Where I’m Supposed to Be by Mehr-Afarin Kohan

When I open the fridge, a buzzing white light cuts through the darkness in the house. I stare at the items on the shelves, unable to land on anything. Darkness falls again when I close the door. I sit on the kitchen stool. 

Our neighbor across the street pulls into his driveway. Moments later, his windows light up. I follow the shadows behind his curtains, reminded of the time when three in the morning had other meanings. Now I’m hazy, waiting to wake up from a dream that’s been dragging behind me for months. My eyes warm up but I can’t move to reach the bed.

Now three in the morning is a time set in a series of checkpoints. It’s three hours after twelve and three hours before six. It’s the most quiet checkpoint, in the dead of the night. I’m usually the only ghost behind the windows on our street. It’s the time that I’m not sure if I’m asleep or awake, dreaming or lucid. 

It’s at this hour that I sometimes find myself creeping back to the second bedroom, pressing down the handle so gently and opening the door just enough to peek inside. The noise machine fills the dimly lit room. My pupils follow the shadows on the ceiling— rabbits, carrots, and clouds, circling round.

I see myself standing over the crib. The eyelashes force themselves out of the closed eyelids. The mouth holds the shape of the pacifier, now on the mattress. The tiny fingers hold on tightly to a white rabbit with protruding ears. At such an hour of the night, I can’t believe that I ever created this. Me, the crooked pathetic grasshopper always searching for crumbs with her long limbs. I stand over her, questioning if I deserve her, until the light in the kitchen calls me back to the barstool and the peanut butter toast on the counter.

It’s the same peanut butter and toast I made for myself at twelve. I don’t touch it. Time passes. I don’t know how long but enough that my back begins to ache. I’m standing beside myself now. I watch myself, stooped on the barstool, forehead almost touching the plate. Hair in a messy bun. Under chin folds, saggy abdomen showing from my t-shirt, a wrist brace still on my right hand—pregnancy arthritis—elephant feet from all the swelling… the swaddle still hangs from one shoulder, two circular stains on the front of my shirt. 

I step back from myself. I remove all the clothes and cover my body with a long raincoat. I tie the belt around my waist. I wear rain boots. I walk out, clicking the door gently behind me. The second door that I’ve closed behind me tonight. I pace down the dark street. The fall breeze enters through the crack in my coat, touching the sore nipples. 

David can take care of her, I say to myself. David who always has two feet on the ground with limbs the right proportions, with tucked-in chin and belly, with firm man-breasts and pink nipples. He swaddles much neater than I do. He coos and boos at the buttons. He holds the crying bundle without losing patience. As for me, I’m a dark shadow dissolving at the end of the street. 

I hear my footsteps on the concrete. It ticks the seconds. I lose track of how many minutes. I float in a memory of myself from ten years ago. I’m in Paris, drunk and lost on a complicated metro platform in the middle of the night. I’m wearing a black raincoat and red high heel shoes. There’s an enormous clock on the wall that shows two o’clock. I note the location and time as I step down the long staircase. 

I swirl through dark smelly corridors, feeling cold but not afraid. I turn right and left, up another set of stairs until I see the enormous clock once again. Handles now show twenty after two. I burst out laughing. I must be in a Dali painting. A dada short film. A short story that I want to be writing. It’s exactly where I’m supposed to be. 

I find myself in front of the subway station closest to our house. An overground station, lit by streetlamps. The ticket kiosk is empty. I hop over the bar and head towards the platform. The train tracks are down below. Hard rustic iron. Parallel lines repeated at equal intervals to eternal darkness. I stand with my back and one foot against the cold wall.

I inhale the smell of the platform. It brings back memories of transient things, of heavy backpacks, of books. I waver in and out of memories, losing track of time, until a white hue spreads against the wall, slides down onto the platform and pours into the tracks, illuminating them one after the other all the way to the horizon. I can tell six o’clock is approaching and passing as gates open and people begin to fill the platform. Pale faces, staring in one direction, wait for the train. Briefcases, coffee cups, newspapers, books…

I’m dripping milk under my coat. Suddenly aware of myself, I have an urge to hide. I’m searching my pockets for coins. Unable to find any, I run towards the exit. Some heads turn and follow me.

I’m pushing through the revolving door. I race home. Trees and houses pass by me as I run. I recall a morning train ride back to Paris from Chars, where a transient lover lived. I was alone on the train, reading. Outside my window small villages with stonewalled houses, smoking chimneys, green fields passed. In the middle of a meadow, close to the tracks, my eyes caught sight of a mare with her foal, standing so close to one another and so still that one blended into the other and there was nothing, I realized, with envy in that moment, that nothing could ever rip them apart. 

Mehr-Afarin Kohan is a Toronto-based writer, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. Her fiction appears in The Missouri Review, The Citron Review, and The Antigonish Review amongst others. She was awarded Best Small Fictions 2021. She lives with her husband and three-year-old daughter. You can find her at mehrafarinkohan.com.

4 February 2o22