Monster

There is something inside me that unfurls like black smoke when I’m hunched over in the bathtub half-covered by purple water and he’s sitting naked on the toilet stinking of vodka and weed telling me that, exactly six months ago when we broke up for the second time, he had fallen in love with someone else. 

It happens like this: We walk into the art store, and he drops my hand. We walk into the art store and a girl with pink hair and three nose piercings smiles at him, and he drops my hand. He tries to play it off all casually like they didn’t just exchange a glance. We walk toward the blank canvas in the clearance section of the store, and I don’t say anything under my breath. I swallow my hateful self. 

At the counter she’s there again, glowering at me for some reason, flipping a bright smile over at the man beside me. I pay. I snake my arm around him, and he shrugs it off. He makes a stupid joke about a magnet they’re selling. I take the receipt and I burn. 

As we walk out to the car, bag swinging on my wrist, he says, “I’m surprised you didn’t say anything about her hair.” 

I snort a little. “I thought she was rude.” 

He looks confused. I don’t bring up the hand or the arm or the stupid joke or the last six months. I just burn and swallow all the things I only said once all those months ago when I kicked him out, when the gate squeaked so loud past midnight, when I piled up t-shirts and pants and dirty sneakers and wet swim trunks. 

“What,” he says flatly when we reach the first light. This is always his question of me, what. What’s wrong? But no, always what’s wrong now? You always want a problem. 

Sorry, I want to say. Sorry, but before her hair, I see a middle-aged, overweight bellydancer who owns her own studio downtown. Who six months ago on our anniversary picked you up in her ugly, tan minivan and made me late to understanding that, in this thing between us, I am all alone. Before her hair, I see a photo on your phone of a body that isn’t mine with strips of cantaloupe arranged over pink nipples. Before her hair, I see you quickly write your number on a receipt and slip it into a customer’s bag at work. I see a business card floating at the bottom of your backpack. 

I want to say all this and more, but instead, I swallow. I play out the conversation in my head. I’ll say he pulled his arm away. He’ll say I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ll burn myself up trying to feel my way out of it for both of us. 

We’ll be back in the bathroom in six months talking about a different girl, talking about how I pushed him away. I’ll say I’m not your type anyway. I’ll think I should have seen her hair. I’ll sit there all purple and pruned knowing that all this time I’ve just been arguing with myself. At every turn, I’ve been both sides.

I chew my lip for a little longer, stalling. Then, finally, “She was a bitch to me and falling all over you. It was pathetic.” 

His face comes undone, and I start to see the shape of something real behind it, some hurt that I can tell he had there, put away for quite some time. “I feel like I can’t work anywhere, do you understand that? You don’t want me working at the dispensary, and, okay, I get it, Maria works there. I don’t care about that. But now I feel like I can’t even tell you that I wanted to apply at the art store. Now I can’t even go take my resume in because, if I do get the job, every day I’ll come home and you’ll ask if that girl was working. And sometimes she will be.” 

The same slow, angry black smoke starts to fill my chest again. I used to blow up fast as a kid. If someone made me angry, I didn’t even have time to think before my mouth was running away from me saying things that were rotten before they even left my tongue. One time, I told my mother I wanted her to die in the dark of a theater right before the movie started. My dad took me into the hallway, and I thought he was going to yell like he normally did, scare me into shutting up, scare me into listening. 

Instead, he looked me in the face and said, “The first day that you don’t have a mother will be the worst day of your life. You don’t want that to be any sooner. You’re amazing in every other way, a four - hundred foot home run, but you have this mean streak in you a mile wide. And sometimes I don’t know what to do with you.” 

We went back inside, and I was good for some time after that. He had instilled in me back then a fear that I would not come to understand until much later. I realize now that it had nothing to do with being afraid of him and everything to do with the self-hatred regret spawns. 

A few months after that, my sister and I had gotten into a terrible fight. My sister had said something — unimportant, I know, probably about clothes edging onto my side of the room— and something burst inside my brain. I blacked out for a second. All I know is that some dark part of me took control of the rest and threw a chair across the room. I hit her. I screamed worse and harder than I ever had up until that point in my small life. There was something bad in me. 

