Lisa Pimental
Out the Window
Response
Dorothy Bendel
At the Window
Inspiration piece
I’m envious of the potted plant that sits on the window ledge. It can move more than I can. It moves in increments, in ways most people would never have the patience to see. It reaches towards the sky and sprawls into corners, creeping beyond the space it is allowed. People cannot sit long enough to notice. There is something inside them that jolts the system, propelling them forward.
My wheelchair is planted, facing the pot full of leaves that splinter from a thick center stalk and burst out into a firework of green. Helen feels that it is good for me to sit in the sun’s rays, that I will reap some sort of miraculous benefit from exposure. Maybe I will get a tan for the first time in my life. Maybe it will reverse the paralysis.
A fly coasts through the open window and lands on one of the plant’s leaves that stretches out like a long, relaxed limb. They sway together in the wind, dancing. I used to dance with Helen even though I had two left feet. Thursday night lessons in a big red barn. I would have felt terrible for stepping on her toes so often if she hadn’t laughed each time, her shoulders bouncing with each eruption. Then my feet went numb, the deadness spreading up my legs, thickening and hardening. I can’t move my head far enough down anymore to see if my feet are even still there. I like to think they are waiting for me on the barn’s dirt floor.
The fly lands on my mouth. I move my eyes to look past my bumpy nose. I can see twitching hairs and two legs rubbing against each other like it is in the midst of plotting something sinister. I try to will my lips to move, to shoo it away, but some invisible hand has buttoned my mouth shut at the middle and left the corners to hang open, rigid.
I’m starting to lose sight of it now. I think it is going inside. What the hell does it want? It won’t find anything there, just something dry and empty that used to fill the silence with meaningless jabber. Maybe it will fill the emptiness with its eggs. Warm, white, limbless things. Panic and chaos waiting to break through. Helen would find me, my face covered in tiny creatures, and think that I had finally gone.
I see the fly emerging now, out from the darkness. The jig is up. It has come to its senses and knows that its tricks are lost on me. No sustenance to offer its children from these thin bones. I hear the soft whirr as it flies back to its lush green lady. The sun is dead center and as bright as it has ever been. The plant is reaching out her arms. I close my eyes and can almost feel her touch.
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