Here I Am

A Story by Zahava Lichtig

A story with no beginning. But with an end in sight.

She isn’t me. She has my eyes, my face and my body. But she doesn’t have my name. She doesn’t have my soul.

We are locked, as if in a staring contest, on either side of the glass. The sun shining into the room is hot. I sweat. But she is composed. I cringe. But she doesn’t blink. It has been like this ever since. My entire life, I struggled. And she just stood there, staring. Her steely gaze is biting. It eats away at my core. The way she just looks onto my suffering and cannot be bothered. Or affected.

I grew up understanding very little about my life. I had more questions than answers. In fact I had no answers at all. I was left wondering. Why am I different. Why is my family the one with such problems. Why am I lost between my siblings, when I know my self worth is greater than all of theirs combined. Why do I have so many questions. Why can’t I be like everybody else, going about life with a blessed oblivion and no care for a thing.

I was told that all people are beautiful. I am not beautiful. I am broken. I am stricken. I have been slashed across the face. I hide from the sun. I am alone. Even darkness is not a friend. Just an ally. And when she looks at me, all I can think of is my imperfection. Perfect people have everything. Families that accept them. Parents that care for them. Siblings who want to stay close. Money to buy the most needless of things. And I have nothing. Not even a perfect nothing. A sort-of-kinda nothing that is blurred around the edges with the occasional uselessness that basic necessities introduce.

The world is an unfair place. I should have been born in a different place. To a different woman. I should have been born as an only child. With no sick siblings to steal my childhood and my life. With no shattered marriage. With no shaky home built on flawed fundaments. With no troubles and fears and insecurities and the knowledge of knowing that, no matter what, I still will never be as good as even the worst of them.

I say the words. I hate you. And she looks back at me and she repeats the words after me. But she doesn’t mean it. The way she never means anything she says or does. The way she only seconds what I say to make me feel even worse about it all. She knows I never believed in people, never believed in myself. But she does. She knows me as well as I know myself. And she knows that behind all the sad masquerading boils a soul of pure fire. She believes in me with such unforgiving jealousy that she devotes her every moment in the sun to tear me apart. She brings me face to face with those fibers of my being that don’t buy into my pain, into my fear, into my harassment of self.

I can’t fight her. She is strong. Her vice reaches out from within. She squeezes mercilessly and funnels my blood into her pulsating veins. As I weaken, she blossoms. And when she grows, it is a wicked thing. Wretched and evil and with no good to it. She keeps her eyes fixed on mine. I see my reflection in her eyes that reflect mine that reflect hers that reflect mine that reflect hers. I lose my identity. She isn’t me. And neither am I.

I want to bear his child. It’s the one thought that hammers me proper. I am petrified of having kids, of the world of the beyond, of the maternal anchor that drives sea-daring women ashore.

But I want to bear his child. I want to sacrifice my body to create another such as him. I cannot put a time to it. It is too far ahead in the future to calculate. I am too scared. And I’m not at all convinced that fear ebbs away over time. But I will do it. I will raise my feet to the occasion. I will moan and scream and swear and sob. I will do it. I will shut my eyes so tight they hurt. I will cough and spit and snivel and weep. I will do it. And not because anyone can tell me to. And not because I can be given a number to conquer. And not because those who came after me have gone and done it before me. But because I want to.

I call him ray. Never out loud. But deep in my heart, where I lock my harmful secrets from him. Ray of sunshine. Ray. Ray of hope. Ray. Ray of blinding optimism that I know not whence he hails from. I call him ray.

He came into my life at the wrong time. He twisted my plans around and slayed the dreams I had scheduled. I was urged to meet him. Not because he was for me. And not because I would want a he in my life. But because he was one worth meeting. If only for a fleeting moment. If only for a lesson in careless human interaction. In bright smiles in the face of indecency. In the boggling simplicity of inexperience.

He is nice, I said. He can have my hand in marriage. But he will never get a handle on me, on her, on an identity lost to the kaleidoscope of mirrored hallways and burning afternoons. Fine. I will allow the ceremonies. I will follow the petal paths. I will clickety-clack beneath the well-meaning umbrellas and the confetti hail and the blinding zaps of photography scribes. I will stomp, with my back to that old house, and walk with closed eyes. Because anywhere is better than there. And no weathered trail or pathway can wander me to a state more lost than that of my childhood home. Than that of my weeping corner.

