Historical Reflections: The Medical Heritage Center Blog

Voices in Humanism

after the foxes see us
Tala Nashawati
Senior Medical Student
Past Editor, Ether Arts
OSU College of Medicine

“Do you believe in reincarnation?” I ask. I’m trying to be romantic.
“No.”
She sees the bluntness in her voice. We laugh about it.
“My aunt believes in reincarnation, though,” she says.
But I’m already falling asleep again.

The neighbors must have been sick of seeing us on the balcony, feet on the rails and skin bronzing. We
always played the music a little too loud and sometimes I read to her. I couldn’t read quietly, wouldn’t risk it.
“It’s just a parking lot,” I said, “but still. So much happens.”
“A parking lot is a place of transit. Good people-watching.”
We stared down at the filling-up spaces, creating lives for the people opening and closing car doors.
“Imagine,” I began. I paused. Looked at her.
“I’m imagining.”
“A whole plaza. With little coffee shops and a fountain. And we’re old, sipping tea.”
“Or the ocean. And its ocean smell.”
We breathed it in. There was no ocean nearby, but we couldn’t imagine without going through the
motions.

I sat on the sofa by the window while she watered the plants in the kitchen. The coffee was brewing. I was no fun without coffee.
“The bonsai tree hasn’t been growing,” she said, bending to peer at its thin, angled branches.
“I don’t know the first thing about bonsai trees.”
“I’ve been watering it, though.”
“I can’t even keep a succulent alive.”
She laughed. The drip of the coffee into the mug echoed up toward the ceiling as she reached out toward
the bonsai. Her fingertips brushed a drooping leaf and its branch cracked, snapped, fell into the rocks and soil.
“It’s dead?” Her voice rose with the surprise of someone cruelly tricked. Expecting something beautiful
and easy and met with only the ugliest the world had to offer.
“Bonsais are hard to take care of. It’s okay,” I shrugged.
“How long has it been dead for?”
“Probably not long. You said you’ve been watering it.”
“Weeks? Months?” She straightened up and stared at the tree with her lips curling over themselves,
fingers gripping the bottom of her shirt. My gaze swept over to her from the window—I suppose I’d been taking the bonsai for granted. I hadn’t thought about watering it, or even considered that it might be dead. I really didn’t know the first thing about bonsais.
“God, just seeing it is making me sad,” she breathed.
“Well, I guess if it’s already dead…”
Shoulders slouched, heavy with this unexpected failure, she picked up the pot with both hands. Into the
open bin it fell—then came the heave of the trash crushed beneath it. I straightened up.
“Why the pot?” I asked. “You don’t have to throw away the pot. Just the tree.”
“I just wanted it in the trash.”
“You don’t have to throw away the pot, right?”
She opened the bin again and reached inside. The heaviness of the dead bonsai in its pot had dragged it
down through the junk. She had to sift through for a few moments before she lifted it back out. Thoroughly
broken, thoroughly dead. Her lips were puckered now. Her nose crinkled.
She placed the pot on the granite counter and set about trying to dig the bonsai corpse from the rocks
and soil. But it wouldn’t budge. There was nothing to dig through, as it turned out. I watched her face as she did it: crestfallen and lifeless, no point in betraying the sadness in something already dead.
“I don’t think I can separate the pot,” she said, having pulled and tugged. I turned back to the window.
“Fine. Throw the whole thing away, then.”
She tossed it back into the trash and brought me my coffee. I was no fun without coffee.

The roses are supposed to be out.
But when we go to the park, all we see are the buds. We stand at the side of the creek.
“I really thought the roses would be out,” she says, voice hitching.
I give my biggest smile. It makes her feel better, I know.
“We’ll just have to come back soon,” I say. “Can you skip a few more stones for me?”

