Scraps of Sangeetha

The first instinct the fruit fly had was to feed. Feed, grow, feed, grow- all for her sister-self.  Feed. Grow. Feed. Grow. All the while carrying her sister-self, her specter-self. She was both doctor and monster: mushed brown banana her lightning, blackened peach her scalpel. 

Feed. Grow. Feed. Grow. Ripe fruits repelled her. Too early, too early, she thought as she moved away. The freshly dying fruits and the long dead, the sunken and the rotting, the spotted and molding, were her fuel and lovers. The fruit fly found an orgasmic ecstasy with each new feed. 

And that was childhood. Three days a living shell, an organ donor for another being, one she would never get the chance to meet. On the precipice of adulthood, she began to climb up out of her dark, warm cave, out of the mountain of food and into the world. Her body was changing, racing towards the inevitable. She thought back fondly to the many happy hours spent eating. The past hour already bore the tinge of nostalgia. The next hour jerked her forward, a forward march, a four word march. Feed. Grow. Feed. Grow.

#

Sangeetha is sinking in a swimming pool of lotion. Or rather, a pool of petroleum jelly: thick sludge she gloops on to stop the pain. It makes her hair greasy and leaves oil slick stains on the furniture, until even Amy asks her to maybe dry off in one spot instead of all over the apartment.

This morning, Amy rubbed petroleum jelly all over Sangeetha’s body, every crease and fold of fat, with a clinical efficiency that chilled her. Amy once told her she was jealous Sangeetha never had to tan. And this morning, Amy told her how thick her hair was, like telling a cancer patient her jutting collarbones were beautiful. 

Sangeetha sits in a sea of lotion twice a day, once in the morning and once at night. She prefers to think of it as lotion, something for creamy fair skinned women smiling on TV. Her body is a temple-turned-tomb. 

Her students stare. How can she maintain any sort of control when her life is already spiraling? Who is she to tell them they need to care about the structural model of DNA, all just to get a good grade on a state-mandated test, to get into a good college, and have a good life?

Amy brings home pizza for dinner. Sangeetha perches on the edge of their bad chair, the one that wobbles, as she dries off. Amy makes a show of eating the vegetables (olives and mushrooms and tomatoes, no onions), but Sangeetha sees her tear off the cheese and crust, discarded like a carcass at the edge of her plate. Sangeetha demolishes half of the pizza, along with Amy’s castoffs. 

“Did you try the new steroid cream?” Amy asks. 

“Yeah.”

“And?” 

“And it didn’t do anything.” 

Amy sits with her creamy white skin, smooth and soft, forgotten, uncared for, and yet still so perfect. Amy is ungrateful. 

“Well, maybe in a few weeks, we’ll see something. You’re not taking long showers, right?” Amy says.

“No.” 

Amy tries to smile at her.

“We’ll get through this,” she says. “Hand me my water bottle, babe?” 

Sangeetha grabs it, aware of the greasy fingerprints she leaves on the stainless steel. Rose gold, a birthday gift. 

“If I’m not back in an hour, avenge me,” Amy says. 

Sangeetha watches Amy’s skin shine in black tights, black shirt, black sports bra. For an hour, Amy will sweat, grunt and whip her body into submission. Amy’s body will never betray her. Amy would never allow it. 

“Love you,” Sangeetha says, suddenly wishing Amy would stay.

“Love you, too,” Amy says.

#

Sangeetha’s skin is shedding. She runs her hand over her legs, which are encased in grey sweatpants and sprinkled with skin dust.

“Like fairy dust,” Amy says, trying to brush it off, “We should go to Disney World someday. I always wanted to run their marathon.” 

Sangeetha peels off her tights and balls them up and flings them into a corner. She changes into the same pair of sweatpants she’s been wearing all week.

“Ready?” Amy asks. 

“Actually, I think I’m just gonna hang out here, get some grading done,” Sangeetha says, “But I’ll start some rice for dinner.”

“I thought we were going to go together,” Amy says, “It’s the only reason I came here after work instead of driving straight to Costco.” 

“I’m just really tired, and I have a ton of labs to grade,” Sangeetha says. 

She wonders if Amy hates her. Amy has on that face where she’s trying to figure out if it’s worth fighting over. 

“Be back in a bit,” Amy says.

Finally, Amy leaves. Finally, Sangeetha feels free. No clothes, because clothes keep her enclosed. They brush up against her skin and prickle. They get soaked through with petroleum jelly and the stain never washes out. The shame never washes out. So, no clothes.

Sangeetha starts up the hot water while she gears up her playlist, her most depressing songs. When the water is hot enough that the steam fogs up the mirror, she turns off the lights, locks the door and steps into the shower.

She knows it’s bad for her skin and she knows she’s being stupid. But it’s the only thing that makes her feel halfway okay. Sangeetha lets her legs drop and her body follows, until she’s curled up. She feels like the water is hugging her or maybe drilling nails into her, drumming into her hair and back until she builds up a tolerance to the heat, and yet she still lingers, reluctant to leave her cave. 

The old games: her hair a waterfall, her finger a magic wand, pretending she’s a superhero and she controls the water. 

