by Christina Fong
It’s the kind of spring day that permeates all conversation until it can’t be talked about anymore and must simply be enjoyed. The warm temperatures promise to stay for good this time, and with that promise, all the winter frost sitting heavy on everyone’s shoulders gradually drips away. The air smells sweet with fresh blooms and cold candied treats. People flood the streets until they can see and touch new growth in familiar shapes.
But you can’t enjoy much of it except for the firm ground under your back, a nice break from the pillow-plush bed your husband prefers.
“Can’t believe I forgot the blanket,” he says, grumbling beside you.
Smile, tell him “This is perfect.”
Keep smiling in spite of the nagging ache. Like a dog, roll around. Rock side to side. Legs twisting this way, arms twisting that way. Soak up that grassy aroma of blades breaking and bending. Green leaf volatiles, you read somewhere, a little cry for help.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“I’m a dog.”
He reaches out and rubs you under your chin with a smirk that reads “Good girl!”
Think about barking “No!” Think about running away. Chase the kid with chocolate ice cream melting down his cone and all over his hand. Root around in the dandelions still fluffy and whole. Sniff a few friendly looking butts. Anything but the chin rubs.
Swat his hand away instead. His cheeks deflate as he looks back down at his book, then up at the clouds casting a gentle shadow over pages 46 and 47. His belly has grown soft, out of sympathy they say, and it sits over the top of his jeans, cradled in the overhang of his Piggly Wiggly shirt. It looks good on him. The belly, not the shirt.
Groan.
“Your back still bothering you?”
Nod pathetically.
“I’m sorry, baby.”
Wonder, which baby?
Count the months until it’s all over, until it’s a whole different kind of hell. Laugh because it’s a joke, a funny truth. Listen to the children laugh-screaming, familiarizing yourself with the sound. Smell the burning coals cooking kebabs, corn on the cobs, hot dogs. Consider begging the cook for a bite. Rub your belly hungrily.
“Do you want to go home?” he asks.
Feel bad because he worked so hard to get you out of bed, to enjoy this beautiful day together, to make you feel better.
So try to feel better. Forget the stubborn ache. Savor the warm breeze wafting faint floral aromas in your direction. Remember this for when you’re changing the fourth diaper of the day or cleaning spit up milk off your chest.
“No,” you say. “This is nice.”
Smile at him and mean it. He holds your gaze, smiles back, swims in the calm of your eyes. He offers to give you a massage, but sitting up feels impossible, so he tells you to roll over on one side.
“I’ve been practicing that move,” you say, perking up.
Roll over. The ground sinks with your shape as he works his hands. Watch as the world moves vertically, defying gravity. People sleeping standing up. Dogs running up a lawn wall. Balls falling sideways. There’s the thwack of a baseball in the distance and the cheers of a successful hit. Or catch. Or run.
“How is that?” he asks.
Make sounds that amount to “good”.
Forget baseball. Forget the world. His hands knead a stiff neck into supple dough, telling the rest of your body to find rest where it can. Slip away, briefly, before he asks for permission to stop. Plead for a few more minutes, maybe the other side. He repositions himself, all too happy to oblige.
Struggle to get up on your elbows to roll over in the other direction, but first, pause to look at the sky. There’s a plane towing a banner some hundreds of feet above but the angle is too sharp or the words are too small. The advertisement goes unseen. But what are they selling? Strain to read it as a crowd bellows in the background until the banner is obscured by something. A bird? A bug? A baseball. Its red stitching careens towards you before crash landing on your forehead, lacking the give of a mitt. But it finds a tender spot and something cracks, the way the air cracks after a clean hit. The crowd goes wild. And the world goes black.
Remember, maybe, being inside an ambulance. The hush of medical speak.
Feel, most definitely, the reassurance of his hand. A kiss.
Hear, faintly, the melody of I’m right here and Stay with me. A hopeful, desperate little tune that pulses like a homing beacon. Here, here, stay right here. But it starts to slip away. The world fades into sepia-toned nostalgia. Dewy-eyed reminiscence. Think about the first tomatoes of the summer season you’ll never get to eat again. The trip to Mexico you never got to go on. Saying “I love you” with a plate of chili cheese tater tots and “I’m sorry” with an extra wet martini. Your shabby little home. Him. Worry about the bills you haven’t paid. Regret not telling him sooner, that you’re being let go. Next Friday’s supposed to be your last day, and they’ve already hired someone younger, stronger, and not pregnant. Get mad again. You were going to make them rue the day. There was even a whole speech planned, though dying is probably better.
The music slows. A sad song plays while all color drains away.
Save the baby while she dies, they sing. She would want that, goes the chorus.
But something feels wrong as they outfit your dying body for incubation. You’re supposed to be alive for this part, you’re sure of it, and there are too many months left. Panic helplessly. Will she still be able to hear and see and walk? Will she even work?
Promise her a wonderful life. Laugh. Then cry. After all, who promised you one?
If you had a choice, say no. Wait out the rest of your afterlife for him, together. Choose to rest in peace, together. Save him from watching. Save her from everything, their gaze, expectations, disappointment, and guilt.
If you could, take it all back. Your smooth-talking lips and rough-around-the-edges hands. Your heartbreaking rendition of “Try a Little Tenderness” and knack for remembering the names of everyone you’ve ever met. Take back your conception, crawl back to predawn, and choose a different life, a wonderful one. Wait for a world that offers unbounded freedom, where you have a say over whether you get to live or die. Where your body is under your jurisdiction, irrefutably and unconditionally yours. To love. And give. And keep. Because you know what’s best, if only they would give you a chance, if only they could believe, hear you when you speak. Wait until they can see and love you for all that you are, a walking miracle and confounding contradiction. Brilliant and complex. Cosmically sublime. Wait until you don’t have to hide, settling for the lesser of many evils just to live in peace. Wait until you can live honestly, free of shame and reprisal. Wait for them to know pain, same as you, and accept it. To accept loss. To value it. Be freed by it. Carry it as a token of kindness and grace. Wait, then feel bad, already and again, because they will call you names. Weak. Coward. Woman. Waiting instead of being, insisting. And fine. Admit it. You’re all those things, sinking in the loss of everything. But you’ve been, insisted, fought for your life. And now, you’re a broken machine approaching obsolescence. So you wait, wait for the courage to face the end. And then, choose a different life. Start all over, if you could.
Christina Fong is a writer and multidisciplinary creative based in Memphis, Tennessee. She holds a BA in journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and recently completed a fiction writing workshop that rekindled her love of storytelling. Christina is especially drawn to narratives that center marginalized voices and is currently at work on her first novel.
January House Literary Journal 
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