Baltimore by Jelena Lengold Page B

which I will no longer make an effort to do anything.
    My husband, however, didn’t see things in the same light. Not on that morning, at least. First, he began calling to me from the kitchen, and then he came into the bedroom, stood by the bed I was lying in and, a little annoyed, announced the time.
    This information meant nothing to me. I knew I wouldn’t be going to work. Not that day, nor any day in the future. Never, in fact. I didn’t like it, the morning rush through the traffic lights, the climb up the stairs, the faces waiting for me at the office, that cluster of meaningless papers and the pile of unpleasant news. No. I will no longer have any part of it. Watching the sky is much nicer, I said to myself.
    He simply couldn’t believe that I didn’t want to get up. He brought me tea, sat on the bed, and for the first time, looked at me with real worry.
    “Are you ill?” he asked.
    He touched my forehead. Then he looked at his watch, and at me again.
    “What do you want me to do?”
    He rested his head on my chest. I was sorry he didn’t understand. I caressed his hair.
    “Tell me what’s wrong. Please.”
    He sat there for a few minutes, with his head on my chest, his hand on mine, and I almost hoped that he would join me, that we would doze off together, untouched by the outside world. But then he looked at his watch again.
    “Is it that time of the month? Is that what’s wrong?”
    He got up, wavering, and then finally said:
    “All right, I’m going to work now and you try to get it out of your system. I’ll call you as soon as I get there.”
    The days that followed could have been even better if the people around me hadn’t been so intent on making me talk. It didn’t matter that I did all the usual chores, went shopping for groceries, cooked dinner, brushed my hair, dusted. Each morning, after my husband left for work, I would go to the park, carrying a book.
    Sometimes, I would sit in the park crocheting a curtain and watching the children play. They could have been wonderful spring days if only they had let me be.
    To them, all these very normal human activities weren’t proof enough that I was living and that I existed. My mother came over every day. She would sit by me and cry. I would crochet in my sofa chair, or watch a movie on television, or read, do the things all ordinary women in the world do, and she would stare at me and cry. I would be peeling potatoes or carrots and she would be choking with tears next to me, as if I were already dead and buried. It seemed like refusing to talk was the cruelest thing you could do to your loved ones.
    This was so strange to me and completely beyond my comprehension, and I didn’t know how to help them. Silence had descended upon me as though it was the most natural thing in the world, and to me, the more they tried to pull me out of it, the more they became unusual and estranged.
    One day, they brought home a doctor who took my pulse, listened to my heart, and examined my pupils. He waved some little lamp in front of me and moved his forefinger from side to side. He too tried talking to me, but his words didn’t even enter my range of hearing. My mind was able to separate, better than ever before, the important from the unimportant, people I should hear from those who mean nothing to me.
    “We’ll put you on sick-leave,” said my husband after the doctor had left, “or else you’ll lose your job.”
    As if that was even important.
    For a little while after, it seemed like they understood. My mother came over regularly and she didn’t cry anymore, nor did she try to talk to me. Sometimes she would just sit next to me and hold my hand. She would give me a kiss on the forehead, then my cheek, and then quickly turn away.
    My husband still spoke around the house sometimes, but that too was becoming less frequent. Our life slowly took on a new form, the way people adapt to all new situations. One night, he cautiously moved his hand towards me,