, nutrition classes, home economics. There are bedroom-technique potlucks and mandatory “Moving On” seminars.
In my first “Moving On for Widows” seminar we are given a manual of helpful exercises and visualizations. For one, I'm to remember seeing my husband for the first timeâwe met at a new hires lunchâand then imagine the moment happening differently. So, for example, rather than sitting next to him and knocking his water onto his welcome packet, I should visualize walking right by him and sitting alone. Or, if I let myself sit down and spill his water, instead of him laughing and our hands tangling in the nervous cleanup, I should picture him yelling at me for my clumsiness. I'm supposed to pretend our wedding day was lonely and that rather than feeling love and happiness, I felt doubt, dread. It's all very hard.
But, they say, it's helpful in getting placed. What I find funny is that since my husband diedâas he was dying, reallyâI hadn't considered that this might be hard. I thought it was just the next step. My Case Manager says that this is normal, and that the feeling of detachment comes from shock. She says that if I can hold on to it and skip over the bewildering grief that follows, I'll be better off. The grief-stricken spend more time here. Years, in some cases. “Practice, practice, practice,” she always says.
We're each given a framed picture of a man, some model, and I take it back to my cell and put it by my bed as instructed. I'm supposed to replace my husband's face in my memory with this man's face while being careful not to get too attached; the man in the photo won't be my new husband. The man is too smooth; his teeth are very straight and white, and there is a glistening in his hair from gel that has hardened. I can tell he probably uses a brand of soap I would hate the smell of. He looks as though he doesn't need to shave every day. My husband had a beard. But, I remind myself, that doesn't matter now. What I prefer is no longer of concern.
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We are allowed outside for an hour each day, into a fenced pen off the north wing. It is full of plastic lawn chairs, and the women who have been here awhile push to get chairs in the sun. They undress down to their underwear and work on their tans. Other women beeline to an aerobics class in the far corner. The fences are topped with barbed wire. Guards sit in booths and observe. So far I've just walked inside the perimeter and looked through the chain link. The land beyond is razed save for the occasional stubborn stump. Weeds and thorny bushes grow everywhere. This is a newer facility. Decades from now, perhaps young trees will shade it, which, I think, would make it cozier. Far off, the forest is visible; a shaky line of green from the swaying trees. Though coyotes prowl the barren tract, it is the forest that, to me, seems most menacing. It is so unknown.
On my walks I often must step around a huddle of women from another floor (the floors mostly keep together, socially); they form a human shield around a woman on her knees. She is digging into the ground with a serving spoon from the cafeteria. It is bent, almost folded, but still she scrapes at the pebbly soil. There are runners who try to escape at night. They think they will fare better on their own. I don't think I could do it. I'm too domestic for that kind of thing.
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Four weeks in, and I have gotten to be friends with the women on my floor. It turns out we're all bakers. Just a hobby. Each night one of us whips up some cookie or cake from memory, or from a recipe found in the old women's magazines lying around the compound, and we sample it, drink tea, chat. It is lovely to be with women. In many ways, this is a humane shelter. We are women with very little to do and no certain future. Aside from the daily work of bettering ourselves, we are mostly left alone. I like the women on my floor. They are down-to-earth, calm, not particularly jealous. I suspect we are lucky. I've heard fights in the night on other floors. Solitary, in the basement, is always full. As is the infirmary. A woman on the fifth floor who had just been chosen was attacked while she slept. Slashed across the cheek with a razor blade. The story goes that when the Placement Team contacted the husband-to-be with the news, he rejected her. There she was, all packed and about to begin a new life. When she returned from the infirmary with tidy stitches to minimize the scarring, she crawled into that same bed where her blood still stained the sheets. If she had been on our floor, I would have changed the sheets for her. And I know the others would have too. That's what I mean about feeling lucky.
Last week, our girl Marybeth was chosen and sent to a farm near Spokane. We made her a care package; we wrote out recipes on index cards for the treats we'd baked together so she could always remember her time here if she chose to. When we handed it to her, she cried. “I'm not ready,” she whimpered. “I still miss him.” A couple of us encouraged her, “Just do your best.” We stood in a circle embracing, and Marybeth did not want to let go. Eventually the guard led her away; we could hear her trying to catch her breath until the elevator doors closed.
