Hunger   by Sarah Wamsley

    Chloe was fasting. She told herself it was for purely physical reasons--an attempt to cleanse her system from its toxins--the results of too many wine coolers and bad hamburgers over the last week. "It’s really healthy," her vegetarian cousin had told her. "Cleansing." Eating with her cousin had always made her feel vaguely guilty as she chewed up the meat with its darkened blood and bits of gristle stuck between her teeth. Her eyes, propelled by her stomach, wandered to the clock. 3:28. Since dinner last night she had eaten nothing, and her stomach was bubbling with hunger and useless air. She sat on a plastic chair on her tired balcony, and felt as nauseated by her mind as she did by her stomach.

    She was punishing herself--whipping her stomach into submission and at the same time submitting herself to the oppressive stillness that hung in the humid air, pressing down on her skin and forcing her to sit in the chair instead of getting up to eat. Her view was cluttered by cars, weathered and tired, parked in a long stretch beneath her. She moodily allowed the environment to weigh her down. Her skin crawled with the people surrounding her, living below, behind, beside her, swarming like invisible but instinctively felt insects. An involuntary shudder ran across her shoulder blades, and she leapt up from the plastic chair, the skin on the back of her legs peeling free a moment after the rest of her. She was being ridiculous, thinking these thoughts.

    She reentered her apartment through the sliding glass door. She was alone--her roommate had gone to her parents for the weekend and taken the dog with her. She made it as far as the couch before flopping herself down and listlessly turning on the television.

    The disgust welled up in the back of her throat and restlessness filled her like dirty water from a faucet. Her discontent swelled. She felt in limbo. It was her third year of college and she felt she had accomplished nothing. The scream of a child downstairs caused her eyes to prick with tiny needles. Her arms ached for children--a thought she dared share with no one, especially not her mother. It suddenly occurred to her that she might want children not only because she liked them, but because it would mean she had produced something meaningful. A child would screw up all your plans, though, that annoyingly logical part of herself reminded the rest. Everything was always ruining her plans. Life was ruining her plans to live.

    School, which she had enjoyed for the first several months, was stifling her. She sat in classes and felt imprisoned, listening to her own doubts with the professor’s droning playing as background noise. One question kept repeating itself in her mind, "What the hell am I doing here?" She flung up prayers like ropes, holding onto one end and watching the other fall to the ground again and again. They were desperate prayers--not thankful ones. She asked for guidance. She was a spiritual person. She didn’t attend church because she felt it was purely ritualistic; all true spiritual feeling--the passion--was sucked out of the ceremonies in a thorough and purposeful way, leaving only a meaningless shell. She felt an impersonal conviction that God did take the lives offered to him and use them. But she had never received a calling, had never heard the booming voice of God. She believed that God didn’t really talk to anyone, but that people heard his voice through nagging internal reminders, like when she reminded herself about an errand. That was how people knew God was speaking. He told them to do the things they didn’t want to do, and if they tried to ignore him, he kept nagging until they finally paid attention.

    So she was in limbo. She felt that she couldn’t start anything now that she was in school. School itself was not something, was not a real activity. It was merely a waiting period--a necessary trial to undergo, like learning to swim. It was not the learning that really mattered--it was the swimming itself. And since the school was transitory, nothing else in her life could be permanent--not work or even friends. She felt transitional, and was filled with the impulse to travel. But as always, she was anchored, land-locked, by the obligatory classes on Monday. With disgust she picked up her keys and went out the door, headed nowhere in particular.

    She cruised along--if it could be called that--in her beat-up old hatchback. She wound into a more rural area she didn’t recognize. She thought fleetingly about how she rarely drove anywhere nowadays except to school and work. These backroads were comfortingly unfamiliar. There were even occasional cows in pastures, standing motionless, in the manner of cardboard cutouts. She watched them with a mixture of amusement and pity. She turned the wheel abruptly and braked around a corner which was sharper than it looked, then resumed her speed. She checked her speedometer--35. It felt faster, and she was glad. She began loudly singing Eponine’s solo from Les Miserables, happy in her moodiness.

    The crash was like an afterthought, surfacing suddenly, while not completely unexpected, in the smooth waves of the road. She rounded the curve, saw a flash of blue like some kind of spirit, and then there was the noise. That horrifying scream of metal on metal, like two outraged beasts fighting for dominance, filled her ears and seared her mind. She slammed on the brakes, turned the wheel--all far far too late--moving in jelly. The car came to a calmed halt and caught its breath with a wheeze, and she sat frozen for what seemed like hours.

