Breathe Read online

  Michaela isn’t accustomed to reading aloud, the effort is surprisingly stressful. Her throat feels parched, hoarse. And there is the effort not to cry. She hears her voice unnaturally earnest, “sincere”: there is some doubt (she feels this doubt as impersonal, the humming of an invisible mosquito) that what is issuing from her mouth is in fact her voice. In the midst of the reading interludes Gerard sometimes squirms or winces with pain (?) but indicates to Michaela not to stop—he is listening, and does not wish the reading to be interrupted just yet.

  Sometimes Michaela discovers that Gerard has lapsed into an exhausted sleep, mouth slack and saliva glistening in the corners of his chapped lips which Michaela wipes gently with a tissue, and kisses. (Michaela kisses her sleeping husband at risk, in dread of waking him.)

  At such times his breathing is hoarse, unnerving to hear. And when there is a lengthy pause between breaths she feels her heartbeat accelerate—

  Breathe! Breathe . . .

  Sometimes so anxious that she reads to Gerard a sequence of words that might be foreign, their meaning lost to her, and Gerard, far from having drifted into sleep, is entirely alert, annoyed: “Michaela! You’re reading too fast, I can’t follow. Please start over.”

  “From the beginning?”

  “Yes! From the beginning.”

  But there is no beginning.

  And there is no end.

  13

  Urgent Care

  “Excuse me. I need to talk with you, Professor.”

  Grim words: the heart sinks.

  Indeed, a grim-faced young woman with sallow, sullen skin, damp reproachful eyes, a faint but distinct odor of unwashed armpits, underwear. Her hair is incongruously neon—wanly festive streaks of blue, magenta, silver, brass—short-cut, jagged and uncombed. Her clothes are shapeless, sexless, with a look of having been slept-in. Her enunciation of Professor is acid-tinged with irony.

  Since the conclusion of the workshop at 6:00 P.M. Letitia Tanik has been waiting with forced patience for the other students to file out of the seminar room. She’d annoyed Michaela by arriving twenty minutes late for class with a muttered excuse—Sor-ry! She’d been distracted during the three-hour class, sighing often, glancing surreptitiously at the cell phone in her lap, as if, like a child, she imagines that Michaela isn’t aware.

  But Michaela is determined to smile sympathetically at Letitia, who is clearly under duress.

  “Of course, Letitia. My office is on the fourth floor . . .”

  “Can we just stay here, Professor? I need to leave in a few minutes.”

  Letitia speaks with an air of reproach. Michaela feels the sting of a rebuke but understands that the unkempt young woman is in distress and doesn’t mean to be rude.

  Nor is calling her adjunct instructor Professor meant to be mocking or ironic, Michaela chooses to think.

  To assure their privacy Michaela shuts the door to the seminar room. Invites Letitia to sit down at the table with her. “What is it, Letitia?”—calibrating a teacherly tone midway between friendly solicitude and a wary sense of respecting boundaries.

  It has been Michaela’s intention through the semester to impersonate an individual who is not-herself: not a wife whose husband is dying: not continuously distracted, not anxious, not overwhelmed as by walls closing in upon her, floors shifting beneath her feet.

  An individual who is indeed a university professor: a figure of (benign, gracious) authority.

  Like breathing through a straw, it has been. Such effort. Though the straw is bent, broken yet one can breathe through it, with effort.

  Breathe! Never stop.

  Of the eighteen students in the memoir workshop Letitia Tanik has been the most problematic, baffling. At the start of the term she’d been a highly vocal, sometimes argumentative presence in the workshop, virtually quivering with excitement and enthusiasm at times; then, after turning in two obsessively detailed prose pieces describing family life in a tight-knit immigrant community in Las Cruces, in the southern part of the state, prose pieces which were greeted with much praise from her fellow writers and from Michaela, and a few critical suggestions, Letitia was absent for two class meetings and has failed to hand in assignments. In a neutral voice she’d apologized to Michaela—Sorry to miss class. Had some kind of flu.

