Shepard
I wrote this short story as an assignment for my seminar class. We were tasked with employing a frame narrative in our story, similar to the one used in James Baldwins Giovanni’s Room which we had read earlier that week. The story could be about anyone or anything as long as it experimented with the frame narrative.
I like lying in the lion's den when it rains because the sound of the rain falling outside makes me forget what I was ever so afraid of.
Shepa’s room is warm and humid, and I think about her when my room is cool and my windows are open. We had our first of many fights here. Today, right now, I’m wrapped up in her sheets surrounded by a sea of clothes, shoes, and trinkets of her life, thinking about the last time.
It started because I wanted burgers for lunch, and Shepa doesn’t like burgers. She says it’s inconsiderate when I ask to do things the both of us don’t like and only I like, she says I should be more aware of those things and I shouldn’t allow my feelings to get ahead of hers. Funnily enough, we met in a burger shop and to this day she won’t tell me why she was even there.
Six or something months ago, I was sitting in a booth eating my lunch alone at the burger shop only a few blocks walk from here. That was something I did pretty often back then, I wasn’t afraid to be by myself. If I wanted to go to a restaurant, I went. If I wanted to go dancing, I just went. I did things because I wanted to. I don’t really do that anymore.
She walked past my booth and I remember the smell of her perfume as she hurried past. Once she made it a few steps past something fell out of her pocket and onto the ground. It rolled a bit and then stopped, it didn’t get close enough for me to see what it was. I shouted “Excuse me '' twice before she could hear, there was music playing in her earphones and my mouth was full of ground beef and ketchup.
“You dropped something,” I said to her, looking her in the eyes and then back down to her fallen item. The first time I looked into her eyes it wasn’t awkward at all. I wasn’t awe-struck with true love, in fact, I didn’t think I’d ever speak to her again after this moment. I spoke to her like a stranger who would forever remain just a stranger to me, and in some ways she has.
“Oh, thanks.” She said, picking the item up slowly and putting it in her pocket. I think it was a cigarette. I hate cigarettes.
She then took it upon herself to sit opposite me in my booth. I didn’t ask her to, I didn’t make googly eyes or smile at her. I didn’t really want her to sit but she did anyway, and I let her.
She asked my name. I told her. I asked what hers was. She told me. We then sat there staring at each other quietly, with an odd comfortability. Actually, it was less staring and more Shepa watching me eat, and me catching her eye every once in a while. After a few minutes of this I asked her why she sat down and she said,
“You caught my eye…I like you.”
“Why?” I asked, naturally.
“I don’t know. I think I’d like to get to know you.” She said,
“Well, how come you didn’t ask me that, you know, when you sat down,” I said, earnestly.
“I’m not sure.” She responded.
We sat like that, in silence for a bit. As I finished my meal and got up to throw my food away she followed me to the garbage, and then out the door. It wasn’t until we were on the streets, surrounded by crowds of pale people, ruby red double-decker buses, and cigarette smoke for miles that she spoke. She didn’t necessarily pour her heart out to me though, she told me things that were important to her, yet peculiar. That night we spent pacing up and down the London streets, she told me her mother's middle name (Eliza), the address of her childhood home (83 High Street), her brother's military deployment date (the Fifth of May), and why her uncle and her father don’t speak anymore. I didn’t learn very much about her, but I learned about all of the things that made her, her.
She told me I was inconsiderate for saying we should have burgers for lunch, as she lit up a cigarette. I replied “Sometimes, you have to make compromises. Especially when they make other people happy.” She then said, “There are just some things you can’t compromise on, and burgers are one of those things for me.” She blew her cigarette smoke into the middle of the room.
Her bed was unmade as it usually is and god knows how long it had been since she changed those sheets. As much as I love her, or enjoy her, I’m glad we never lived together because she is absolutely filthy. For the first month we were together I had no clue whether her room was hardwood or carpet, there were so many clothes on her floor. She leaves food out on her nightstand for days and scatters half-smoked cigarettes and wrappers of all kinds all over the place. It’s a bit of a nightmare, and that alone should’ve told me to run as far away as I could get.
“Well then, If you don’t want burgers then what do you want?” I asked, I stood on top of a red jumper and a pair of blue jeans.
“I honestly don’t really care. Just not burgers,” She responded. She was so annoying.
“Honestly Shepa, you could eat shit for lunch right now. And I really wouldn’t even care,” was my response.
One time, a few months before this, I told her I felt suffocated by her. It was after a long night out with her friends who I couldn’t stand, but I tolerated them anyway. We were both still drunk, and I was laughing uncontrollably for an inexplicable reason. I think I was nervous, or ashamed. So I laughed, and she giggled too, “What makes you say that?”
“I miss who I was before you,” I said with the biggest smile on my face, not a happy one though, a sort of uncanny unnerving one. The kind of smiles you see on the edge. I was laying on top of at least three weeks' worth of laundry and it was starting to hurt my back. She laid down only a few feet away and faced me with a lost, childlike look in her eyes, “I used to do things. I used to go places. Now all I do is sit in this room with you, or sit in other rooms with you. I miss sitting with myself.”
