Kelly Tynan
Time is Relative
The orange in my hand slips to the tiled floor. My vision suddenly blurred, narrows in to just a point, a speck, and I think I put my hand on another orange to steady my fall to the tiled floor, and I think I end up brining with me the entire stack of oranges previously neatly arranged for consumers to be drawn to with salivating mouths. I think this happens, but I fall to the floor with such a smack that all I know is one moment I could see and was squeezing and orange yet the very next moment I am hit with such force surely it wasn’t an accident. I was hit by a barrel of a gun. I was hit because I wouldn’t go to the line. My son! My three-year-old son is screaming for me.
My husband’s long handsome body appears to me, but my eyes are closed. As he kneels down to the cold dusty grocery store tiled floor, I breathe in and surround myself within his cologne that I bought him for Christmas. He tore open the wrapping paper with such enthusiasm I half expected he thought I had wrapped the baby girl he was longing for. We promised each other no more children until we were safely out of the country.
Kevin touches my ear with his gentle lips, “We were right, my love. We were right.”
He is fading, and I reach for him, “Wait, Kevin!”
He is fading into a darkness spotted with points of light. “You cannot follow me.”
“Kevin,” I breathe. I feel someone doing CPR. “Kevin, show me.” I hear counting. I feel pressure on my chest until I am home, cooking dinner. David plays on the floor beside my feet with his favorite wooden blocks. They are old; I bought them in a thrift store, and he likes them more than anything else.
“David, please baby, do not play by my feet while I am cooking.” I run my hand under his chin. “I do not want to trip on you or hurt you with the hot food.”
He smiles up at me, “No, my blocks stay, mommy.”
Kevin’s voice vibrates from his office, “David, come here with your blocks and let mommy cook dinner.” Kevin, sitting at his desk, with a map of the whole world spread out in front of him, marking where the organizations are hiding, searching for one we can go to, one David won’t be found by the chip in his hand, as we have been for many months, plotting and planning and making phone calls.
David gathers all the blocks into his arms, stands, calls out, “OK, daddy. Where are you, daddy?”
Then sirens and foot steps, getting louder and louder, and hard banging on the front door that had been spray painted with the word “terrorist” just the other day while we were at work. David and I say nothing. He drops his blocks, and we look at each other, and then at the door.
“Kevin-”
He runs into the kitchen, “I’m here, my love. I am here.”
“Have you ever thought of hypnotherapy?”
I look up at him, a tall man, even taller to me as I lay on the table. Needles are in my points, in my wrists, hands, knees, feet, and my forehead. My hands find their way to cover my mouth. I am sobbing.
“I could hypnotize you. These dreams are probably past lives or one past life that haunts you still.”
I shake my head.
“You must have been a victim of the holocaust,” he continues, running his hovering hands down my body from my head and pausing at my feet. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. You hear your son screaming as you are taken away. You won’t get in a line that is being formed for the women, and you are hit in the head with a gun. You wake up in a crate on a moving train. Other women are also jammed in crates. No one can stand. You feel like pigs going to a slaughterhouse. You feel you are going to die. When the train stops, a door opens and you see-”
I shake my head. “No, no, no, no.”
He steadies me with his hands. “You said they charged into your home. They shot Kevin right in front of you, right in his face. Then they grab you and David and drag you out into the street-”
I raise my hand. “Shut … up … shut up … I … know what you … think … You think … we were Jews … that I am confusing … past with present … You don’t know … what they … are … I saw it.”
He wipes tears from my cheeks with a Kleenex and holds onto my chin with his thumb and forefinger. “These dreams, are these dreams the reason you and your husband are involved in the protests?” He clears his throat. “Listen. I understand. With the dollar bankrupting, I too am scared. But this is America. Our government will take care of us. Our government is in control. A new currency is forming and we – We will be all right. We are at war. When we are at war, we have to take precautions. And we need to go on with our lives. Go to work, take care of our kids, pay our bills, go shopping, you understand. The protests will only insult the new way. You cannot win.”
“Please, take these out,” I ask him, motioning to the needles. “Please. I need to get out of here. I didn’t know you knew we go to the protests. I didn’t know. You’re one of them. Take these out.”
“I am one of whom?” He stays where he is and points to his chest. “Do you think I am a Nazi? This is not the 1930s. You are becoming delusional. I am worried for you. I am trying to help you.”
“Take these out! Take these out, or I will scream!”
“Why do you think they will put you on a train and send you to a camp? They wouldn’t do such a thing here, in America. People in hiding … Terrorist written on peoples’ front doors,” he laughs. He laughs! “It’s the books you read. After they turned off the Internet because of people like you. Banks making millions in the holocaust. The JFK assassination. AIDS being man made by our government. 9/11. The closed elections. The police state. The police state is for our own protection!”
“Take these out! You know nothing! Time is relative, you are such an idiot! All those things matter! They are all connected! You’re a sheep, a follower! You’re a fool! You will see. You think you are safe. You will see what they are going to do. Take these out!” I am pinching myself. Again. Again. I draw blood. How could I tell him? How dare I trust him!
I try to stand, but the needles yank on my skin. I start to fumble with the ones in my hands, and he stops me.
“You were just dreaming. That can’t happen in America, and if you stopped your conspiracy theory questioning you wouldn’t have these problems.”
“Do you believe that? Do you believe the government really cares about you? You are just a number! Like the chips they are putting in new babies. Don’t you pay attention? You have been my acupuncturist these five years. You stood up in my wedding! You were my friend! Haven’t you noticed what is happening? Haven’t you been asked to report people?”
He turns his face from my question.
A breath can be words in between language.
A breath can bring truth.
“Oh, I see. Please, take these out. I need to leave.” I glance around the room and nod for him to notice the shadow movements from behind the blaring white blinds. “I know there is a camera in here. I know they are listening.”
He pulls out the needles from my feet, one by one, my knees, my wrists, my hands, and he stops. He leans his face close to mine as if he is about to kiss me. He pauses just above my lips, and delicately, like a flower blooming, he whispers, “I was asked about you by a man who identified himself as an FBI agent.” He is caressing me. He is trying to unbutton my shirt.
“What are you doing? Stop. Stop it! What are you doing?”
“He told me you and Kevin have been reported by spies for the new government. Pretend to struggle, please. I will tell you more.”
I push him with all my strength. As I try to stand, he catches my hair. He holds me down with his knees now, pushes on my shoulders, now almost angry, “Wait!” He pulls out in one swift motion the needle from my forehead.
Tears not from pain or humiliation but sadness, such sadness … I could swim in my own sadness … and the sadness for what is coming … for the world … forgive us … are rolling down my face and dropping onto his padded table. His eyes are very kind, but no one can be trusted.
He is kissing me. “This is your own fault. You spoke too much. Everyone watches and reports each other, for our own survival. The only way for me to tell you more, we have to act as though I am going to rape you. They will let me. I can’t simply let you walk out the door.” He whispers in my ear as he forces himself on me. I kick at him, bit him, scratch and punch him, this man who had been my friend. He used to ask me questions. What are you reading? Tell me, tell me. Do you think it’s real?
Maybe he is going to rape me. He might want to help me. He might want to hurt me. I really do not know anything at all for sure anymore.
That is what they have done to us.
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