Originally published in Southern Indiana Review, Spring 1994
Julie Cursed
Elizabeth's skin vibrates, buzzes, blossoms bright red from incessant rubbing. Her fingers dig into what must be the itch's source, but she can not really determine even if there is an itch.
"You know how it is," she says to Matt. "You can feel
your arm, just feel it. It's there, always there, but normally you don't
notice it. And then you can't do a goddamned thing because you're aware
of it: hanging there, fleshy, lumpy, useless. I know there's nothing really
wrong with it, the tests showed nothing, but I have to consciously tell
it to pick something up before it will."
The index finger of her left hand traces the fading red marks up to
her elbow. "But, damn it, people don't have to tell their arms to reach,
their hands to grasp."
"When did it begin?" he asks. He reaches to her, taking
her right hand out of her left and into his own. A dead weight in his hand
he stretches it toward the ceiling, then exercises it at the elbow, pushing
her hand towards her shoulder and drawing it
back up, again and again.
"Last week," she says, oblivious to his massage. "I was in class, my off period, checking class journals and I became aware of it, my arm, big and white and lumpy. It seemed to weigh so much." She wrenches her hand out of his and buries it in her skirt.
* * *
Elizabeth thinks back to her classroom. She hears the students scream
and laugh again outside her door. She hears the same obnoxious sex jokes
and double entendres that have never bothered her before. As she looks down
to respond to one more journal, her hand drops like a dead weight into her
lap. Her pen clatters to the floor. She sees the blackboard filled with
eleventh-grade comments that have become meaningless, notices the dust on
the old-fashioned transom over the door, hears Julie yelling at some boy
and can almost feel him flinch away in pain.
"I don't know, Matt. I had already decided I couldn't take the
school much longer and now this."
"What happened, Elizabeth? At the moment this thing came over
you?"
"Nothing, damn it. Nothing that hasn't happened a thousand times
before. Julie cursed when some boy told her he was gay and then I simply
could not read one more mindless entry."
She shakes her long hair out of her face and, looking up at him, blinking
back the tears that are more painful than the fading red where she had been
scratching at what was not really an itch, laughs. "I threw the rest
of the goddamned journals across the room with my good hand and just sat
there listening to Julie and to someone, Joe, I think, maybe Scott, explaining
to her that he was gay. And do you know what Julie said?"
"Tell me."
"Julie said he just needs to think himself well and he'll be
cured--as if being gay is a disease. She told him she has a friend with
AIDS, someone gay like him, and she talked him into not seeing a doctor
or anything. If her friend dies, she said, it'll be his own fault for not
willing himself well. 'Fuck doctors,' Julie said. 'Who needs them?' He said--Joe
or Scott, whichever one,--he said, 'But I don't have AIDS. I'm gay, but
I've never even had sex before. I'm still a virgin with both sexes.' "
"And then Julie said, yes, Julie said, 'If you're worried about it, you'll get it. You can't get sick if you develop a good mindset about yourself. But you're sick all right. Boy are you sick. With a mind like yours, the first time you do it BANG! The big A-I-D-S. You're already dead, man, and haven't found out yet because you're too goddamned stupid.' "
* * *
Elizabeth rubs her hand roughly, sits straighter in the chair, and
looks up at Matt. "Is that what's wrong with my hand? Do I just have
to think it back to normal? Is it that simple?"
"Yes, but not because of what your dear young Julie was saying.
In fact you probably need to not think about it and not think it back to
normal."
He bends down to her, takes both her hands gently in his and pulls
her slowly to her feet. When she starts to jerk herself up, he releases
her and she falls back onto the cushions.
"Don't help me," he says. He pulls again, stretching her
worn muscles, pulling both arms up and around his neck. "And precious
Julie's right about something else, too. Come on, let's get out of this
room, for Christ's sake."
"And go where?"
"Where Julie and Joe or Scott or whatever his name is have never
been, to bed, together. I'm not talking about sex. But I do want to see
if you can feel anything." He draws his fingernail down her arm and
laughs when he feels her shiver.
"So someone told Julie he was gay," he says.
"And Julie cursed," she whispers.
As they walk into the bedroom, she squeezes his neck, mock ferociously,
with both hands, leans into him comfortably, her hip against his, and whispers
close to his ear, "It's all right, isn't it, not to like them, at least
not all the time?"