“Are you saying we should go out more?” She asked.
“I’m saying I should get away from you… but I guess we could go out more.” I chuckled, which then erupted into another fit of unnatural laughter.
“How about I take you to lunch next week, we’ll go wherever you want,” she smiled a radiant smile, “We’ll eat whatever you want to eat.”
“Ok,” I said after I had finally calmed down and stopped giggling. “Let’s do that.” A blank look grew on my face and absolutely nothing sat behind my eyes. It would be three months until she finally found the initiative to take me to lunch, and of course, it turned into a fight.
“Do you really mean that?” She said after me. She looked at me as if I’d never spoken to her before.
Usually when we argued it was initiated by her, and it went something like this: she said something crazy like “you’re so selfish” or “you don’t care about me” over something really small and minuscule like me not wanting to go out with her friends for the third time this week or not wanting to drop her off three hours away to do god knows what. I’d try to defend myself, but she was so sure, she really believed the things she said to me, and after a while I’d start to cry, not out of sadness but defeat and anger. I would cry and cry like a baby until I was so embarrassed I would leave. I would be gone for a few days, she’d call me and apologize and I’d be back in this room by that same night. It was like clockwork, we did it every two weeks and at this point, we had been pushing almost three weeks with no fight. Things started to get tense, she started slighting me over nonsense, and I stopped answering her text messages. I was waiting, praying for her to say something to me so I could cry and wail and leave, why else would I request burgers for our lunch? If we fought I’d have no personal responsibility to come back. I would be free for three whole days until she needed me again. I could be alone.
Tears began to well up in her eyes, and all I could think of was whether or not I had seen her cry before. Not that phony little “first I love you” cry, when you're overwhelmed, and one moment you're ok and the next your face is wet and you don’t understand how you’ve gotten there. A real cry, a conscious cry. A cry that takes a lot of thought and purpose, one that you remember and cringe at for weeks and weeks after.
She began to blubber, her bottom lip shook violently and her eyes went bloodshot. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why she was crying, I thought what I said was funny. It was a joke, a jab. She’s said much worse for much less, and I thought she was being ridiculous for crying right now. Not all the other times we fought, after all the vile things she said. But now, when I told her she could eat shit and I meant it. She looked in my direction but not at me, she was afraid to make eye contact. She said something but I don’t remember what. It was probably her attempt at sticking to our original script, but she failed.
I was exactly sure why I said what I said, there was no shadow of doubt in my statement. What had been missing from our arguments was a purpose, neither of us knew why we fought with each other. We didn’t really understand why we were together, let alone why we weren’t apart.
She stood there shaking like a wet dog and I looked back at her with empty hands. She could tell this was the case but her eyes still grasped onto me, pulling me, begging me to speak. To apologize. To fix it.
I left. I wasn’t sure what else to do. I picked up my things and I walked home alone in the dark. I walked at an average pace for a few blocks, I didn’t stomp with anger or speed walk out of fear, I just walked. Until I stopped cold in my tracks. I forgot something, I patted my body down and pulled every receipt, stray coin, and train ticket out of my pockets. I had my keys, my phone, and my wallet, and I didn’t bring anything else with me. But something was missing, and I knew that for sure. I left something behind, but now in retrospect, I’m not sure if it was there before.
Two weeks later I had the day off of work which was rare for me, so I decided to have a walk after breakfast. I thought the sunshine on my skin would have some sort of healing effect, I thought I’d turn my face to the warmth of the rays and smile with real joy. But somehow, what was meant to be a morning stroll turned into an afternoon walk, then an evening trek, and finally a night run. I wasn’t troubled, or determined to go anywhere, and I wasn’t lost looking for something either. I was just wandering because I wanted to, or so I told myself. I ended up right in the center of the city where Shepa and I spent our first night together. In that sea of faces, names, and identities, I felt nothing but stone cold fear. In a sea of signs and signals, of hundreds of people with lives and jobs and purposes, I was alone. I was lonely. I can’t remember the last time I felt that. Before Shepa “lonely” was something completely unfamiliar to me. But now, in this strangely familiar place I was afraid that if I closed my eyes too long, I’d open them and everyone would disappear. I’d be in the same city, the same buildings, the same paved roads but no one would be there but me.
I tried to fight it, I walked all day in the rain, I went into shops I couldn’t afford just to look at shiny things. I sat in the burger shop alone and bought myself a meal, but I could barely eat one bite. By 8 pm I was knocking at her door, rain beating on my head as I waited for her to answer. She opened it and let me in without saying a word. I took off my coat and laid down on her bed in silence, my face dripping with water onto her fitted sheet. She laid herself down right behind me, filling the space between myself and the world. As I lay here now something, inside and outside me is gnawing at me. It’s pulling, begging me to go, to do, to see. And I’m choosing to ignore it. Because the sticky comfortability of her hot and humid room is better than what could be If we came apart.