The intrusive Amy sounds: kicking her shoes off, slamming cabinets and the fridge door to unload groceries, singing along to Broadway songs. The rattling of the bathroom door until Sangeetha lets her in, the harsh flick of the light switch. 

“Hey, you didn’t start the rice?” Amy asks. 

“Sorry, I’ll get to it in a minute.”

“And why’d you take a second shower? You already took one this morning. How long have you been in there?” Amy asks. 

“I’m fine,” Sangeetha says. 

“Now you’ll be up all night scratching,” Amy says.

“Don’t worry, I can sleep on the couch so you won’t wake up.”

“That’s not what I meant.” 

Sangeetha storms out of the bathroom and her skin prickles with goosebumps, and she wishes she had glooped on petroleum jelly before she had stalked out.

The rice, she thinks, still wrapped in a damp towel.

The rice. The rice. The goddamn rice.

“Stop being so dramatic,” Amy says, “I’ll get dinner ready, go get dressed.”

Sangeetha grabs the bag of brown rice, the electric cooker, the water. She stops herself from slamming it all in so she doesn’t waste the rice. 

“I got it,” she says, hiking up her slipping towel. She is acutely aware of the feeling of her skin drying out. 

Amy sighs.

“We need to talk,” Amy says. 

“Now?”

“No. But soon.” 

Her heart races and she focuses on chopping vegetables, careful not to sprinkle in any skin dust. Like seasoning, she thinks, like cannibal salt. 

#

Eclosed: moving from pupae to adult. Enclosed: trapped, surrounded. In order for eclosion to occur, first there must be enclosure. The death of her old self, her body the tomb. Drosophilia pupae turn black just before they emerge as adults. It is almost like they are attending their own funeral: a party of one, both the widow and the bereaved. 

The fruit fly was no exception. She turned black and was forced to mourn her old self, now a self of scraps. She shuddered with powerful surges of energy as she grew, transformed. A new head, wings, legs, thorax, reproductive organs. A new self, a clean self. All her sins forgiven, lemon fresh bleach gleefully poured over her old body, melting it to reveal a shiny new one underneath.

It was like riding on a conveyor belt, and as if for company, for sheer moral support, she sat in the passenger seat, disoriented and anxious. Her body rebuilt itself almost independently of her. She watched as buckets of water flooded around her, soap suds fogging the world as she soaked in bleach. 

The new body whispered let’s go for a ride, and so she did, blinking out the soap sting, bracing as wind rushed over her furry face. 

#

Amy is asleep, thanks to her noise cancelling headphones and sleeping pills, one arm flung over her eyes, her body facing the wall. Sangeetha tries not to overthink this last fact. 

Sangeetha was always the one who could fall asleep on command: on airplanes, car trips, the back of the classroom. It was her superpower, one she inherited from her mom. Amy was the one who meditated, ran, cut out caffeine, swallowed melatonin, Xanax, Ambien. 

But now, the scratching. The sweating, the overheating. The quick checks on her phone to see what time it is, to see how many hours of sleep she could still get if she fell asleep right now. 

“We need to talk.” 

Four and a half hours if she fell asleep now. 

“We need to talk.”

“Now?”

“No. But soon.” 

Amy will want to break up with her. Amy wants more than what Sangeetha has become. Once they were compatible, now not. Once they were normal, now one of them is drowning and the other can no longer stand and watch. 

Maybe it will be another plea for couple counseling, therapy, medicine. Maybe Amy wants her to train for a marathon together. Maybe she wants a bigger apartment, a pet, a pool, a person who won’t hide in her sweatpants and armor of petroleum jelly all day. 

She is dreading summer. Now, at least, she can bury herself in work: grading, lectures, homework. When summer comes, she will no longer be able to ignore everything. But if Amy leaves--

“Now?”

“No. But soon.” 

But if Amy leaves, then Sangeetha will have to get a job for the summer, an apartment, food. Why should Amy take the apartment? It’s only half hers. 

“I want to break up with you,” Amy might say.

“I can do better, I promise. I’ll go to therapy with you, I’ll try to find another doctor.”

“But it’s too late now. I gave you so many chances. There’s just something wrong with you, I think. May I recommend therapy after I leave?”

“If there’s something so wrong with me, why’d you date me in the first place?” Sangeetha would ask. 

The Amy voice in her head is silent. The real Amy is snoring, her body slanted, her skin glowing. Her limbs always poke out from under the blanket over the course of the night, heat radiating from her tall, strong body. White skin, white oversized shirt and nothing underneath. 

Three hours. 

“But soon.” 

#

Hypothesis: A conditional statement that follows an “if-then” format. 

If school lunch includes cardboard pizza today, then Amy won’t break up with her.

If she makes rice for dinner and doesn’t burn the bottom, then Amy won’t break up with her.

If she loses five pounds and gets her hair cut and dyed, then Amy won’t break up with her. 

If she takes one minute ice showers, swims in steroids and lotion and petroleum jelly, signs up for experimental treatments and sells all her belongings to pay for a specialized doctor in Tibet, then Amy won’t break up with her. 

If she eats nothing but cabbage and water for a year, takes peyote and ketamine infusions and goes on mission trips, and embraces a minimalist lifestyle of surrender and peace, then Amy won’t break up with her.

