by Jessica Fogal
I’m going to vomit.
The telltale signs: the swollen tongue, the difficulty swallowing, the sweat beading above my lip that is quivering unattractively.
“Pull over.”
It’s out of nowhere and confusing, and he doesn’t pull over.
“Pull over now!”
Then there is stomach muscle clenching, the smell of sun-warmed gravel and century-old, packed dirt, a light breeze that encourages little loose pieces of highway trash to flutter fatuously past my feet.
Then we are driving again, and it is the bleak scenery flying past my vision, driving us closer to our destination, my skin crawling.
He doesn’t look at me when he asks, “Are you okay?” His tone collides with his question violently, and I take offense.
I don’t look at him when I say, “Don’t you think it’s normal to feel nervous?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
I slam the heel of my palm against the glove box and feel equal pain and embarrassment at my outburst. I breathe slowly through my nose and feel my chest shake with restrained emotion.
“Don’t talk to me that way.”
“Jesus, Beth, it’s a fucking plant.”
“What does that matter? You don’t believe in miracles? You think all the stories are lies? I don’t care to hear it; I’m stressed enough as it is.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose with his left hand, the chapped skin of his elbow pressing against the cool window. I can see his reflection in the glass he leans against for support; transparent, defeated. Defeat is the one thing we have in common anymore, and at this moment, I am grateful to witness it. I was starting to feel quite alone.
When we arrive, the pavement turns to a rich brown dirt that is so dry on the edges, clouds of dust roll and expand under our tires and the tires of the people in front and behind us. It takes three hours of crawling in line before we can park. The air in the car stinks with my anxiety, and the wait did nothing to encourage my husband. It’s clear at this point that my decision to embark on this pilgrimage has ended our twenty-four-year marriage.
By now it’s dark, and a nest of bright stars twinkle above a small army tent set up a few hundred feet from our car. The air stings my skin with magic; the excited whispers of other men and women slowly surround me from all sides as we gingerly make our way to the tent. Unexpectedly, a hole opens at the bottom of my foot, and the sinking weight of dread that I had been carrying with me the entire drive, the entire week leading up to this moment, falls through the hole and I’m free, elated. I only realize I’m smiling when I hear the choked sound of disapproval from the man next to me, the one who promised in sickness and in health and who is not happy to be loyal.
The only other light is coming from the tent. Each time someone enters or exits the tent, bending low at the waist with the weight of their quest and the thick beige tarp, a triangle of orange glows across the grass and fades over the pale faces of the lost souls in line; little moments of our desperation revealed as the line slowly moves closer, leaning on each other for emotional support we are too weak to give back.
In the pressured silence of it all, people whisper, cough, lean down to retie their shoes. The woman in front of me whimpers, and I see she is crying. I learn her young son was diagnosed with cancer, and she is both anxious and terrified to learn of his journey. Her husband holds her elbow as she clutches her T-shirt in tired knots right where her heart should be.
There is a man behind me who grips a small piece of paper so tight in his thick hands that the skin of his fingers is yellow. Sweat drips off his ears and chin like a leaky faucet, and he rocks slightly, bumping into my shoulder blades every so often. I learn the paper is a lotto ticket. I feel a sudden urge to fill my lungs with the clean middle-of-nowhere air, turn on my heels, and blow as hard as I can in his direction, just to have a laugh; the giddiness of the coming moments taking over my rational thoughts. I don’t do it, though. Instead, I move a couple of feet forward with the rest of the line.
I want to make small talk, to release the energy steadily building in my joints by forcing sound into the ether, having no time or mental capacity to comprehend any response. I want to be the center of this world, of everyone’s undivided attention, watch their faces light up and their chins nod up and down in total agreement with the incoherent chatter escaping my throat without my permission. I’m literally a toddler in line at an ice cream shop. I want to tug on my husband’s hand or jump up and down or vomit. Dear Lord, I’m going to vomit.
“Fucking Christ.”
He sounds disgusted as I bend my knees and dry heave into the earth, again.
“I’m going to go wait in the car.”
And now I’m alone in line, in between a panicked mother and a panicked vagrant, and the space is cold against the left side of my body, where he had been standing just moments before. I didn’t even see him leave. I only saw the inside of my thighs and other people’s shoe prints in the dirt. I just know he left because of the cold and the sinking familiarity of his absence.
