Carmen

Last Wednesday my girlfriend turned into a fairy. Not the Celtic kind, or Elven kind, or Eastern European or anything good like that—she turned into the pixie kind. With dust and sparkles and diamonds and little wings that glimmer brighter than sunlight.

But sunlight doesn’t shine that bright in the swamp. I guess it depends on the time of day. There are many trees blocking its path. White oaks, red maples, eastern pines. Black alder. Shrubs are dense too. Sweet Pepperbush. Brambles. I remind Carmen of this when talking about her wings. It’s good to keep her humble.

Carmen has blonde banana curls growing down her back. She’s always been blonde. It’s maybe the most infuriating thing about her. Fucking Carmen. She’s too pretty. And turning into a fairy exacerbates things. Especially her sparkle. It was cute at first. I found her with wings, crying in the tissue box. Literally, she was inside the box, barely the size of my thumb. I only looked because I heard rustling inside. I assumed it was a mouse. The tissues had been pulled inwards, like it was nesting. I was ready to kill it, trap it, chuck it outside. Whatever made most sense when the time came. But I looked inside the hole and saw Carmen. Little Carmen. She had folded the paper around herself and was wetting it with her nose. Sniffling away. Her cheeks were perfectly blushed and they’ve stayed that way since.

“Oh my god, what happened?” I asked. She was busy choking on feelings so it took her a while to answer. When she did, it came out in a squeal. High pitched and tough to interpret. I didn’t catch a word. This only made her cry more. She was frustrated. Her tears looked like tiny diamonds and her snot was full of sparkles, like craft glue from the dollar store. I couldn’t help but smile. It’s easy to see someone you love like that. So small, broken, and vulnerable.

 

 

 #

 

 

Carmen is my not-girlfriend-girlfriend. Girlfriend in the sense of wine Wednesday’s and prepubescent traumas. Not-girlfriend because we aren’t dating, don’t have sex, don’t talk about a future together, blah, blah, blah. We don’t share a bank account either, thank God. Carmen’s broke as hell. But we do share some things. Rent, dreams. Lots of dreams. Like the time I dreamt about this guy I briefly dated— briefly dated meaning one day and one night of good sex and bad company, which I still think is better than bad sex and good company— his name is Jeremiah. He has these big brown eyes that make me want to die. Like, just looking into them I feel pity. For him, for me, for anyone else looking. The eyes of a St. Bernard and the body of a god, which is beside the point. The point is, I had this dream about Jeremiah, long after we dated. In the dream I drove out to Utah, into the desert. Lots of canyons and sand, not that I’ve ever been. He had this cabin on top of the mountain and we made love under the stars. At that moment, I knew he was my soul mate, even if I was dreaming. I told Carmen about it, my dream, how I botched my chance at real love with Jeremiah, and she told me she had the exact same one. Star for star, moment for moment. That’s how I found out she, too, slept with him. Apparently she did this often.

Carmen shoots my dreams down, swats at them like ping pong balls. Like the job opportunity I got last fall, at that journalism place. I’d get the chance to travel, interview people on their psychedelic experiences, and make it into art. My dream job, honestly. She told me everyone who worked at that company had been sexually assaulted or was sexually assaulting and I better stay away. I thought, isn’t that like any workplace? But her little voice, that was so loud at the time, wouldn’t get out of my head. I let the job go and the next person they offered made it big time. Major motion picture shot on film. Art gallery for the stills. Sold out shows and all that. Could’ve been me. But also, probably not. I probably would’ve gotten assaulted and quit and racked up some trauma and Carmen would’ve been right, again.

 

 

#

 

 

I’ve always wanted to be a fairy. Dreamt about it a lot as a kid, until my mom told me they weren’t real. That she’d been lying to me all those years about fairies and more. The salt on my spaghetti was from a shaker, not the pixies in the trees. Trees can’t talk, I’m just weird. My father didn’t die in a fire, he left the day I was born. Sometimes I think we should lie more. To ourselves, our kids, our families. The truth does a lot of dulling. And sometimes the truth isn’t even true. Take fairies, for example. They weren’t real, but now Carmen went and got herself turned into one, and I’m faced with two options.

Option One: put her in a large glass jar, or fish tank the size of our living room. Grow some moss, hang some lights and let our little home turn into a fantasy.

Option Two: let her disappear into the trees.

Obviously, I’m opting for the jar. But in this case, a jar made of wooden walls, silk fabrics and thrifted mirrors. A jar that is our underpriced shack in the swamp. It’s crawling with photo albums. Pictures of prepubescent Carmen and little old me. History. Dust. Bats live in our gutters. Mice in our walls. We’ve lived together for too long and being cooped up inside doesn’t make her happy. But then again, I can’t remember much that does, besides chugging wine and talking shit. About me, to me. It’s a little game we’ve played for years that I like to call See How Much I Can Take Before I Have to Go to The Bathroom and Cry.

