An Excerpt from Women Surrounded by Water by Patricia Coral
Marriage Addictions I
I remember how you cried when I walked towards you and took your hand in my hand.
After the wedding, we danced all night in Casa de España to our favorite songs, to our friends’ joy, to our love. My feet were aching. When I complained about the pain, you took me to the side of the dance floor and brought a chair for me to sit on. You knelt in front of me, took off my heels, and gave me a foot massage. A friend took a picture of me in my wedding gown with my bare foot in your hand.
I don’t have a picture of your forehead cut open, nor of the red blood running through your nose until it reached for your mouth, like a river flowing into the sea.
Our naked bodies on a hotel bed. Your left hand on my breast, your wet kisses on my neck. “My wife, I’m so lucky that you are my wife,” you whispered, and I stared at your wedding band shining on your finger.
We were hungry. Late at night we walked hand in hand to Walgreens to get snacks. You chose a box of cheese sandwich crackers, and we went back to the hotel. We sat next to each other at the bedroom balcony and opened up a bottle of rum. Our laughter merged with the sound of the waves and the palm trees in San Juan. We stayed awake till dawn. Until there were no crackers or rum left.
On our first trip together, you let me have the window seat in the airplane. You knew how much I loved it. I fell asleep on your chest while we were up in the air. We opened the tray to fill out the tourist card, took pictures of our left hands with our new wedding rings and the first document we checked “married” on. You carried my luggage when we landed in Punta Cana.
A room with an ocean view. Carefully chosen lingerie. Days spent between the bed and the water. You wrote our names on the sand with a heart and a “Just Married” next to them. You didn’t stop taking pictures of me. You didn’t stop saying how much you loved me.
I asked you to stop ordering so many drinks at the bar.
It was a Monday. You brought another six pack of Medalla to our house. I threw it to the floor of the unfinished terrace in the backyard and yelled: “I will not allow any more alcohol in this house. I’m tired of it.” I was actually tired of you. Maybe I threw the beers to the floor because I couldn’t throw you, or my job, or grad school, or our house, or our marriage, or myself. You cried. Right there or later in our bed until you fell asleep. Or so I remember it. Or so I want to remember it, that I paid with guilt for my cruelty.
Some Friday nights made me feel that we were like any other young married couple. You picked up a medium pizza with onions, half bacon, half ham. We sat on the couch to watch comedy movies on the TV your dad bought for us. The dogs lay on the floor right next to us. My dreams were small.
Some Friday nights made me feel that we were like any other young married couple.
I called my best friend crying.
“We still don’t have a dining table at the house,” I told her. “Don’t cry! You have a husband that really loves you, and that’s what matters the most,” she answered. “It takes time to put a house together.”
I didn’t tell her that you were drinking beers every day and the fridge was almost empty.
I hated being a full-time teacher, a full-time grad student, and a full-time wife. I fell asleep on the couch as soon as I arrived from work every afternoon until the next day. “I feel so alone,” you kept telling me over and over, and I didn’t listen.
Every few months you cut plantains and green bananas from our backyard, put them inside shopping bags, and gifted them to our neighbors.
When we invited friends over, it took me too long to clean. “Why are you so slow? Stop being so obsessed about the details. Go take a shower, and I’ll finish the rest,” you told me as you took the mop from my hands. I felt inadequate.
I called in sick to work because our car didn’t have enough gas.
You stayed awake all night when I had to finish my final paper. You made me coffee and rubbed my neck. “You’ve got this. You’re almost done. I’m here with you.” A few months later you celebrated my diploma by taking a picture of it and posting it on social media with a caption that read, I am so proud of my wife.
It was summer and you were wearing a long sleeve T-shirt to cover your arms.
You started losing students. I wanted to think it was because of the economy and not because you didn’t make it to the music lessons. You didn’t leave the bedroom for a week. When you did, you didn’t have a job anymore.
In the mornings I got dressed for work and sat on the bed staring at the floor. It took me an hour to stand up and leave the house while you slept. I was afraid to leave the house for fear I’d find your dead body lying on the kitchen floor when I came back and opened the door.
You promised to trim the tree that was in front of the house. When I came home from school, I found you crying in the kitchen.
“Are you okay?”
“I killed the tree,” you told me. “I cut it too much.”
I looked through the window and saw that the tree was missing most of its branches. “Don’t worry, it will grow back,” I reassured you.
And it did.
Marriage Addictions II
We argued on our way to celebrate our anniversary and my birthday. You spent the money we were going to use for the weekend escapade. When we arrived at the hotel you gave me a gift and a handwritten card. The line on the card read, “I’m sorry for not being able to give you all you deserve.” And I sobbed.
The line on the card read, ‘I’m sorry for not being able to give you all you deserve.’
“These marks are old. Do you believe me?” you asked me while you took off your shirt to get inside the pool and I stared at the fresh red dots on your arm.
“I know,” I lied.
I waited for you at my parents’ house for a family dinner. “I feel I’m getting sick. I prefer to stay home,” you told me when I called you to ask why you were taking so long. When I made it to our house you were dressed up to go out.
“Where are you going?” I asked, and the argument started. “I’m getting some beers,” you answered.
