Page 99 of Possibly Texas

Still no response from him.

Anger boiled up in me and I slammed a hand down on the wooden tabletop he was sanding.

“I’m going to help you, you stubborn bastard!”

Jack’s movements stopped, his hand holding the sandpaper frozen against the wood. He didn’t look up, though.

“Let me help you,” I said, my voice cracking. “Please.”

For a moment, I thought Jack would look up at me, maybe frown with consternation, but relent to my request. Instead, he started sanding again, his hand moving slowly at first, then picking up speed, aggressively sanding away at the wood, smoothing out some imperfection only he could see.

Resigned, I walked away from Jack and his project and slogged back through the yard to the back steps. Turning around, I plopped down on the steps, trying to ignore the wetness from the morning dew, and stared at Jack.

“I’m going to sit right here,” I said loudly enough that he could hear me across the yard. “When you need help, I’ll be waiting. I’m not leaving.”

Jack continued on about his business.

The morning sun sauntered across the sky and hours ticked by, the fog burning off incrementally until lunchtime arrived. By the noon hour, the grass was baking in the August sun and the steps felt more like sauna stones against my backside. Sweat was trickling down between my shoulders blades and running towards the waistband of my shorts.

I didn’t move.

Even when Jack stopped working and brushed past me on the steps up into the house, I sat and waited like I said I would. When Jack came back outside, just a few minutes later, he had a plate containing a sandwich and chips. A soda was in his other hand. He went back across the yard, laid the plate on the table, and went back to work. In between working on the table, he’d take a bite of his sandwich or chips, or take a sip of his soda, but he ignored me.

I continued to sit and watch.

Jack continued to ignore me.

He only came near me to go up the steps to return his plate to the kitchen, to get a drink, or use the bathroom.

Even as the afternoon grew orange and hazy, and the sun began its descent towards the horizon, I didn’t move. By dusk, Jack seemed to be done sanding the table—I couldn’t imagine spending a whole day manually sanding a table so thoroughly—and he covered it with his tarp. Then he headed back inside, brushing past me as he went up the steps for the last time that day.

I stayed on the steps. My skin felt cracked from sitting in the summer sun all day, and my lips were chapped. My throat felt like a desert. But I stayed outside until the sun had disappeared from the sky and the first stars were starting to twinkle.

Back inside, Jack had a bowl of leftover spaghetti from the night before. He wasn’t sitting at the table, waiting to have a family dinner. Instead, he was in front of the T.V., watching some innocuous comedy as he ate.

All I could do was make a plate of spaghetti and set it in the microwave to heat up. As I waited, I drank three glasses of water, directly from the tap, then filled a fourth to go with my dinner. Then I sat at the table and ate my pasta and drank my water. Alone. Jack didn’t even come into the kitchen once he was done with his bowl.

So, I cleaned my plate and glass, put them in the draining rack, and made my way to the stairs. When I had reached the second floor, I could hear Jack rustling around in the kitchen, cleaning up his dinner plate. Up on the third floor, I stripped my shorts and boxers off in my room and then ducked into the shower. Minutes later, even though it was barely evening, I was climbing under the covers of my bed. I hadn’t even bothered to put on pajamas.

The sun exposure from the day made me feel sick, as though I had the chills. I shivered and shook under the covers in bed, wishing I had an extra blanket, but I was too proud to ask Jack for anything. Sometime, probably around nine o’clock, I fell into a deep sleep.

A door opened and closed somewhere as I drifted off.

Was Jack leaving?

In my imagination, awake and daydreaming, I am the desert tortoise. Alone and wandering my arid ecosystem, fulfilling the duties bestowed upon me by whatever power decides what we will be when we are given life.

When I dreamed that night, I was a caterpillar. But not quite. I was in a chrysalis, waiting to see what life would bring. Wet and warm, packed in tightly, I had nothing to do but wonder what would happen when my shell split and I climbed out into the waiting sun.

As that happened, as the pod split and light poured in and fluid seeped out, and my eyes adjusted to the new world around me, what would come of me?

Would I become a butterfly? Would I forget that I was once a caterpillar?

Would anyone care that the caterpillar they’d known was missing?

I awoke the following morning, my shoulders raw and angry against the crisp sheets of my bed. Gingerly, I made my way to the bathroom and examined myself in the mirror.

I wasn’t a tortoise. I was a lobster.