Onion Songs

THE CHANGING ROOM

He wakes with the door behind him. It rattles, rattles again. He hears the eager key opposed by the reluctant lock. He hears the torn breath of the key’s owner, as if even this is too much effort. He hears a familiar language whose words he still cannot understand. He hears a music of distressed syllables, low vowels, painful consonants.

He risks a constricted, claustrophobic breath: these objects in front of him so close and yet somehow unreachable: the miniature table with the picture of the young girl: the bright red necklace arranged about the neck of her black and white image: the necklace moving one segment at a time down her throat: the click of insect legs on glass as the narrow red body disappears around the edge of the stained silver frame. A few inches away the square of soiled handkerchief, its aged stains graying into a spotted lizard hide. And on that cloth square, the ruins of the young girl’s comb, metal teeth broken and handle cracked, a swatch of blonde hair caught and held for decades, the whole of it collapsed like a wolf’s decaying grin. And beyond that grin, crumpled like a life regurgitated, lie the meager remains of her last letter, paper fingered again and again almost to transparency, the blue ink of her words floating above the shadows.

And, hanging around him, the clothes he wore that day, as if he were standing in the changing room of a large swimming pool, as if the objects on the table were the things from his pockets, laid there, away from the dampness that must eventually creep, that must eventually spread everywhere, and soften everything, and dissolve us all in its path.

The back wall of the room shimmers, as if metal or glass, but he knows it’s not metal nor glass, but he knows… nothing. And leaving the realm of factual carpentry, he understands that this is the corridor outside the changing room, leading to that grand public swimming pool. The passage glitters, reflecting the pool that lies beyond the doorway, around the short hall to the left, where the water extends as far as his mind will allow, as deep, where every word he speaks has an echo, where the other swimmers repeat his awkward speech, but will not show their faces.

But he will not go there. He is not ready to go there. He hasn’t done enough, even with all these rooms to show for what can and has been done, each one holding a moment he can climb into. He hasn’t gathered enough. There’s never enough time to gather everything he needs, and never enough space to hold it all. And what is there to do when every moment he’s collected demands focus, insists upon his attention? Sometimes all he can do is leave.

He turns around and grabs the handle. He runs through all his keys, trying each in succession. The door rattles, rattles again. The reluctant lock resists the eager key. He hears his breath begin to tear in the close space of the room. He rests his hand on the interior wall and is alarmed at how leathery it has become, how brittle, how yielding. He starts to pray in a familiar language whose words he cannot understand.

His repetitive plea becomes a music of distressed syllables and low vowels. The consonants are painful in the tender space of his mouth.