by Molly Gleeson
The Japanese have a phrase: Meishi, Furo, Neru – which, loosely translated, means: work, bath, sleep. As if that is all there is to life. You get up, you go to work, you come home to a hot bath, and then you sleep again. Except in my case, I’ve cut out the work. I’ve cut out the bath. Sleep is the only thing repeating in my life. Seemingly the only thing worth repeating. But there are things I like – the way the curtains fold in on themselves – in and out and back and forth like dominoes. The way they blow into the room with a sudden blast of hot city air. I like sinking in to the oblivion of my bed. These are the things I like now. I like sleep. The way, finally, after fighting consciousness, sleep hovers over you like an x-ray machine –something palpable, but barely there. Then you’re gone. That gone-ness –it’s the only place I really want to be.
* * *
At first, I liked to pronounce the name: Yazidi. I liked to exaggerate the syllables, let them roll around my mouth like marbles. But that was back before we knew anything. That was back before humor had left us.
My supervisor stepped into my office, throwing a fat manila folder on my desk.
“No Muslims. No men,” he said. Then, “And don’t wear blue. Only God wears blue.”
Stupidly, I said, “What?”
He pointed to the folder.
“Read the briefing, Nan,” and left.
There goes half my wardrobe, I thought.
In the break room, Ali was stirring his coffee. He looked up at me, shrugged his shoulders, and took a sip.
“You won’t miss being in on this one?” I said.
He shook his head.
“I don’t think so.”
After Bosnia, we hired a host of Muslim counselors –not an easy feat, even in Toronto. But now they were asked to be out of the office when the Yazidi Group came in.
* * *
I like to imagine myself as part of a giant shepherd’s pie –my downy white comforter as the top layer of mashed potatoes, my bed a layer of Pillsbury pie crust, and me, as the lamb and canned peas in the middle. I am delicious. In this heat, the down comforter is hardly needed –it makes me sweat. I let myself sweat. Pools of it gather on my sheets in the middle of the night. I change out of my sopping pajamas. I sleep naked.
* * *
She sat in a corner of the couch in my office. She made herself as small as she could. Her well-worn espadrilles were on the floor beneath her, and I could tell she walked on the outside of her feet. She curled into herself, picking at her cuticles. She never looked me in the eye. She barely acknowledged the translator, sitting on a chair near her. I wondered when she would open up, like a chrysalis.
The Group had met the day before. It was a disaster. The EMTs had to be called. One woman screamed her head off, then collapsed in a fit onto the floor. They pumped her full of morphine. What else could we do?
* * *
Mostly, I can’t bear noise, but I turned on the radio today. There’s a heat warning for Wednesday for all southwestern Ontario. They say the drought is a “once-in-20-years” event. They say the corn and soybean yields are in jeopardy. I look out my window at the parking lot behind my apartment building. The sun glints off the cars in mirror-like shards and the trees around the lot are wilting. They talk of burnt fields, brown grass.
* * *
A month ago. “What is this place?” she said through the translator. “I thought it would be green. I thought it would be cool. It’s not. Just like home. No water. No water.”
“But the lake…” I suggest.
A bare hint of a smile plays on her face.
“Yes, it’s nice,” she said.
“I like your name,” she said abruptly. “It’s a name of a mother, Nan.”
I smiled.
I thought, but didn’t say, “And you are my only children.”
* * *
I’m down to eggs, and flour, and sugar. A little canola oil, some molasses. I decide to make ginger snaps, in spite of the heat. I’m too lazy to shape the dough into cookies. I slap the whole mess into a Pyrex casserole. It looks like a pile of shit sitting there. I laugh. The sound is strange to me. Like I’m inside a tin can. I put the dish in the oven. I wait.
* * *
Margaret sat across from me at a small table in the break room. We nursed Styrofoam cups of hot coffee, even as the air conditioning purred from the vents above us.
“You know it’s bad,” she said, “when you’re dreaming other peoples’ dreams.”
We sat silent after that. What could we say?
The stories had started to come out. Like children on a giant slide, the stories came fast. They tumbled out of the mouths of the Yazidi women. Even when I wanted them to stop, they couldn’t.
* * *
The mobile that hangs in the corner of my bedroom is made of paper –black Viking ships with round red shields, something I picked up in Copenhagen during a conference. I watch it dance and spin in the heavy breeze coming from the open window. It is evening and I have slept too much. I think about getting up, but I don’t. I watch the mobile.
Then, incredibly—thunder. The wind blowing into my bedroom becomes heavier. The thunder rolls long and hard, spasms with lightning. It reminds me of the opening sequence in “Doctor Zhivago” –all those drums. The mobile flies around and gets tangled up with itself. I get up. I go to the window. A drop of water falls on the window sill. Then another. The rain comes, so concentrated it’s like shafts of light. I think about closing the window, but I don’t. I kneel underneath it, letting the rain soak my torso. It hits my face like a slap, but then each drop slowly, haltingly, slides down my cheeks, over my nose, and onto my lips. A first kiss—droplets gather and caress me. I am held by the water.
Molly Gleeson has had her fiction and nonfiction published in Crab Fat Literary Magazine, The Apeiron Review, and Brush Talks, among others. Before moving back to her hometown of Bloomington, Indiana, Molly spent seven years teaching English in China, Saudi Arabia, and Japan. She now serves as an administrative assistant for a children’s theatre company.