Anayalaj

During my lunch break, walking past reception — on my way to sell another piece of furniture crammed into the bed of my truck — I could hear the fatigue in both advice nurses’ tone. Phone lines had been jammed for days as the nurses addressed conspiracy theories, occasionally thrilled by an actual dire call, someone bleeding or contracting. I saw them shaking their heads as they spoke, elbows on the desk, one squeezing the bridge of her nose.

It had been a long week already.

We’d all had a meeting when the news broke, a place to unpack our feelings, like bulging pockets or heavy boxes, and share our sympathy and outrage — for our patients, and even ourselves a little.

Today, though, while walking out, Teresa up front saw me leaving. She opened her mouth as if to say something, then just waved and nodded.

I walked to the parking lot. Part of me didn’t want to come back.

***

After it happened last year, I bought an old truck with a covered bed. A camper shell. I traded in my needless hybrid SUV, wanting to punish myself and the atmosphere with a used, dented Ford F-150 that smelled like burnt rubber and lighter fluid. Whenever I saw it parked anywhere now, I remembered all the old fishermen who’d park similar ones in the handicapped spots of the strip malls where I grew up. Inside their shells, the fisherman kept their possessions; poles and tackle boxes. Their shells’ backsides were tattooed with stickers that read BASS, or GONE FISHIN’, CATCH YA LATER.

“You got a…truck, Teah?” Rob had asked me about it one day, months ago, when we were both in the parking lot. Rob used to call me Lonely T. A nickname, endearing sort of, with a long story back from residency. But he dropped calling me Lonely after. Rob's bumper had HRW and KEEP TAHOE BLUE stamps, and he, on account of being a man, needed a female nurse to warm body his patient exams.

I was filling the back of my truck, you see, with everything I could get rid of. Box-by-box, piece-by-piece via Craigslist.

GONE PURGIN’, CASH YA LATER.

Only took a couple transactions to realize, I didn’t want their money. I started giving my belongings away, finding them homes that weren’t mine.

FREE DELIVERY, NO CATCH.

“Yeah. I’m considering becoming a fisherman, didn’t I tell you?” I joked back to Rob that day. But my tone betrayed me. I was still emanating sadness, fragility at that point. Or so they all perceived, handling me how we did our patients with double-digit miscarriages in their charts.

Rob walked around the truck. “New couch?” He asked, pointing through the shell’s tinted windows.

“Getting rid of my old one, some friend I haven’t met yet on Craigslist needed it.”

Aparigraha. Non-possessiveness.

“Ah Craigslist. Suits you as much as the truck.” Rob paused, then pointed at the shell again. “Let me know if you ever need any help. With anything.” Rob’s pauses — the absence of my nickname punctuating every sentence of his — stood out more than the Ford did in this parking lot. A Vilaksana.

“Appreciate it, Robaxin.”

Then again, I should talk. There’d always been unsaid things, to Rob especially, on my end.

***

Today, during lunch, I was getting rid of a pie cabinet over in the Elmwood neighborhood. Some lady named Marigolde claimed she’d been “trashure hunting” for one just like mine. Couldn’t believe her luck!

Inside the cab, the peeling leather scratching through my soft scrubs, I put Marigolde’s address into my phone. 1624 Bancroft. Not far, but unfamiliar enough to use directions like a crutch. The truck groaned in reluctant compliance as I put it in drive, heading out.

Like going toward the church, but turn left.

Right on Dwight.

Left on Bancroft.

1624.

Unload the pie cabinet.

Then backwards, back to work. To all the patients who, beg your partum, kept controlling their births or having babies or doubting our medical advice.

***

In the months after, on the advice of others (mostly online strangers I trusted), I drove to the church. There, I sat in its basement, in a circle of folding chairs and grievers at every stage. Gobsmacked by the cliches our Gods made us into, that's stage 1.5. Invisible beneath their nametags were the nicknames. Widower. Orphan. Veteran. Mostly widows, though.

They didn’t have a name for me.

At least, not one that they could summon or pronounce in their language. I cringed when one of the widowers, Michael, suggested I call myself a survivor.

No, Michael. That’s wrong.

You see, I knew the exact word for what I was.

After it happened, when I returned to work I realized everyone dropped it. Saying it now would’ve left a bad taste in their mouths. Their mouths. But for me? It felt like a second loss.

Since then, they’ve all called me Teah. Or Doc.

One day, while making my lunchtime departure, Front Desk Teresa tried something new.

“Have a good lunch LT!” But when I turned to look at her, to receive what she’d said, I saw her eyes welling up. Her eyes.

I responded, “You too T,” and walked out.

I needed another language after what happened to me. Another name. Maybe another support group, in another basement somewhere else. Perhaps a career change.

Success, life, the pursuit of happiness… not all it was cracked up to be.

***

Today, I caught myself on autopilot, turning right towards the church basement. I had to remind myself I wasn’t going back there, and overcorrected, jerking into a sharp left instead. A small car in the opposite lane entering the intersection long-honked at me.

