CYNTA


Celeste Flores

 Cynta, I am selling the house. 

 You understand, it is too big for me.  I feel there is too much air above me with these high ceilings, and it’s such a waste because sometimes, I don’t even want to breathe.

 I still smell you.  Although very faintly now, unlike that first week. I remember the chamomile scent of your hair that clung to your pillow, the smell of your skin on the sheets, and all the other scents that wafted across the room from your closet and your dressing table, while I lay in bed for days trying to name all your flowers.  I’ve finally washed off your perfume from my shirts but sometimes, if I breathe deep enough, I still smell you.  Your hands on the keys of the piano, your neck on the arm of the sofa, your cheek on my sleeves.  And I thought the day I packed your robe the smell would disappear.

 How long did you have that robe?  I was folding it when I saw how faded the purple was and felt how frayed the terrycloth was in my hands.  It never seemed old to me before.  Not when it pressed against my skin those mornings I pulled you back to bed and held you down with the weight of my arm and my thigh.  Not when it brushed against me those late nights I picked you up from the sofa where you lay asleep surrounded by your books and test papers.

 Now that robe and all your other clothes are packed in huge boxes up in the attic.  I carefully folded each blouse, each skirt, each little cotton dress.  My fingers lingered on the collars and hems, remembering how you liked dressing up, liked feeling soft fabrics around you, and how much you hated jeans. 

 And heels.  I packed boots and sandals and about fifteen pairs of sneakers but just one pair of high-heeled shoes, the pair I bought for you and found shoved way back into your closet still in its box.  I thought you’d thrown those shoes away after that party where you kept tripping on them.  The most embarrassing night of your life you’d say years later, shaking your head at the memory.  And each time I’d make you smile by taking your two small, white feet in my hands, and kissing them to tell you once again that I was sorry for having you endure all that for me.

 I packed your collection of Coca-Cola miniature bottles along with the multi-colored pens you managed to leave in every one of the drawers in my desk.  So many paperclips and stationery and greeting cards you never used but kept around, everywhere.  “Because,” you’d say.  Only because.

Your books have coffee stains and chocolate fingerprints.  They are marked all over.  Whole paragraphs underlined.  Stanzas circled.  Hearts around the page numbers.  I finally tried to read them one night but found I couldn’t understand much of what they said. And again I felt sorry for not having listened when you were around to explain.

I packed them all, your books in a box with all your records, remembering as I sealed it, how you’d sometimes close your eyes and hug your knees while listening to Sting.  I sat there a long time, in the middle of our bedroom, surrounded by those boxes, my eyes closed tightly shut, and my knees pressed hard against my heart.

Now all your pretty things are up in the attic.  And I said we didn’t need an attic, whoever heard of an attic in this country, what would we do with an attic?  Did you know it then, Cynta, when you insisted we have it built, that one day you’d occupy that space up there and leave me here?

All this space.  A man in a suit dropped by the other day and walked around the house with his hands clasped behind his back, saying, “It’s big.”  And while he continued to talk about flooring, paneling, framing, all I could think of was the first time you saw this place.  How your fingers trembled touching the wallpaper, how your sneakered feet padded on the marble floor, faster and faster until you were running circles around the living room.  You darted into the kitchen and dragged you hands across the gleaming counter and threw open the cupboards like you just had to hear the wood bang against each other.  Then you were heading upstairs, making the steps creak for the first time.  From below I heard you swinging the doors open and close and I laughed both times I heard the blast of the showers in each of the bathrooms.  And then everything got quiet. I went up and found you inside the biggest of the four rooms in the house, the one that had a balcony.  There you were, sniffing in the middle of the huge bed, and I’m still not sure if you were laughing or crying when you said, “No maids.  This is my house.”

And it is, Cynta.  That’s why I have to go.  I can walk barefoot all day feeling for a place I can call mine but I won’t.  Because you burned food in the kitchen, you burned candles in the bathroom.  Once you almost burned the sofa when you set fire to your students’ papers in the living room. 

And you burned me.  Wherever I was, whenever you chose, just by walking in and saying my name.  I’ve lain down with you everywhere it seems.  I could stand on tiptoe on the rugs, on the kitchen counter, even on my workdesk and I would always be stepping on a strand of your hair.

I lie on my side of the bed at night, very still and look across the room at that luminous clock on the wall.  Sleep comes, sometimes.  And with it the dreams, the nightmares.  I’d wake up from them feeling like I’ve been flung away, into some far corner of the universe.  Before, when I woke up in the darkness, you would stir beside me, call out my name, and put an arm across my chest to stop me from floating away.  Because you knew how scared I got sometimes.  And what was that line you liked so much?  “How could you leave me when you knew me?”

There is a white veil of dust masking the house.  It is thickest on top of the piano.  I tried cleaning it once but I knocked over once of your porcelain paperweights.  The sound of the angel breaking echoed in my ears for days.  So I don’t try to clean anymore because I can’t bear the thought of losing another.

How many have I lost now, Cynta?  Along with the one who bled with you.  The one we haven’t even named.

I try and sit in front of my desk with a pencil in my hand.  I try to think of houses in terms of framing, paneling, and flooring again.  I try and picture other bedrooms, other kitchens, other bathrooms.  I try to think of walls and floors and ceilings.  But I never get farther than that single dark point on the white sheet, where everything I try to start ends.

Maybe if I leave this one, I’ll be able to build other houses again.

So, Cynta, I am selling the house.  You understand.
 
 
 
 
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