When Escaping Ends

          My knees are beginning to ache. The sleepy joints pinch as I shift beneath my sky starred with chewing gum planets and constellations. My feet always manage to fall asleep during the longer morning class, buzzing and humming little tunes into my shins. Although it is never the most comfortable hour and ten minutes, it gives me an adequate chunk of time in which to work. Something the teacher is saying catches my brief attention, “Polysaccharides are complex sugars. Linked together monosaccharides. For example something…”. What piques my interest is the image of the monosaccharides linked together holding hands, like children younger than myself. We used to hold hands like that at school, walking from place to place. We are too old for that now. No one holds my hand. I return to my work.

           I am digging. The laminated tile beneath my wooden desk is soft, like an Oreo left to soak too long. When I get deeper down I know I will encounter something closer to Play-Dough, then gravel imbedded so securely that it’s like digging through an infinitely deep Crunch bar. For now, the earth beneath my desk remains supple; my hands will do. 

          As I am scooping away hands full of bread pudding earth, I get that familiar breathless feeling right behind my nose. It takes a moment to build, then I sneeze. My left foot shifts a little from under the cover of my desk and bumps the backpack of the person to my right. I retract my foot with a small apology, and the backpack is retracted in return with no acknowledgement. 

          My allergies always get so much worse in the spring. My nose is beginning to drip a bit now. Like the faucet when I don’t quite turn the nob all the way clockwise. At first all seems in order, but when you have the patience to look for just a few seconds longer: drip. The teacher has a box of tissues on her desk at the front of the room. I don’t get up. I never get up.

* * *

Lunch is always my most productive time during the day. There is a rickety wooden stage in the schoolyard. No one ever performs there. My place is in the small gap behind the latticed plywood fencing of the platform. Here there is more quiet and just enough space for my legs to stretch out in front of me as I work. I am pressed against the back of the stage and reach forward, pulling away at the growing chasm of earth wedged between the boards of the fence. Digging. The mound of earth at my feet grows, the damp cooling my ankles. When I look up I can see the top of the oak tree on the other side of the fence. I should be able to see the base of the tree through the hole I have dug in the redwood panelling before me, but the cavity just continues indefinitely in shades of dark and clay. I do not give much thought to this.

* * *

The kind glow of the dining room provides a stark contrast to the depth and dark of my continuing excavation. I can see the feet of my family members from my position under the dining room table; shuffling, knees crossing, uncrossing, bouncing, settling again. The whole house has filled with the vaporous odor of cooked meat and vinegar. I am more concerned with the task before me than the need to eat. I have all of eternity to eat, and only so long to escape. I hear a not so subtle noise of indignation and request for attention from outside of my wooden hovel. “The potatoes. I believe I asked for the potatoes.” My mother. 

          I groan, using a grip on the table to drag myself into my empty chair. “Yes. Fine. Here are your potatoes.” I pass a well manicured hand the glass dish and slide back to my crypt, careful to avoid cranial collision with the edge. I’d made that mistake hundreds of times before I learned. 

I stare for a moment, transfixed by where the maroon geometry of the rug meets the rough edges of my ever deepening crater. I have reached farther than I usually am able to at this point in the day. My metal spoon meant to be transporting mashed potatoes to my mouth is now necessary for my digging. They are laughing at something in that world up above me. I return to my work. 

* * *

My coarse creation seems so foreign nested in the soft embrace of a downy comforter. The low light of my bedside lamp throws the image into even further contrast. The hole is so deep now that the dim light cannot touch the bottom of it, and I curve my back and lean precariously to reach where I must work.    

          My digging has quickened its pace, and my heart is racing with my hands, now that I can feel I am nearing the end, nearing my escape. Then comes the sound of relief and finality. The screaming of metal against glass. I hurriedly scrape away the remaining dirt from the smooth surface. 

          I am no longer faced with the bottom of a pit, but with myself. In that surface I can finally see the wide, observing, tired eyes. I can see the lips prepared to laugh at a moment’s notice, the rebellious hair, the questioning brow. I see the tumbling heart, the inundated mind. The earth will soon swallow this clarity, as it has always done. 

          I hear laughter from the other room.

          Perhaps I should go join them.

          Or perhaps I should close my eyes.