Annie Blake
The Concubine
I start to feel the fabric under my skin as I have been wearing the same clothes for years. The outside is a bit more faded—a little more accessible. When I was young, living was about survival. It meant going through the old clothes of other people so we had enough money to buy food and pay bills.
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Stains from other people were our stains—when we look up at the sky and ask to be buried under rocks or mountains it means fear has got us by the throat. We think obstacles will hide us, but the stars still see. The experiences of others add to the layers of sackcloth we make our bed with. I’m buried under the linen of people I have never heard of.
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Buying new clothes is like holding a spherical candle in your hand in the room you were raised in. The more we avoid the door the more the dark snatches. The flame is licked. The candle can never be transparent. It becomes the blood moon without the wells and ledges assembling on the inside.
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Her arm is out of the sweet sleeve of her perfume. She is holding the candle in her palm. The light is burning through her skin. She bites the edge of the candle like an apple. A carved out pumpkin with eyes of lights.
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I sit up in my bed at night and worry that daylight will never come.
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People in the old days had more physical deformities, but I feel more comfortable with them because they grew their own potatoes and ate what they made. Now even potatoes have to look as soft and round as the bellies of pigeons to be sold at the supermarket. People didn’t have to worry about driving a car that makes decisions without a conscience. A machine can only see through one eye. In the future, we will be expected to eat in vitro meat grown from the stem cells of human beings.
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Handwritten letters are not like typed ones. When I was a child, I used to wait for months for a handwritten letter. Now, I get a typed letter almost every day.
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Fertile sun sheds its flanks of lean meat. It grows from the ground or what’s under it. Not to gain initially, but to pay—what it ought to. This payment comes back—the less money invested in the process, the less fat we find disguised inside the wrappers of meat at the shops. The fields need to sleep—before the sun folds open to give us its dialog of rays. I need the nutrients of natural meat. I want to become its texture of mushroom.
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When will we have enough time to write through the polish of the table, to make amendments in red pen; of its reiterations? When will I recognize the visceral fat? I used to play the organ at church. Its deep wind blows through my whole body. From the bellies of drains. Of the legs of the wood—our pathophysiology—the legs it wobbles on. The etiology is under the floor. The scribbles of our blue hair and last night’s dinner—mortar between the leg and the floor like the type of shoe that stands between the floor and my feet.
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A man who worked in an underground carpark detained me and my child once. He wore scuffed shoes—outdated; probably the same his father wore. I don’t wear shoes if I can help it. I need my soul closer to the earth. The shoe is like a contract. I have a very small body and business shoes swallow my feet. Men’s business shoes make me look like a clown.
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The man told me the boom gate didn’t open because I didn’t put money in the machine. I called him Penial. I told him that I put in ten dollars and the machine gave back two. He wouldn’t open the boom gate.
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There are concrete pumps from trucks on the sides of the roads. How big these machines—knocking down one house after the other. Obstacles that slow down my driving. Every time I drive on the road someone uses their horn on me at least once. No one can wait until I change into first gear. I don’t want to have my foot constantly ready on the clutch—it makes my heart palpitate. Like having hyperarousal.
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My child was crying. She was hungry. We had visited the hospital. I hadn’t slept or eaten. Penial knew. I told him he was tired too. To open the gate. I tried to get him to open the gate for two hours. It was almost daylight. He wanted me to hand over more money. Chris couldn’t come to save me. He was at home. With four sick kids who were sleeping.
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I told him to open up his machine and count the money. My child was in hysterics. I started to cry. I told him I was being held hostage.
‘The longer you leave me here, the longer the cameras are watching.’ I pointed to all the eyes on the wall. I batted a ball to the window and the glass of his eyes broke.
‘All you have to do is pay,’
‘I did pay. I’m not feeding the machine again.’
‘Pay.’
‘I’m gonna call the cops and tell them you’re holding me and my kid hostage.’
He laughed, but I could feel that he unleashed the nooses of wind from his teeth and not his lungs. I could hear his shoes scraping the floor.
‘The cameras aren’t eyes, Penial. They’re mouths—mouths—all over these walls. They’re eating both of us alive.’
The male carpark attendant who was shuffling through his newspaper left and walked out of the office.
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Penial stunk. He was sweating as hard as I was. I told him I had a family too and they were waiting for me. Just like his was. And I was desperate to get home. Like he was. His eyes got damp.
