Small Stories Which Involve Rib Cages
or how sometimes starting in the middle makes for a better story
I find it’s the big shit that’s the hardest to write about. I tend to go crashing towards the final takeaway without unspooling all the fibrous, knotty, and colorful details. And because hard shit is hard to write about, I have a tendency to spit it out quick—plain and stark—so we can get it out of the way. (This is probably why I’ve never had much success writing fiction.) Even now, since I launched this Substack, I’m writing around the stories, writing around the trauma, offering up poems, and remaining stubbornly in the timeless Now. Perhaps I’m trying to spare us both the pain and pity.
But how does one write these stories? This tesseract of movement and pinned butterflies and sorrow and grinding and defilement and the explosion of light; always shifting, always here in all its entirety. Rifling through the snapshots from the many lives I’ve lived—those which are indelibly burned into my retinas—is, perhaps, a beginning.
10 years old: I live across the road from a dairy barn with scaling red paint in a squat, white farmhouse. The man who owns the barn doesn’t mind me wandering around inside, rubbing the Jersey cowlicked noses with my fingers. It is warm, dusty, and everything smells of shit and milk. The male calves are chained in their own personal pens with a slatted floor, with no hay to rest on or to eat, so that their meat will stay white and soft. The man sometimes lets me feed the calves big buckets of sugared milk, and they suck toothless on my fingers, eyes just wide enough to hint at desperation. I want to lead them out the side door, help them escape into the green of the swampy creek running down the middle of the valley. I think the farmer must know more than me, must have his reasons for what he does to these little boy cows.
One day I go looking for my dog, out behind the barn, and find two dead calves flung in the tall grass. My dog has braced his legs and is nosed up inside the ribcage of one of the calves, and as he hears me approach, he swings his red smeared grin at me, tongue lolling. Those calves are more than three days dead – I can smell it, and I shout at my dog to leave those babies alone. Feeling sick to my stomach, I drag my dog back across the dirt road, clip him to the wire wrapped around a pillar on the front porch. Inside, my mother is making lentils with cheese in the dim, low ceilinged kitchen, and we discuss what TV show I plan to watch with my one-hour allotment for the coming week.
I don’t ever go behind the barn again.
19 years old: My Norwegian friend, Hilda, appears at the back door of my apartment in tropical Queensland in Australia—so proud—with a small hammerhead shark dangling by the gills from her fingers. She hadn’t meant to catch a shark, had gone down to the beach with her cheap pole and simply flung her line out into the sea. It was a baby, maybe two feet give or take in length, with skin like a cat’s tongue but gray. It should have been left to grow; the predators are such a vital part of the chain. But what could be done now? She’d already gutted it; it’s rib cage empty, delicate.
But she would need help cooking the creature as we both knew her culinary skills started and stopped with instant Ramen noodles. Insistent we attempt to beer batter it, she gesticulated with the poor thing as blood fell in splashy droplets all over my just mopped kitchen tiles. I assented, told her to put it in the sink already.
I’d never cooked or eaten shark before (or since,) but into inelegant fillets it was slashed, the batter concocted on the fly out of what I had on hand (plus the beer she’d thoughtfully brought along), the oil heated to snapping in the pan.
We ate that shark together, almost triumphantly, although the batter was not the fluffy crunch she had been dreaming of. Shark has the taste of red meat but with the flake of fish. It was delicious, but to this day the tang of guilt remains.
38 years old: Me, sitting, blood splashed hands clenched between my thighs, in of the emergency department of Praslin island’s hospital in the Seychelles, as a doctor told me that my ex’s blood pressure was 210 over 130, and this was very concerning indeed.
That was A Day.
He and I had taken a very early cab ride to catch the inter-island ferry—and what a ride it was, breakneck over the mountainous island pass in chaotic traffic, driver cheerfully swearing out the window at those ahead of us who chose to use their brakes. My most recent ex—who I’ve mentioned only in passing thus far—was some 30 years older than myself, and loved adventure but required careful oversight—ahem, management—as he often wandered around like a dazed and awestruck tourist. My role was the Sexy Girl Friday: the holder of the tickets, passports, and the working phone. I was the rental car driver, the problem-solver, the “should be grateful to be invited along for the trip” and all-around mop up assistant for frustrations and irritations.
