Excerpt: Brush Teeth with Tomatoes

Ethan’s eyes are grey. When, on the rare occasion, he makes eye-contact it’s like watching rain glide off a slate roof, millions of tear drops pummel to the bed of pebbles below. His eyes are soothing, almost purifying. He has veiny hands like the hands of a Boeing machinist. He has working hands from the top view as he turns pages. The scar down the side of his palm and pinky is white against his brown skin. I know his aren’t working hands. His touch is satin soft. Sometimes his finger tips brush the skin around my hairline. He never means anything sensual by it. But touch is rare for me and his always means something.

He’s incognizant and distant.

I feel calmer when he’s by my bed. Sometimes he reads aloud to me. I listen until a single word punches me square-fisted in the gut and that’s the end of hearing him. I find it an annoyance on occasions when his topic of study is intriguing. Occasions, I say.

Today he’s reading Nietzsche, Human, All too Human, a particular set of aphorisms which allure him. This literature I actually enjoy when I listen. Ethan’s search for wisdom is original, according to the nursing staff. They are perplexed by his silence. They fill space with words. He doesn’t. He went quiet after we left. It was months before he spoke a word. I pretend he needs me.

The ceiling is a mess of tiles. Sometimes they crack and chip. Chunks fall on my face and uncovered legs. Rubble covers the tops of my shins when they bring my spicy applesauce and peas. The first time was especially petrifying because I was new to the ward. They moved me during the night. I woke to the tiles and lines of the ceiling. Instantly I recall the squirming feeling in my stomach.

A trigger. They’re called triggers when the anxiety strikes. The joke among the doctors is I have enough triggers to arm the Russian battalion. Why Russian?, I wonder. Because they’re known for militancy? I presumed and leave it at that. Why don’t we have a Russian troika? I muse looking at the doctor as he lifts his arm across me and the table.

Labels annoy me. Once I had a spell in the label maker section of the Office Depot. It was only because I’m intelligent enough to make the connections. The store manager, however, didn’t appreciate my remarkable mind or his isle of electronic label devises in disarray. He believed the marketing bullshit about organizational tools. I was ban. I added Office De-pot to my ban list. This was the span of time the ban list grew most rapidly.

“She is becoming more and more dangerous,” was the understanding my friend Maggie came to. She placed the call. She was with me when the creamy truck picked me up. Tiny lights flashing on the ground below my apartment, blurred by the speckles of rain on the double paned window. She caught me after the ceramic-intentional.

None of them were accidents except when I spilled the boiling tea down my chest. That was accidental and ironically more painful. Mint tea, now there’s a smell permanently seated in the pores between my breasts. I have greenheads, not black.

Ethan stands up and stretches. His knees crack. His wrists pop as he flicks them up, right first, then left. His sudden movement startles me. I snap into a seated position, flat backed at attention. He walks to the door and looks to the right. He scratches above his left hip pocket and gazes left. Slowly his head turns and his eyes stray to the right again. I feel his eyes look right. I hope he won’t take that next step, but he does. He exits the room and I’m alone. A million intestinal worms start their crawl up through my plumbing toward my esophagus. My trachea will start to swell next if I don’t take charge of the trigger and click the safety.