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Sometimes weaving in and out of traffic without an indicator doesn’t hit home.
I got out my cell phone.
My eyes were like a man gunning his car down a straight road. ‘I’ve paid.’
His mouth twisted.
‘Open the gate.’
He activated the gate.
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I have started work on my old house. It would be much easier to build a small room— everyone wants to be paid with money. No one wants to wait for crop—but where there is soil and water—the lotus grows long stems through mud to crack itself open.
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Chris spends two hours explaining how selfish I am. I keep eating slowly. I maintain eye contact. His eyes are like candles that sting my eyes. I remain seated at the table even though my hand has already caught fire.
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The plate of labor is in the sitting and watching. The plate on the table is a scratch—there is not enough blood there—a shallow slide on the skin. I should be sitting in a turmoil of worms. In a hole under the table.
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I avoid making eye-contact with other women when I take my children to their institutions. Like that, I can avoid switching on the television to watch the presenter delivering the distraction of the evening news. Like avoiding taking my children to the gas station so I don’t hear them ask for condensed sugar wrapped in gold.
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I stand in my psyche—at the back of the kitchen and watch how morning opens like a cross on a hill. A large wooden table as long as a hall, for I have lots of people who need to eat from me. The sunlight comes through; brightening its archeology—lamping onto my surfaces— rattling my yellow lakes; raising my knots like blood under the skin. I wait for them to clot—the curing and erection of their red spirals.
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I climb on the roof of a hearse as high as a mountain and attach roses to the wreath there. The mountains imbue my edges with a silhouetted fall. The rich dark—for I am with my own sounds of my own wounds, the palms of leaves—dry bowls of the trees lifting the living from their cloaks of black hair.
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During my childhood, the day felt like a corn field—fecund—nipples and milk sliding down the waves as the wind rolls the balls of its limbs into the sea. The sun grows off me sometimes—there are days I can stand in a dark room and feel unanimous.
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They are rare. These fields.
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The sun undresses the table, shaves off each puddle with a chisel. Until I am able to cut up my body and separate the ripe figs from the caviar. I stand—watching, drinking this coffee. I used to have it with sugar. The dietician told me to take artificial sweetener instead. But I found it plays with my metabolism too much. My coffee’s bitterness is not knowing what I’m tasting. An easy ride on the back of this spike of energy makes it all bearable for now.
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My other child tantrums. I can’t give her time now because I am running on a treadmill. I have curled steel in my mouth. The more I bite, the more we bleed. I will lie down next to her soon, for I am a child too. I will chew the steel slowly—till I can swallow every piece myself.
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Politics is mainstream television. It is the burden of my mother gossiping about other people on the phone. Like a scorpion on my skin. I don’t answer the phone until I hear the voice being recorded first. My mother left me a message on my phone last year. My new policy is to delete her voice as soon as she becomes identifiable.
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My mother is in her bedroom with her eyes half open like in a strange sleep. She has stopped the obsessive cleaning of her house. In the living room, the vases my father bought her the year she became a mother are still beautiful. But it is good the wind has harnessed them. The roses on them are dripping. I closed the windows in both of the rooms. I asked the rocks and mountains to bury me again. I could not bear the noise of porcelain falling on the mantelpiece. Like the pans hanging off my herb drying rack when I leave the windows open. They clang like the sound of church bells.
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When I was 16 years old, the earth broke underneath my feet. I wanted to be a tardigrade. I wanted the night to be permanent. So I could slow down my body. So I could catch up and renovate myself. But no one could wait for me. The stars shook and fell to the ground. The blood of the moon was visible for the first time. Peels of the eyes. And the sun was veiled with black hair. I lived behind the glass. When I tried to clean the walls, the scratches on them became more pronounced. The scar tissue left them thicker.
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And I have been bleeding ever since. I am the woman who never stops bleeding. I will scratch until I feel alive.
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Sometimes, nights can be a cradle—a spring meadow in winter—an assurance of my durability. I don’t want to be part of a tangled hand or a knot. An awkward mold I need to squash myself in, without ever knowing my origin.
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I want to be able to get out of my bed and walk diagonally from one corner of my room to the other without the lamp slipping between my fingers. But I need the wrath of the lamb. Dying has its merits. That is the only way to fly to outer space. It is better to go as a child—being unaware of all the risks can prolong life. I have started to live in a flying saucer. I can send handwritten messages across two rooms. There is a library and a room full of snow that I spend time crumbling like styrofoam. I start to rewrite the bible in red pen.