You’d look your best if you lost like fifteen pounds, she tells me, unprompted.

Your dad probably left because you were so ugly as a baby, she laughs looking through old photos.

Yeah, your art is cool. It’s just unfocused and not very unique.

He was always flirting with me, so I’m not surprised he cheated on you.

You can’t really count that as rape though.

Carmen says it all, whatever she’s thinking. I’m glad. It’s good to have thick skin. To make it thicker. People train for all sorts of things. Marathons, The Olympics. What I’m doing is much more practical— training for life. And now I get to train her. It’s quite simple, really. She’s small, I’m big. What I say goes. And I say Carmen can fly back into the world once she’s mastered the apartment. Baby steps.

 

 

#

 

 

Fairy proofing is much easier than childproofing, I think. Carmen’s so weak now that she can’t open any of the windows. I don’t even have to lock them, or close the curtains. I got one of those butterfly kits I used as a kid and let that be her crate for when I need to get stuff done, like work. I’ve been producing a lot of work with her as a fairy. Paintings, stories, film, I even wrote a song. It has an opera feel to it.

I take a break from my work and stumble upon a yard sale. The first thing I see is an ear trumpet. Brass and slender with a big open mouth at one end. It’s the best day in days. Now I’ll be able to hear Carmen speak. I needed to have that on my terms for once— Carmen speaking. Plus, I love yard sales. Especially this one. It has lots of stuff I can distort. Vintage teacups, scrap metal, wooden boxes and other objects. I grab some beads to put tassels on Carmen’s crate and walk home feeling good, excited to finally have a conversation with her and sort everything out (how she’ll manage to pay rent, what this all might look like moving forwards). I walk through the swamp and the trees sound like they’re singing. I whistle to their song. Cheerful bliss.

It’s extra green this time of year. Lots of moss. Ferns. The solstice just passed. Black flies are done biting and there’s all sorts of animals. I feel like Snow White. Pretty, singing, wearing a dress. Baby bunnies and blue jays. Deer and bobcats hiding in the brush, turtles crossing the road. Their eggs are everywhere, mostly cracked open by coyotes and foxes looking for a snack. Makes me think of the turtle Carmen and I found as kids. We were probably around the age of eleven, or some other era of annoyance. I’m not a fan of children, but the turtle was lost. It wandered up from the swamp and into her garden. We decided to name it Woodchip because we found it in a pile of woodchips. Then we put it in a fish tank. I took the time to set up some rock structures so the tank felt more interesting than your regular bowl of water, and I think Woodchip was happy there for some time.

 

 

#

 

 

I get home and its afternoon. Our house always smells like a mix of old wood and pond water. A layer of dust hangs in the air. Particles float in the sunlight that falls through our windows. We don’t have many windows in our little shack. But there is one, and Carmen’s crate is right under it.

I pull out the trumpet, “look at what I got!” I say, holding it to my ear. I’m filled with wonder, surprise, optimism, and she doesn’t even care.

The first thing she says is, “what the fuck is wrong with you and why haven’t you got me any clothes! I’ve been wearing the same fucking dress for weeks. Also, when I’m human again, I swear to God I’m going to kill you.”

Her words are so fast my head vibrates. And she’s right, about the clothes. I should’ve thought of that. The little girl in me is crying. So I put my shoes back on and go straight to the store, buy some felt, some patterns and start sewing. I even cut up my old curtains to make little dresses in every color that compliment her curls. I’m excited about this. But she refuses to wear green, and begs for shades of black, because apparently, there can only be one Tink. She’s right.

Carmen’s right about a lot of things. I’m a bad friend, a bad girlfriend to everyone I’ve dated, slightly neurotic and sometimes a little narcissistic. I can be honest. She’s right about killing me too. I know she’ll try, given the chance, thus the butterfly cage. She’s tried before, in the past. Just that one time when she brought over an expensive bottle of wine and slipped way too many sleeping pills into it. She said she wasn’t drinking because she thought she was pregnant, but I should celebrate anyway, which I thought was weird because Carmen hates kids and has had three abortions since I’ve known her.