***

Basement Beth, one of the widows, had been stuck in anger. She confessed to us, while wrangling her tissue like a leather whip, she wished ill on the paramedics who came “as quickly as they could” which she imputed to be a widow-making lie. She seemed like a long-honker too.

I wasn't like her.

Not long after Beth blamed the paramedics, I couldn’t return to the circle anymore, with their unrelatable dilemmas with their remaining families, their tissue wads.

Besides, after we’d drop hands and end our meeting, the scuffing of sneakers and chairs on the parquet floor sent me. Sounded too much like a bunch of little kids playing inside a gym.

***

I liked being honked at today, treated like just another asshole.

But when Ford and I jerked left, the sounds I created inside the cab truly sent me. Coins rattling in my center console reminded me of my dad. Rails clanking back in the bed reminded me of her.

***

Honking is exactly how patients sounded sometimes. “I never even took Tylenol in either of my pregnancies, it’s so absurd!” a patient cry-honked earlier today, her legs in stirrups; a splayed little golden goose wrapped in crinkly paper, like parchment.

“It’s not your fault, Eve. I can promise you that,” I said, cranking a speculum inside her.

Maybe cranking the truth, too.

Technically, pregnancy itself could be to blame, its side effect being their birth, life, and all that follows. But that’s oversimplifying.

Nothing the mother did would have changed the course.

Sure as hell taking a little lonely-T spelled backwards didn’t disrupt the natural order.

***

The rattling coins though. They bring me to a flashback, bargaining with my past and present. Remembering my dad.

***

Growing up, if my dad was at home on a school night, I’d try to do homework in his office while he worked. One night, while I’d been reading about Napoleon’s second exile, Dad told me how he flipped a coin to determine what career path he’d follow. And had he ever told me that before?

“You flipped and landed on becoming a lawyer?” I asked, putting my finger on Waterloo inside the textbook, then looking up.

“Well, electrical engineering, technically. It was between math and engineering. But then I went to law school with my EE and now, here we are!”

Behind him on his built-ins were models of stents he’d defended against other inventors who claimed they’d made them first. Remote controls, garage door openers, pills even. There were others he protected too – walls and fortresses in the clouds. Those victories just sat on the shelf, invisible, like air.

“Do you ever wonder where you’d be if it landed on math?”

He paused. “I don’t, Teah Bear.”

But I wondered. Smaller office, probably — smaller house, maybe not just us two plus my grandmother. If there were bookshelves, maybe Math Dad would have my paintings, school awards displayed, instead of the intellectual props of others.

“Wanna flip a coin with me now?” he asked, reaching into the crystal dish on the built-ins behind him, jangling. “I always win, wanna find out how?” He held up a quarter and grinned at me.

“Yeah, sure.”

“Say heads or tails, Teah Bear. Quickly! Heads I win, tails you lose.”

“Tails!” I sputtered as he tossed it in the air — and it took me a moment to understand what he'd just said. I smiled at him, thinking it a little game, relishing his full attention.

“Heads!” He laughed, showing me the quarter in his palm and winking.

When he died before I finished med school, I took the stent and clicker off his shelf. I put them in a humble pie cabinet in my own home, the same place I’d later keep sentimental objects. Like my sonogram images of her, and both of our hospital bracelets.

I had planned to have my colleague Erin deliver her, but, of course, God laughed at me, and it had been Rob who received her into this world. He stitched me up perfectly; textbook sutures.

Always Rob, catching me at my most vulnerable.

***

Right onto Dwight now.

***

Sometimes when I wanted to get out of my head, I’d flip.

Salad or Thai food?

This black dress or that one?

Do it alone or wait and see if my fairytale was around the river bend? It wouldn’t get easier if I waited, you know.

Unlike my dad, I didn’t have a home office. At work, my office was a cubicle in the shared area. But I wanted to push little finger-paintings into the padding with thumbtacks, how others around me had increasingly done in all the years since I started. Nobody wants to be lonely, not even my walls.

***

When I was 18 and EE Dad asked what I’d declare, I vacillated about what I’d tell him.

Linguistics or Pre-med?

I loved language so much. Etymology, and Sanskrit, especially. His mother, my primary caretaker and only other living relative at one point, taught me some as a girl, and I grew up with a dog-earred book called Devavipravesika. Its tattered cover translated: An Introduction to the Speech of the Gods.

I brought it with me to college. Sitting in my dorm, flipping pages of the course catalog sans enthusiasm, I fantasized for a moment about telling everyone my name was Jalayana.

“It means boat, or water vessel,” I’d tell them, before we all walked from some cafe to our impassioned seminar. Jalayana. To me, the most beautiful word.

In Devavipravesika, if a word was also beautiful when delivered in reverse, I’d highlight it from right to left.

I never became Jalayana; flowing in the rivers of linguistics, seducing lovers who bestowed me with pet names and prose in handsome accents.

Instead, I sat in the back at O-Chem, graduated with honors and still having never been kissed, and quietly gave my real name, Teah. But only if and when asked.

Heads, you win. Tails, I lose, Dad.

***

Left on Bancroft.

