"Judy"

Walking quiet streets was a pastime for Judy in the purest sense of the word- it was a way to pass the time. The ache in her abdomen refused to give way, crowding her senses and refusing her favorite form of personal abandonment. She had tried to go walking three times already, but she couldn’t catch her breath enough to conquer her stairs, let alone the hill she lived on. She settled for a puff of guilt-ridden cancer and sat on the stoop while its acrid taste seeped into her cheeks and fingertips.

She wondered if the ache in her belly was something more than bad food. The recurring fear of a tiny parasite leeching the walls of her uterus drained her mind of its store of calm and left every signal her body sent tinged with dread. She couldn’t be pregnant. She just couldn’t be.

Why hadn’t she insisted that he be safe? What was it about her that allowed those sudden bursts of passivity in the worst possible moments? She was a pillar of strength and intention except in those terribly hopeless moments when an older man pressed himself against her or an unknown stallion pierced into her. She couldn’t understand herself and she had all but given up hope of forgiving herself for such weaknesses. They were to be born, and that was all.

Judy climbed into her bed and swaddled herself with blankets. She was always cold, her extremities tingling even in the full weight of the sunshine. She pulled the neck of her sweater up over her head to trap in every escaping molecule. She stopped moving to survey the results and found that she was trapped. The warmth would come soon, but the knocking in her head and chest would not leave. She wished for a sign, a desire, a passion, even hatred. Her apathy was paralyzing.

If her blood returned in a week would her numbness disappear? She listlessly hoped it were so and curled her hands into a twisted ball, cradled under her chin. How she longed to sob into the night, but there was nothing for which to sob. There was nothing wrong with her life even if there was nothing right. She wished for sleep.

The elusiveness of such dreamless sleep was ironic for a woman who often battled competing waves of depression and narcolepsy. At any point she could sleep for a dozen hours without stirring, that is, any point but when she desperately needed to escape. She could not banish the thousand empty thoughts running loops in her head. For a woman without conflict she carried too many fears.

And anger, though she was reluctant to admit it, was creating its own course through her body. She couldn’t believe that she had allowed her ex to seduce her. She had been weak, she had been clouded, she had been lonely, and though she knew she could have done things no differently, she was still disappointed with herself. She should have known the future, her gut pushed. She should have seen the falseness and the trap. She could never forgive her own humanity.

How she expected herself to resist That Woman’s smile and shoulders is a mystery, but Judy was still crucifying herself for it, and laughing at the reality of the conversation the day after when That Woman had spoken of being cautious and building friendships with respect. Somehow she seemed to miss the glaring inconsistency in her own philosophy, having pounced on her confused friend and former lover only the night before. Judy felt stupid for having believed any of the words that came out of That Woman’s mouth. After all, she had prior offenses and a history of laxity when it came to being genuine with her truth.

But this was past, as all her transgressions were. Lying in bed and considering all the ways that life had gone awry was Judy’s least favorite pastime and the one that recurred most painfully and insidiously. It was frustrating, but it was her only reality. What was life without these occasional forays into the pitiful and pathetic? She couldn’t be happy, not really. Perhaps she didn’t believe that such happiness or comfort was acceptable. Perhaps she was happiest in her soul when she was huddled alone and crying. That was a sobering thought. These journeys into her sad, illusionary world were becoming less frequent and, Judy thought with a hint of a smile, maybe she was growing past the sadness. Maybe she was beginning to live.

That life made these moments all the harder to bear. When she had fallen asleep every night cradled in her own arms, it had been comforting to know that her self-pity would always be there. Now its presence brought a stale, mildewy stench with it and memories of that life, many lives ago, when she had believed that she truly was alone. It was jarring to find herself lifted from the joy of life to this self-induced trauma. She hoped it would pass soon. If only she had the energy to walk right now she might walk until she flew away. Instead she tucked her head in and pressed shut her eyes, praying for sleep and a little bit of clarity.