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The different parts of the sky consume me. They hold me in check like a leash. The sun yokes me like a man yokes me to his rocket. I often forget I have thawed pieces of meat overnight. I often find them days later under piles of paper on the organ I have used as a desk. I have to find a way to convert blood into ink.
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Pour out a twilight—the goblet of Hygeia—a view of rose colored champagne.
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Memories moisten in a stiff sea. I rub the floor of the sink to loosen the grey grains of water. The conduit of my hand swimming the merge of color and thought.
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My best friend Chris was an astronaut. He finally decided rockets were unnecessary. Space is full of water like the ocean on earth. I use a rolling pin to thin it out for it is continuous. I wanted to be his wife. But I’m in denial. I can’t help discarding dirty water in drains. It is easier to wipe the scum off with a dry cloth.
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It wasn’t me who was sick so I didn’t enquire about our family grave site. Rockets need to die too. And Chris’ rocket was trying to find a grave to bury itself in. The rocket was really his father. Chris dived under the sea and swam far away from it. We’re all afraid of the vortex. We all get sucked into it. But only some of us realize. When we’re in the tail of it.
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But then he let go of the rocket. He held me and told me I had to let it go too. I was very attached to my son.
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The same way I’m attached to bombs.
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My mom used to tell me I have sold my soul to the devil. He will come at night and strip it open like a rag and shake it outside. The devil will rake you through two horns. And you will never see me again.
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She was right.
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The doctors told me I’m only shaking because I’m cold. They banned my antidepressants. They locked me in a cell. It reminded me of our holiday house. I had to feel things. They told me I had to think of a way to appeal to Chris. I had to redraft a letter and cover it with red pen. I had to write about how I loved him. They said if I succeeded in painting the walls white, I would be murdered in the morning.
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I was with my family on the bed, but I was the only one sleeping at the foot. A lady near the door of this room was sewing things. The wall had a mouth and they spoke.
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I wrote about how I don’t feel alive here. I don’t uncurl like a ribbon or a wet tongue. I’m forced and prodded with utensils. Everybody is doing it to everyone. We are the walls of the vortex and I’m scared because no one can stop it.
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The credits of the movie have been cut off. I can’t hear the orchestra play. The voice of a man is chopping up my Tao with an axe. Its music stripped, like water shut down at the tap.
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I am a concubine. Her name is Shama. One day she will be a shaman. I sleep in animal furs in a hammock because all I want is safety. All you can see is my yellow hair like a Shamash. I’m just a young girl. I cringe to think how someone as unaware as her will ever get through childbirth.
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I walked to Israel to beg for freedom. I am afraid of Peniel. How do I cut up my face and throw it on a plate? I started to hook up my own feelings and thoughts with a cheese knife. I have begun walking across my room without breaking my lamp. I start to feel soft and yellow like the concubine’s hair. Introverted like a crescent moon in animal skins.
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My thoughts are clicking quicker than the wheels of trains on tracks. I start to eat my food with my hands.
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When I walk I try to avoid my mother eating me. She sleeps with a knife and a fork—a mirror of my neurosis. I used to walk through halls of mirrors, making sure to seal each wardrobe that flung its doors wide open for me. My feet are riveted—cold wasted wax. A caduceus without wings.
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I draw a DNA symbol with wings.
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These wardrobes look primitive. Like animals. Their antique skins. I have to learn to stop signing contracts—to stop kissing mirrors. I will unlock each one with a key the shape of the bowl of my palm.
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I won’t stop until I am no longer the cutting noise of teeth in the printing machine, a production line for everyone wants me to be a copy. I live in a developed country. The food too is finely processed. White sugar—smug; in the cavities of my teeth. The teeth munch. The typewriter copying me on its own new paper. I throw most letters in the bin.
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To dislodge god from billboards; the slowing down of his aborted arms. The prolonging of his hands, nailed one by one. How I lick this black juice, the taste of its gums and how I am learning about the color of blackberries. Contrived knots. The knuckles of love—cut up like lamb’s meat.
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Suspended—on the wood. The warbling of a pigeon in ordinary form.
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I give you fire from the cross in my chest.