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A window has blinked to life across the road. A man is awake, like me. He pads around his small room in pajamasâthe same as ours, hospital blue. I want to be seen, so I stand in my window. He sees me, steps to his window, and offers a quiet wave. I wave back. We are opposing floats in a parade.
If we had been poor and I had died, my husband would be over there now, waiting for someone to want him. How strange to worry about being wanted, when we had been wanted by each other so confidently. Most people reach the age of exemption before their partner dies and they are allowed to simply live alone. Who would want them, anyway? Ideally, you marry the man you love and get to stay with him forever, through everything you can think to put each other through, because you chose to go through it together.
But I had not prepared for this. Had he? Had my husband kept some part of himself separate so he could give it to someone else if he needed to? Was it possible I had managed to withhold something of myself without even realizing it? I hoped so.
I look around my small cinder-block room, painted a halfhearted pink, the desk too large for the unread library book on it. I had a picture of us hidden under my mattress. It was one of those pictures couples take when they are alone in a special place, at a moment they want to remember. We smooshed our heads together and my husband held the camera out and snapped the picture. We look distorted, ecstatic. One night, I fell asleep while looking at it; it dropped to the floor, was found at wake-up, and was confiscated. I still can't believe I was so careless.
In bed, I imagine my husband lying beside me, warming the rubber-coated mattress, beneath the thin sheet so many women have slept under before me. My scalp tingles as I think of him scratching it. We rub feet. Then I have to picture him dissolving into the air like in a science-fiction movie, vaporized to another planet, grainy, muted, then gone. The sheet holds his shape for a moment before deflating to the bed. I practice not feeling a thing.
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A few women on other floors have been chosen and will leave tomorrow. I can smell snow in the air pushing through the crack where the window insulation has peeled away. The late fall has given way to winter. When it is too cold, we aren't let outside for activities in the pen. I would give anything to run through a field and not stop. I have never been the running-through-fields type.
Being chosen seems bittersweet. I imagine many of us wouldn't mind living out our days at the shelter in the company of women like ourselves. But then again, it wouldn't always be us. The woman who moved into Marybeth's old room liked to start fights. She told me my muffins were dry. She squeezed one in my face; it crumbled between her fingers. She crept into sweet Laura's room and cut a chunk of her long, shiny hair with safety scissors. Laura was forced into a bob that didn't suit her. Luckily, this woman was very beautiful and was chosen after only four days. We're waiting for her replacement. Even though there is uncertainty in being chosen, it seems more uncertain to remain among the women, a sentiment I've seen expressed in the manual.
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Something very special has happened. I met my window friend. He came over with the others from the men's shelter for bingo. This happens occasionally. It keeps everyone socially agile.
Even though we wave across a wide road, when he walked in I recognized him instantlyâthe darkness of his hair and the general line of his brow. The nights we wave have become important to me. It's nice to be seen by a man.
My window friend spotted me, too, stopped in the doorway and waved. I waved back, and we laughed. A tiny, forgotten thrill bubbled up in me.
He sat next to me. Close up I found him handsome. He clowned around, pushed the bingo chips off my board whenever I wasn't looking. He was nervous.
He said, “I'm going to tell you ten bad jokes in a row,” and he did, counting on his fingers as he went along, not pausing for my laughter, which made me laugh harder. A guard watched us disapprovingly. We were having too much fun. I guess it goes without saying that relations between shelter dwellers are prohibited. I mean, how could we survive together in the world if we have both ended up in a place like this?
At the end of the evening a whistle blew and the men began to shuffle out. Again my window friend stood in front of me and waved and I did the same. But this time he touched his open hand to mine. I felt us quake like animals that have been discovered where they shouldn't be and have no time to run, no place to run to.
The next night, after we waved, I undressed in the window, the lights bright behind me. He placed his hands against the glass as if to get closer and watched.
Tonight, his light isn't on and so we don't wave, but still, I undress in front of my lit window. I can't know if he's watching from the darkness, or who else is watching, for that matter. I loved my husband. I mourn his tenderness. I have to believe that someone out there is feeling a kind of tenderness for me. I'll take it any way I can.
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I've been moved to another floor. Someone from the men's shelter reported me, and my Case Manager thought it best that I occupy a room in the back of the building. Now I overlook the pen.
For days, I feign illness and stay in bed. I hear the groups of women doing their outside activities. It is a cyclical drone of laughing, arguing, calisthenic counting, and loaded silence.