The Death of Small Creatures (36 page)

I am thirty years old, sitting on the sofa in my and Leigh's little apartment on Cadboro Bay Road, across from the high school with its bells ringing all day, with the rush of buses only feet outside our living room window. I am sitting on Leigh's fancy sofa from his old life, surrounded by other remnants of his life, boxes piled around me, beautiful leather and wood dining room chairs, paintings stacked against one wall. I am sipping a dry martini, getting drunk, listening to Enya, not sure I want to be here, not sure I am in love with this man. Soon I will have a series of panic attacks, waking up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, staggering into the bathroom where I will cut myself with a razor blade, not badly—it will barely scar.

I am thirty-three years old, standing before Leigh in a white gazebo overlooking the Caribbean, waves crashing upon the rocks. It's blazing hot. Rose petals flutter in the breeze. White tulle billows around me. My shoulders are bare, burning in the sun. My torso is tightly contained inside a white strapless wedding dress. I can hardly breathe. A sailboat with a bright spinnaker sails past in the distance. The bartender down the beach mixes mojitos in a blender. I hear the spinning of the blender, the crushing of ice. I smell mint—it is either real or imaginary mint—and rum, a memory of all the concoctions I have drunk here on my honeymoon in Cuba. Leigh is speaking to me. His mouth is moving. No sound is coming out. My mouth is moving too. No sound is coming out. We are moving our mouths silently before each other as the ocean sprays a fine mist upon us. I am not in love.

I am thirty-five years old, sitting on my bed in 408A, Eric Martin Pavilion, Victoria, BC. I am wearing blue scrubs, sedated and bleary-eyed, my wrists grazed lightly, blood dried along the cuts. I am stunned: I have left my husband, my husband has left me in here, my marriage is over, I have no belongings, just the clothes on my back, I have no money and bills mounting. Soon I will declare bankruptcy and venture into even greater depths of self-deprecation, crystal meth and crack cocaine, hallucinations, aliens in the clouds, God in the clouds and later still, cuts almost through to the bone, another hospitalization, three solid years of desperate love for Dr. P, three solid years of anguish and love and pain.

And now Richard:

I am laying on my bed in my Moss Street suite with its fireplace and hardwood floors, its ornate wooden walls and alcove ceilings. I am wearing pink pyjama bottoms and a short white cotton nightgown. Richard is cooking rice and salmon in my wasabi-green kitchen. It's night, summertime, warm. A warm breeze drifts through the suite. Marcello lays sleeping on the couch in the living room. The TV glows in the distance, the volume on mute. The room is filling with steam. The room smells of basmati rice. The salmon will be pink and tender and perfectly cooked in a pan in the oven, glazed with hot butter and olive oil. We are listening to Bon Iver, “Stacks.”

There's a black crow sitting across from me and his wiry legs are crossed And he's dangling my keys, he even fakes a toss…

…This is not the sound of a new man or a crispy realization

It's the sound of the unlocking and the lift away

Your love will be safe with me

Your love will be safe with me.
Richard comes around the corner, sees me lying there on my side. He stops in the doorway, smiles, says he loves me and that I'm beautiful, that he wants to marry me.

Suddenly, my life is full of possibility.

Not so suddenly, I know myself, perhaps for the first time in my life, because I hung on and persevered.

I want to finish writing my book. I am writing poetry again. I am submitting essays and poetry to literary magazines.

I am happy.

I am in love.

I am these things and have come to this place with the help of doctors, family and a few close friends. I am here because of Marcello and Caravaggio, because they loved me and I love them. I am here because I remembered who I am, because, in the end, I have always been right here.

I want pure, simple, opulent love, something derived from deep inside me, not something tangible that can be plucked from the air or from the arms of a man. I feel it blossoming within, deep blue, then purple, violet, rose, and deepening again, pulsing, sunset, crimson, gold.

Epilogue

September 8, 2012

Chrysalis: Latin, chrysalis.
Also known as
aurelia
or
nympha
. The pupal stage of butterflies.

I am standing at the lookout at the top of a long winding path that leads to the Pacific Ocean, Juan de Fuca Trail, Vancouver Island, British Columbia.

China Beach glitters in the distance, through the tall trees.

The path is rough and steep, has been made by bulldozing old-growth trees that once led from the shore to the top of hill, to here. Then they levelled the way at intervals, creating steps, laden with wood or hardened earth for your foothold. So you step alternately on earth and wood to make your way from the top to the bottom of the path, or from the bottom of the path to the top upon your steady and calculated return.

There is a metallic-gold coloration found in the pupae of many butterflies:

When the caterpillar is fully grown, it makes a button of silk which it uses to fasten itself to a leaf or twig. Then the caterpillar's skin comes off for the final time. Under this old skin is a hard skin called a chrysalis.

Through a clearing in the trees, where the eagles soar, I see the ocean, dazzling and green, glittering before me from east to west, from the invisible northern shore to the southern shore where the tide sucks at the pebbles, sloshing in and out of the tide pool.

The date is September 8, 2012.

I have long since known that if I die, when I die, I want my body burned and my ashes spread over the ocean here. This is where I have experienced my greatest joy since moving to Vancouver Island when I was eighteen.

This is where I belong. I no longer want to die. I want to live. I want to live again and again. I do not want to live once and that be it. I want it to never end, this living.

The depression has lifted.

I have fifteen scars on my left and right wrists. I have four raised red scars on the soft right side of my belly. I have a cross burned into my chest above my left breast and a small raised burn mark above my belly button, above the butterfly tattoo.

Some butterfly pupae are capable of moving the abdominal segments to produce sounds or to scare away potential predators. Within chrysalis, growth and differentiation occur. The adult butterfly emerges (ecloses) from this and expands its wings.

My heart is full.

I am in love with two men at the same time. The first man I cannot have but will love forever. He saved my life. He brought me from despair to where I am now, to salvation. The second man I have with me now, and we will build a life together, we will travel together.

I have saved myself.

I have saved myself with the help of those around me: Dr. P; my psychologist Fiona, whom I will never forget; my GP, Dr. W; family and friends. I woke up hungover for the last time. I pulled myself from the delirium of over-the-counter cough remedies for the last time. I gave them up for the last time.

And now I'm returning to you.

Although the sudden and rapid change from pupa to imago is often called metamorphosis, metamorphosis is really the whole series of changes from egg to adult. On emerging, the butterfly uses a liquid which softens the shell of the chrysalis. It also uses its two sharp claws at the base of the forewings to help make its way out.

I am lying on the beach. Large, round, smooth, hot stones under my back and legs. My legs and shoulders are bare and feel the heat of the stones. I have lifted up my pink tank top to expose my belly, my butterfly tattoo, the small raised burn mark above it. I place small hot round stones, each one smooth, upon my scars. I breathe and the stones rise and fall. I leave them there. I place stones on my upturned left wrist where most of my long vertical scars reside. I lie there with stones on my belly and wrist, let the heat of the stones penetrate and cover my wounds, absorb the pain of the past.

Having emerged from the chrysalis, the butterfly will usually sit on the empty shell in order to expand and harden its wings.

Photo: George Ellenbogen

About the Author

Trisha Cull is
a graduate of the University of British Columbia's MFA Creative Writing program. Her work has been published in
Room of One's Own
,
Descant
,
subTerrain
,
Geist
,
The New Quarterly
,
The Dalhousie Review
and
PRISM
. She was the winner of
Lichen
's “Tracking a Serial Poet” contest in 2006,
PRISM
's Communications Award for Literary Non-fiction in 2007, and was also the winner of
Prairie Fire
's 2007 Bliss Carman Poetry Award. Cull lives in Victoria, BC.