by Anya Meksin

Painting by E.V. Meksin.

I had just awoken and was sitting on my bed wringing my hands and sobbing when the telephone rang.

It was Lein, a well-meaning but unpleasant boy I had befriended out of pity years ago, before I learned how limited my capacity for kindness really was. We hadn’t spoken since we graduated together from H-103, but the moment I heard him on the phone I felt a deep irritation, as if his pestering had never stopped.

“So you’ve already heard,” he said, after some tiresome opening words.

“Heard what?”

“About Sirch.”

Lein and I lived hundreds of miles apart on the A-Coast, where we attended different Confirmation Centers. We never spoke or communicated and to my knowledge had no friends in common, nor were we ourselves friends.

“Sirch who?” I asked.

“Srohrs. Sirch Srohrs.”

I knew Sirch Srohrs, not well, but enough to see that he and Lein might somehow be connected in that great unknowable way, the way that all pathetic people are connected to each other and to no one else.

“Yes, I know Sirch, not well, but—”

“You knew Sirch, you mean.”

That tasteless use of the past tense, to be expected from Lein and from the world.

“Has something happened, Lein?”

“I hate to be the one to tell you this,” he said with relish.

“I’m listening.”

“But you’re upset already. I don’t want to increase...,” Lein babbled with growing excitement.

Sirch was dead. His mother had come over with cookies and had found him between the white cotton sheets of his bed, lying on his back in flannel pajamas. His pale skin was stretched taught over the slight protruding bones of his face and arms—he had long ago stopped eating: a quiet, gentle way of going about things.

Lein had called to see if I wanted to accompany him to the funeral the next morning, if I, by any chance, wanted to be his date. I hung up the phone and stared, bewildered, at the trappings of my life. The walls of my room were painted red, the ceiling and the window trim were white. I had hung things on the wall, I had procured a bed, a desk, a bookshelf, and some books. All around there was evidence of my interests and my character. Across the entrance, a phone cord stretched like trip-wire, but I was careful to step over it when I came and went—I wasn’t going to make things simple for myself and move the phone.

There was a Neighborhood Health Meeting scheduled for the day, a simple day that having only just begun, was already untenable. Of course, the suicide of an acquaintance should be excuse enough to break appointments. A sniffle or a minor headache was normally excuse enough. Anything, really, to temporarily throw down the load and act as if a rest was well-deserved. But I was struck with a resolve. Sirch’s death would afford me no petty gains, as it had done for Lein and his day planner.

Through the thin wall that separated our rooms, I heard Silesa stir and step heavily from her bed. I heard most of what went on in her room: her quiet whispers to herself at night, and the occasional times she brought home men for hurried, shrill encounters. I preferred not to consider what she heard of my own doings. She was no friend, just a woman with whom I shared living quarters and other things, for convenience.

We had planned to go to the medical facility together, so I waited while Silesa crafted her public face and ironed the curls from her hair. It was a daily ritual, the indignity of which I could not help experiencing personally, by way of our common sex. When she was sufficiently disguised, we climbed into Silesa’s large unwieldy car and got on our way.

“Do you mind if we stop at Fejo’s?” she asked immediately after starting the motor.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” I said, glancing at my wrist where there was no watch.

“But I have to tell him how I feel,” Silesa insisted. “It can’t wait.”

“Alright,” I said and counted her many injustices against me.

She was always switching things around in the apartment: I would come home and find that the locations of the kitchen and the living room had been reversed. The length of the hallway would be shorter and the door to the bathroom would come after the door to my room, rather than before. She never stole from me, and all my things were always easily found in recognizable places, but I couldn’t help feeling that they’d been tampered with while I was out.

Once, when I came back from an extended stay elsewhere, I found her sleeping in my bed, having essentially usurped my room. Her stained and gaudy clothes hung over every surface, filling the air with the stench of tobacco. She leapt up from the bed when she saw me stagger in, tired from traveling, and attempted to mask the awkwardness of my finding her there by making a big show of our reunion. “I missed you so much,” she shouted, while smothering me with her lunging embrace.

We pulled up to Fejo’s residence and found him on the porch, playing his violin. Fejo and I played music together frequently—that was the way he and Silesa met. But now the two of them had struck up this sordid fling, and I could no longer look him in the eye. For one, I was acquainted with his wife and forced by some malfunctioning propriety to keep her ignorant. But in addition, it was clear that such an affair could only last so long, before I was left with a psychotic and distraught Silesa on my hands.

I stayed in the car while Silesa stepped out and sauntered up to Fejo, who put down his violin and allowed her to sit on his lap. I turned away and noticed that Silesa had parked the car in a ridiculous way and now the big barge was blocking the entire road. I slid over to the driver’s side, put the car in reverse, and eased my foot off the breaks. Nothing happened, so I lightly tapped the gas. The car jerked backwards and I only just avoided smashing into a parked van. I tried to gently slide forward into the more than adequate stretch of space along the curb, but again the car didn’t respond, like it was pulling at a tether that wouldn’t give. I had to press down on the gas pedal with all my weight just to initiate a slight turning of the wheels. Then without warning, I jolted forward again, and this time bumped the car in front of me.

Fejo and Silesa didn’t take notice—they were deeply engrossed with one another. I continued trying to park the car while fragments of their interaction floated out to me. Silesa had begun singing to Fejo, a song that I’d heard her composing the night before when I was falling asleep.

“I’m making cornbread,
Because I’m so…,” she knelt down and whispered something in Fejo’s ear.
“And I’d rather be corny,
Than dreaming of you….”