  It is shocking to Michaela, the change in Letitia Tanik! Where previously Letitia had taken care with her appearance, far more than most of the other young women in the workshop, exuding an air of punk-style glamor, purple lipstick and purple nail polish, inky-black eyeliner, eyebrow and nostril piercings glittering against powdered-ivory skin in an eerie evocation (Michaela thinks) of the late Amy Winehouse; now her face is sallow, plain, aggrieved. Where once her streaked hair suggested the feathers of an exotic bird now it is growing out dull-brown at the roots. Like the purple lipstick, the punk jewelry has vanished—the playful tinselly glitter. Without eye makeup her eyes seem to have shrunken and have become lash-less, without luster. Colorful clothes have been replaced with shapeless clothes. As if executing a harsh revenge upon her body Letitia seems to have stopped caring for herself as a physical being.

  Her voice is a breathy lowered murmur forcing others to lean close to her to hear her even as her rigid body signals—Stay away! Keep your distance.

  Michaela has picked up these signals. Indeed Michaela has no intention of drawing close to the scowling young woman.

  But here is a surprise: all Letitia seems to want from her instructor is a simple favor, a grade of “incomplete” in the workshop.

  She’s too far behind on the assignments to catch up, Letitia says. She wants her writing to be good, and it just isn’t, right now.

  She’s sorry, she hasn’t been well. She’s been missing other classes too. The reason being—personal problems.

  Michaela understands: personal means don’t ask.

  Michaela tells Letitia that she’s sorry to hear this—she’d been concerned that something was wrong. Since Letitia had missed two classes. And hasn’t handed in work lately.

  Taking care not to seem to be accusing Letitia. Not to seem to be judging her.

  Hesitant to make inquiries for fear that her sympathy might be misconstrued as intrusive, overly curious. Inappropriate in an instructor considerably older than her undergraduate student.

  Michaela assures Letitia that she has no objection to giving her an incomplete grade. But there are three weeks remaining in the term, it’s possible that Letitia will be able to catch up before the end . . .

  “Ma’am! You didn’t hear me, I guess. I’m saying that I can’t write at all, not like I used to. Like, there’s something heavy on my chest, pressing down—just makes me so tired.”

  Ma’am strikes Michaela’s ear like Professor, something of a rebuke.

  Drawn to her, rebuked by her. Not consciously, Michaela thinks, the girl invites sympathy, even as she repels it.

  As the deathly-ill yearn for us to save them, yet repel us for our failure.

  “Have you seen a doctor, Letitia? If you’re feeling . . .”

  Letitia laughs derisively. As if Michaela has inadvertently said something very funny.

  Michaela is thinking that of the eighteen students in the workshop, only Letitia has never called her by her first name as she’d invited them to call her; indeed, Letitia has never called Michaela any name at all, first-or-last name.

  “Oh shit.”

  There’s a sudden chattering sound like a parrot—Letitia’s cell phone ringing inside her hemp-woven shoulder bag. Letitia frowns rummaging through the bag, locates the phone, answers in a vexed voice in a language Michaela thinks at first is Spanish.

  Trying not to overhear. Trying not to give the appearance of overhearing.

  Not that it matters, Letitia isn’t speaking Spanish. And even if she were, Michaela with her limited knowledge of the language probably couldn’t have deciphered much of what she says for Letitia is speaking rapidly, in a lowered, impatient voice.

  How angry Letitia is! Her fury is self-lacerating, as in one clawing at her own face.

  Michaela thinks: requesting an incomplete in the memoir workshop doesn’t seem unreasonable. The focus should be on student work, not on disciplining students for failing to turn in work. Michaela is an adjunct in the English Department at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque for just one term; a temporary instructor not likely to teach here again after the term ends. (If she will even complete the term.) Indeed, Michaela dislikes giving grades in courses in “creative writing”; unless a student fails to complete the minimum work she is likely to give only A’s and B’s.

  She’d screened applicants for the course, selecting eighteen out of more than forty; she considers that everyone in the class has demonstrated talent by simply being chosen. Along with two or three others, Letitia Tanik was one of the strongest applicants.