If she adheres a mask with a stretched clown smile and hungry eyes, fixed in a permanent state of positivity, with skin transplants and a liposuction and a boob job, blue contacts and a blonde wig, then Amy won’t break up with her.

If she pretends like she is running after school exam prep just to help her students, like she loves making dinner and cleaning and small talk, like her real self is not squashed down and vacuum sealed, like she is a customer service puppet that can smile and laugh and be happy, then Amy will stay.

#

Sangeetha brushes her teeth and tosses back sleeping pills while Amy steps on her scale.

Sangeetha loathes the scale because it’s always waiting to trip her when she stumbles in the darkness to pee.

Amy strips off her clothes and examines herself in the mirror while Sangeetha pulls on a granny nightgown and applies petroleum jelly. 

“Maybe the sodium in the salad dressing…” Amy mumbles. 

Amy frowns at herself, then kicks the scale back to its spot, and slips on an oversized shirt. 

“Do you think I’m becoming my mom?” Amy asks.

“What?”

“Never mind.” 

“No, tell me, I just didn’t get it the first time. How are you like your mom?” Sangeetha asks. 

“It’s stupid. You know how she was kinda crazy, and she used to make fun of my body and control all my food and stuff,” Amy says. 

“Yeah. What does Tanya say about it?” 

Tanya was Amy’s therapist.

“Something about being aware is the first step, helps you break the pattern, I don’t know. I have a session with her tomorrow,” Amy says, “You wanna come along? There’s stuff I want to talk about.”

“Maybe,” Sangeetha says, meaning no. 

“Okay,” Amy says, meaning It’s not okay. 

“It’s just that I’m busy, and you know I’m really not into therapy,” Sangeetha says.

“This is really important to me.”

“I’ll think about it,” Sangeetha says. 

Amy gets into bed and puts in her earbuds for her nighttime meditation playlist. Sangeetha lays in bed next to her, wishing she could get up and go for a walk, and keep on walking until she discovered a new country, empty of humans and rich with fruit, a deserted tropical paradise with magic sand that didn’t rub up against her skin, and healing water. 

Would Tanya and Amy gang up on her, bully her into submission? 

What does Amy tell Tanya, how much does Tanya know?

Healing water, magic sand. Hot sun, empty horizon. 

#

Sangeetha hasn’t gone to work for the past few days. First, they had some sort of holiday, then Sangeetha took a day off, and another, and then it was practically the weekend, so she took those days off, too. She emails in lesson plans for the sub, and sweats in bed all day. 

It’s Friday, and Amy comes home early. 

“How was your day?” Amy asks.

“Just chilled, how about you?” 

“It was fine, just really boring. Lot of meetings,” Amy says, “And all they had to eat was just junk food.” 

Amy kicks off her work clothes, steps on her scale, and then changes into her comfy clothes. 

“I have so much work to do this weekend,” Amy says, “And I feel like I’m picking up my team’s slack.” 

Sangeetha feels like she is watching herself and Amy from a distance. It feels ghostly, like her soul has already left her body and she is a mere observer. 

“What do you want for dinner, babe?” Amy asks.

“Anything,” Sangeetha says.

“Is everything okay?” Amy asks, “Here, let me go get you some more petroleum jelly and some pain reliever.”

Sangeetha swallows the pain reliever pill dry, and lets Amy work the petroleum jelly into her skin with her cool, firm hands.

Then Sangeetha jerks away. 

“What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?” 

“I’m fine.”

“Why won’t you talk to me anymore?” Amy asks.

“You always do that. I’m fine, and you won’t believe me,” Sangeetha says.

“I’m sorry,” Amy says, “I’m a little stressed from work.” 

“It’s okay,” Sangeetha says, and lays back down, “Here, come sleep next to me for a minute.”

She maneuvers herself so Amy is hugging her, squeezing her gently, the petroleum jelly lifting off of Sangeetha’s skin and imprinting on to Amy’s. Amy’s arms are wrapped around her chest, holding her in place, keeping her safe, keeping her going. 

“I should start dinner,” Amy murmurs, “And get some work done.” 

“Just stay with me for a minute,” Sangeetha begs.

#

Sangeetha is slouching in the sidelines, her body packed in with dozens of other sweaty bodies, staving off boredom and heat.

Amy is running the half marathon with her work friend for some charity. It’s a color run, and spectators (mostly the children) are poised eagerly with powdered purples, reds and blues. The crowd is aggressively white, which is a bit jarring because they live in a “diverse” area. 

Sangeetha yanks her floppy sun hat down her forehead. She wonders if the coats of Amy’s sunscreen help her blend in or alienate her even further. 

Early this morning, Amy confessed she was more excited about the free t-shirt than anything else. Sangeetha asked for Karen’s shirt, and Amy said she would try.

Amy should be rounding the corner within the next 20 minutes, might even be one of the first to cross the finish line. Apparently, the first place gift is a Subway gift card. Amy would pick at the limp vegetables, no dressing, maybe a splash of lemon juice and salt, and leave the bread for Sangeetha. Scraps of Subway, scraps for Sangeetha. 