We waited. Him, wandering the port, musing and marveling at the ships. Me, furiously attempting to establish cell connection with a new local SIM card, and troubleshooting using the shaky public Wi-Fi. The ferry ride was only thirty minutes or so, but it was marvelous being on the water, the vibration from the engines and wind providing a soothing drone against a backdrop of ocean and sky so electrically blue it seemed unreal
The ferry docked, our weighty suitcases unloaded and bumped down the long concrete gangway, the rental car aggressively haggled for (not by me, couldn’t be trusted to) all while leaking with sweat and swooning in full noon sun, and at last we were on our way to our very budget hotel room on the other side of the island. The hotel was a decaying resort with 60s era vibes, sagging mattresses, and an unswimmable shoreline, but with the 95-degree temperatures and several hours of transportation rigmarole, collapsing under the creaking fan sounded about fine.
It was then the ex discovered he’d left one of his bags on the ferry.
Immediately, there were recriminations of how could I have not noticed. Why hadn’t I been paying closer attention? We could have begun to fight, but instead I marched down to the front desk and asked if someone could call over to the ferry office. I was informed that while the office closed in 30 minutes, his bag was still there. A huge sigh of relief. Quick, get back into the rental car, zip the 18-minute drive up through the steeply curved and shoulder-less roads and then down again, back to the ferry port to collect the bag.
Hooray. Bag in hand. Not much in it besides his snorkel mask, shaving kit, and the oh-so-necessary Waterpik flossing device, but another disaster narrowly averted. By now, it was nearly 2:30 in the afternoon, and the ex was extremely heat intolerant, so I suggested we check out the village adjacent the ferry dock, find some lunch, rest in the shade, drink something cold.
Forgive me. I’m getting to the blood splashed hands I mentioned earlier, I promise.
The town is quaint, palms tinkling in the very scant breeze, only few shops. It’s quiet apart from a buzzing motorbike every few minutes, as it is the very hottest part of the day, and all the smart local people are trying not to move much. We have lunch in the one spot we find still open—more open-air shack than building—and which has only one item on the menu: phenomenally spicy creole chicken legs with rice, peas, and fried sweet plantains.
We were more relaxed now: forgotten bag recouped, bellies filled, fight averted. Going out again later for dinner or snacks or—to be perfectly frank, copious liquor for the ex so he’d be able to sleep—seemed out of the question given the intensity of the day so far, and I suggested we stop off and pick up supplies before heading back to the hotel. The ex was delighted to find that the shopkeeper in the random-sells-everything shop we’d stopped into spoke excellent English and had visited the States several times. After much chatting and milling about in his dusty warren of a store, we left loaded with a couple bags worth of snacks, a large plastic cup for me (I like drinking my water from really large cups, what can I say,) a couple bottles of wine, and two liters of Canadian whiskey for the ex.
Why is all this humdrum detail necessary? Well, I tell you. While the ex was taking in the small-town sights of Baie Sainte-Anne and marveling at the fishermen pulling their lines in from the bay on the other side of the road, he missed a stone the size of a softball that had been paved over—indeed, the road crew had even painted over it—and he went down on his face like a tree falling in a sudden, heavy wind. Carrying all that glass. Which shattered on the pavement right under his falling body.
One thing I am very good at—being a hyper-vigilant, first-responder sort of woman—is staying focused and in control during a crisis, and this definitely qualified. When your 70-year-old ‘boyfriend’ with a serious heart condition falls face down on pavement in an explosion of alcohol and glass in the broiling heat of a remote island in the tropics, it’s an emergency. I helped him roll onto his back and saw both forearms and hands were slashed to ribbons. His chest had taken the worst of it, as he’d fallen squarely on his left side of his rib cage—but the blood everywhere blood everywhere blood grabbed my attention first. No arteries cut from what I could tell at first glance, but there were several serious lacerations on his hands and wrists that needed immediate staunching.
