A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [142]
I remembered having had such acute and chronic stomachaches through adolescence that my Aunt Kate finally took me to the doctor to see if I had an ulcer. It was all in my head, Dr. Finnegan concluded after the exam. My father, irritated because my infirmity could not be resolved by surgery or medication, ordered me to be more sociable and then with-drew to his study.
As I got older I wondered how to get into the race while at the same time preserving what I thought of as my soul. I was moved to tears reading the ancient philosophers in my ethics class my freshman year in college. I understood that I had spent my entire young life standing guard, as if my body were a great walled fortress around the small thing, as fragile as a twig on its velvet pillow: my soul. It was a delicate, impossible balance—to see, to touch, to feel, and yet to have nothing penetrate to the inner realm, so as not to twist or crack or break the poor twig. At eighteen I was studious and quiet, staking out a carrel in the library and reading day after day until the light outdoors faded and my reflection stared back at me in the window. I’d fold my arms around my head and sleep sitting up, thinking, as I drifted off, that I could feel my pith growing stronger even without the aid of strangers and lovers. I would occasionally find myself out on cold starry nights, right by the railroad tracks, standing close to the trains as they streaked past. I wanted the cold to pierce me, wanted to feel the tremor of the earth under the train, wanted to stay awake in the snow until every part of me was aching with fatigue, and all so I’d know I was alive. Years later, with several experiments in sociability under my belt, Howard had come to me like some exotic remedy, that rare extract calibrated to produce sensation without harm.
Sometimes I couldn’t think exactly why I was in jail; I’d lose track of the reason. I was locked away, I’d think, to test my liberal upbringing, to measure just how deep my muddled convictions went. When I was in high school Aunt Kate used to read aloud from her holy books, from E. M. Forster’s novels, over our oatmeal and stewed prunes. Where Aunt Kate professed that despite our differences we are one, my father meant me to understand that other people, not our sort, are the ones who starve, who suffer indignities.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to see a piece of playground equipment rising up from the cement at the park or the zoo without my heart convulsing at speeds that are not recommended on exercise pulse charts. In our living unit at the jail there were two steel tables that had been cast into concrete and looked to be growing out of the floor. While I was locked up I cleaned my plate and changed one pair of tube socks for another without having tremors. When I was out I could not abide the sight or smell of American cheese between two pieces of soft white bread, scalloped potatoes, fried chicken, Tater Tots, fruit cocktail, and canned peas. I bought expensive cotton socks with textured flowers in bold colors.
Emma asked me repeatedly what the jail was like. Should I compare it to a day at the baby-sitter’s, I wondered. Or to the cow comfort stalls Howard had built for the Guernseys with staggering results in milk output? In their new quarters the cows had remained cleaner and spent two hours more a day lying down and ruminating. In jail I had been leagues away from the air and the sky, so perhaps it was like spending months near the ocean floor in a submarine. “It was like being one of a large litter of hamsters in a small metal cage, Emma,” I said at last.
“Really?