by Ursula Carroll
She did not ever know if she would be able to say it out loud. Frances was a coward. Every morning she woke up and she put on her slippers and her robe, went to the bathroom and unpinned the curlers from her hair, brushed her teeth, washed her face, and opened the pillbox. One pill for her stomach, one pill for her veins, one pill for her nerves, and one very small, very tightly rolled slip of paper upon which she has written down what she is too scared to say. She took the cloth off the birdcage, made coffee, and waited for her husband to wake up.
Francis was always happy to see her. He was a kind man, clever and doting. Something was wrong with her. She was a coward. Frances smiled glibly at him and sat down at the table with the coffee and the paper. Francis took the crossword out and, like every morning, they began to work on it together. He pretended to struggle with the answers, for her sake. He was a bad actor. Frances bit her tongue, the same way she did every day. She made a sandwich for him while he read the clues aloud.
Francis left for work. He kissed Frances on the forehead and told her he loved her. She smiled her gap-tooth smile at him and wished him a nice day at the office. She put on a record, poured herself a vodka tonic, and sat down at her desk. She opened the roll top and began methodically cutting her thin strips of paper. Every so often she would scratch something into a strip of paper, roll it tightly, and swallow it. Once a week she needed to cut more paper. Her tightly rolled strips were hidden in many places around the house, places Francis would never see. The pill case, her makeup bag, her jewelry box, in spice jars, her pocketbook. She swallowed her rolled paper all day long. Francis had no idea.
Frances did not remember when she started but she knew she could not stop. It felt completely necessary to swallow her rolled paper, as if her life depended on it. She was afraid of what would happen if she did not swallow her paper strips. She was a coward. Her girlfriends did not know she did this, and they did not know the secret written on them. Surely they did the same thing, the married ones at least. Some things you must keep from your husbands at any cost. Another vodka soda and she did the washing, swallowing paper periodically. The water was very, very hot, but she always refused to wear gloves, scalding her hands raw.
Frances put on another record, sat on the couch, and read. She did the same thing every week, week in and week out, for many years. There was a brief period of excitement when Francis came home with a horse. He had accepted it as payment for a deal at work, and it lived in the side yard. Frances loved the horse. She had not started swallowing paper then. When their Buick broke down, they had no choice but to trade the horse for another car.
She went out to the garage for more tonic and some frozen pasta sauce to heat up for dinner. She absently pushed a rolled paper between her lips as she walked in the kitchen.
“What is that?” said Francis, a genuine look of concern across his face. “What are you taking?”
Frances was terrified. “What are you doing here? I wasn’t expecting you for three hours.” She tried to not sound as scared as she was.
“The power went out at the office, electric company says it’ll be fixed in the morning, so we all left.”
“Oh, OK. It's nice to have you home early.” Frances smiled weakly.
“But I believe I asked you a question. What were you swallowing?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“What were you taking?”
“Nothing!” She was getting angry.
“I saw you!”
“It’s none of your fucking business!”
“I saw you pull something out of your pocket and put it in your mouth and swallow it! What was it?”
“Mind your business, it doesn’t fucking concern you.”
“I need to know!” he yelled at her.
She was crying. She did not want him to know about her strips of paper.
He was very angry, she had never acted like this towards him before. He yelled the same question over and over: “What were you taking?”
Frances cried. She refused to tell him and ran towards their bedroom as he chased her. She cried and ran through the house, shouting all the while that it was not any of his business. He was irate. She had never seen him behave like this.
Francis lunged for her skirt; his face was red; she was more scared than she had ever been. He grabbed ahold of her and slapped her across the face. She recoiled, he had never hit her before. She staggered away from him, tripped over the ottoman, and fell onto the carpet. He knelt above her and pinned her arms down. Sweat dripped down his red face.
He screamed at her while she was completely immobilized: “What did you swallow? Why won’t you just tell me?” his face softening ever so slightly.
And then any trace of cowardice left Frances. She thought he looked ridiculous, spitting and hissing at her. She had stopped crying. “I will show you if you get off of me, please,” she said.
Francis nodded and stood up. He wiped his brow.
Frances stood up and sighed. She walked over to the chair under the window and smoothed her skirt. She pulled a ribbon from her pocket and tied her hair back.
“Are you sure you want to know?” she asked him.
Francis nodded and stared at her. Frances spread her legs wide and tucked her skirt neatly beneath her on the chair so it did not get dirty. She closed her eyes and leaned forward. With her left hand, she shoved her fingers so far down her throat she retched. Francis was horrified. Frances gagged and sputtered until she vomited. At first, just a little liquid. She had not eaten much today.
She stuck her fingers down her throat deeper. She retched harder. She leaned forward as much as she could and gagged one final time. Through her gapped teeth, past her red lips came one very, very long piece of paper. Without much force it landed in a sickly little puddle on the shining hardwood. The slip must have been three feet long, with edges that rolled in on themselves like a scroll.
Francis looked up and offered a handkerchief. Frances took it and wiped the corners of her mouth and her hands. She unfurled the slip of paper with her stockinged feet, she hated getting her hands dirty. On it, written in perfect, meticulous script, was one single sentence:
“We are both guilty now, aren’t we?”
______
Ursula Carroll is a writer and translator in St. Louis. Her work has appeared or will appear in HAD, Thimble, Washington Square Review, Michigan City Review Of Books, and elsewhere. She spends most of her time thinking up knuckle tattoos and taking pictures of vanity license plates.
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