When he couldn’t stand it anymore, he gave into the urge to penetrate something, anything, and thrust his erection into his closed hands, which he had lubricated with his saliva. He thrust without thinking about the scars on Marko’s spine, without remembering the numbness in Marko’s penis. He thrust knowing about the tyranny of appearance, of beauty, how it wasn’t real. As Emil, with this body, with this sensation, he knew he’d found something real, as real as knives, as real as fish, and as real and natural as thunderclouds that never boomed, silently dropping rain.

  35. March 17, 2015: Cambridge, MA

  Kali came home that evening to find Lydia asleep on the couch and no sign of Marko. Dinner hadn’t been made. Had she done his catheter? Kali went to Marko’s room but found his bed empty. His chair was parked near the door. She knew where he would be. She could tell from the carpet that Marko had dragged himself into her room. She went in and found him asleep under her bed. He had removed his pants and diaper and was messy with bodily fluids. Kali went to the bathroom to get a washcloth and a bucket of soapy water and a new diaper and then returned to her son. Gently, she washed the urine and semen from his body, trying not to wake him, trying not to think about the regular fourteen-year-old boy he wasn’t able to be.

  Marko’s hipbones protruded from the pale skin of his waist as he lay on his back. They reminded Kali of the protrusion on his back made by the pronounced curve in his spine. The incredible smallness and fragileness about him and his bones reminded her of something she couldn’t at first place. Then she remembered: the river in Bulgaria at the foothills. The rhythm of it and how she used to sit and watch for hours. Water finding water, water finding more curves. Once, there was a dead pigeon with its bones sticking out. They looked fragile and fine, yet also strong, like they could be taken apart and then lashed together with willow branches and pine gum to make a raft. A strong raft.

  Kali finished washing Marko and gently put the diaper on him. She pulled his legs into the pant holes and began to pull them up, but Marko stirred and started to wake, so she stopped. Looking at him, there in the half light of the room, on the floor just under her bed, all she could see in that moment were pigeon bones and a pair of pants.

  36. March 18, 2015: Cambridge, MA

  Marko woke in his own bed. It was very early morning. His body was sore but his head didn’t hurt. For a moment, he thought he could still feel his legs and feet, but as soon as he looked down, the sensation faded and he was himself. The experience left him burning with questions and confusion. He felt agitated, impatient with his unruly body. With urgency, he called out to his mom. When she didn’t appear right away, he called out to her even louder. He kept calling until she appeared with an alarmed, fearful expression. She sat down on the bed and peered at him with lines across her forehead.

  “What is it, what’s wrong?”

  “Where did I come from?”

  The lines deepened. She didn’t understand.

  “Where do we all come from?”

  Her face relaxed, some but the lines remained. “Well, you have a spirit—”

  “I know all that; you’ve told me, but how did all this happen? What came before this?”

  “I’m trying to understand what you mean, Marko,” his mom said slowly. “Did you have a bad dream? I found you under my bed last night and carried you in here. What happened?”

  Marko thought about it. No, it wasn’t a bad dream, but it had disturbed him greatly to wake up from it into his own life, his own body. He wanted to be Emil. Or anyone else.

  “Where did the world come from?”

  Kali slouched and her forehead turned smooth. The corners of her mouth lifted only a little. Marko was annoyed at her amused posture; this was s serious matter.

  “Well, there’s a theory that the whole universe is a kind of ordered debris from a big explosion out of nothing, called the Big Bang. It happened billions of years ago and the Earth and everything is just expanding out from that single point of spontaneous something.”

  Marko knew that already. His problem with it always was: how could something come out of nothing? But then, of course it can, because before he existed, he didn’t exist, and so he was nothing, and then suddenly he did exist, becoming something.

  “What about all of life? Evolution?”

  “You can look it up. But from what I understand, the world started out as a ball of ice, mostly. Just a frozen planet exploding everywhere with volcanoes, which released a ton of water vapor, making oceans. The heat from the volcanoes warmed the earth and the lava brought out elements from deep inside, which reacted with other elements, which formed primitive life. The earliest life was said to develop out of this.”

  “Can I look it up now?” Marko was dying to know more. He reached his arms around his mom’s neck and she lifted him from his bed into his chair. He rolled himself into the living room right to the computer. He looked up what he needed to know on the Internet. He read everything he could about volcanoes, how they helped to form life on earth and how they destroyed earth. There were so many different types of volcanoes, slow ones that gave warning when they were about to blow, and then instead of blowing, just oozing out the molten rock. Then there were hot, fast ones that exploded and covered everything instantly. In some cases, the covering happened so instantly that the lava preserved the life forms it obliterated, turning each into a perfect sculpture to be unearthed and studied and placed in museums eons later.

  But the idea that everything in the universe, all the intricate nuances of life and all of the distinct groupings of the elements, came to be out of nothing, seemed to Marko impossible and borderline barbaric. Existence must mean something more. The questions of existence, the hows and the whys, pressed into Marko powerfully, almost strangling him.

