Tear Me From Her Torn Self by Roberta Allen
The woman crouching in underpants at the top of the worn stairs cannot be who I think she is, cannot be who I want her to be, even though I recognize the coarse voice asking in Dutch, “Who’s there?” I want to shout in the voice she hasn’t heard for forty years, It isn’t me! But it’s too late. Too late to retrace my steps, walk past her house, pretend I haven’t seen her. I climb the narrow creaking steps and see in dim light the ruined face, long matted hair, but bare breasts as cheerful as they were in the communal sauna near the Central Station. I hug her in spite of myself, in spite of my attraction and revulsion, in spite of the run-away feeling that wants to tear me from her torn self. I don’t want to know what tremor, what tornado shook her to the core, broke her apart. But still I ask. And she answers. The coarse voice of the sixty-four year-old coming out of this shockingly youthful body. The torn self talks about the nine months in the state mental hospital. The depression. The loneliness. The disease that racks her body. The pills. All the pills. She fumbles over the round table where we once drank coffee, where we laughed till we cried, the round table now covered with papers and vials. “All my friends have gone,” she says, as I watch her trembling hands travel the length and breadth of the table, trying to find the right pills. The disease. I want to hear about the disease. “It’s everywhere,” she says, moving hands along her delicate skin. “Nothing doctors can do. Soon I’ll die.” I remember now. The disease. The imaginary disease started as a tiny seed in her mind the summer she walked to France many years ago: I see her in work boots, with a backpack, dark hair in waist-long braids. I see her sleeping alone in the forest. I never gave a thought to the disease. Now she is the disease. There is only the disease and this body, this cheerful young body that might still find some happiness if not for the disease. “You used to be so nervous,” she says, suddenly remembering who I was when we looked like sisters, when we were best friends.
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About the Author
Roberta Allen
On-line: www.robertaallen.com
Bio: Roberta Allen is the author of eight books, including two short short collections praised by The New York Times Book Review: Certain People (Coffee House) and The Traveling Woman (Vehicle Editions). Her novel The Dreaming Girl will be republished in 2011. She has also authored a novella-in-shorts, an Amazon travel memoir (City Lights), and three writing guides, including the first one for writing short shorts, Fast Fiction. She taught at The New School for many years and teaches private workshops. www.robertaallen.com
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image by paRanOYiqzz.
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