    No, no, no, no, no. The negatives tumbled over each other and filled her skull. Turn it back, turn it back. A minute ago, thirty seconds ago would be enough. Her hands clawed at the seatbelt, but it was time she was trying to grab onto, sink her nails into, force to turn backward. Her stomach was beating, a huge bird was beating its wings inside her ribs in a panic, trying to escape, she struggled with the door, it would not open. She heard choked, hysterical sobbing, and then realized it was her own. She flung herself across the seat, grabbed the passenger side door handle, forced open the door. The cheerful, repeated chirping of the "door open" warning made her jump and she suddenly gagged on vomit before swallowing it back down. Crying hard now, unable to catch her breath, she flopped out across the seat and out of the car like a recently snagged fish. Her feet landed on ground and she began running.

    The other car was in the ditch, looking oddly comfortable. Chloe saw a woman struggling inside with a passenger. An invisible passenger. Oh, God. A child. Chloe’s footsteps felt disconnected but hurried nonetheless. She ran to the car and threw open the driver’s side door. A girl was lying bent in the passenger seat. The mother looked up at her, panicked and angry, opened her mouth, saw Chloe’s tears and panic, and closed it.

    "Is she okay?" Chloe choked out.

    "I don’t know. She’s unconscious." The woman was sputtering, looking at the child, fairly shouting at her. "Honey! Honey, wake up. Oh, God, please let her wake up."

    "Do you have a phone?" Chloe heard her voice and it sounded ridiculously calm. The woman looked dazed and slightly relieved at the question, as though grateful that someone else was there to think for her. She nodded like a child and pointed to her purse in the back. Chloe grabbed and unzipped it, sorting through Advil bottles, Kleenex, and assorted lipsticks until her fingers clasped the phone and she dialed 911.

    Chloe sat in the hospital chair with the woman beside her. The little girl was still unconscious when they arrived, but stable--a neutral term which always became miraculously positive in the hospital. The woman was comforting her absently, patting Chloe’s hand as if the difference in their ages was much larger. It wasn’t--the woman was perhaps ten years older than Chloe. But the patting was a comforting sensation. "It’s okay," the woman had said in the ambulance as the little girl lay like a corpse between them. Chloe hadn’t been sure whether the woman was talking to her or to herself. The woman had grabbed Chloe’s hand, and the two hands had rested on top of the girl’s stomach in a sacrilegious sort of way. The mother had looked her in the eyes, like she recognized Chloe as somebody’s daughter. "I know you didn’t mean to. I know you’re sorry. It’ll be okay."

    Now they were waiting. Chloe didn’t know exactly why she was there. The woman had made some phone calls when they arrived but no one had shown up, and now she felt like she had to stay, for herself as much as for the woman. They waited for the doctor to return. Always waiting, she thought with a rush of…something. Bitterness? She couldn’t pin it down and was too tired to try. She was whipped with thinking. She watched a family in the corner. They were probably waiting for a baby to be born. They had that look of being more excited than worried, although the worry was still there, especially on the face of the older woman, who looked like a surrogate for her daughter’s pain. Unexpected tears leapt to her eyes and she suddenly felt lost and lonely. Guilt was still fluttering in her stomach. She turned again to this woman, who she knew without knowing, and apologized yet again. "I’m so sorry. So sorry." The words were hollow, and broken into pieces by the doctor’s arrival.

    They stood up. Chloe suddenly felt on trial, as if the doctor was about to point his finger and condemn her. But he started talking, looking at them both, assuming she was another relative.

    "Your daughter’s fine. She has a minor concussion--nothing serious. She’ll have a headache for a while, and we’ll keep her overnight to observe her, but I wouldn’t worry." The woman thanked him. He smiled distractedly, nodded, and was retrieved by the jealous hallway.

    Alone again, they stood awkwardly for a moment, and Chloe wondered what was left to do. They had already exchanged insurance information. She opened her mouth and the woman smiled tiredly.

    "I know, honey," the woman said again. "It’s all right. These things happen. They just do."

    The words slapped her, but not in cruel way. It was more like the way her mother used to lightly slap her cheeks to wake her up in the morning. If these things just happened, what was the point?

    The woman nodded, still smiling that tired smile. "That’s being a parent, honey. You don’t know what’ll happen tomorrow. Anything could happen. You have to enjoy today. That’s all you have."

    She stood frozen, absorbing. The woman made an anxious glance towards the door, and Chloe immediately told her to please go and see her daughter. They would be in touch. The woman nodded again, and in a swift moment hugged her, holding her close, before releasing her and disappearing down the hall.

    Her car was still drivable, after she got in through the passenger door. She made her way home in silence, trying hard to hold her head still and not think. Her eyes were full of the road. She didn’t think about the crash, but the woman’s words at the hospital wouldn’t leave her mind. She thought about the waiting. Nine months before a child, and then the complete loss of control. It was too present for her to wrap her mind around. The crash crept up around the edges of her mind, and bits and pieces broke through--the nauseating feeling of irreparable damage. The suddenness and then the finality, with no control.

    Her stomach whined and she was grateful for the interruption. She pulled into the apartment lot, went upstairs, opened the fridge. She wanted…eggs. Eggs and toast. The fast was over.