  He realized then that the questions were always there, present in every material thing, looming in the moments where everything turns heavy and meaningless. They were present also in moments where happiness was so spontaneous and whole that all of the objects around Marko seemed to be there for the very first time. And the questions were there, present in the in-between times, when everything just is, and is neither good nor bad.

  Marko let his gaze rest in the computer screen. He unfocused his eyes, making the letters and words blur into broken horizontal lines of indistinct, arbitrary shapes. He looked down at his lap, then his legs, their unnatural flatness against the seat of the chair. He pressed down on his thighs, feeling the nothingness. He closed his eyes and tried to summon the math, but it wouldn’t come. His position in space and in time was uncharted in that moment and he sensed its smallness, its impermanence. Billions of years, billions of miles, the unfathomable measurements of history and galaxies, and the insignificance of his struggling little self against it all with nothing but questions and a will to survive. But why? Yet another question.

  It seemed to Marko that he was trapped—inside a body, inside time, inside his own limited mind and intellect, too small to determine what it all meant and where it all came from. He pressed the heels of his palms against his closed eyes and saw the spots of light, stars in the dark. “

  You okay?”

  It was his mom. Marko opened his eyes. He blinked away the stardust swirling around her bright face.

  37. March 21, 2015: Cambridge, MA

  Kali’s shrink asked her to talk about her childhood—her parents and her dead brother. Kali tried. She started talking about her parents’ relationship and how needy her father sometimes was, but it made her remember how needy Zach sometimes was.

  Marko was three. He had just recently become mobile. He had a scooter board that he could drag himself on and off. It was early December, and Zach decided that they should get a Christmas tree. He thought it was important for Marko to be able to get a tree and decorate it. Kali was dreading the task of getting the tree “as a family.” Zach and Kali decorated trees the first two years they were together like the happy couple they were, but then after the first pregnancy and abortion, which was just before Christmas, they stopped. This would be the first time since.

  “Can we not call it a Christmas tree? How about a Winter Solstice tree?” Kali said this dripping out of the shower, red from the cold water. Her voice shuddered when she spoke. She was not feeling well and hadn’t been for a week. She hadn’t been able to do her yoga in three days and her energy had bottomed out. She hoped that a cold shower would shock her system and give her the energy to follow through with Zach’s plan for the day.

  “Call it whatever you want to call it. It’s a Christmas tree.” With that, he walked out of the bathroom. Kali bent over double at the pain in her stomach. She crouched in front of the toilet but nothing came. The pain was still there, but her mouth wasn’t watering. She wished that she would puke so she would feel better. Then, slowly, the pain went from sharp to dull and tolerable. She stood up, dried off, and wrapped herself in a white robe. She lifted the white towel she dried herself with and wrapped her hair. Kali walked into the living room and lay down on the couch. Marko came scooting in and reached for her.

  “We’re going to get a tree, honey, get your coat.”

  Zach walked in with his coat on and grabbed the car keys. “Do you want me to go get the tree by myself? Since you’re not feeling well?”

  He tried to make his voice sound sincere, as though it was a genuine offer out of care instead of a complaint. Still, Kali appreciated his acknowledgement that she wasn’t feeling well.

  “No, no. I’m coming. Let me get dressed.”

  She got up and moved fast to the bedroom. She grabbed whatever clothes she saw first and dressed hastily. She pulled the towel off her head and threw it into the dirty clothes hamper. Just after it landed, Zach came in and took it away. He went out the door of the apartment that led down to the basement where the laundry was. He often started doing chores obsessively when he was irritated. Marko called out to Kali.

  “I’ll be right there, baby, I’m getting dressed.”

  Kali heard his scooter sliding down the hall toward her. She tensed with the anticipation of seeing him. He appeared—a tiny blonde creature blinking up at her through thick-lensed glasses. Topless with pants on, still unbuttoned, Kali felt vulnerable in front of her son—a half-peeled banana. She quickly pulled a shirt over her head and turned to him.

  “There. Mommy’s ready. Is Marko ready?”

  He just continued blinking at her. Sometimes, she wondered if he understood her. Zach banged back up from the basement.

  At the store, there was only one Winter Solstice tree left and it was huge.

  “It’s too big,” Kali said.

  “Fine, I’ll get a coffee,” Zach said and went to stand in line. He held Marko, who reached for a box of candy canes on the shelf. Zach picked them up and handed them to him.

  “He’s had enough sugar today already,” Kali said. Zach rolled his eyes.

  “Fine,” he said, “these aren’t to eat, okay buddy? They’re for decorating the tree.”

  Marko started wailing. Zach looked at Kali like it was her fault. Kali thought that it was his fault for giving Marko sugar but said nothing.

  “You look terrible. Do you want to go wait in the car?”

  Kali realized she was barely able to stand up and felt nauseated.