As I turned, I slowed. Looking for house numbers, taking in front yards, their excessive amount of little free libraries, porches with shoe piles, chalk-tinged sidewalks, and tolerance-promoting signs taped to windows.

1650.

1646.

My pie cabinet would be happy here, I thought, rolling along. Past 1632, 1630.

1628.

But then, as I neared Marigolde’s house, I saw a black and white sign mounted into one of the enormous tree trunks curbside.

1624.

I didn’t know much about trees, but figured it was an elm, planted here back when we were all mere ideas of seeds and eggs inside our ancestors.

I had to read it again.

DRIVE LIKE YOUR KID DIED HERE.

I blame myself, forgetting my stick shift, as Ford and I stalled in front of this sign.

You have arrived.

***

I heard the rails clank in the back again. In my body, my kayak, it felt like all the boxes, the weight, in me tipped over, like my cords inside yanked or strangled me. I couldn’t start the car, couldn’t get out. Couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move.

Stuck. Baddha.

I am… stuck. Aren’t I? No denying I’m who I’ve always been. I don’t ask or speak in circles unless called upon.

I couldn’t bring myself to ring the bell, face Marigolde, ask about the sign. If this friend I’ve never met before, this Marigolde, had more in common with me than taste in antique furniture, I’d never verify.

If she had ever heard of the word for me, maybe for both of us. Vilomah.

Or if it was just a sign, a gimmick to slow drivers while maybe her littles played outside. We had only written about a cabinet, after all; I didn’t know her.

But. I could see both sides.

On one hand, the pie cabinet was heavy. I’d need her help, or someone’s help, unloading it. And once we’d worked as a team, laboring together to rehome the piece, Marigolde and I would never talk again after I drove off. Down Bancroft, right on Dwight. Maybe she’d be disappointed, realizing the hinges creaked and the drawers needed some sort of lubricant to slide out more comfortably. Then I’d slide backwards myself. Back to being Lonely T, going home to a house that now echoed, only ever corresponding with new people who wanted a sideboard or a vanity mirror. Back to being Doctor Madhavan, reassuring women that they were in good hands. A sad, dry drawer.

On the other hand, I didn’t want to ask for help, to even give Marigolde my pie cabinet anymore, to put it into her hands. I wanted to hide in my truck, and drive away like a ghost. Erasing this Bancroft street, leaving it in my wake.

I don’t know the word for ghost. I think it’s Preta? But I’d need to check, and I fear I already gave my copy of Devavipravesika away, back when I’d been angry or bargaining with the Gods, packing and sacrificing feverishly.

While stalled in front of the sign, I looked in the back of the truck towards the furniture, and then reached inside the center console. A quarter now in my hand.

I may never not be depressed. Perhaps I always was, even as a lonely little girl abandoned to read in a big house, so full it somehow always felt empty unless my father was there.

But I could keep rehoming furniture, I could pick up another language.

I could take some medicine, something to feel a little better.

I could tell my patients what they needed to hear. That they did incredible, that their babies are beautiful, no matter whether they came out backwards or forwards or upside down, inside out.

All of this, I accepted.

***

Minutes later and having never met Marigolde, I drove away from Bancroft. Turned right onto Dwight. Back toward work, back the way I came. I didn’t think of the basement as much this time when I passed. And when I pulled into the lot across from the hospital, I parked and leaned over, grabbing my keycard and ID. I’d taken them off and set them down on the sticky, cracked passenger seat outside of Marigolde’s curb where I labored alone with unloading.

My ID said Teah Madhavan, OBGYN. It had my picture, taken long before I had decided to get pregnant, to become a single mother, and then had become what the English language has no word for, but the Gods do.

Vilomah.

Like a water vessel with irreparable holes in it.

If my keycard had said Jalayana, I might have been brave enough to ask Rob. Or. Perhaps taken things more slowly. Started with drinks, just the two of us. Maybe I’d never have met him. Or maybe I’d be a mother of many children in a home like those on Bancroft, with a husband I kiss. Maybe him, maybe not.

But Jalayana is not my name. It was hers.

I, Lonely T, found someone — may as well have been flour, or seasoning — in a binder to make embryos with. A lawyer, like my father had been.

In hindsight. I wish many things. That I’d gone into Linguistics, that my dad had gone into math, and that I’d given myself time.

But mostly, I wished I could have saved her. There wasn’t enough Tylenol or medicine in the world for that, no matter what you call it, or how you looked at it.

Sadder, lonelier than regret. Pascattapa, I suppose.

Crossing the lot back into work, I left Ford unlocked. All that furniture and those boxes still inside, but I’d tackle each, find good homes for them all soon enough. It was less full now, though. Quieter. Half-empty, you could say.

Me. The owner, still, of a pie cabinet in a Ford.

***

Next to the sign outside 1624 Bancroft, I left the broken-down crib — its loud rails and frame — plus, a ziplock taped to it with nuts and bolts, a post-it inside. Like New. I felt lighter without it following me around anymore.

I’ve delivered many things, you see, filled many homes with a wanted presence. But sometimes, Gods speak, and deliveries take unexpected turns.

Heads, you win.

Tails, I lose.