Scraps of Sangeetha, she thinks as she scratches, and her neck is a particular problem spot today no matter how many layers of petroleum jelly she feeds it.

Sangeetha is starting to wish she had found an excuse to not come. With or without her, Amy would have ran, and with or without her, Amy would be fine. Sangeetha’s skin is sweating, burning. She is compulsively scraping her nails against her skin, as if she can peel off her skin and eradicate the root cause. People around her subtly lean away. Still, she scratches until she draws blood, and then scratches some more. Scratching brings a split second of relief, and then her skin doubles down on imparting agony.

“It’s not personal,” her skin says, “This is not, for instance, a punishment or anything.”

“Of course not,” Sangeetha says, raking her nails into her skin to silence it. 

On their first date, Amy took her hiking. Sangeetha agreed because she wanted to impress her. Ten minutes in, she was out of breath and felt like she was dying, but scared to breathe too loudly in case Amy caught on. Thankfully, Amy did catch on and pretended like Amy was the one who needed the breaks. Every few steps, they would stop and rest, with Amy making Sangeetha laugh by narrating the hike from the point of view of a squirrel or a leaf. 

Sangeetha desperately wishes she could unpeel her skin and shimmy out of it like a coat. If that can’t happen, then she wants to leave, right now. She is starting to feel like a circus freak, a sick zoo animal. She can feel the stares, the derision, the fear that she is contagious, the pity. Oh, the sneering pity. 

“I thought you don’t care what other people think,” her skin points out, “And by the way, I’m going to need you to simultaneously scratch your elbows, behind your knees, and your back, thanks.”

A doctor she saw a weeks ago told her to just slap at her skin gently when she feels itchy. Sangeetha thinks it must look like she’s scolding a wayward child, gentle spanks to bring it back into line. In reality, slapping does nothing, and only digging her nails in and clawing for bone bring any sort of relief. 

She decides she will drive down to the nearest store and buy some cold water, stand in some air conditioning. Amy will be done in about ten minutes, but if she leaves now, maybe she can make it back in time. 

Sangeetha gets stuck in traffic on the way back. Her skin is still miserable and red, and she keeps reaching for the tub of petroleum jelly that she forgot to bring. She finally makes it back, and frantically checks her phone for any texts or missed calls. None yet. She is worming her way back through the crowd when Amy taps her on the shoulder. Sangeetha can smell her fabric softener, diluted with sweat and mud and grass. 

“Amy! I’m so proud of you,” Sangeetha says. 

Amy is covered in purple and red powder, her chest still heaving up and down proudly. Karen is next to her, downing a water bottle. They both have their free t shirts slung over their shoulders, like the pelts of animals they shot. 

“How was it?” Sangeetha asks.

“Exhausting,” Karen says, “I’m starving. Do y’all want to grab some food?” 

“Sure! Where do you want to eat, babe?” 

“How about that Thai place near work?” Amy asks Karen, who agrees. 

At the restaurant, Karen explains how she was allergic to peanuts when she was little, but outgrew her allergy. This reminds Amy of a coworker who was rumored to have snuck peanuts into a birthday cake to bait another coworker, and Karen seizes on this. 

Sangeetha tries to keep up with their office gossip and small talk, but she’s distracted. She keeps pinching the skin on her neck and rolling it. Her hand compulsively clasps her neck like that old story where the bride’s head is only attached to her body by a piece of velvet tied around her neck. Finally, she succumbs to scratching, grateful for the air conditioning, but angry that it’s drying out her skin. 

Karen valiantly pretends not to notice, and makes a show of including Sangeetha. Amy offers Sangeetha her hand lotion as a substitute, and Sangeetha points out it’s scented. They are all grateful when the food arrives. 

On the ride back home, Amy feigns sleep and Sangeetha tries not to cry. 

“What’s wrong?” Amy asks, looking over at Sangeetha when they pull into their street.

“Nothing,” Sangeetha says, “My skin hurts.” 

“I’ll rub you down with petroleum jelly when we get home,” Amy says. 

#

There came the period of the fruit fly’s life where she was moved to seek out male fruit flies. She danced and sang, danced and sang, with dozens of male fruit flies, a whirlwind of smell and touch, each partner trying to preserve their family line by employing brave lies, their best selves. The fruit fly equivalent of a carefully contoured face, suffocatingly silky Spandex. Salads and fake gold and whitened smiles. 

They danced under the sunset and then by moonlight. With the moon as witness, she moved purposefully, looking for the right taste, only slowing down and choosing to mate when she felt like the match was right, like some tenuous primal balance of chemicals and genetics had been struck. Here was a gamble, and the prize her children’s lives. If she bet wrong, if the clock ran out and the glass slipper was left behind, then her children would pay dearly: malformed bodies, inbred, mutated, or perhaps stillborn. 

The male fruit flies sang ballads, mournful and ambitious, in their attempts to court her. She swayed in the wind, letting her body overtake her, a vehicle of totalizing pleasure. For once, it was not such a bad thing that her body was her overseer, whip bearer, slave master. She spread her wings and extended her ovopositor, submitting to the ancestral pull. 