  Nor has Michaela any interest in being punitive with unhappy students like Letitia who have fallen behind the others like swimmers floundering in a turbulent sea.

  When Letitia breaks off her phone conversation Michaela assumes that she is about to jump up from the seminar table and leave. Yet, Letitia doesn’t move from the table but instead leans forward on her elbows, resting her head on her hands. She sighs heavily, there is something left unsaid.

  Michaela wonders if Letitia expects her to ask more questions even as she has indicated that she doesn’t want her privacy invaded.

  Michaela sees that Letitia Tanik is probably younger than she’d seemed initially, perhaps no more than twenty. Without makeup she looks defenseless, vulnerable. Her skin is blemished at the hairline, her eyelids are inflamed. In the aftermath of the brief phone conversation, she has begun to breathe harshly; she shifts her body, smelling of rank animal rage.

  “See, ma’am, what happened to me, three weeks ago, three weeks and two days, I was—I was raped—I was raped by this friend . . .”

  Michaela listens, astonished. Raped, friend. In such proximity, incongruous words.

  “. . . in this house where I am living, off-campus, there’s mostly graduate students, he’s a graduate student in chemical engineering . . . Professor, you have to promise: you won’t tell anyone.”

  Without thinking Michaela nods. Of course.

  Letitia explains that the “friend” who’d raped her was not a boyfriend but he’d kind of acted like he wanted to be, hanging out in her room, walking with her on the street, he’d met up with her for drinks a few times, not just the two of them alone together but with others, foreign students like him, all of them in engineering—“Like, in this country they come from, that’s what they all want to be: engineers.” That night there was a lot of laughing between them, watching YouTube videos, back and forth between her room and his and they wound up in his room, next thing she knew she was waking up naked in his bed, sick to her stomach and vomiting and her “friend” disgusted with her telling her to go back to her own room, she couldn’t stay with him, he had to get some sleep before an early class . . .

  Letitia begins to cry. Angry sobs, wiping at her eyes. Telling Michaela she hasn’t told anybody, didn’t want anybody to know except she has to have an incomplete in Michaela’s course, she will just die if she fails the course, or if Michaela reports her . . .

  And this guy she’d trusted, telling her what happened was consensual.

  Don’t blame me he’s telling her. Anybody’s to blame it’s both of us and this includes you.

  “Looking at me like—like I’m a slut and a liar and he hates me.”

  Adding, “He’d always said he liked my ‘look’—‘cool’—he’s got short-cut hair and hates heavy metal . . .”

  Michaela lets Letitia talk angrily, bitterly. Badly she wants to lay her hand on the girl’s arm to comfort her—but no.

  The gesture might be misunderstood. Misconstrued. Sympathy misread as condescension.

  Michaela tries to think: What are the university rules? She’d paid little attention to the pamphlet she’d found in her mailbox, presuming that the protocol of dealing with sexual harassment and sexual abuse would never enter into her relations with her students whom she sees only once a week and who are, for the most part, older students, part-time students.

  It’s unfortunate, Michaela has already promised Letitia not to report the incident, without knowing quite what she was doing.

  Michaela asks Letitia if her “friend” had hurt her and Letitia says stiffly yes she thinks so last time she’d looked. But he’d just say it was an accident, they were both drunk, God damn him he’d just say, he’d repeat—con sen sual.

  “You didn’t tell anyone?”

  “I said no.”

  Can’t tell anyone, Letitia says hotly. That would only make things worse.

  Especially, her family can’t know about what happened. Cannot know.

  They would be so ashamed of her, Letitia says. They would be mortified. In their community you can’t even—ever—say the word rape out loud. A wife would not utter the word rape even to her husband—especially to her husband.

  Everyone would know what had happened to her, the family would never live it down. Parents, grandparents. All her grandparents. They would never forgive her!

  Her sisters—they would never let her forget it. They’d feel sorry for her but they would never—ever—let her forget it—“That’s the way they are.”

