The Scent of Your Breath

Twenty-one

It happened all at once. I was sitting on the toilet and felt first an itch in my ovaries and then a dull splash in the toilet bowl. When I was little I was convinced that frogs could come out of the toilet and climb up my back. I lifted myself up from the bowl, holding my legs wide, and blood dripped to the floor.

There were no frogs in it. There was a tadpole. A human tadpole. It was red, floating in a golden swimming pool, looking at me with its one black eye, which was almost bigger than its own head. With a little tail, its body was elongated like a lizard’s.

“Suttu ’n palazzu c’è ’n cani pazzu, te pazzu cani stu pezzu ri pani,” this disgusting creature whispered, a nonsensical tongue twister in the Sicilian dialect of my childhood, something about a mad dog and a piece of bread.

I felt my heart tremble and my thoughts blurred. The tadpole swam there, moving back and forth as though enjoying its aquatic game. I could hear the shrill laughter of a child in the distance while the tadpole went on swimming and swimming, repeating its curious phrase.

Then, afraid that it was a monster, I flushed the toilet. A mighty whirlpool dragged it down to the sewer.

Because of the noise of the water I didn’t hear Thomas arrive. He had closed the door and was putting his bag on the ground.

“I’m home!”

Grabbed him. That’s what I should have done. Grabbed him and strangled him.

“Where are you hiding?”

Strangled him with rage, with keen love, with the love that made me love him for an infinitesimally short length of time, and for the death that he dragged from my belly.

“Pequeña…where are you?”

I came out of the bathroom, looking at the floor, and smiled at him.

“What were you doing?” he asked.

“I was in the bathroom,” I replied.

Lick away the blood and hold him naked and clean under the pillow.

“Hey, listen, I’ve brought you a surprise…!” he said enthusiastically.

Touch his soft limbs and plunge a finger into his chest. Rip out his heart and lift it to the sky.

I know it took two of us, but I put up no resistance…

Attach him to my nipple for a few minutes, long enough to weep.

Then I felt a hairy head stroking my calves and for a moment I thought my son had returned in the form of a velvety ghost.

I looked straight ahead and asked Thomas, “What is it?”

He stared at me and then he said, “It’s a dog…”

I lowered my head, eyes full of tears.

And then I burst out crying.

The darkness had already entered the room, and the red curtain floated slightly in the breeze, while the noise from our neighbors’ TV filled the still silence.

“What shall we do?” he asked me, stroking my feet.

“He’s already done what had to be done. Everything’s just as it was,” I replied crisply.

He got to his feet, lit a cigarette, and went to look out the window. I heard him breathing.

The cowering dog took refuge in a corner and followed all my tired movements with the corner of its eye. “Everything’s just as it was,” I repeated.

The smoke from his cigarette rose in circles and dissolved in the air.

“Why did you throw it away?” he asked me in a tone of voice that I had never heard him use before.

“It came out all by itself, I…”

“No, no,” he broke in, “why did you flush the toilet?”

I stopped and thought for a moment, because I didn’t really know either.

The dog went on staring at me, and that phrase echoed around in my head: “Suttu ’n palazzu c’è ’n cani pazzu, te pazzu cani stu pezzu ri pani.”

“Perhaps out of fear,” I replied.

“Fear of what?” he asked me.

I shrugged, but he couldn’t see me.

“You should have shown it to me,” he said.

“What difference would that have made…,” I replied, tears beginning to sting my eyes again.

Then he turned around and said, “I’m sorry.”

Everything’s as it was.

Is everything as it was?