Her body grew and bulged, once more a machine, depositing eggs like metallic arms plopping out Hershey kisses onto a conveyor belt. They poured out of her, although pour implied an ease that was not there. She was drawn to a rotting banana, her former lover, former parent, former home, and there she hunched and shuddered and parted with her eggs. 

Having fulfilled her end of the bargain, her body once more only hers, the fruit fly flew away, blissfully unaware of her mortality. She had achieved her main purpose: to bear children so that the cycle may continue. Her children begin hatching, drowsy blinking larvae who had but one thought in their minds. And that thought was: Feed. Grow. Feed. Grow.

#

Amy starts going to therapy twice a week and stays out of the house, using it more like a hotel, a place to sleep until the next day, when she can go back to her actual home. 

Sangeetha wishes desperately that Amy is cheating on her, maybe even with Tanya, “therapy” as code for come to my hotel room. Or Amy is a married woman, with a secret family in some small town in rural Nebraska, with five kids and a deluded husband, and they all know her as a housewife who visits her sister and her deformed baby, the poor thing. 

Then Sangeetha could be the one to sigh and tell her friends, “Well, I don’t blame her, really. Clearly she had some issues to work through, and I wish her the best,” and her friends would all tell her how strong she is, how brave, for putting up with someone like that. 

In all her past relationships, Sangeetha always escaped before she became the villain, or else she guarded her real self so closely that they never even knew her, so if they left or if she left, it didn’t hurt because it didn’t really happen to her, after all. 

None of this is real, she reassures herself. 

Amy isn’t real, just another stranger she lives with, someone passing by.

Her skin isn’t real, and if she tries hard enough, maybe she can will herself out of this body and into another plane of existence. Isn’t that what enlightenment is? Transcending the cage that is her skin, fleeing the pain and suffering of being trapped in a human body with childish human desires. 

Sangeetha thinks about getting really trashed, completely wasted, out of her mind and babbling on the streets drunk, just another brown person that everyone’s eyes will catch on and then pass over like she is invisible, like she does not really exist. 

She is counting down the days until school is over, how many labs she still has to assign, how many tests she still has to grade. She pretends like summer will be a fresh start, like maybe the sunlight will melt her down and her skin will molt and generate a new body, creamy white dewy skin, happy smile, flaming bikini. 

And isn’t seasonal affective disorder a thing? The lack of Vitamin D can cause people to get depressed? All she needs, and Amy too, is to lay out in the sun, naked, exposed, and confess all their sins, until the sun burns into them and makes them anew. Imperfect, but trying. Sangeetha is trying so desperately hard to hold on to the scraps of her life. 

She dresses overly formally at work, sweating in black dress pants and blouses, trying to grab onto authority, control. She gives rambling speeches about the material, or else assigns students to give presentations and teach each other. She once thought she might make a difference in the world. 

“Let’s talk tonight,” Amy texts Sangeetha, who sees it on her lunch break. 

“Is everything okay?” she texts back.

“I want to talk in person. After dinner.”

She muddles her way through introducing drosophila, and the lab they are going to do where they will cross parents and observe the offspring, the same lab she did once in high school, or a variation thereof. 

Who is to say if fruit flies are real? Or her students, or the sandwich she had for lunch, or cryptic texts? Maybe if she drove her car to the edge of the earth, she would run up against fraying pixels, reality dissolving into a gaping wall of nothingness. Maybe she would keep driving, watching as first the steering wheel, then her discolored hands, frantically pixelated and disappeared. 

#

Dinner is tense. Amy doesn’t ask about her skin, for once. Sangeetha fights back her mounting anxiety with inane attempts at small talk, all the while fearing she is being annoying. Amy is polite, the way you would tolerate a senile relative you only see on Thanksgiving.

After dinner, Amy sits Sangeetha down in their living room, her body held upright and stiff. She plays with her rings. She takes a deep breath, and begins. 

“I am going to say something, and it’s hard for me to say, and it’s going to be hard for you to hear. I just ask that you give me the space to say it before you say your piece, and I will do the same for you,” Amy says.

Amy must have rehearsed with Tanya. Sangeetha nods, commanding her skin not to itch, her face not to quiver. She plasters on what she hopes is a mature, normal smile, and waits for Amy to continue with her monologue. 

“I would like to take a break. I think it would be the healthiest option for both of us. I’m in a place right now where I need to focus on my needs and myself for once in my life, and I don’t think I can do that with you. I still care about you, but I don’t think we should see each other,” Amy says.

All Sangeetha can tell herself is this is not real, this cannot be real, this is not really happening, I can’t let it happen. 

“During this break, I would prefer if we don’t call or text. And Sangeetha, I know how you feel about therapy, but… but maybe you should really think about it. It might be really helpful,” Amy says. 

Sangeetha smiles blankly and nods.

Amy lets out a big exhale.

“Okay, um, you can say what you would like to say,” Amy says.

Why would I have to say anything if this isn’t even real? 

“I think… yeah, sure, let’s try a break,” Sangeetha says.

“Really? And… is there anything else you want to add?” Amy asks.

“No, I think you’ve said everything,” Sangeetha says.

It feels like they are talking about their coffee order, or choosing between the pumpkin muffin and the chocolate chip. It feels like they are on stage, simulating a real conversation. 

