day four continued: forget to breathe

the sun is peaking in through the blinds. they are still bent from when we had that kitten, the small, grey one that liked to leap from the bed to the blinds, hang by them by two or three claws, meowing until jake would get up and rescue her. once down she would start puncturing the boxes still left unpacked. we never did give the kitten a name, just kept calling her rascal and cat, or kit cat, or "no kitty". we meant to name her before all this happened. that night when it all ended, we were distracted and we'd forgotten to close the door that night tightly. she ran off then. probably out to find a home that would give her a proper name.

i could use that kit cat right about now. this apartment feels too big, too quiet. i’ve been sleeping with the television on all night, just for the sounds, just like my mother. does it really happen that easily? the adoption of parental cringe habits? i need to get up, get out of bed, get out of this funk i’ve found myself in.

there are unanswered messages on my machine, a pad of paper and a half worth. troy is going to be in town next week. he’s working on some kind of documentary show for mtv, something about a group of people living in a house. he's here in town briefly before he's back in new york, where sam is, and where the show is meant to be. he told me about it last christmas, over drinks. i asked him where the music was? isn’t that what mtv is supposed to be? music? videos? he just laughed and told me i had no vision and that college was bleeding the cool out of me. as if i was ever cool. as if i even stayed in school. i should have. i still have all the books, a month and a half salary worth of books that i didn’t even get halfway through. jake hadn’t wanted me to go. he had wanted me to work on all of this. our new place, our new life. "how can we have any freedom with your hands tied to schedules and papers and tests all the time? where is the adventure in that?" he would ask, shaking his head.

but our life wasn’t any sort of adventure. a department store job for me, a coffee counter job for him, one that only paid in tips; tips that usually consisted of a few buttons, some loose change and iou slips written on the inside of cigarette packs. we were supposed to be bohemian, living the artist life. he had every detail plotted, every t crossed. i guess i let him take me over. sometimes you just get tired of fighting life. i don’t know what i had to offer besides selling overpriced dresses, anyhow. i had those dreams of being a writer, a journalist, a teacher. but, every girl has those notions that they can write. they spout off about being a poet or an author because they write in journals and black and white composition books, or because they have read keats and e.e. cummings. all they really do is smoke cigarettes and skip meals, get pregnant, proposed to, and then wind up alone. what an adventure.

i wish i hadn’t thrown that pack of cigarettes away. i wonder if i go down to the dumpster, maybe i can still find the pack, wade through the mountain of black plastic we had a party last night bags to find them. no, i promised myself i’d quit. i promised you, too, little girl. i need to come up with a name for you. i do. i don’t think you can be kit cat the kid.

i don’t want to see troy when he comes. i don’t want to hear his stories, or see that look in his eye when he sees my belly. my maternity clothes, this half empty apartment. he’ll just talk about robert. he will. even if i don’t ask him, he’ll get brought up. robert is our connection, our old family ties. and i’m just not up for it. i’m not that girl anymore.

i can’t tell robert either. i know he’s on that machine, too, lost in that maze of i’m hiding unreturned calls. he can always sense when something is happening to me. it's in the wind, he used to tell me. "your words are in the wind, janie." he never knew about jake, about me dropping out of school, or that the dreams came back. no one knows about the dreams. jake tried to get me to tell him, told me i wake up screaming and clawing at the air, when i slept. he said my voice would sound alien to him, feral and raw. i pretended not to know, acted suprised and shocked. i blamed it on the zombie fueled 'night of the living dead' marathon we'd had, and bad food. i didn't tlel him that they come to me when i'm awake, too. the memories, the sounds, or how i etched survival lines into the inside of my thighs, in the tender spots, the pain covering me with a soothing haze; helping me breathe. i guess i don't have to hide it away any longer. last night's criss-cross cuts on my arm are proof of that. my freedom in pink swollen flesh; anything to silence this fear.

how am i going to do this? i don't even think i can afford rent here anymore. i've missed so many days of work. carrie pretends not to notice because of the baby, because she knows jake left. she'd run into him getting coffee, and he told her he'd left for good. not just me, but the whole city, the entire state. that he cannot breathe the same air as me, anymore. she told me she asked about the baby, asked how he could do it. how he could be out of my breathing space and still have a daughter. he told her i'd made my decision, shut him out, that he had no baby now. maybe he can look up my father and live with him, they can compare notes on denying their children's existance.

and, in a quick moment or less, we become our parents. it happens. they don't warn you about it, but it does, it happens.

"carrie, i'm sorry. i can't come in today. yeah, i'm sick." and i am still sick. i think i'll go back to bed. maybe i need a matched set, maybe then i can breathe. don't worry jake, i'll try to keep my breath far from you.

i wish i'd let sam come. i didn't think i'd be this scared.