K ate osias
The man laughs, because he sees Holly, and Carla laughs again some more, because it is
the first conversation she’s had, that she initiated, and though brief, she feels all the more alive for it. Carla tries to think of something else to say as she picks up a cup from his free samples tray and takes a sip.
It’s a chocolate drink, mildly cold, somewhat sweet, a little too watery. But as the liquid
travels down her throat, it triggers, in the irrational way the Carla’s memory seems to trigger, an image of a kitchen, where the fridge door needs to be closed gently, where the tap water is too strong, where tiles don’t match the cabinets, because it was too expensive to change the tiles, after the cabinets were replaced, where an oven sits, old but in good condition, a relic passed down from mother-in-law to daughter-in-law.
And then the image explodes into a house, into a street, into series of roads, into a map,
startlingly clear in Carla’s mind.
Carla drops the cup and tries to run. –––––
When she finally arrives at the gatehouse of the small community where her house is,
where her kitchen is, where she irrationally believes the oven she inherited still sits, she looks more bedraggled cat than human. She’s been scrambling, walking, avoiding swerving hovering cars that she does not recognize, contending with a landscape that has become unfamiliar to her. The coughing fits come more frequently now but somehow, despite her trials or perhaps because of it, the weight of the body has eased.
I am a pebble in an avalanche.
She’s hurtling to her end, propelled by an image that becomes more glorious with each
labored breath. Memories taunt her, pull at her, urge her forward. The road she walks is the road of her past, the houses that she passes by are the houses she knew, the trees that loom like leafy sentinels are smaller, thinner, younger.
Carla does not even notice the security guard who waves her on—perhaps deciding she’s
no threat, perhaps recognizing her desperation—she just keeps walking, as quickly as the body that is not hers, that is still dying, that is tired and light and weightless, is able.
This is where I live, she tells herself. This is where I will die. 12