“Well, okay. Right, well, you’re welcome to sleep here for the night, and if you need a few days to get settled and find a new place to live, that’s totally okay. I might stay with Lexi or Gem for a week or two, that should give you enough time to move out, right? Or do you need longer?” 

“A week is fine,” Sangeetha says. 

“Okay, uh, should I take the couch tonight? You can have the bedroom.” 

“No, it’s fine, I’ll take the couch. I’m actually gonna go grab some fresh air, take a walk, before I head to bed,” Sangeetha says. 

She keeps her voice calm, normal, mostly out of spite. Did Tanya and Amy try to guess how she would react when they rehearsed? Was she sobbing? Screaming? Throwing, kicking, hitting? Did Amy throw back her head and shriek in a distorted attempt to practice, to predict, to pity? 

“Okay,” Amy says.

Blindly, Sangeetha stumbles out the door, waiting until she is out of the view of their apartment until she starts crying, tears and snot streaming down her face. She keeps walking, walking briskly like she has somewhere to be, someone who is expecting her, someone who needs her. 

Sangeetha keeps walking, keeps her head held up, refusing to acknowledge that she is crying, only wiping her face on her sleeve when her tears and snot start overflowing. 

This isn’t real.

Did Tanya counsel that Sangeetha might get violent, aggressive, demanding, clingy, needy? Did she tell Amy how strong she was being, how abandoning Sangeetha was the right thing to do, the healthiest thing to do, for both of them? 

Her skin burns from the salt in her tears.

A break. A week to leave. The healthiest option for both of them. 

She keeps walking. She doesn’t know how to be alone. What is real, if she is by herself? She’s only ever felt real when she was with other people, their bodies reviving hers. 

Sangeetha needs money, fast. Amy is kicking her out.

The healthiest option. So, staying with Sangeetha is unhealthy. So, Sangeetha is some sort of disease, a parasite, clawing her way into Amy and sucking out all her blood, her nutrients, her energy. 

She keeps walking. As long as she keeps walking, she can suspend herself in a state of willful irreality. 

#

Sangeetha is sipping the cheapest drink at Starbucks, scrolling through Craigslist rooms for rent on her computer. She can’t face the thought of standing in front of the classroom, meeting the eyes of her students and lecturing. Not today. Not when their questions are all the same, not when their hungry faces all blur together.

“Will this be a part of the exam?” a student will ask.

“Yes,” she will lie, in order to hold their attention. 

“Can I get an extension on the lab? My grandma died,” a student will say.

“One extra day,” she will say, “Or it’s 10% off every day after that.” 

The one extra day is an arbitrary gesture, cynical, empty. What if their grandmother really did die? What if their grandmother was the only person they trusted, the only one they felt safe and comforted around? She will toss them one day, one pity day, and after that one day is over, they must act like a healthy, happy human being.

Imagine a day, Sangeetha thinks, where I just don’t show up. Or I do, and we sit in a circle and talk, bare our souls to each other, the lights dim so it’s an even playing field and they can’t see my face. We could roast marshmallows and the sprinklers would go off, and we would tip our heads back and catch water droplets on our tongues. 

She’s attended seminars and lectures where people say teaching saved their life. That they learned just as much, if not more, from their students. That they left high paying jobs, expectations of what they should do or be, to dedicate themselves to a lifetime of helping, guiding, inspiring. 

If she quits teaching, where will she go? What will she do? She has no more passions, no more dreams. She is far too old. Sangeetha has students that sketch intricate photorealistic portraits on the back of her tests, students that leave early for varsity games and debate tournaments, students that have hands forever freckled with leftover paint. It hurts too much to meet their eyes, to admit to them that she is a failure, with no dreams to fall back on or fly towards. 

This is what is waiting for you, Sangeetha wants to whisper to her students, sleeping in cars and peeing at a Starbucks bathroom. 

She calls in yet another sick day, emails in yet another lesson plan for a substitute. Her coworkers talk about her, she’s sure. They loathe laziness, imperfection, any sign of weakness. Sangeetha has coworkers that run the debate team, coach football and cooking club and Spanish club, and stay after work to tutor students, and still never take a sick day. What is it they have that Sangeetha doesn’t? Her body refuses to keep going, to soldier on. 

The email comes back quickly. Almost like someone had it ready and waiting. 

This is to inform you that no new employment contract will be offered to you for the following academic year. I would like to thank you for your service to this institution and… 

Oh God, she thinks, sinking to the floor. 

Her cup hits the floor spectacularly, spraying coffee all over her crumpled body. She is vaguely aware of people staring. There’s probably dust and dirt all over the floor that will only make her skin worse, but she can’t seem to pick herself back up.

Sangeetha tries to will herself into standing, fleeing to the nearest bathroom. But her body won’t respond. Her brain cries at the unfairness of it all. People are walking around her, careful to not make eye contact, like falling apart might be contagious, and it’s rude to stare at someone who is this far gone. 

An employee comes over and reluctantly asks if she needs medical assistance. 

I’m fine, Sangeetha tries to say, but the words are stuck. Her mouth won’t open. She tries to convey with her eyes that she needs someone to save her, please, or else to leave her alone on this floor forever and trample her body until she and the floor are one. 

