White Oleander

Love. I would ban the word from the vocabulary. Such imprecision. Love, which love, what love? Sentiment, fantasy, longing, lust? Obsession, devouring need? Perhaps the only love that is accurate without qualification is the love of a very young child. Afterward, she too becomes a person, and thus compromised. "Do you love me?" you asked in the dark of your narrow bed. "Do you love me Mommy?"

 

"Of course," I told you. "Now go to sleep."

 

Love is a bedtime story, a teddy bear, familiar, one eye missing.

 

"Do you love me, carita?" Lydia says, twisting my arm, forcing my face into the rough horsehair blanket, biting my neck. "Say it, you bitch."

 

Love is a toy, a token, a scented handkerchief.

 

"Tell me you love me," Barry said.

 

"I love you," I said. "I love you, I love you."

 

Love is a check, that can be forged, that can be cashed. Love is a payment that comes due.

 

Lydia lies on her side on my bunk, the curve of her hip the crest of a wave in shallow water, turquoise, Playa del Carmen, Martinique. Leafing through a new Celebridades. I bought her a subscription. She says it makes her feel part of the world. I can't see getting excited about movies I won't see, political issues of the day fail to move me, they have nothing to say within the deep prison stillness.

 

Time has taken on an utterly different quality for me. What difference does a year make? In a perverse way, I pity the women who are still a part of time, trapped by it, how many months, how many days. I have been cut free, I move among centuries. Writers send me books —Joseph Brodsky, Marianne Moore, Pound. I think maybe I will study Chinese.

 

"You ever go to Guanajuato?" Lydia asks. "All the big stars going there now.

 

Guanajuato, Astrid. Do you remember? I know you do. We went with Alejandro the painter, as distinguished from Alejandro the poet. From San Miguel. My Spanish wasn't good enough to determine the quality of the poet's oeuvre, but Alejandro the painter was very bad indeed. He should not have created at all. He should have simply sat on a stool and charged one to look at him. And so shy, he could never look in my eyes until after he'd finished speaking. Instead, he'd talk to my hand, the arch of my foot, the curve of my calf. Only after he had stopped could he look into my eyes. He trembled when we made love, the faint smell of geraniums.