I had nothing. I was wearing little white lace shorts and a tank top. No extra cloth or scarf or anything. In some places in the world, instead of offering plastic bags for purchases, shops provide cloth-like (but still plastic) carry out bags. And I had one full of all the chips and nuts (and that stupid pink plastic cup made in China which I still have with me here in Guatemala,) so I emptied the contents of the bag onto the street and wound it around the worse looking hand, had him use the other hand to hold it in place tightly. A man stopped to offer some help and directed us to a pharmacy 3 doors up the street. The ex could walk but was in significant distress, disoriented and in a great deal of pain. There was blood running down his elbows now, dripping onto his pants.
The pharmacist took one look at us as we staggered in and held up his hands, saying No no no no. Clearly, he did not want the trouble of our little disaster in his shop, nor, after a quick perusal of his meager wares which skewed heavily towards mobility devices, could I disagree with him. A small, older lady motioned to me, and walked us down 2 blocks in the other direction, away from the rental car to the local doctor’s office. She knocked, spoke in rapid Creole to the woman at the front desk, who then, rather leisurely, called the doctor out to look at us. Mind you, the doctor’s office was only a step or two above a tropical shed, with one room in front, one in the back, and a broad front porch to keep the sun off the waiting patients. The doctor turned us away as well. No no no. We needed the hospital.
I couldn’t disagree but fuck. I don’t know where the hospital is, and now we are five blocks away from the car and I’m practically holding the ex up. He looks gray and this is so so SO fucked. Somehow—I really don’t know how—we make it to the rental car, follow the directions the doctor crabbed in half Creole-half English at me—turn right at the cross island pass road, then veer to the right again before leaving town—and I park in the loading dock for ambulances before being redirected again by some bored looking orderlies to the casualties entrance another 100 meters along the building.
The hospital was a large concrete building surrounded by plane trees, bougainvillea, and wide grassy lawns. I was so relieved that it appeared to be a very reasonable, well-kept ‘3rd world’ hospital that I nearly wept. Upon entering, a triage nurse—who spoke no English—came right up to us and ushered us into a treatment room that could have doubled as abattoir. Enameled industrial double sink circa 1910, concrete floor angled to a drain in the center, high ceilings, walls that hadn’t been washed or painted in some forty years or longer, and a high leatherette bench complete with a hand-cobbled-from-wood scraps step stool to clamber up.
I’ll spare you all the patching up details and say only that the nurse swabbed him from bicep to fingertip with orange Betadine and used an awful lot of butterfly bandages instead of opting for stitches. In truth, she was excellent—extremely calm, well trained, and attentive. In total, the ex had some 30 plus wounds on his hands and forearms, but only five were especially nasty. The ex continued to exclaim how irresponsible it was for the road crew to have paved and painted over the rock, what kind of country was this anyways, that he—who had built several roads in his lifetime—would never have done something so incompetent. I listened, murmuring my agreement to keep him calm, while inside I began to go into shock. We waited in the hallway for some time to be seen by the doctor, the one fellow in the whole facility who spoke any English.
The doctor’s examination revealed the precipitous blood pressure and an estimated three broken ribs directly over the ex’s heart. He asked the ex how old he was, to which he responded in his typical ‘I do so enjoy fucking with people’s minds’ manner, saying “Old enough to drink!” So, in a strange reversal, the male doctor stopped asking my ex anything, and instead directed all his questions to me.
Yes, he’s 70 years old. (Glare from the ex.) Yes, he has a heart condition. Yes, on occasion his blood pressure is very high (but not this high.) Yes, I know what medications he’s taking. Yes, he drinks alcohol. (Another glare.) How much? At this question, my ex began to look at me very dangerously. Maybe 8 drinks a day, give or take. I got a hot, murderous look for telling the truth.
A little less than $30 dollars paid to the cashier at the hospital, and another $7 for the drugs to bring his blood pressure down and dull the pain from the crunched ribs, and we were off. It was when I finally had the ex back in his hotel room, bloody shirt off, ice pack settled on his chest, medication swallowed and taking hold, and then at last, asleep, that I began to shake.
Here, my memory begins to grow watery as the shock and demands of the day took hold of my body. It grew dark. The sky opened, releasing a torrent of wind and cold water. I sat alone in the empty restaurant downstairs, listening to the storm, staring out into the darkness for a long time, just holding all that vibration.
Very moving and deep. Keep going and digging for bloodroot.