“I’m making cornbread,
To stop thoughts of you that run through my head.
Because it’s better to bake,
Than to ache,
And dream of you.”

I was just inching the car back and forth now, back and forth, unable to get it right or to let it alone. Finally Silesa had had enough and we left.

We were late getting to the medical facility, so the Presentations were already in progress when we sat down in the empty waiting room.

“How’s Fejo?” I asked her.

“God, he is so perfect,” Silesa began, but a nurse came over and cut her short.

“Address?” she demanded.

I answered for both of us: “57 Wedgehood Road, Number 1.”

“Semnik and Refraize?”

We nodded and she checked our names off her list.

We followed her through a door and she showed us to Closet 41, where Silesa and I took off our clothes and laid them in the cabinets provided.

“Is anything wrong with you?” Silesa asked.

“I don’t think so. You?”

“Yeah, maybe. I’m going to talk about how I’ve been eating lately.”

“Yeah, that’s been weird,” I said.

The nurse came back and we followed her into the Presentation Room, where she motioned us to some empty chairs along the room’s perimeter. Someone’s Presentation was in progress, so we took our seats quietly. I recognized the person as a man from around the corner—I saw him at the convenience store sometimes. He was saying how he’d been feeling tired lately, even though he got plenty of sleep. It was a common complaint and people nodded sympathetically.

He sat down and the next name was read. “Jalindra Role.” It was not a name I was acquainted with, but the woman looked familiar. As she walked to the center of the room, I noticed that her hips were unusually narrow, but in a nice way. She held up her right arm and said, “Well, it hasn’t gotten any better, but I’m ok.” It was then I noticed that her arm was severely swollen and disfigured by bulging veins. “I’ve been taking a daily dose of blood-thinner for a few years, as some of you know, and I’ve had two surgeries to remove the largest of the blood-clots,” she continued. “I might have more surgery later, but for now I think I can manage like this.”

There was something noble about her Presentation, and a few people were moved to clap.

She sat down and Silesa’s name was called, which meant I was next.

Silesa walked to the center, and I observed that she had visibly lost weight.

“I haven’t been eating properly,” she began. “Most of the time I can’t eat at all, but then every few days, I feel ravenous and eat for several hours non-stop. But only certain foods. Extra-sharp cheddar cheese, mostly. And cornbread.”

I suddenly felt bad for her, and also affectionate, like she was a disturbed but promising child under my temporary care. Maybe she was in love with Fejo after all, and I had been so inwardly insensitive. Luckily, I had never made my disdain obvious, so now I was free to act on better impulses.

My own name then rang softly through the room, pronounced by an attendant who remained hidden, so as not to encroach on the communal feeling. I got up and walked to the center casually. I had stopped sucking in or holding my back straight during Presentations years ago, because it had become obvious to me when other people did it. I stood in the center and turned around a few times, as was customary, and then a few more to kill time. There was nothing wrong with me. I was a healthy woman.

“My problem is…” I started slowly. “I think I’m having trouble with the general logic of our situation.”

Silesa looked up at me sharply with pity and unease, but I was already elaborating.

“I continue being overwhelmed by our conventions, but also by the basic biological predicament we face.”

A few people around the room snorted and shifted their bodies in annoyance.

“I learned today that a person from our area, a kind and fragile boy who some of you may know, is dead. I wonder what he said the last time he stood before his group like this. His funeral is tomorrow morning. Maybe it can count as a Presentation of sorts too.”

Before I even finished speaking, I felt a deep humiliation at having allowed myself this pathetic grand stand, which I could see was written off by the assembled group as a self-righteous outburst. Nothing was really wrong with me, as everyone could tell. I was abusing the Presentation for ideological ends. Silesa and I drove home in silence, and I remained quiet the rest of the day.

In the morning, I dressed carefully for Sirch’s funeral and went alone. The event was held in a long hall, down which a buffet-table snaked from side to side. At the door, I was handed a plate by a sweet elderly woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Srohrs.

“Help yourself honey…enjoy,” she said.

First there was an assortment of different dumplings, at least three tables full. They were steamed or fried, and of all shapes and sizes. Some looked like little buns, but were filled with delicious meat stuffing. I put some into my mouth and some on my plate.

Then there were diverse pastas and salads and elaborately prepared vegetable dishes. My plate was overflowing with little mounds of food, all pressed against each other, but I kept adding more, piling on a second layer, and then a third.

As the variety of tastes built up in my mouth, my eyes began to water heavily, and suddenly the buffet ended and I was standing before the open coffin of Sirch Srohrs. He was emaciated. He looked like he was fourteen, although I knew him to be in his thirties.

Two tearful women stood near the coffin, gobbling food off their plates.

“He never got his Confirmation, you know,” I overheard one say. “He got through everything but the Final Show of Merit, and then he just stopped working, and laid the whole thing aside.”

“But why not move away and start fresh somewhere else?” the other woman asked, with a dollop of sour cream caught at the corner of her mouth.

“I don’t know. Maybe he was hoping to finish someday after all. You know, to do things right.”

I stepped back and tried to put down my heaping plate, but there was no room on the nearby table. I swayed a little, but someone was already beside me, his steady arm at my elbow.

It was Lein, though I hardly recognized him. He was handsome and calm, and it reassured me to lean against his side. I allowed him to lead me out of the hall, back past the winding tables filled with food.

And then we were outside in the fresh spring air, and Lein was telling me about his life since last we’d met. I had been wrong about him, I then realized.

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