The night she tried to kill me I drank a glass of red with my pasta. It tasted normal, like pesto and wine. I’m used to cheaper stuff. Cheaper pesto and cheaper wine, but Carmen was cooking, which was also weird because she doesn’t eat. Says it’s a waste of energy, of time. But she knows how to cook. Uses expensive ingredients and whole foods. Anyways, Carmen set the table. Even pulled out her favorite cloth. Velvet with pink and green stripes. I made it a few years ago as a birthday gift to myself. She lit some candles and I got real drowsy, as one would expect. The last thing I remember was her face. Blue eyes, round cheeks, and teeth. Too many teeth set in this bold smile that was an awful amount of creepy.

“Goodnight,” she said, like it was the last time I’d hear it, and my head fell into the pasta. The smell of pesto didn’t leave my nose for weeks, and she apologized profusely after. She didn’t know what she was thinking, her hormones were getting to the best of her, she must’ve really been pregnant, again. I let it go, because how else was I supposed to move on?

 

 

#

 

 

It’s been a week with Carmen as a fairy and I like to watch her fly around at night. I take out my camera, film her wings, and let the air be the runway for all the dresses I made. Black slips, silk gowns, lacey skirts. She even let me work in some baby pink scarves and orange socks. Maybe I’ll start a line of miniature doll clothes, or fairy clothes if this is a shared experience. If more and more people start to turn. Sounds possible considering it happened to Carmen, it’s not like she’s special or anything. This could be my big break.

I sprinkle rosemary into my candles and it makes her sneeze, which is my favorite sound. So cute, high pitched. She’s kind of like a toy. I feel bad about that. I’ve always looked down on people who keep pets. Fish, monkeys, birds, things that are meant to roam free. Hell, even dogs. Tie a rope around its neck and call it love. Cats, I get, but fairies seem like all the other animals. And while Carmen is my friend, and maybe she should be locked up, she’s starting to feel like a pet, and I’m getting bored. She’s bored too, I can tell. Unlike a kitten, there’s not much for her to explore. She’s already lived here, full sized, for a few years, and she’s been cooped up in her own home for a week. I think it’s best I let her out. I’m sure she’ll come back. It’s not like she’s going to take up housing in the pond. For that, she’d need a tail.

 

 

#

 

 

I open the door and breathe in the night. The forest is alive with crickets and toads and bats and skeeters. The pond is still. It’s rather tranquil out here, which is why we moved in the first place. That and the price. Nobody wants to live near the swamp these days. Sinkholes, deformities, floods and stuff. I like to embrace the threat of disaster, let it flow into my art. Carmen’s broke so it works for her too.

I hold the ear trumpet close and hear her little words.

“Finally you fucking let some air into the place you fucking psychopath” she says, or yells, and flies out the door, soaring over the pond. I forgot how much she swears, and I’m a little offended. I don’t deserve the anger. I’m helping her live.

I sit out there for a while, watching her blow off steam. Her dust trails behind her, forming shapes and spirals of glitter. She paints a sparkling oak tree in the air and it starts attracting other things, like bugs and bats, mosquitoes. Lots of mosquitoes. Thousands of them, it seems. The bats can’t eat them fast enough. They’re biting me and I hear Carmen snickering through the ear trumpet, making fun of my discomfort.

She flutters above me, over the porch, the house, raining her dust down, attracting more mosquitoes, more bats. She knows I’m allergic. To mosquitoes. Everyone’s allergic, but one bite and my skin swells the size of a tennis ball. One bite, then three, and I’m covered in lumps. I don’t think death by mosquito is possible, besides the whole malaria thing, but what if they bite every inch of my body and I start swelling up to the point where my throat is thick and my eyes are closed and I’m just a swollen body covered in itch. Would it be a thousand itches? Or one, great itch? I’m not sure, and I don’t want to find out, but Carmen isn’t letting up. Not with her laughter, and not with her dust. She attracts more bugs, more bats, and after about twelve bites I realize she’s definitely trying to kill me. Again. But the joke’s on her. I go inside and make sure the windows are closed.

I leave her out overnight and bathe myself in another near death victory. I’m comfortable in bed. Cozy under the blankets. Sound asleep until around three a.m., when I swear I hear scratching at the door. The softest squeak of the word “please.” I must be hallucinating the voices of trees again, or I really do have mice, because there’s no way Carmen would be begging. I put in earplugs and fall back to sleep.

In the morning I find Carmen curled up in a ball. She’s asleep in the flower pot on my porch, using a leaf as a blanket. Adorable. Fuck, I think, as I transfer her into the cup of my hand and carry her inside. She’s shivering and her skin is ice. I could kill her. All it’d take is one squeeze and she’d shatter into a trillion pieces. I practice restraint and boil a pot of water instead. All I need to do is drop her in and she’ll blister to death. It’s easy helping her live a life so fragile, but the thought of her death makes me love her more. 

