Suicide
Time hurts all cures
GROUCHO MARX
Eighteen years. You’re still here. Or you were just here, I know. Or you will be there when it arrives.
This month the lilies were in bloom. Beds and beds of pink flowers, blurred in the rain, just at the highway entrance above the Claremont Hotel. They bloom twice a year, once in winter and once in August, on August 19, when you died.
One time we drank and fought all night. I tried to break up with you. It was all delirious, sick. We were. In the morning you took me to the school in Oakland where I taught. Neither of them said anything. When we drove past the lilies we were left breathless.
“They’re beautiful,” you said.
“They’re the only beauty in my life right now,” I murmured.
The next morning, when I drove by to go to work, I saw that they had been plucked, not a single flower remained. We never talk about it. Months later I asked you if you wanted to go to Lake Anza. It’s beautiful in spring.
-You did not say-. I never liked beauty.
For years I used my remorse to keep drinking, to turn on the sirens and give me clean sheets and Valium. The safety of the straitjacket, the straps. I used the pain you caused me to hide from all the other deaths until I finally forgave myself to stay alive.
Not you, I will never forgive you.
A kind of coda to the story “Manual for Cleaning Women”, which was originally going to be titled “Suicide Note” and which she wrote in 1975 after the premature death of her boyfriend, Terry. This piece is a memory written eighteen years later. It was published in Sniper Logic magazine, No. 2 (1994).
The birds of the temple
They hung the birds among the tropical plants in the living room. “They are a treat for the eyes,” he commented. It was what he always said when he thought something was in good taste. “They are very pretty,” the woman acknowledged. Although he wasn’t too enthusiastic about the birds, those were beautiful, black and gray with a conch-pink beak.
And then the husband forgot about the birds, even though he had put a lot of effort into fixing their cage. He was very busy.
And the woman forgot about the birds. Not for lack of time; She was never busy, far from it.
It was because the birds didn’t sing. They didn’t make the slightest noise, not even the rustling beat of their wings. The woman did not notice her presence and she did not remember to feed them.
One night she was sitting in the living room with her husband. “The birds!” she exclaimed.
He ran and filled their small plate with birdseed and gave them a bowl of water. A little later she returned to the cage. The birds were still perched face to face and at first he thought they hadn’t eaten any birdseed, but yes, there was a bit missing. “They’ve barely touched it,” he said, “practically nothing. —And she sat next to her husband—. Those crazy birds don’t like to eat, so it doesn’t matter.
But he felt guilty for the carelessness, and the next day he bought them birdseed, a special birdseed, with sesame, coriander, sunflower seeds and anise. He opened the bag and smelled the seeds. “Ah, yes, they’ll like these,” he said to himself.
What’s up: the birds, no matter. She went to check the little plate several times, but they hadn’t even come close. She scattered some birdseed on the floor of the cage. “Look, fools, licorice.” They didn’t even move. “Damn it,” she sputtered, and scattered the rest.
That night she told her husband, and he told her that she should have taken the birdseed to the store to return it.
It took almost a week to feed the birds. One night she woke up in the early morning and shook her husband. “What’s wrong,” he asked. “I think the birds are dead.” “God,” her husband said, and turned around. She got up and put on a bathrobe, although she was not cold. She entered the living room. No, of course the birds weren’t dead. She filled their bowl with birdseed and gave them water and she stayed by the cage for a while, but they never ate while she was near her, so she went back to bed.
When he went to give them food again, there was no birdseed left. He put a piece of rye bread on their plate. He returned shortly and the birds were huddled in front of the feeder, pecking at the bread in silence. “Oh,” she exclaimed, and they were frightened, so she stepped aside.
He sat in a chair and smiled. When her husband arrived, she told him. “They liked it,” he said, “I know because they were both eating at the same time. Isn’t that a good sign? It’s the first time they’ve reacted, right? “Yes, I guess,” the husband answered, and told her that he had to go back to work and didn’t have time to eat dinner.
She woke up when he got home and asked him how he was doing. “Good,” he answered, and quickly undressed and sank into bed. “I’m tired,” he said. Good night,’ and he put his wife’s arm over her shoulder.
After a while she started laughing and started talking to him. «I was thinking of getting a mirror, you know? They say that birds sing if they have a mirror, but it just occurred to me that birds that are not alone would not care. He was asleep.
For a while the two forgot about the birds.
Until one day one of the birds fell off the perch and couldn’t land on it again. She stayed on the floor of the cage flapping desperately until he finally managed to get back up. The bird had something wrong with its legs, with its claws.
The bird’s claws had grown out from under the leg and were twisting upward again, forming a beige scale. “Their nails have grown,” said the husband, “because they don’t walk or dig to look for food. “Cut them off, it sucks.”
“Is it true that people’s nails continue to grow after they die?” she asked. But she didn’t hear her. She asked him if he could help her cut their nails. “No,” he answered.
The nails got much worse. They caught and tangled with each other, and the birds were grotesque and clumsy, and soon they could barely move on the perch to reach the food. The woman went to see Mrs. Dawson, the elderly woman who lived across the street. Mrs. Dawson held the birds while she trimmed their nails. She tried not to touch them, it made her sick, because their paws were peeling, dry and cold. Mrs. Dawson was in tears. «How could you, dear? How could you let these poor creatures get to this point? The woman felt embarrassed, and she excused herself by saying that she believed she was natural, like a mute.
It was a relief. He saw the birds happier, although they still did not move except to eat. As the days grew warmer they also became prettier, with bright eyes and soft, lustrous plumage.
I wanted to be their friend: every day I whistled at them, got their attention, cooed at them and stuck my finger in the cage…
Lucia’s second story, written in 1957 for the same creative writing course, is inspired by events experienced during her first marriage. She wrote this story in the hope that her husband would understand her mixed feelings, but he never read it, and although we don’t know how the story originally ended, it probably had a happy ending. In real life, she said that the first thing she did the day Paul left for graduate school (never to return) was release the birds. Years later, in her memoir ‘Welcome Home’, she mentions that she gave the birds to an old woman who lived across the street. (Also unpublished).
