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Eulogy
by Gian Carla Agbisit I. Past tense does not suit her. II. She sings the things she has to do, in a New York New York cabaret tone. I have a paper, due tomorrow. 4 pages down, 8 to go... She collects books and piles them up and calls them towers. The Bradbury tower, the Beats tower, and so on. She piles them up like she piles pain, stacked one after the other, waiting for a collapse. III. She winds up the kitchen timer and hums a sad song. She kneads the dough to make a fresh batch for some friends I've heard about, but never met. I get agitated. The clock ticks away, and I hear the time that I'm losing, and she hums a sad song, her beat the ticking of the clock. IV. We have a fight over the incessant tick tock. I slam the kitchen timer against the counter top and its plastic face comes off. It still works. She buys another one, though. Being perfect, complete, is everything, she insists. And you could hear two alternate ticking. V. If embryos have souls, then I could be Lewis Mumford. Calculate it. He was born on Oct 19, too. And died on Mom and Dad's wedding day. Considering the time zones, and the 9 months after, he could be me. I could be him. she says. Come on, try it yourself. Find out if we knew each other. I already wish we don't. I say. I do not know who Lewis Mumford is, but if you believe in reincarnation, then you are already dead. A million times over. VI. We always share a room, bunk beds and white walls and Ikea furniture. I always get the top bed. Sometimes, when she thinks I’ve fallen asleep, she prays out loud. I close my eyes and feel like God. I remember her prayers: long atonements of guilt, a hastily woven list of questions, and excuses, and accusations. Why? Why? She asks to be chained to God, to be stripped of the freedom to wander, the freedom to not believe. We are 15. I am disgusted with her doubts. I am always here, I want to tell her. Who else do you need? But gods are gods because they don’t respond. So like gods, I shut up and I pretend not to hear. VII. She makes sure everything was in their places, constantly disarranging my mess. For her, perfection is everything that she begins cutting herself for not being so. At first, there are lines and red marks that starts retreating to the safe unseen thighs and inner arms. VIII. In college, black long sleeved blouses cover the bruises. IX. She spends nights at the study table scribbling sad realizations of the place that she holds in this world: ugly, fat, stupid, pig. I am useless. I am useless. I am useless, she writes. And I read on, thinking about how I always have to pick up the pieces. We are twins, but I couldn’t agree more. X. She keeps all her precious things in a shoebox: letter kits and stickers and magazine cut outs and movie tickets, memories and memorabilia of her uneventful life. Every time we fight, I would steal something from that box—a tiny life, an insignificant memory—and she never notices. XI. She goes to the cinema 10 minutes before the movie begins and sits there in the dark. I know because I follow her. She just sits there. She thrives in darkness, in poorly lit rooms, and closed cramped spaces. It is always as if she was physically simulating the coldness of her insides, when she closes her eyes, she is comparing how one tone darker her mind must be that no physical blackness can replicate. XII. She drinks 3 cups of coffee for breakfast and another 3 for dinner. She says she likes feeling her heart beat. She says, it is as if she is alive. And I laugh at her nonsense because palpitations don’t make one any happier. XIII. She lives in alternative universes: Middle Earth, Jazz and Beats New York, science fiction Mars, and Victorian England, and 19th century France. She loves the alternative universe, the packets and pockets of histories that at least pulsate with life, posts and walls that allow sound to reverberate when she calls out. XIV. She tells my mom, over and over, that she wants to stop. My mom thinks it was the pressure. It must be the school, my mom told people when it happened, the pressure. Maybe, the people, my mom dared to suggest. She changed, people say. She snapped. She came undone. She told my mom, over and over, and I pretended not to hear. It has always been a request. Let her go, I tell myself, she was gone even before this. XV. Once, she told me that it was not the fall that matters. Icarus felt what it was like to fly, she assured me. XVI. I close my eyes. When she jumped, she must have been happy. |
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