Hubris and Hemlock

Chapter 14: Stories of Hubris

A Get. It sank in like Brutus' knife.

The phone rang. Let the answering maching get it.

She changed her mind as she cringed, launching herself the two steps to the phone just to interrupt the cackle.

-Hi, hon, I'm glad you saved me from having to leave you a message, what took you so long to get to the phone?

-I, um...

She choked on the excuse she had been about to give. Obviously she couldn't be chopping vegetables for dinner on the start of Tisha B'Av, even if Marie didn't yet know that. She would pick it up.

-Are you ok, hon? Where is Mike? Has he done anything to you?

-No! But, he...

-That pig has hurt you! I'm coming to get you. Dont' you move I'll be right there!

Before she could say anything, the phone line went dead in her hand. Oh, no.

Then her stomach began doing cartwheels. Marie might be like family, but the idea of talking about a Get terrified her. Easier to just die.

She shot a glance across the kitchen table, no more than a blur in the darkness, to the empty knife rack. The knives waited patiently in the drawer below. She hadn't told Mike why, when he'd groused about not finding the chopping knife. Mike was, or had been, the only friend that Nanyehi had ever trusted. Even above Marie, her adopted family.

Though she trusted Marie more than anyone else in her life, she had never told Marie things about herself that she had entrusted to Mike. Marie undoubtedly suspected without being told. But Mike had offered her the security of marriage, an official way to become family, conditioned only upon her trust. Or that was what he had said before they got married.

She had been so happy, so relieved, so grateful that someone would accept her despite the constant jumpiness that Marie often pointed out. Once, Marie had tried to explain how Nan's jumpiness made her nervous, too, but it only made Nan feel even more ashamed.

Mike, on the other hand, after she'd confided to him that she often felt afraid,

(he never notices my feelings, but that actually makes it easier)

had become more protective, pulling her into bone-crushing hugs which he undoubtedly meant to make her feel loved, safe and reassured.  And they did, until his smell changed.  Then she felt more small, nauseaus, and excrable than ever.

-Why in the hell was I born a women?

She looked down, thinking to have addressed that question to the kitchen table. But she was really addressing the question to her chopping knife. That knife had a soul, she was sure.

-In fact, why in the hell was I born at all? What in the frickin 32 hells of Dante did I do before I was born to deserve this? What's 32 divided by 9, anyway?

The table did not seem to have answer. Who was she kidding, it was her chopping knife that had no answer. Tali, on the other hand, just might give her a reply. The image of her large white talit, the prayer shawl she had taken 6 weeks to finish, between sewing the long blue atara across the top, and tying the four fringes in the corners just so, with all the patience she could muster. Every morning she seemed to ignore that talit, despite the fact that her beautiful soft talit, whom a friend at shul had dubbed Tali, most certainly did have a soul, and lots of opinions to go with it.

-Was I a serial killer, a rapist, the secret right hand man of Hitler or something in my last lifetime? What exactly did I to deserve this?

-Nothing, hon.