FICTION
If I Were A Tattered Board
Mother told me I was a chatty kid who didn’t lose her voice in the crowd.
Mother told me I was a chatty kid who didn’t lose her voice in the crowd. Without a care of my surroundings or ill pronunciation, I refused to lower my voice, blurting out childish thoughts about birds and rainbows.
I once visited my former elementary school teacher to congratulate her for giving birth. The last time we met was about a decade ago, and I was relieved when she recognized me, seeming pleasantly surprised. She showed me her newly born son who was too identical to his father, and then told me how getting married to a man of her parents’ choice was a bet that bloomed beautifully. At some point in her unordered ranting about her life, she suddenly stopped, realizing she wasn’t getting enough replies.
“What about you?” She asked.
I cleared my throat. “I’m studying English.” One thing about efforts was that they were often betrayed rather than compensated well. My voice came out hoarse, almost sounding too whimsical for a human. Oblivious of my shame, she stared at me all sparkly, expecting more words to escape my vocal cords. “At Malang,” I added.
The expectation in her eyes faded in confusion. As she forced herself to speak cheerfully, the joy shook, poorly concealing the unpleasant shock in her tone, fooling no one.
“You used to talk a lot,” she finally said with a disbelieving smile.
“I know.”
Perhaps, I was eleven or ten when I got a serious fever for the first time. Yesterday, I had a sleepover with my friends at Mayang’s house on the hill. The night was chilly, and Mom suspected that the sweater and blanket weren’t enough to block the temperature from entering my body.
Over potato chips, we talked about different topics at once. I had to enter the conversation fast and loudly, or someone else would seize the opportunity. My sentences were buried under theirs as the chatters intensified. I raised my volume. Yet, even when I spoke the loudest, it was late. None of them seemed able to hear my scream. The air solidified before me, muffling their voices that landed on my ears like a poorly recorded cassette. I felt my seat distance itself from the table, setting me apart from the living room where they were in. I reached my hand for them, but the air was too dense to transpierce. I bagged the barrier with both hands, making noises, hoping some of them would pull me back into their space.
Their mouths fell silent. In unison, they turned their scowling faces to me. The dense air evaporated, leaving me exposed under those glowering gazes. My throat ached, losing its ability to speak normally.
“What are you talking about?!”
I came home with a headache and a sore throat. The fever had taken my voice away. I should’ve dressed more warmly, I thought.
Grandma said that to heal a sore throat was to stop talking, so I cut my words short. With nods and excessive expressions, I tried to get back to my friends. The dense air had returned around me, but I could hear better now that I wasn’t kicking or hitting it.
Ah, they talked about a Korean TV show.
Ah, they talked about that infamous English teacher.
Ah, they talked about —
I halted and then took a detour, giving up my intention to join their table. I kept walking without a destination in mind like a fugitive trying to get away from the police. The break would be over soon, but I would vomit the moment I caught sight of them sitting in their exclusive seats. I turned left and locked myself in a toilet, once again surrounded by silence. A tsunami of the words they used to call me crashed into my mind, flooding the barely alive garden in murky water.
The land’s vibration brought down the tall buildings I built with my two hands and was born with. It crept to the mountain, angering the calm volcano. A thread of burning ribbon rivered down the raging summit. As the fire kissed the water’s surface, the spark born from their contact devastated the tiny room inside my ribs. The blast devoured everything in its radar without mercy like a star blasting itself in a supernova. What was left of the explosion was a lifeless orb that couldn’t be revived.
A layer of dense air tapped my shoulder, and how warm… I should’ve known better. The barrier was never once an enemy.
I walked on the earth with dense air — my guardian angel, I had decided to call her — lurking behind me, ready to put herself in the front line when people’s displayed kindness got me to open my mouth. Behind the void, the blur helped me to see more clearly. Glimpses of those kids adorned their faces.
My guardian angel would wrap her wings around me, suffocating me with her feathers that had turned my lungs rotten. I gasped for air, struggling to get away from her, but she didn’t budge, ignoring my pleas. When my body began to shake, and I could no longer hear other noises but my short breaths, I grabbed a jar in my handbag. I ran an imaginary hand throughout my body, trying to locate a part that had decomposed before the damage spread all over me. Once I stumbled upon the area, my blood stopped rushing, my flesh thinned, and my bones desiccated. I broke that part, splitting it from the rest of my body, and stuffed it into the jar among the pieces of my rage, curiosity, excitement, and their other friends whose names I hadn’t learned.
My lungs remembered they could breathe the feathers. Against her shoulder, I gave in.
On a hot summer day, I found myself in the bathroom. In my hand was another chuck I then placed into the jar. It had already been filled to the brim, so I forced the lid to close. The glass cracked and then shattered. Parts of myself I had discarded surrounded me, and I wasn’t sure what to do with them. The rest of me, a tattered board I didn’t notice was falling apart, shuddered. A fracture appeared at the center, spreading like wildfire on a windy afternoon. My feet were the first to break. Lying on the warm floor, my body dismantled itself from one another, becoming chucks, until there wasn’t any piece big enough I could call “Myself.”
My guardian angel gathered the pieces into her embrace, bringing me close to her heart. I let her hold me without muttering protest even when her arms started to hurt me. Maybe, this was her aim from the start, to swallow me down her belly. Whatever… I just hoped it wouldn’t be as painful.
A silhouette stood in the distance. Her small frame was covered by mist. She was quiet, and my left eye couldn’t recognize her. She shortened the distance between us, stopping a few feet away from me. She reached for my hand. As her touch landed on my skin, the mist around her disappeared, revealing a smiling face I had failed to protect.
She pulled my hand, and every part of me, as if those chucks were still connected by a weak magnetic force, tailing my hand into her caress. Those small fingers united the fractures piece by piece as she hummed the melody of ‘As Long as You Love Me.’ She brought her hand to my face, wiping the tears that had escaped my eyelids gently. Her smile reached her ears when our eyes met. I pulled her into a tight hug and felt complete for the first time after years of being a tattered board.
My guardian angel had succumbed on the ground with her wings withered on both sides. Gazing at her, I finally could see her true face and realized that between us, she needed protection the most. So, I grabbed her hand, reassuring her with a harsh voice I was sure she would understand.
“It’s going to be fine.”
It has been a rough couple of months for me — life happened, and it didn’t hold back — so it feels really nice to finally be back on Medium with a new piece. Thank you so much for reading it!
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