 

 

#

 

 

I sip my tea as Carmen thaws in her cup. I give her chamomile, and she uses the tea bag as a back rest. She’s quiet, for once. Looks tired. Her eyes are still blue but her hair has turned silver and I think I see wrinkles. A night out will do that. Once she’s fully thawed I take out my trumpet, hold it to my ear.

“Thanks,” she says, and I wait for the rest of it, but it doesn’t come. She just closes her eyes, letting the bathwater flood up to her nose.

I haven’t seen her like this since her last abortion, the one she actually thought about keeping. I think Jermiah was the dad. Carmen said it looked like a can of cranberry sauce. All she did for days was sit in the tub, let her skin prune, and weep into the water. I don’t like to remember it, or talk about it. And she doesn’t either, which is why I let her grieve in silence. I left her chocolate and raspberry tea outside the bathroom door. Tiptoed around our house. The floorboards were louder than usual. I was unsure of how to carry my own body weight, let alone the weight of what had happened. I probably handled it wrong, her abortion. Abortions. I just couldn’t think of anything to say. But silence didn’t help her then and it won’t help her now.

So, I sing my opera song. The one I wrote while she was in the butterfly cage. The high notes come out a little squeaky, but the rest sounds good in my ears. When I’m done, her mouth is agape.  Tears flood her face. Sparkling, of course. I hold the trumpet to my ear again and she’s screaming. With laughter. Her shoulders are shaking so much I pray she doesn’t pee because I’ll be washing the dish.

Carmen laughs well past the point of anything being funny, and I start to feel like shit. I wasn’t really trying to be funny, but I guess it could be taken that way.

“The funniest part is, you actually weren’t that bad,” she says, and I take it for the compliment it is. I know I wasn’t bad. I’ve booked opera gigs for years. Paid lots of money for lessons. Received all sorts of feedback. But none of that matters. All is right. Carmen is still Carmen, her hair is blonde again, her skin is blushed, and I can get back to my work.

 

 

#

 

 

We go outside long after dusk falls. There’s supposed to be a meteor shower and I want her to see it. Carmen flies over the pond, trailing her dust. This time she attracts the bugs away from me, putting on a show. She paints pictures that linger above the bog. Another oak tree. Birds and angels. Even a butterfly, or maybe it’s a moth. It’s rather magical the way she blends in with the stars, glows against the navy sky, a swarm of bugs behind her.

It’s loud out tonight. All sorts of noises in the swamp. Coyotes. Crickets. Peepers. Owls. It’s so loud I can hardly hear the trees. But they’re there, rustling in the breeze, and I swear they are laughing.

If Carmen was a shooting star or a meteorite crashing down, I’d make a wish. I’d wish that I could get everything I ever wanted, whatever that means. I figure it doesn’t hurt to try, to wish into the night, to wish on Carmen, who turned into a fairy. But before I get to close my eyes and blow out any candles, her shimmer is snuffed. A trail of pixie dust falls to the pond. It lands atop the water softly. Glistens, then drowns. The stars are brighter now. She must be blending in. Absorbed into stardust, which is more special than fairydust. Little Carmen, absorbed into the night.

My eyes adjust. Something dark is flying up there. It’s a bat. A fucking bat. It flies high, flapping its wings. It’s moving weird. Really weird. I think it’s choking.

It is choking.

Shit.

It’s choking on Carmen. It thought she was a skeeter, or a glow worm or a firefly or whatever the fuck bats eat. She’s too big for it, and I can tell she’s fighting in there, punching at its rib cage, cursing in its belly. The bat takes each internal blow and juts side to side, zigzagging in the air.

It’s a big bat, and this goes on for quite some time. Enough time for me to gather my thoughts. Enough time to try throwing things at it. But I don’t. I’m more calm than I care to admit. I don’t have that many thoughts to gather. I don’t know what to do, what I can do. Nothing. I can only do nothing. I try to cry or scream or feel something but my eyes are just sandy. They’re filled with it. Sand and muck from the bank of the pond. I blink it away. Rub it out of them. My hands are covered in glitter. It’s green and pink. Starlight blue. It’s not sand. It’s the dust Carmen was drawing with. 

Eventually the bat wavers less and less, flies higher, breaking her fairy bones down. Digesting, I guess. As if she was just another juicy moth. I look to the stars. Look for fairies. Meteors. Wishes raining down. All that’s there is sky. All that’s here is swamp. I pick up the trumpet, hold it to my ear. I wait for the sound of her voice, or an insult at least. But I don’t hear her voice. I don’t hear anything. Only the trees. For once they’ve stopped talking.