Chapter 25 #3
That Monday, as soon as Russ left for work, I sliced off a thick piece of raw chicken, put it on a plate, and carried it out to the table on the back patio.
There I left it, right in the sun. After some consideration, I went back in and got a mesh strainer to keep off the bugs, then came back in to do my chores.
When I finished, instead of having lunch, I sat at the dining room table and drank three beers, one after the other, until I felt ready.
But I got pretty scared when I went outside and actually looked down at what the chicken had become.
In just those few hours, the whole thing had grown a thin coat of slime around it.
Under the slime, the meat had turned from pink to gray, and the fat from white to beige.
When I bent down for a closer look, it was like smelling death itself.
I took the chicken back inside, cut it into little pieces, and managed to get down almost a third of it.
I was crying the whole time, partly because I knew I might be killing myself, and partly because the feel and smell of the chicken was so disgusting, even with every swallow washed down with more beer.
All that misery was for nothing, though—as soon as I stood, I had to rush to the sink to throw up.
I couldn’t bear to eat any more, so I went out to the dock and tossed the remaining pieces in the water.
Almost immediately, a pelican cruised down and swallowed them.
The next morning, I repeated the whole process, and though again I couldn’t eat much, what I got down stayed down.
Once I sobered up, I just felt a little queasy.
I still made dinner, and I ate with Russ.
We watched The Perry Como Show and stayed up for What’s My Line?
I went to sleep fine, but in the middle of the night, I woke up feeling as if I had a live animal in my bowels.
I barely made it to the bathroom, where both ends of my digestive tract committed fully to getting not just the chicken, but everything, everything, out of me.
Our second bathroom came in handy, as I told Russ I wasn’t coming out, even to sleep.
I rolled up the bathroom rug, and I used that for a pillow.
In the morning, as soon as he left for work, I went out and got my real pillow, and also a blanket, the portable radio, and a cup.
I brought all that into the bathroom, and that was where I stayed for almost a week.
Russ called his mother at one point, asking her if he should take me to the hospital, though I’d already told him that he shouldn’t.
His mother said she’d heard there was a bug going around, and that I just needed rest and water.
Through the door I told him, “Oh, okay, that’s good to know.
Thank her for me, please,” though by then, I thought I was dying.
I don’t mean that as a figure of speech.
I mean there were several nights that week when I lay on the bathroom floor truly believing I would die there, and that I wouldn’t reach my twenty-second birthday, or get to tell anyone but Russ goodbye.
Even when I felt well enough to go back to living in the rest of the house, I went on feeling shaky and nauseated for weeks.
But I did get my period on time. Now I understand I was probably never pregnant to begin with.
I have a friend who’s a nurse, and she told me that if I had been pregnant, I likely would have stayed that way, and the salmonella would have only increased the chance of problems with the baby’s spine and brain.
So, all in all, not great advice from Carol.
But I also know that if I had been pregnant, I never would have actually given birth. If there’d been no other way, I would have taken Russ’s bowling ball, tied it into the skirt of my dress or apron, and jumped off the dock. I’m certain of this. I recall my state of mind. My resolve was absolute.
When I felt healthy again, physically I mean, I told Russ what I’d done, and why. I described exactly what the chicken looked like before I ate it, and how it felt sliding down my throat. He thought I was kidding at first. When he understood I wasn’t, he got scared.
“And I’ll do it again,” I said. “I’ll always be able to find something. I’ll go out to the water myself and get scallops. I’ll leave them out in the sun for a week.”
He told me I was crazy. He told me I should be in a mental hospital, doing something like that.
“Sounds great,” I said. “You find one I can go to, I’ll start packing.”
It soon became clear which one of us was making empty threats: not me.
He told me okay, he was sorry he’d gotten pushy, but the words had barely left his mouth before he moved on to talking about how he’d been drunk, and how he wanted to be a father, and how unfair it was about Leonard, et cetera. I didn’t want to hear it.
“I told you,” I said. “If you changed your mind and want children, okay. Go find somebody else.”
He started crying, telling me I didn’t realize how much he loved me, how I’d always been the girl for him.
We went on like that, married, for the rest of that spring.