Quiet Rage, part iii

The iconic Hallelujah breaker of violence against women is considered in another woman

I thought I was done with Michelle for now.

However, I can’t stop thinking about her Hallelujah vacuum that risks entropy.

Thus, a third window into Michelle’s life. 

( For the first pieces of the story, see:   Quiet Rage, part i and Quiet Rage, part ii)

And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!

_quiet rage, part iii_

Her parents had left pissed.

Nothing new there.

Michelle had become so intimate with their disappointment that they were almost lovers.  She couldn’t remember a time that the way she responded didn’t frustrate them.  In an odd way that she knew was on some level was sick, their impatience with her felt safe and familiar.

She recalled the way her father had ended the abortive interview with that Polish cop who had just gotten a perm.  Michelle herself hated perms.  They smelled worse than sour kraut, like a helmet of funky cabbage.   She hated that cop too.  She’d always hated women who acted like dicks.  This one manned herself up behind a badge and had tried to eat her heart.

But oh, God, oh!  How Michelle loved poetry.  It kept her sane.  Pretty pissed herself, she had not expected to wake up to this old shit.  She had not expected to wake up again ever.  Even now though, inside a vise of almost claustrophobic, physical pain, she recalled a Sylvia Plath poem:

Lady Lazarus

I have done it again. One year in every ten I manage it– A sort of walking miracle, my skin Bright as a Nazi lampshade, My right foot A paperweight, My face a featureless, fine Jew linen. Peel off the napkin O my enemy. Do I terrify?– The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth? The sour breath Will vanish in a day. Soon, soon the flesh The grave cave ate will be At home on me And I a smiling woman. I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die. This is Number Three. What a trash To annihilate each decade. What a million filaments. The peanut-crunching crowd Shoves in to see Them unwrap me hand and foot– The big strip tease. Gentlemen, ladies These are my hands My knees. I may be skin and bone, Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman. The first time it happened I was ten. It was an accident. The second time I meant To last it out and not come back at all. I rocked shut As a seashell. They had to call and call And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I’ve a call. It’s easy enough to do it in a cell. It’s easy enough to do it and stay put. It’s the theatrical Comeback in broad day To the same place, the same face, the same brute Amused shout: ‘A miracle!’ That knocks me out. There is a charge For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge For the hearing of my heart– It really goes. And there is a charge, a very large charge For a word or a touch Or a bit of blood Or a piece of my hair or my clothes. So, so, Herr Doktor. So, Herr Enemy. I am your opus, I am your valuable, The pure gold baby That melts to a shriek. I turn and burn. Do not think I underestimate your great concern. Ash, ash– You poke and stir. Flesh, bone, there is nothing there– A cake of soap, A wedding ring, A gold filling. Herr God, Herr Lucifer Beware Beware. Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air.

As if a director of a play, her father had cast himself in the role of her hero.  Her knight in shining armor.  Like he could rescue her now.   And she, only 18, didn’t care how many lives she may have been granted, she knew only that no one could rescue her now.

A fatigue deeper than pain had invaded when that bitch had said, “It’s only just begun.  She is going to have to face it.”

Michelle had no appetite left.

She was unleavened bread.