The room was different than I remembered it. I was away for a while and when I returned, the walls seemed a different shade of orange, and the painting of Jesus seemed less frightening and foreboding. I laid alone in the room I once enjoyed more than my fair share and watched the same TV that I will watch with him later. It seems colder this time.
He is at work, and I am here. Alone in this house that’s next to a centro commercial in the Peruvian city where I once lived. Everything seems different. I look under the bed and see a red Puma shoebox, and wonder if it holds any secrets, or any lovers he’s never told me about. He doesn’t know about a few of the people I’ve dated. He doesn’t know that I fell in love with a drug dealer in a week and still dream about casually running into him and telling him that I have a boyfriend. That in the dream, he begs me to leave that man, that Peruvian. What could he ever bring to me? A doctor in Peru? Ha! Anyone can do that, right? And then he tells me that everything he said on the rooftop of that Barcelona apartment overlooking Avenida Diagonal was true. No, he can’t ever know about that.
He can’t know about the Polish man who harmlessly flirted with me, and who I considered marrying, so that he could have his green card. He used to watch me eat ice cream and tell me he liked the way I licked it. I was never really sure what that meant. I think he was gay, but Poland is probably one of those countries were ‘being gay’ doesn’t exist. But I loved watching him suspend himself in the air and twirl. No, I haven’t told my Peruvian about this Polish man, or the truth about the drug dealer from Barcelona. I can’t now, in this house with a picture of Jesus and curtains with blue apples looking at me.
I can’t tell him that I hate being alone in this house. It creeps me out. I can’t tell him that I love when he pees with the door open because I think it’s a sign of closeness. I can’t tell him that I hate scratching his back, but I love the way he asks. I can’t tell him that I plucked his eyebrows, because I couldn’t deal with the unibrow. I can’t tell him that his jealousy wounds me and comforts me at the same time. When I don’t tell him these things, I wonder if they will hurt his feelings.
I’ve seen him cry. I saw him cry that day he took me to the airport for the first time. My plane took off, and amidst the acceleration, I could still see his face. He was alone. I wonder if it will be the same this time, when I leave. When I’m not in this house anymore, with Jesus and those blue apples staring at me. Do you think Jesus hears us in our moments of rapture? Do you think those blue apples know my favorite position? Do they know his? Do they judge my accent in Spanish, or the way I roll my r’s? If they could speak, what would they say about me, about us?
He’s the one who told me I didn’t have to run; it would be okay to stay in one place. He was the one who fought for me when I started running away from him. He chased me and said, “Slow down, I just want to run with you.”
I want to go outside and escape. I have the keys. They fit into a door that I cannot open. No, that’s not a metaphor. I can never open that door. The bottom lock you turn twice to the right. The top you turn to the left three times. Then, you push a little with your foot. I can never push hard enough. Maybe if I open this red Puma shoebox and see some perfect-looking girl, I will be angry enough to push down the whole damn door. Maybe I’ll find letters from other lovers, letters from the women who used to lay in this bed. Maybe I’ll find nothing that I’m expecting. Maybe I’ll find another set of curtains with blue apples or another picture of Jesus, but this time he’ll be bleeding.
But when I open the box, it’s empty. Sometimes a shoebox is just a shoebox.
This piece was first read as a part of Sadie Lou’s Student and Alumnae/i Collaborative Reading.