  Her parents hadn’t wanted her to go to Albuquerque to the university, Letitia says, but to a community college in Las Cruces. So they would blame her for coming here. They’d wanted her to live in a residence hall not off-campus housing with older students so they’d blame her for that—where the rape happened. No one in her family would ever believe that it wasn’t her fault, what happened to her—because she’d been drinking, drunk. Because she’d passed out. That she’d been drinking at all would totally disgust them. They had no idea that Letitia drank sometimes—not a lot, but sometimes. No more than anybody else. In fact, not so much as anyone else. So what happened to her was her own fault, they would think, they would be so disgusted some of them wouldn’t even speak to her, she knew. In their eyes she had no one to blame but herself. The so-called friend who’d gotten her drunk, who’d raped her, or whatever he’d done to her when she was drunk and unconscious and naked in his smelly bed, she still has bruises on her arms and belly, her hips, thighs, all this time later just starting to fade, a bump on the side of her head like (maybe) he’d knocked her head against the wall beside his bed. God knows what happened and all he can say is it’s her fault as much as his.

  Also, he tries to act like nothing much happened between them. Nothing special. Seeing her, saying hello to her in the house, other people around and he’ll wave at her acting like they are—still—kind of friends . . .

  Bitterly Letitia says: “He isn’t White, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  Michaela has no idea what this means. Why Letitia speaks accusingly to her.

  “He’s from the same religion as me. That would really make my family sick.”

  But why?—Michaela wonders. Would the family expect better behavior from one of their own, than from a young White man? But isn’t Letitia White? Isn’t “Tanik” an Eastern European name?

  No matter Letitia’s last name, her mother’s last name might be very different. Letitia is biracial, perhaps. Michaela is beginning to be anxious, like one stepping into water, uncertain of her footing, and how deep the water is.

  Michaela reverts to common sense: advising that Letitia see a doctor. Even if the assault was three weeks ago. Even if she thinks she doesn’t want to report the rape. Michaela will take her to the infirmary if she doesn’t want to go alone, she says. Michaela will stay with her and drive her back to her residence afterward.

  Michaela has surprised herself, speaking so impulsively. And Letitia is moved by this offer, it seems. She hesitates for a moment. Then shakes her head vehemently no.

  No no no no no.

  ANOTHER WORLD TO LIVE IN. Our writing.

  And if you are writing a memoir, your actual life is enclosed in the writing like an embryo in a womb.

  Michaela has written just two memoirs of childhood and adolescence in late twentieth-century midwestern-suburban America, both highly acclaimed. Her prose is impressionistic, in the style of Virginia Woolf: states of mind shifting like desert sands into ever-new and arresting forms, unpredictable.

  In an era in which individual identity has become the nexus of anxiety, and family dysfunction seemingly universal, Michaela has concentrated on the small rituals of daily, domestic midwestern life, the “healing powers” of pleasures shared with relatives and neighbors, a way of life passing into oblivion by the time she began to publish in her early thirties.

  In tone, Michaela’s memoirs have been respectful, even reverential. She has no appetite for the harshness of satire, she has no wish to “see” with an objective camera-eye. Was it Gloucester, in King Lear—I see feelingly.

  Since Gerard’s illness Michaela has not been able to write nor has Michaela felt a strong urge to write. Everything about her is too fraught with feeling.

  Too much suffering, helplessness. On all sides. She cannot watch TV news, cannot glance at newspaper headlines. Photographs positioned at the very top, center of the New York Times—no.

  So much casual, commodified death. Deaths. Where once newspapers would never have published photographs of the maimed, suffering, dying, dead now such atrocities have become commonplace. Such sorrow.

  Making her way numbly along hospital corridors. Not allowing herself to glance into rooms as she passes.

  Michaela urges her students to keep journals when they can’t write. For journal-keeping may be the most sincere, as it is the most intimate, kind of writing.

  Yet, for Michaela, it isn’t possible. For what is writing but a way of distracting the self from what is essential: life, death.

  That is, life threatened by death.

  That is, a specific life threatened by a specific death.