For my birthday, she cooked me a dish that my grandmother always cooked for me, but wouldn’t be able
to this year. The sun blistered and withered us, but she cooked it anyway. In a tank top that showed her thick shoulder-strap tan lines, shorts, a headband to keep the thinner strands of hair from her face. We had to buy another pot because the one we had was too small. I moved from the counter to the balcony and back, sipped on white wine, used the nearest object as a karaoke microphone, while she stirred the rice and cooked the meat. The sweat shimmered on her temple. We were hot and happy. It was supposed to rain later, and when it did, we would put on sweaters that were too large and sit on the balcony to watch the storm unfurl.
The dish was perfect. We ate until we couldn’t move.
The rain started, so we went back out to the balcony.
“The thunder’s strong tonight,” she said. “Look at how the rain is moving across the parking lot.”
“Do you want to know what thunder really is?” I replied.
“What?”
“Giants in the sky going bowling.”
“Really?”
“Yup. The especially loud ones are strikes.”
Every time there was an earth-shaking rumble—
“Nice! A strike.”
Then we made up stories, because it was 4am but there were still lights on in the apartments around us.
“What’s she doing?” I asked. We could see the top of her head. Sitting at a desk, maybe.
“Studying.”
“For what?”
“Her master’s degree.”
“In what?” I pressed.
“Business.” She didn’t miss a beat.
“And what’s that guy doing?” I pointed to a window below, where we could see the darkened silhouette
of a male figure with a book. She thought for a moment, head tilted.
“He’s having some sort of political revelation,” she said, probably because he didn’t look at all like he was
having a political revelation.
“Exactly. He’s reading The Communist Manifesto.”
“Going through his leftist transformation,” she smiled.
“If it’s going to happen, might as well be now.”
“His mind is really being blown down there,” she continued. Confident, pursing her lips. I stared, hard, to
get the imprint of her profile into my mind. She met my eyes and her smile widened.
“I’m proud of him,” I announced.
“Me, too.”

The rain started slowly, was loud and demanding before we’d even realized it was there. Then the air was
dense with it—we’d left the windows open because it had been warm and sunny earlier, with clouds creeping in. Misty warning signs we ignored.
“Do you wanna go for a drive?” she asked.
I shook my head. We were sprawled on the floor while the television droned on, speaking only to itself. Her fingers drew maps against my shoulder.
“Let’s go for a walk,” she continued.
“It’s raining.”
“Just a drizzle.”
“More than a drizzle.” I stared pointedly at the window, shuddering with the heaps of water.
“We have umbrellas.”
“No.”
“Let’s go out onto the porch. There’s a roof. You won’t get wet.”
Pestering me—because I was pouting, because my eyes were watering, because my arms were crossed
like ten-ton armor over my chest.
“Can’t you just let me sit here?” I sighed.
“No.”
I put on a pair of sweatpants with elastic so worn they slid down my hips and trailed behind her to the
porch. On the other side, an old woman whose soles didn’t leave the ground when she walked lit a cigarette. Smoked it alone. The rain created a thousand halos in front of us. She reached out and forced my arms down, uncrossed.
“Not a drizzle,” I said, gesturing to the downpour.
“It was hard to tell from inside.”
What a liar she was. With that smile twisting her lips. I had the sudden urge to break down into body-shaking laughter, but my pride was sitting in the shape of a devil on my shoulder. I turned my face away to watch the halos dropping, crashing against the earth, beneath the soft light of a lamppost. I had to bite the insides of my cheeks, but even then, she noticed.
“We could dance out there.”
“You do that, and I won’t let you touch me,” I shot.
“Yes, yes, you win.”
“I forget sometimes. Rain smells so nice.”
I wouldn’t look at her when I said it.
We didn’t end up dancing in the rain, but we did sing a little bit.

It was sticky out, so we decided to read on the sofa inside, underneath the whirling ceiling fan. Legs
intertwined, limbs tired. I was trying to get the voices down, but there were so many characters. They must have been blending together. Every few moments I glanced up from the pages to see her neck bent over the sketchbook in her lap. I let her sketch without bothering her. Kept reading. Kept working on the voices.
After about fifteen minutes, I found myself cut off by sudden, aggressive scratches. She was running her
pencil harshly over whatever poor thing she had been sketching. I furrowed my brow.
“No good?” I asked.
“Not really,” she sighed.
“Who were you sketching?”
Which of the characters in the book, is what I meant to ask. Which particular image had inspired her the
most? But she glanced up at me and the corners of her lips trembled. Her chin was tucked to her neck.
“Aha,” I grinned.
“Was it obvious?” Her chin came up.
“No. That’s why I asked,” I laughed.
“Well, now you know.”
“I’m really that ugly?”
“I just couldn’t get it right at all,” she replied, simple, open.
“More practice, I guess,” I shrugged.
“Yeah, I guess,” she shrugged back. “I’ll have plenty of chances.”

Driving now.
We can’t stand another moment inside.
We’ve escaped.
There’s a new album we want to listen to with the bass-strong speakers of her car. The windows are
cracked, the seats vibrating.
We laugh at nothing, point out beautiful homes with beautiful front lawns.
We catch a pair of foxes running through their gardens—
We stop, gasp. They see us in return, with their eyes flashing.
“Do you believe in reincarnation now?” I ask.
“Maybe,” she replies.
Our voices are hushed.
They run off, and we keep driving.