My insomnia was at its worst. I hadn’t slept for more than ten minutes in weeks. I was a carbon copy of myself, only the faded imprint of pressure remained on paper-thin skin. Locked in the past, time had become hollow, and everything seemed to exist at a distance. Unreachable, unattainable, unimportant.
I didn’t care when the towels weren’t folded the right way anymore. I didn’t care when Jack left his dirty socks lying on the living room floor for days. I didn’t care that the kitchen sink was piled with dishes caked in gunk. I didn’t care if I ate or starved or slept or drank water or washed my hair or hands. I didn’t have the strength to pretend.
Sipping a cup of coffee over the kitchen sink, I watched Jack through the window. The vines from the hanging plant had dried and were beginning to turn an orange-brown. I reached out and pinched a leaf between my thumb and forefinger, plucking it from its stem. Crumbling it to dust, I let it fall onto the counter.
Jack was digging a hole beneath the lilac tree. He was struggling to break the earth with the plastic toy shovel we had bought for the baby. I lifted my mug to my mouth and tipped it, letting the liquid linger on my tongue. It tasted particularly bitter, and I knew Jack had made it that way on purpose.
I hated him. His stupid crooked teeth and messy hair. His ripped shirts and jeans, stained with paint. His unclean fingernails and unclipped toenails. The thought of him ever touching me again made me sick.
He was clutching a white, plush bunny in his free hand. I remembered the day we bought that bunny. I was restless—I hadn’t had a drink or done drugs in months—so we walked downtown on an unseasonably chilly spring day. I was bundled in Jack’s mahogany scarf, cranky because I was constantly sick, and the air, rife with pollen, was making my eyes watery and itchy. “Let’s just go in here,” I said, motioning to the store ahead, rubbing my eyes with the end of his scarf.
The shop was filled with beautiful household items. Handmade soaps that smelled of lavender and eucalyptus were piled on silver cupcake trays. Fluffy white towels and housecoats hung on hangers near vintage bathroom vanities with basins and washbowls. I stepped between the delicate items, careful not to bump into anything with my new belly.
Jack grabbed a stuffed rabbit with floppy ears and an embroidered pink nose from a crib as we passed by. He held the bunny by the back of the neck, bobbing its head from side to side, and directed a voice from the edge of his mouth like a ventriloquist. “Hey, sweetheart, you have any plans for later?”
I bit the sides of my cheeks, trying not to laugh.
“How about taking me home?” he continued, nodding the bunny’s head up and down.
I allowed myself to smile as I reached up to touch the rabbit’s ears. They were as soft as cashmere.
“Alright,” I said, giving in. “But you have to buy me dinner first.”
Relieved that he had cheered me up, Jack leaned in and kissed me on the cheek before heading for the cash register.
I carried the bunny all the way home by its paw, just like I had carried my own stuffed toys when I was a little girl. Halting on the corner, I pulled a loose strand of red hair off of the rabbit.
Presently, Jack beckoned for me to join him in the yard. His lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear him through the glass. I cupped my ear, shook my head, and mouthed, “I can’t hear you, you moron.”
Placing my cup down, I rounded the kitchen table, exiting through the back door. I let the screen door slam loudly, which Jack hated, but this time it prompted no reaction from him.
I met him by the hole under the tree. All I could smell were lilacs and the dampness of the dirt.
“Should we say something?” I asked.
“What is there to say?” Jack dropped the bunny into the hole, picked up the child-sized shovel and started to bury it. The image caused me to tense up, the soft white soiled by the moist brown earth.
Jack fell to his knees, sobbing. He wrapped his arms around my legs and buried his face in the space between my thighs. He wailed mournfully, peering up at me with wet eyes. “Our boy,” he whispered once he’d caught his breath. “What are we going to do without our boy?”
I couldn’t look at him. I stared at the soil, noticing something pinkish-grey squirming around. I strained to see what it was, and realized it was two parts of a worm that had been sliced in half by Jack’s shovelling. Both ends of it continued to writhe.
I thought of the grief that was eating me up inside; like maggots consuming rotten flesh, it was burrowing its way into my heart, tearing my ventricles apart. Then I pictured my baby decomposing in the ground.
Unlike the worm, I didn’t think I had the heart to survive the split.