Seven days make a week. Weak in the knees. And strong in resolute. Brutal in heading and in directionless dance. Seven nights. Seven parties. Two families celebrating the surrender of their young to waters untested, to tumultuous seas uncharted. I am given to him. Relinquished. And he is given to me. Discarded. And they sing and feast, and they cheer and extol, and they pat each other on the back. And they are yet to be sorry.

I can compose myself that long. I can act the part for a few days and let them have it. Watch them drown in their own vomit just as they prepare to eat their words. I can play good. I can play fake. I can play their daughter and daughter-in-law. If only for a fleeting moment. If only for insight into the trivialities that bring them a drunkard’s joy. If only to hear them sing-song, once more, that I am indeed capable of being one of them. If only to close the door on them once seven days are up.

I shut the door with a force that questioned my woman’s frailty. I twisted both locks, marking the end of a chapter. And then I turned around to see him standing with open arms and that same silly smile that he had bore all along. I asked him what he wanted. He said he wanted to hug me. And I felt like running away. Nobody gets to touch me. My body is off limits. I don’t need a friend or a hug or any recognition whatsoever. I am married. Now I write the rules. And I have a kitchen table in an apartment continents away from my former home. And here I am alone. I have myself and my peace. I need nobody.

Morning rises, and he is sleeping three feet away from me, separated only by the clumsy wooden night chest that is so conveniently situated between the male and female beds. His breathing is the calmest thing I have ever heard. It is louder than all my parents’ yelling. But I find it soothing. It repeats itself more times than my sister’s epic nagging. But I only want to hear more of it. I want him to breathe onto me and bring me relief from the white noise that my life has become a soundboard to.

I am torn. I don’t hate him. I don’t even know him. But he isn’t part of my plan. He isn’t a piece of my puzzle. He doesn’t fit. He sleeps still, but he moves me to tears. He rests completely, but causes me such inner turmoil. His steady breathing calls my name. It whistles of achievable happiness. His soft lips are red and tender. And I don’t know why, but I am aware of their size and shape and the possibility of them creating a suction with my own. Maybe he is good-looking. Maybe I am not even feeling guilty staring at him in his slumber.

He is good to me. I often question if I deserve it. But maybe I do because I am good to him. He has questions of his own. He carries baggage like the rest of the world does. He is not perfect as a human being. But he is perfect for me. He listens well. He speaks in a soothing, raspy voice that tells me I am this or that. I can’t register what it says. But I do like hearing it ramble on for hours.

He makes me look him in the eye. He tells me I’m pretty. And when I don’t know what he’s saying, he repeats it with the relentlessness of his in-sleep breathing. He wouldn’t hear me doubt my appearance. He would hold me and sway me in endless ways to tell me he is physically attracted to me. He wants me. He wants me. He wants me. Incredible.

A new beauty is born, a beauty that has never been. One that is in the eyes of the beholder. One that I cannot recognize. One that he must reaffirm every day, lest I second-guess his desires in me. In many ways, I feel born anew. In a different place. To a different person. I was born to him. To him I am an only child. To him I was born for a reason. And he would have bore me himself if he needed to.

Life now owns a rhythm. There is day and there is night and there is a calendar of value to incorporate. There are times of laughter and there are times of copious tears. There are times of joy and there are times when our stories rub us against each other. I still have my questions. I still can’t love myself. I haven’t yet done enough to deserve that. But I can give. I can share of myself and invite him into my life. And with that I can hope. He will accept me. He will take what I give and cherish it. And then he will teach me.

He will show me the way to shelve my fears. He will squeeze my hands gently as I dare the paths that once scared me to death. He will wrap me in his jacket on a breezy summer night. He will embrace me and kiss me so much, I will lose myself to his affection. And I know I want it all.

Now I love. I love, therefore I am. I may not be whole yet. But I’m not broken anymore. And she stands alone. Still. She stares all the same. But here I am. I know I won this round. And I’m on my way to believing.