Full Circle
By Heidi Heimler
She tears the plastic womb that holds me and my siblings, releasing us from our cramped confines. I tumble out into the world and she lifts me with eager fingers, yanks off my cap, and begins to write. My virgin ink doesn’t flow right away, and she grumbles, presses hard. Finally, the ink comes. Tennis Thursday, she writes, Colonics Friday.
No sooner does she put me down, her teenaged daughter snatches me and tosses me into her satchel. I join a pencil that is missing his eraser, a marker lying in a pool of pink, and another pen, his head gnawed beyond recognition.
In school, the girl places me, along with a well-worn notebook, on her desk. Penis, she writes at the top of the page. Then again, Penis Penis Penis. She decorates the page with the word. Then she illustrates: big ones, small ones, hastily sketched or painstakingly detailed. Meanwhile, a stern-faced teacher drones on about integers, but the girl doesn’t notice. She continues to draw, even as the woman nears, then stands above her.
An angry hand grabs me, along with the well-decorated notebook, from the startled girl’s hand. I spend the rest of the afternoon on the teacher’s cluttered desk. Though I’m forced to vie for space with books, papers and chalk, I’m grateful for the respite. Drawing all those penises, after all, is tiring.
At the end of the day, the teacher ushers the papers on her desk into an oversized woven handbag. Like so much flotsam, I’m swept along. She tosses the bag over her shoulder and rushes out of the room. Through the holes in the weave I spot lockers, water fountains, and the odd janitor. When she reaches her car, she kicks off her flats, trading them for a pair of stilettos. She unbuttons her blouse, pushes up her breasts, shakes her hair loose from its oppressive bun and removes her eyeglasses. She paints her lips crimson and smiles at herself in the rearview mirror.
She drives for a while, then parks beneath a streetlamp, grabs her handbag and steps into a cavernous bar. With surprising ease given the height of her heels, she slinks through the crowd. The music is deafening and cigarette smoke insinuates itself into every crevice, but she’s oblivious. She places her bag on the bar and settles onto a stool.
“Scotch,” she says. “Neat. With a twist.” The bartender plunks a glass before her. Her fingers dig through the bag, linger on me momentarily then move on to a frayed, faux-leather wallet. She hands the bartender a few bills. “Another,” she says.
Her third scotch is courtesy of a balding, portly man in an expensive-looking suit. She tosses the brown liquid back as if it were a McNugget. He comes toward her, doesn’t stop until his face is an inch from hers. Beads of sweat dot his lined forehead. His ample belly presses against her knee.
He doesn’t smile. “What’s your name?” he asks.
“Rhonda.” She runs a badly manicured finger along the edge of the empty glass.
“How much for a bareback?”
She keeps her gaze on the glass. “Fifty.”
He guides her away from the bar, to a small room in the back with a tattered couch and a flickering lamp. She tosses her bag, her blouse and her bra on the floor. I’m grateful when his pants land on top of the mound she’s created, obscuring my vision. If only I were spared the sounds, too: her gagging, his groaning, her swallows, his sighs.
“I like you, Rhonda,” he says as he buckles his pants. “You got a number?”
She fishes me out of her purse and scribbles on a scrap of paper she tears from a student’s homework. When she hands him the number, he takes me as well, pocketing us both. She doesn’t object, maybe she doesn’t even notice. He turns and walks out of the room, leaving her there with her ungraded papers.
After throwing back one more, he tips the bartender, then heads out to his car. We glide along through moonlit streets in his luxurious ride and I drift off to the sounds of soft jazz. Before I know it, he’s pulling into a garage and padding through a darkened kitchen. Mustn’t wake the family, I suppose. He digs into his jacket, retrieves the scrap of paper and tucks it into his attaché. Me he tosses on the counter. And there, not two feet away from me, is the package from whence I emerged earlier in the day.
The next morning, while the coffee is brewing, the wife grabs me. Lunch with Suzy Monday, she writes, Botox Tuesday.
BIO: Heidi Heimler is a psychologist with an alter ego that’s fond of putting pen to paper. Her work has appeared in both online and print publications, including Liquid Imagination, Postcard Shorts, The Short Humour Site, Verdad magazine and Mississippi Crow, and upcoming in Primalzine and Yellow Mama.