After that, my dad was solely responsible for my discipline. He bought me books on meditation. He came to the side of my bed before I fell asleep and told me everything would be okay. The most important thing is staying calm. He’d say that streak is disappearing. That streak isn’t a mile wide. 

Slowly, I learned not to explode all at once but to let my anger build insidiously inside my throat. 

This is the method I use now in the car just after the intersection near home, six months after he fell in love with someone new, twelve minutes after the girl with the pink hair made me want to gut her like a fish.  

I imagine saying this to her now, stopping the car, flinging the door open. I want to walk up to her and laugh. I want to spit on her. I want to rip her eyelashes off one by one and tell her calmly, I want to gut you like a fucking fish. And then I would. 

But instead of getting out of the car, some better part of me acknowledges the waywardness of my anger and my fantasy. I stay in the car licking my wounds in the hopes that, six months later, they will suddenly and miraculously not only heal but also completely disappear. 

I look at him as we turn onto our street. “I love you. I don’t care where you work. I don’t want something that’s untested anyway.” And I mean that part, I really do. “You should be able to stay loyal anywhere. That’s on you.” 

“I know,” he says, “I have been. I am.” 

We pull into our apartment complex and I watch him. Always watching, always trying to see if some small movement of his mouth, some shake in his hand, some waver in his gaze will give him away. It almost always does. I just don’t want to see it or hear it. It doesn’t exist. 

So when we get inside and take off our shoes, I put my hand out and I repeat the only lie I’ve ever told him, which is, of course, I trust you. 

It happens like this: We walk into a steakhouse to have dinner with his mother, and the hostess has long shiny dark hair. Sorry, but before I see her hair, I see a six - month old hair tie on his dashboard and a strip of eyelashes underneath his bed. Before I see her hair, I see him presenting me the eyelashes like a gift, proud of himself for finding the evidence for which I had, all along, been searching. Before I see her hair, I see him sneak a long, specific look. I see his eyes trying to find hers. 

I see myself, in a moment, reaching out and peeling all the skin from her face. I imagine presenting it to him. I found this for you. Is this more your type? Will this make you stay? 

I’m awkward around his mother, trying to be extra nice. Does she have the same tells as her son? I’m nice. I sit there and I’m nice. I don’t grab extra bread, and I order the cheapest thing on the menu. She still makes fun of it, and I ignore that too. I watch him look at the waitress. He grabs my hand under the table. 

I sit there wondering if I am out of place in my own seat. I wonder who else has met his mother? Who else did she scrutinize? I burn, and I wish the thought would burn away with me. Who else trudged in through the garage, purse in her hand, stuck her face around the door and said hello. Who else stood shyly in the corner as I had the first time? 

When we get home, he turns on the TV. I start the laundry and, as I’m going through his shorts, I find a receipt from the art store. I have swallowed too much and no more will go down. 

“Did you really go back to the art store without me? I thought I said we don’t have any money right now and that had to be the last trip for now.” 

He pauses the TV and throws the remote down on the bed. “You really want to have a problem tonight? Do you really want to have a problem tonight?” 

Smoke fills my chest. “I’m not trying to have a problem. I was just doing the laundry and I found the receipt.” And I’m less worried about the money than I am the fact that he went back, but I don’t say that part. I imagine him asking for her number, her stupid pink hair tucked behind her ear. I want to rip it out, strand by strand. 

He stands and walks over to me. His features are a mix of anger and confusion. “That’s from the other day. You’re fucking paranoid. You know there’s girls everywhere, right? I’m not doing fucking anything wrong. And you just hate everyone. Even when everything before was my fault, you’ll hate anyone that looks my way.” 

“I’ll kill them,” I say. 

“I know.” 

There’s nothing left to say now, not after that, not for a long time. I spit out my hateful self over and over again. Somehow she regrows. Maybe I swallow her and she’s able to crawl back up inside me. 

He touches my hand. He knows this mile-wide wound in me, more familiar to him than my face. I repeat the only lie I know.