I slowly stand, a deep somber air pressing on my shoulders and immediately replacing the excitement I had been feeling just a second ago. As the line moves forward again, and I hear someone mumble about how he better not be stepping in anyone’s “barf,” I feel like I have just been in a car accident, or on a roller coaster ride at the fair, or in the grocery store when you diligently go up and down the aisles and then realize you forgot something down aisle two and have to go all the way back. It’s too much and not enough; it’s extreme and underwhelming. It’s everything and nothing, and I’m at the tent now, never having hated anything more in my life than I hate this exact moment.
The mother ahead of me is sobbing; I can hear her through the thick fabric. My skin breaks into goosebumps as her cries shake the aura and send confusing messages down the line of people behind me. Is she happy? Sad? Is it good, terrible? Somehow, suddenly, her experience inside that tent is densely entwined with my own impending experience, so much so that I am suddenly convinced, down to the marrow in my bones, that whatever she is hearing, to the exact vowel, is exactly what I will be hearing when it’s my turn. The pressure of it threatens to cave me, this unclear cry in the night that has no context. I bend to the ground once more, and this time, something does come up. It burns my sinuses as it makes its way out of my nose and into the dirt, the smell so strong I gag again.
This is the moment when the mother is carried out of the tent by her companion, her strained voice hushing everyone for the longest time, never growing fainter even as they walk farther away. Did they park all the way back in town? Why is it taking so long for them to find their car? I don’t want to hear her anymore.
I realize I should be entering the tent and am surprised no one is encouraging me to do so. I suppose in moments like this, one must really weigh the consequences, let the realization that everything is about to change sink in and settle. While my fellow companions behind me hold high expectations over my vomit, I am suddenly grateful for their moral support, for the understanding and silent solidarity that my own husband couldn’t even muster for one evening.
It gives me the strength I need to stand up, pull the tarp with my shaking fingers, and enter the tent.
The scene before me looks like this: something covered by a cloth sitting on a small table, large woman with a dreadful smile sitting in a wooden chair, tall shop lamp in the back corner, and air that smells of the vast range of human emotions rolling to a nice boil. My breath comes out in audible, uncontrolled bursts from my chest, and so far, it’s the only sound.
I’m standing here, trying to figure out if it’s the tent that is swaying or if it’s just me, and the woman continues to stare in heavy silence, the skin under her chin shaking with effort. Is this hard for her? This line of lost souls crumpling in front of her with the weight of their circumstance spilling out on the floor at her feet. It was hard for me just standing in line.
It must feel powerful, though. I can see she has grown fat with it, this potent control over people’s psyches.
“What do I do now?”
“What do you think you do now?”
Her voice is deep and hollow. I don’t want to answer her, but I don’t know what to do next, so I do.
“Do I uncover it?”
“Do you think you uncover it?”
“Oh fucking Christ.”
I move forward one step and take a corner of the silky fabric in balmy fingers. I pull gently, and the cloth falls to the floor with a soft hush, revealing a normal-looking houseplant in a black plastic pot. I suck in a breath and stare; the dry soil, the oily fingerprints overlapping around pot, the beautiful, large green leaves bouncing gently from its grand reveal under the cloth.
A normal, average, unassuming houseplant. Also, the most important thing I have ever laid eyes on. My heart swells.
A moment of doubt passes, and I glance up at the woman slowly rocking in her chair next to the table. She nods, the smallest movement, and someone outside the tent coughs.
I exhale through my nose, roll my shoulders back, and fill the tent with the timid soprano of my voice.
“Okay, plant. I am ready to hear my future now.”
Afterwards, on the drive home, surrounded by the endless black sky and our reflections looking back at us from the windows of our car, I look at my husband. I see the jut of his skeleton, his chapped lips and handsome eyes. I look down at my fingernails and the wrinkles around my knuckles. I think at one point he looks back at me, when he knows I’m already absorbed in thought, and asks me a question. I don’t know what the question is; I just know it is one by the slight lift of his voice at the very end.
And I know it doesn’t matter.
And that’s when the oncoming headlights change the color inside the car from a soft gray to a bright white. And then it all fades to black.
Jessica Fogal lives in the beautiful Pacific Northwest (USA), where she’s a full-time paralegal, amateur street photographer, and author. She's been published in the Ilanot Review, miniskirt magazine, Nat 1 Publishing, and the Willesden Herald and has had many prints showcased in art galleries such as Terrain Spokane. She continues to use her lifelong passions for performance, visual, and literary arts as an inspiration for her creative writings.
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