Stories We Never Told by Sonja Yoerg

Author:Sonja Yoerg [Yoerg, Sonja]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781542004664
Published: 2020-04-30T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17

HARLAN

Jackie is always beautiful to me, but never more so than when she is on the knife-edge between distress and anger. I realize I’m supposed to find her at her best when she is laughing and playful or when she is calm and studious or even when she is asleep, although I never understood the attraction of the last. When a person sleeps they are entirely mysterious, and there is nothing beautiful about that, at least to me. She could be dreaming about anything or anyone, finding pleasure and satisfaction in another man’s (or woman’s) arms, rowing a boat across a swamp filled with snapping crocodiles, or climbing an endless set of stairs to escape the monster whose breath is hot on the back of her legs. If I can’t know what is in her dreams, then how could I possibly love her best then? Dreams are mere by-products of the daily housekeeping our brains must undertake, but that doesn’t rob them of their emotional significance, only of their meaning. So, no, Jackie asleep is beautiful, but that is not how I prefer to think of her.

When she is distressed and that distress is colored by indignation or frustration, Jackie is simultaneously the epitome of fierce strength and vulnerability. She could explode or implode; all bets are off, unless you know her like I do, and even I have judged wrongly which way she would fall. Today, for example, she was there, on the precipice, but too exhausted to give in to the anger, to allow it to ignite her so she could then extinguish it with a flood of her own tears. I brought her to that perfect point once, the day she left me. Ironic, yes, but it was nearly worth losing her. Today confusion and exhaustion muddled her emotion and kept her from telling me her problems and her secrets, or what she believes are her secrets. They are, in truth, already mine.

It’s nice to share something even if she isn’t aware of it.

Jackie mistrusts Nasira. I’ve helped it along but it’s a natural impulse. Women point the finger at other women whenever they can, even when a man is a more worthy target. So much for female solidarity. I assume there is something biological in this tendency, an assumption, perhaps, that men are hapless victims of a woman’s power to bewitch. Another way to put it would be that men follow their dicks and can’t be held responsible. The woman who entranced him, however, can. It’s all hopelessly sexist and outdated, as all good biological imperatives are, but they don’t call them imperatives for nothing.

Jackie blames Nasira for another reason: Nasira is taciturn and allows people to write motivations all over that perfect blank face of hers. Jackie also has more interactions with Nasira than with me, so I can stay safely in the background with my faultless dick and let the ladies tear each other to pieces. I could see it in Jackie’s eyes today, the itch to trust me, to believe I have answers, not just riddles.

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