“I’m sick of your drinking. If you are going to keep drinking like that you better not come home,” I yelled.
Hours passed by and you didn’t return. I was frightened. I thought you were dead. You came back to the house in the morning and told me that you had a relapse. That was the beginning of a war that I will always feel responsible for.
You invited me to a twelve-steps group in Levittown. I went to the family meetings while you went to the recovering addicts meeting. I saw a young woman talking to you outside of the room. She was celebrating eight months of being clean. I remember the fear in her eyes when you told her you were having a relapse after years of being sober. That night you stopped attending the recovery meetings.
An old man from my group lost his wife to drugs. He gifted me a book with a note in the back that read: “Choose yourself.”
I took off my wedding rings and put them on the coffee table just before falling asleep on the couch. When I woke up in the morning, I couldn’t find them. “Maybe the dog swallowed them by accident,” you told me. I wanted to believe you.
You came trembling to the bedroom with a glass of water. You got in the bed, and when you hugged me, your skin boiled hot.
El Dragón song played on your radio. That was your hell anthem. You turned off the bedroom lights and lay in bed for hours staring at the ceiling. The demons were visiting again.
A list of lost items:
1. the gold and diamond watch Abuela gave me
2. the white and blue sapphire necklace that used to be Titi Carla’s
3. your wedding band
4. did you take mine?
Track marks. Underneath your long-sleeved shirt. Red dots that marked the trail of your veins.
Another list:
1. your guitar
2. your drum set
3. our radio
4. your bike
5. your job
6. my car
7. hope
I found syringes in the toilet tank. Inside your shoes. I found a spoon in the washer when I was doing laundry. It was bent, burned at the bottom with an uneven black circle.
Our neighbor punched you in the face when he learned you stole his skateboard. Our goddaughter was visiting us. She sobbed when your body hit the floor. I pressed her against my chest.
I was trapped in a never-ending scavenger hunt.
Marriage Addictions III
You brought home the street hunger. You turned on the stove, took out the milk, the bag of cornmeal while I made sure you didn’t burn anything. That you didn’t burn yourself. I was cleaning behind you, tripping over you with every step, every half turn like a failed attempt to dance a son Cubano. Without the party. Without the joy. Without the music. You were annoyed as if I were stepping on your feet. You never understood how difficult it was to clean dry cornmeal from a pot, from the ceiling, from the cabinets, from the table, from the floor, from the clothes, from a plate . . . you only knew how to spill it. From the stumbles and our fractured dance in the kitchen you went to the dining table spilling cornmeal on your way. Absent, with full veins and an empty stomach, you sat at the table and tried to eat a few bites without falling from your chair. I sat at the table with you and shook you on the shoulder to keep you awake, but I stood up and went back to the kitchen because I didn’t want to see you anymore. You fell asleep with your face on the plate. I cleaned the mess on the floor while it was still fresh. I waited for you to wake up to take off your shirt and clean your face.
You took the keys I hid inside a kitchen drawer, opened the front door, and left our house. When I got out of the bathroom to get ready for bed, I realized you were gone. I went back inside the shower and stayed under the warm water as long as I could stand, until my fingers were wrinkled and my skin extra clean. It distracted me from the fear of a panic attack. It helped me to avoid thinking about all the bad news I could get.
What if he overdoses?
What if the police call me to identify his body?
I dismissed the thoughts.
He has experience shooting drugs. He won’t make a mistake.
I was looking for you in Sabana Seca and saw from a distance a homeless man crossing the street. Except, it was you. I couldn’t recognize you. I called your name, and when you turned, I saw your face. Your forehead injured, a river of blood running between your big, green eyes that didn’t recognize me either.
“Where are you going?” I yelled from inside the car.
I was looking for you in Sabana Seca and saw from a distance a homeless man crossing the street. Except, it was you.
“I’m going home, don’t you see?” you answered from across the street with your eyes lost, yourself lost. You were walking in the opposite direction of the way home, and I wondered for how long you’d been trying to return.
“Get inside, I’ll take you home.” You didn’t look at me, but you got inside the car. Maybe you were trusting the voice that promised to take you home.
Can you take a picture of a soul breaking?
I came home from work and found you on the floor. I threw myself on top of your body and shook you as strong as I could to see if you were alive, as if I could bring back your soul from the dead. You opened your eyes. I remember your blank stare. Your white eyes. I remember things I don’t want to remember. That I don’t want to write about. Consider them written in this space:
“I don’t want to be married to you anymore,” I blurted out on a Sunday morning. You went to live with your parents. I stayed by myself in a haunted house.
I received a call from a neighbor a few days after you moved out. “I believe your house was broken into,” she said on the phone. I hurried home from work and saw the broken kitchen window. Our TV on the ground outside. Your body coming out from the window. I pushed you as soon as you came out of the window.
“What’s wrong with you? Are you insane?” I yelled, and you didn’t respond.
You took the TV from the ground, and I took it from you. “If you ever come to this house again, I’ll call the police,” I told you.
“Fuck you,” you responded as you stumbled into the street.
A woman drove by, and you got inside of her car. She sped off. Until I no longer saw you.
Excerpted from Women Surrounded By Water by Patricia Coral. © 2024 The Ohio State University.