In my World Literature classroom stands a tiny Christmas tree nearly collapsing under the weight of bright red ornaments made as if from shattered rubies. If you look at one of the ornaments up close, the parts of your face are reflected separately. Out of the everyday context of your face, you can see your nose, lips, ears and eyes as if for the first time. You gain a newfound objectivity, much like encountering an emotion you feel every day in an ancient work of literature. My World Literature class is studying Medea, the story of a woman scorned. When I look in the mirror, I see a thirty-three-year-old woman who looks scorned in the most fundamental of ways, who looks as if her childbearing years are irrelevant to the cold husk where maternity should be. I comb my wiry red hair and feel the bristles prick my scalp, a comforting reminder that something can still sting. I wear affordable suits of polyester at the bank where I work, any color, any fit, and cheap hose, cheap shoes because nothing, not even the touch of silk or satin or chenille, feels pleasurable on my skin anymore. My presence is invisible to the younger tellers—my body is invisible, even to myself, my freckles like camouflage. I feel asexual.
My husband sees me as such. He no longer notices when we brush each other in our small kitchen, he talks to me while he pees with the door open—he is always absent-minded when I’m around. Sadness carries his thoughts away, and he is a shell of a man, just as I see myself performing tasks but can’t put my finger on who is performing them.
Justin’s room remains as it was when he was alive—baseball gear and small trophies and airplane posters. Six months ago, our ten-year-old perfectly healthy and only slightly clumsy son tripped on the concrete steps at a friend’s apartment complex and fell, hitting his head at such a precise angle that he was killed instantly when he hit the bottom. His death was a shock to everyone, with nothing to be learned from it, no cautionary lesson, no moral—a loss it was, simply a loss.
After I get off work at the bank, I drive to the flat brick set of buildings, past the cheap metal sign that reads “Dunwoody Community College.” On the campus, adults like me wander, a dull and zestless pallor in their eyes, the groan of one more chore to do in their steps. The atmosphere is not what comes to mind when one thinks of higher education, hallowed halls, ivy green. But I made this choice to go back to school.
We still get the occasional condolence card, particularly from the Baptists at our former congregation. We were never actively involved in the church, but as it turns out, its members are our most dutiful friends, taking our grief as a call to action, bringing rotisserie chickens and macaroni and cheese over, sending “Thinking of You” cards after months of our absences. I’m relieved they don’t realize that their gestures mean more than God ever could. God is irrelevant in this matter.
Before the accident, I saw parenting as a destiny. By marrying Patrick in college and getting pregnant, I was following the inevitable, the expected. I dropped out of school to get a part-time steady income at the bank and spend the rest of my time raising our son. Now, though, I don’t see anything as heaven-ordained. Having a child, just like getting married, is not meant to be, it’s a choice. Like all other choices, you take your chances that things will go wrong. You take a risk that you might outlive your child. I chose to raise Justin, and I chose the risk of failure along with the possibility, not the certainty, that I would one day see my grandchildren. I look at the tissue-thin pages of Medea that crackle when they are turned, and I think, what does it mean that I spent ten years of my life working for my boy, raising my boy, and now he is gone? What was it for?
Now the world blinds me with what can be conceived, and it wraps around my body, which is no longer, anything physical, but something purely spirit, my insides taking over my outsides. The enormous possibilities—everything made of choice—is a heavy weight to bear. I gaze at the tree in my World Literature classroom and think of a million ways I could make it mine—burn it, sculpt it, adorn it. I attend school. I read Medea. I read works of literature that remind me that there are terrible choices, but there are other choices, too. I will myself to risk, even without destiny, without sureness. I read works of literature so that new possibilities will occur to me.