An ambulance on the way, the employee says nervously, and now Sangeetha is in an ambulance, and she still can’t open her mouth to tell them what, exactly, is wrong with her, or what medicines she takes, or that she left her laptop at Starbucks. 

Even the tears are stuck, locked up somewhere in her body deep down where her words are, but her skin flares up an angry red. Her skin remembers. Her skin is her witness, her skin is her tormentor.

Something to make her sleep, they say, make her calm. 

Sangeetha doesn’t have insurance anymore, she is trying to say. 

Shhhhh, shhhh, they say, smooth white faces, and she drifts away. But her skin remembers, her skin weeps blood.

#

Sangeetha is scared. She feels tears threatening to overflow, salty traitors, she thinks. Salt, water, antibodies, and lysozymes, she chants to herself. Nothing to be scared of. Just biology.

Salt. Water. Antibodies. Lysozymes. Salt.Water.Antibodies.Lysozymes. Saltwaterantibodieslysozymes. Maybe Sangeetha just hasn’t found the right combination of words.

“Do you have thoughts about harming or killing someone else?” 

Heterozygous. Allele. Polyploidy. 

Sangeetha tries to stand so she can march out. Her legs refuse to play along and so she shouts at them:

Autopolyploid, eclosion, drosophila. 

“Do you have thoughts about harming or killing yourself?” 

Sangeetha’s fingers won’t even twitch to scratch. The itch builds up, until she thinks about slamming herself against a wall until she can’t feel anything at all. 

“Do you have difficulty leaving your house?”

The doctor might as well be in another dimension, observing her through a telescope, her voice travelling through the air and arriving distorted. Like it isn’t air that separates them but syrup, thick walls of syrup. Or a pool of petroleum jelly, one that has Sangeetha preserved in the middle of a gigantic mason jar. 

“Do you have difficulty concentrating or thinking?” 

Cladogram, Sangeetha commands.

It’s getting harder to breathe. 

Protobionts, she pleads.

Why can't she get enough air? It feels like she really is just trying to breathe in a room filled with petroleum jelly. Her chest refuses to expand. 

Cocci. Bacilli. Spirilla.

“Do you have trouble sleeping?” 

Her vision gets cloudy and she feels the doctor's face next to hers. Sangeetha thinks Amy will have to come get her now. Amy will have to teach her how to breathe again.

#

When she wakes up, Amy is smiling at her. 

“Miss me?” Sangeetha asks Amy.

“More like I was hoping you would die,” Amy says sweetly, “And now I’m here to finish the job.”

Amy leans in for a kiss, pecks her on the forehead, and Sangeetha’s forehead puckers up, burns, oozes something thick and pungent. 

“What?” Sangeetha asks. 

“I’m just joking, sweet silly little Sangeetha. Oh, you silly baby, what should we do with you?” Amy asks. 

“What should we do?” her skin cries, prickling up against her, like a feral cat’s sandpaper tongue.

Sangeetha is nine years old again and just let the neighbor’s dog out of the fence by accident. In that split second before she chases after Jupiter, she thinks about just running away, finding some train and hitching a ride to a far away state where she will live in an abandoned barn and live off the land. 

Where is the train that will save her now?

Sangeetha realizes she’s choking, that some petroleum jelly must have slipped past her lips and lodged into her throat. The petroleum jelly absorbs all sound, muffles all her grunts and pleas. Her hands refuse to clutch at her neck, her eyes refuse to bulge out. Amy gets into bed next to her.

“Help,” Sangeetha garbles out. 

Amy rubs more petroleum jelly on to her back and neck, then scoops handfuls of it and forces it down her throat. A fly buzzes curiously. 

“Take your medicine, babe. Open up for me, that’s a good girl,” Amy coos. 

Here it was. The way out. Swallow the petroleum jelly or let it seep in, let its tentacles smother her.

Will anyone even come to her funeral? Will Amy cry? Will Sangeetha’s mom? 

Amy’s skin is falling off of her face in big fat strips. Fruit flies gather around her body, and Amy giggles.

“They tickle,” she explains, “Here, you take one.” 

Delicately, like a Disney princess, Amy brushes a fruit fly off her face, and the fruit fly hops on to her finger. Amy looks like she might burst into a Broadway ballad at any minute.

She extends her finger and the fruit fly hops off and buzzes around Sangeetha. 

Sangeetha swats at it, and it dodges her slow hand easily. 

My hand is moving, Sangeetha marvels, even though it looks like it is swimming through petroleum jelly, it’s still moving and that’s something.

The petroleum jelly sits in her throat, waiting. The fly buzzes ecstatically around the room, until Sangeetha wobbles on to her feet and chases it, whacking at the wall and almost catching it each time. She feels dizzy and stops, gathers up her saliva and spits out the wad of petroleum jelly, right on to the floor.

The fly buzzes in and out of her reach, until finally she whacks at a spot on the wall and brings her hand back to see the fly’s corpse hanging off of her palm. Sangeetha keeps whacking, until the fly is disintegrating and all that’s left is a black smudge that she wipes off on the wall. She cradles the fruit fly’s corpse, and wraps it up in a tissue. 