  “Yes, I do, thanks,” she said. She made her way slowly out of the store. In the car, she reclined the seat and closed her eyes. Again, she told herself, he had acknowledged her discomfort. He was trying. Kali wanted to try, too, but felt very weak. She thought about the guilt they had. Not just because they weren’t good enough for a child, but also because that child came into the world so severely compromised. He spent the first two years of his life invaded in every way—cut open, pricked, threaded with tubes and sutures, handled and manipulated and moved by so many latex-covered hands. Neither of them understood the blatant injustice of that fact. Both of them wanted to somehow compensate for it, which proved so impossible that they mocked themselves by trying.

  The back door opened and Zach put Marko’s tiny body into the car seat. Marko was pushing his bottom lip out so far it looked swollen. The inside lenses of his glasses were wet with tears.

  “What happened?”

  “He wanted a candy cane!”

  An accusation. Kali knew he meant that she was the one who had denied Marko the candy cane. Then, after denying him what he wanted, Kali had walked away, leaving Zach to deal with his tears. Kali started the car and drove it up the street to the grocery store.

  “I’ll just go get the tree if you want to wait here,” Zach said, trying to make his voice sound considerate. Marko whined.

  Kali got out of the car and walked to the trees lined up outside the store. There were two sizes, very small and pretty big. They chose the pretty big size, which cost fifty dollars. That was a lot of money for them and Kali didn’t want to spend it.

  “Do we really need this?” she asked.

  Zach handed Marko to her and started carrying one of the trees off to the car. Kali went inside and paid for it. Marko started crying again.

  “What’s wrong, sweetie?”

  He didn’t answer. He couldn’t articulate what was wrong, Kali thought, because neither could she.

  Kali carried Marko back outside. She saw Zach across the parking lot struggling to put the tree in the car. Like heavy doll’s legs, Marko’s were swinging with Kali’s gait and kicking into her thigh. She couldn’t remember if she’d ever been conscious of this before—how his legs moved when she carried him—but it felt new. Kali put him in his seat and he cheered up because his face was close enough to the netted up pine tree to lean over and smell it. She got in behind the driver’s seat and, smelling the pine, felt cheered, too. For a fraction of a moment, Kali had a visceral feeling that everything would be okay. We are a family and will continue to be a family. But as she drove the car home, a wave of sick hit her and Zach made one of his frequent, audible sighs. Kali noticed that the feeling was gone. Obliterated. Like it had never existed.

  She pulled into the driveway and made the mistake of mentioning that they didn’t have a saw and that they would need one to cut the bottom of the trunk off so that it would drink the water they gave it and live longer. It was a mistake because Zach used the comment as an excuse to complain that she was the one who had wanted to get the tree from the nearby store instead of from a tree farm where they would do all of that for you. Kali wasted a little time wondering why he was so bitter toward her.

  Kali carried Marko into the house and Zach carried the tree. He left it on the porch, propped against the house, while he went to look for a saw. He didn’t find one and this made him more bitter. He brought the tree in and Kali held it upright in the stand while he tightened the screws to hold it in place. Marko was on the couch, again asking for a candy cane.

  “No more candy, sweetie, but you can have lunch. Do you want lunch?” Kali said.

  This made him cry hard. It was heartbreaking to see him cry. It was almost painful enough to lead Kali to just give him a bowl full of high fructose corn syrup with a spoon.

  “I’m sorry, baby, you’ll have a candy cane, I promise. Just not right this second.”

  Zach, having tightened the screws in place around the tree trunk and secured it, got up and retrieved a candy cane from the box. He peeled off its plastic wrapping and handed it to Marko. He didn’t look at Kali. Marko smiled through tears and sucked the candy cane. He didn’t look at Kali either.

  Kali opened her mouth then closed it. Not saying anything was better. It was important that she choose her battles, given Zach’s wrath for her. Kali lay down on the couch and curled around Marko. She leaned over to the laptop on the coffee table and played some Christmas music. Zach was opening a string of white lights.

  “Mind helping me with this?” he asked while looking at the lights. Kali got up and helped him wrap the string around from top to bottom. She lay back down while he adjusted it. It looked skimpy, and there was another string of lights in the box.

  “Maybe we use both strings?” Kali said.

  “I don’t want too many lights.”

  Kali opened her mouth then, again, she closed it. She didn’t care about the lights. Her stomach lurched with a stabbing pain and she groaned.

  “Do you need to go lie down in the bedroom?” He barked it at her like a scolding.

  “Would you like for me to go lay down in the bedroom?”

  “Do what you want—you always do.” He looked for the end of the string to plug it in. The plug side was at the top of the tree.

  “Well, Marko, I have to do it over,” he said irritably. “Daddy screwed up; I need this at the bottom.” He heaved a sigh and started unraveling the string of lights.

  “Or you could plug the other string in at the top and wrap that down and use both?”

  He turned around half way, exposing the side of his face to her, and snapped, “I’m doing this myself, alright? Nobody’s helping me!”

 

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