TheBanyanTree: Magda - Fiction

Mon Apr 18 07:57:04 PDT 2011

I have no words to give you that are worthy.

Jena Norton

-----Original Message-----
From: thebanyantree-bounces at lists.remsset.com
[mailto:thebanyantree-bounces at lists.remsset.com] On Behalf Of Monique Colver
Sent: Sunday, April 17, 2011 10:47 PM
To: Banyan Tree
Subject: TheBanyanTree: Magda - Fiction

Magda

I hear the crickets outside, scads of them from the sounds of it. The cats
used to care, always wanting out so they could catch them, but now they just
sleep right through it, as if they can't hear them at all. Just two weeks
ago there weren't any crickets at all, at least not that I could hear, but
time isn't standing still, even when it feels like it is, and before long
the crickets will fade away too, like everything does, and I'll still be
here, with the cats, listening.

Or maybe it's frogs I hear. Frogs, crickets, things that make noises in the
night when the rest of the world is asleep. I used to think it was peaceful
out here, miles from the nearest town, but now I just think it's dead out
here, with nothing alive for miles in any direction, nothing but me and the
cats and the crickets and the frogs. During the day it's even quieter, not
so much as an airplane overhead or the mail truck passing by on the road.
There used to be all kinds of traffic on this road, everyone in a hurry to
get from one place to another, and it bothered me, all the noise, and I
wished for peace.

Now I have it and I don't like it, not one bit. I'm not sure when the
traffic stopped. Maybe it was when the bypass was built, a better smoother
road that takes the people away from this area, as if we've ceased to exist.
Maybe we have. I can't really tell anymore.

I used to keep in touch with people out there, people out in the world, but
that was when the telephone was still working. Somewhere along the line,
perhaps a couple of years ago, the phone stopped working. Maybe I stopped
paying the bill, I'm not really sure. I picked it up one day, after months
of not picking it up at all, and there wasn't so much as a dial tone on it.
Nothing at all. I would have called to find out, but I had no phone. Inertia
took over from there.

I stopped driving after I had the accident, the one that banged me up pretty
bad last year. It was so bad for awhile there I didn't want to keep going
on, especially when they had me in the rehab place. But eventually they sent
me back home with my crutches, had a taxi drop me off right at my house, and
I just stayed here after that. I had nowhere to go, after all, and no one to
see.

It wasn't always like this, just me and the cats. Used to be we had
ourselves a regular life, but that was when Alan was still here, before he
run off on me. He said he was tired of me just moping around, never trying
to get better, but I did try, I know I did.

Just seemed like no matter what I did things wouldn't get better, and I
never could get myself back into a rhythm.

He left on a Tuesday morning in the middle of April. Things were starting to
bloom, spring was coming, and usually that helped, usually I could rouse
myself into caring just a little bit, but before that could happen Alan said
he'd had enough, that no one should have to live like this forever. I didn't
understand what he meant, though I knew I hadn't been myself for quite
awhile.

"You have to get over it," he'd tell me, and I'd wonder how he could expect
that. How could I get over it as if I didn't even care? Are men that
different that they can just move on so quickly?

And then, "I can't live like this, Magda, I just can't." I didn't even try
to stop him. I didn't say anything. What was there to say? If he really
loved me he'd stay, he'd understand, he'd make me better, but I guess he
just didn't love me enough.

I'm not sure anyone has ever loved me enough, not for me anyway. Not even
the cats. They only care for me because I feed them, and I feed them because
I love them. But they don't love me back, not like I want them to.

It's lonely out here, that's the truth, but what am I to do? I don't know
anyone out there in the world anymore. All that ignoring people and hiding
out got me the exact result I thought I wanted, and now no one knows of me
at all. Knowing of me is the most basic of knowing, and what I really want
is for someone to know me. But no one knows of me anymore, much less knows
me.

I was never the most sociable of women anyway, always waiting for others to
come to me. But I made myself agreeable. I laughed at their jokes, I
listened to their stories, I put on a face that I thought said to them,
"please be my friend." And it worked, for a while, or at least it seemed to.

Until I turned them all away when they came out, all so concerned and
sympathetic. I hated the sympathy, I hated the way they looked at me as if
they pitied me. And so I hid, and I sent them away, and they went away and
forgot all about me. Just like I wanted. And then there was only Alan, and
now there's no Alan either.

There's nothing but me and the cats, and the frogs and the crickets. I can't
even remember how long ago it was that Alan left, how long I've been here
alone. I've got my garden, but over the winter I finished off all the canned
goods. Not sure how long I can go on like this, but I can't go back out to
the world now. I don't know how anymore. I lost my way.

I sleep a lot now. It's something to do, and when I sleep I dream of the
beach, and the boardwalk where Alan and I used to go in the summer,
sometimes in the winter too, when no one else was there and the sky was dark
and the wind would put a chill right through us. We didn't care, we loved it
when we were together. I don't even know if the beach is still there, if the
boardwalk is right where we left it, but in my dreams it's all the same, so
I'll keep that. I wouldn't like to go there and find out it was gone, or
that it had changed. I want it just like it was, and so I'll keep it in my
dreams where it won't ever change.

That's why I like the past. It doesn't change, it just is. There's nothing
scary there, for I've already been there. I'd live there all the time, if I
could, but sometimes I have to wake up and feed the cats, feed myself, take
care of what little life I have left.

It's not so bad, I tell myself. At least the worst has already happened, and
nothing can ever be that bad again.

It helps me sleep, that little bit of knowing that nothing else can ever
hurt like that again. If it weren't for that, I think I might go insane.

-- 
Monique Colver