Figs

April 15, 1926

Dear Diary,

                  I told a lie and someone died.

                  There, I wrote it. Took me long enough. This secret has been living in my bowels for twenty- four days now. And I could not write it to you Dear Diary, because you are a mirror and I wasn’t ready for a mirror. 

He does not pay attention to me. He does not care. Why did he court me, why would he marry me if he didn’t care? He doesn’t care what I wear, what I do. He never tells me that I look lovely or pretty. He never tells me that my ideas are smart. I want him to care and I have tried all the ways—even made myself sick but he never so much as brought me a glass of water when I vomited.

                  I’d seen the man John Evans a few times at the grocery mart bagging groceries into brown paper bags. John Evans was tall and always in a white collared shirt, the top-button always unbuttoned. He had eyes round and open and they landed on me from time to time and when they did I’d think thoughts I knew I shouldn’t be thinking and it wasn’t even because I’m a married woman. 

                  I should not have been thinking the thoughts because the world is black and the world is white and apparently that means we are not all of us human.

                  But Dear Diary, I am human and woman and also, white. 

                  It must have been the seventh, maybe eighth time that I’d seen John Evans, bagging groceries. I’d always felt him looking at me and I confess that I liked it when he looked at me, even though Mr. Hackley would consider my liking any attention sinful, selfish and un-necessary. But the way it feels to be desired, even for a few moments—it makes a woman feel alive and I like to feel alive. 

                  Well, on this seventh, maybe eighth day that John Evans and I locked eyes at the grocery mart, I was having a particularly difficult time. And I saw him see the difficult time in my eyes and I don’t know how I saw him see but I saw him see and it made me feel something like warm apples, honey and cinnamon.  

                  You see, just before I went to the grocery mart, I walked in on Mr. Hackley having relations with Clare, right there on the second floor of our dance studio. Clare and I have been dancing together for years, we grew up in this town and well, I never expected it from her. She was always a little quiet but I thought she liked me ? 

                  I saw Mr. Hackley’s ass first, unmistakably pale and hairy and Clare’s face, which didn’t look like her face at all, but it was unmistakably Clare. And when I recognized what was happening between the two of them, I released a sound that was unrecognizable to me. It was a cry deep from my parts, and I was so embarrassed at its primitive tone that I ran out the door. 

                  Mr. Hackley didn’t follow me. 

                  I ended up foggy wandering through the grocery mart looking for figs because figs are my sad fruit. I saw John Evans there at the end of the counter aware of me immediately in the heat of that place.  He read my eyes and he packed my figs and when he handed me the package our hands touched. 

                  I looked over my shoulder on my way out but he was no longer looking at me, packing eggs for the next customer. 

                  I sat on the bench in the park on Lee County Road. I ate all the figs senseless and quickly and I liked the bigger bites and the sad sweetness that sat on my tongue. I walked home with a stubborn stomachache that lasted until the moment Mr. Hackley walked through the front door. 

                  Then the stomachache got worse. 

                   Mr. Hackley came home late that day. He brushed by me, Diary, barely looked at me but laughed to himself that I was always upset about something, that I enjoyed being upset. 

I wanted to pull my hair out but instead I hung on.

                  I followed him into his study where he’d gone to practice his Spanish with that unfortunate ear of his. He didn’t look up from the pages when I followed him in. Didn’t blink when I sat down on one of the extra chairs and crossed my legs. I wanted him to desire me but more than that, I wanted us to share something, a secret, like he had with Clare. 

                  “There’s a man at the grocery mart called John Evans, he’s been looking at me,” I said. 

                  There, I did it, I thought. 

                  I watched the blood flood Mr. Hackley’s wraith face.  He shot up into the air of that stale study, dropped the Spanish pages onto the wood floor and walked purposefully to the front door. My heart fluttered with excitement. Finally, I saw him care and even more than that, I saw him be protective.

                  What a fool I am, Diary. 

 Mr. Hackley was protective, but too late I realized that it wasn’t over me. Mr. Hackley was protective over his hard-earned property: his automobile, his golf clubs, his house, his umbrella, his wife.  

He left that evening and did not return until after 2 in the morning. 

And when Mr. Hackley returned, he smelled of smoke fire. 

At the dance studio, they told me what they heard happened. Rebecca, who speaks it as she thinks it said: “You wanted Mr. Hackley’s attention so bad you had an affair with Groceries?” 

Clare stood there silent and I did not tell them that I hadn’t had the affair with John Evans. 

 The photographic memory of such a tryst would have been a gift and I deserved no such gift. 

They tied John Evans to a tree in the park on Lee County Road that night. They beat him with bats and splintered planks of wood.  And while he was still alive, they burned him. 

At night I wake up drenched and dreaming of John Evans’ handsome flesh burning on Lee County Road while Mr. Hackley sleeps silent as a cemetery beside me.

I will never eat a fig again.

Love,

Me