“You’re sinking,” the fruit fly warns, just out of her vision. 

Its voice is high pitched and insistent and Sangeetha turns her head to try to find it.

“I can’t even do that right,” Sangeetha says, swatting blindly. 

The fruit fly dodges artfully. 

“There’s no one coming to save you this time,” the fruit fly says from somewhere behind her, “And now you’re sinking, really sinking.” 

Amy is standing on the scale and looking in the bathroom mirror, hands on what used to be her hips, frowning. 

“Amy, stop messing around,” Sangeetha says, “I don’t think this is funny.” 

“Maybe a fly got in my mouth,” Amy says, and clatters to the ground. 

The fruit fly crawls into Amy’s eye, and curls up. 

“Don’t leave me,” Sangeetha begs.

“Love you,” the fruit fly says, and dies.

#

Sangeetha props her head against the cold window, trying to relax, to fall asleep. Her heart races, and she exhales loudly. 

She is free. She bought a one way ticket to the closest big city and now she can start over. 

Sangeetha stares past her reflection in the window, stubbornly avoiding eye contact. Still, she fluffs up her hair with her fingers, even as the petroleum jelly glues her hair flat to her head. She scratches her skin harder than necessary, and admires the red raised trails that flow from her nails. She will bleed into being.  

Sangeetha is free. She drums her feet against the back of the seat in front of her, emphatic whacks. She clacks her teeth and bites her bottom lip like she is trying to squeeze every last drop of moisture out of it. 

“Franklin,” the bus driver says over the loud speaker, and the bus jerks to a stop. 

This is her stop. Sangeetha watches as half the bus rushes out, and she stoops to pick up her suitcase at her feet. If the bus were to suddenly swing into motion again, her body would be catapulted out the window, her head sticking out the glass. The sight of her corpse would traumatize bystanders, and the bus driver might spend his whole life repenting, bringing flowers to her grave and asking Amy for forgiveness. Sangeetha sits back down. The bus lurches to a start, and she melts into the seat.

Sangeetha has escaped the hospital. No one ran after her when she was discharged, no cops pulled her over and locked her back up. Every tall blonde woman she looked at was Amy, but then their faces came into focus and she felt relieved and sad. 

A big city would be noisy, impersonal, overwhelming. She would sink in a dirty, cramped apartment and never leave her room until she got kicked out and turned to the streets. She pictures herself lost in a sea of people, fumbling for subway change and getting jostled. 

What’s the point of freedom if it always feels like failure? 

Sangeetha rides the bus until it’s the end of the line and the bus driver kicks her out. Her fingers keep sliding from the petroleum jelly she had just reapplied, and she can’t get a grip on the handle of her suitcase. The bus driver grabs it for her, seemingly not out of kindness but because she was taking so long. 

“Thank you,” she calls, and he closes the door in response, speeding away.

She fights feeling hurt and starts walking, stumbling towards a place with trees, and quiet, and darkness. 

#

Sangeetha tries to bring back the fruit fly. Or Amy, rotting and hungry. Or anyone else that will distract her, comfort her, save her. 

They are all silent. No, they’re all dead. They’re all gone and they abandoned her and now what will she do? 

“I’m scared,” Sangeetha says.

Her suitcase is long gone. It had started leaking earlier, trailing bras and shirts, useless things, until she abandoned it all together. She stands in the middle of the woods alone, looking up at the cloudy night sky. 

"Why are you scared?" Sangeetha-as-the-doctor asks, “What makes you so special that you get to be scared?”

“I’m sinking,” Sangeetha says, “And I’m scared to swim. What’s the point? Maybe I should just sink.” 

She scrapes her wrist with her teeth to get a particularly frustrating itch. 

“Now here is where you tell me it’s strong to keep swimming, that I’m strong and I can do it if I just believe in myself,” Sangeetha tells the doctor.

“Why would I tell you that?” the doctor says, “You’re not even real.” 

“I wish someone else could just drag me to shore and then I could lay in the sand and fall asleep forever,” Sangeetha says. 

“You’re not listening,” Sangeetha-as-the-doctor says.

“This isn’t working,” Sangeetha says. 

Night melts away and she is standing in a garden, barefoot, her feet sinking slightly into the warm soil. Fat roses sway nearby, and nestled underneath are enormous tomatoes, just past ripe. The smells mix nauseatingly. The peach tree stands guard, and in its bark, people have carved out messages, like: “S + A forever” and “YOU are beautiful.” 

Sangeetha reaches into her pocket and digs out the tissue that holds the fruit fly’s corpse. She paws through hot soil and buries the fruit fly underneath a rotting tomato, and scoops dirt over it until the grave is complete. Experimentally, she swipes soil on her wrist and waits. Her wrist itches, and she rakes it with her teeth, disappointed. 

She digs another hole, this one closer to the tree. Dirt jams up her fingernails, invading the space her dead skin and petroleum jelly used to claim, little black crescent moons she would dig out every night with the tip of a pencil. She scoops dirt over her neck and stomach and legs, over her eyes nose mouth. She is no longer sinking but suspended. Soon, someone will come to save her, save her like she saved the fruit fly. She sits, and she waits.