Irretrievably Broken

You saw her on your way home. She was standing beside a roasted sweet potato cart, watching you. You thought you were seeing things.

She was dead. Yesterday, you pushed her into the ravine. She curled up at the bottom and stopped moving. You waited. She never got back up. Then you drove away.

And now she was here.

The cut near her eye had crusted over black, like a centipede clinging to her skin. A small piece of her lower lip was missing, exposing her teeth. You recognized those injuries. The corner of the wall. The lip was older, just after Chinese New Year. You’d been drinking, and she insisted on bringing up divorce again. The cut by her eye, you didn’t remember. There had been too many. The collar of her shirt hung loose over her collarbone, stretched out where you had grabbed it. Dark blue cotton. One sleeve was stained dark and stiff with something dried, blood or mud. She still had a shoe on her left foot. On the right, only a sock covered in pills, stained brown with dirt. Her hair was a bird’s nest. Leaves and tiny twigs were tangled in it. Mud too.

Then she started toward you.

Something was wrong with her gait. Her right leg seemed shorter than the left, or maybe her pelvis had shifted. Every step made her tilt to one side. You remembered the slope at the bottom of the ravine, all those rocks. She had landed on her right side first.

You took a step back.

She stopped in front of you, a head shorter. She tilted her face up to look at you. Her eyes were wrong. No hatred. No fear. No emotion at all. They looked like stagnant water. Then she wrapped her arms around you.

You smelled dirt, blood and roasted sweet potatoes, like the abandoned well you fell into as a child. Her hands locked behind your back, fingers interlaced like a clasp snapping shut.

You pushed her. She didn’t move. You shoved harder, but she stayed where she was. You grabbed her arms, trying to pry them loose. Her arms were thin enough to snap, but your fingers could not force them apart. You jerked backward and slammed into the pedestrian behind you. The man glanced at you.

“Watch it,” he said, and kept walking.

“Help—” you tried to shout.

But something pressed your voice down. Not her hand. She wasn’t covering your mouth. It was stranger than that. The certainty that shouting wouldn’t matter anyway. Your voice swallowed itself before it could escape.

“You two must really love each other,” the vendor said. He turned a sweet potato over and smiled.

You opened your mouth. You wanted to say: That’s not it. She’s the one trying to get divorced. Twice already.

“Help me—” you tried again.

A woman walking past with a child shot you a dirty look. “Keep it appropriate in public,” she snapped before pulling the child along.

You looked down at your own hands. From the outside, you were the one holding your wife.

You were the one refusing to let go. No one would believe you.

You lurched backward, dragging her forward two steps. Her whole body hung from yours, feet almost off the ground, like a coat on a hanger. Then your legs stopped. They refused to move farther.

“Help,” you said.

This time your voice sounded normal. So normal it frightened you.

A security guard stepped out from the bank and looked over.

“Sir,” you called, “help me.”

“You’re a man,” the guard said. “What are you scared of?”

You froze.

The guard came closer. Then he saw her face. You were sure he saw it.

“Couple’s fight?” He kept his hands in his pockets, shifting his weight. “Hard for us to get involved. Why don’t you call the police?”

Then a patrol car rolled up.

Not because you had called. It was just passing by. The window rolled down.

“What’s going on?” the officer asked.

“I’m trapped,” you said. You knew how stupid it sounded, but you couldn’t think of a better word.

The officer looked at you, then at her.

“What’s your relationship?”

You didn’t know what she was to you anymore. Her third divorce filing still hadn’t gone to court. She was still your wife.

“His wife,” the security guard answered for you.

A familiar expression crossed the officer’s face.

“Just ask her to let go,” the officer said. “You’re married, aren’t you? Talk it out yourselves. We can’t really get involved in this kind of thing.”

Then the patrol car drove away.

The sky darkened. The streetlights flickered on. The vendor packed up his cart. Fewer pedestrians passed by now, one or two at a time, giving you a wide berth. No one stopped. No one spoke to you anymore.

You were still standing there, nailed to the sidewalk. You slowed your breathing. You thought maybe if she got tired, eventually she would let go. You could stand here for one night. One day. You could stand here until her third hearing. Then you felt her fingers move against your lower back. Not loosening. Tightening.

You remembered the phrase the judge had used. The relationship has not irretrievably broken down.

Broken down. You used to think that phrase described an action. Now it felt more like an adjective. You were trapped inside it. Just like this.

You knew you could not push her away. Because you had tried. You already had.

You didn’t know how long you would stand here. You only knew tomorrow was Saturday. You didn’t have work. The day after that, either. And the day after that, her third divorce hearing might finally begin.

If you were still standing here by then, she would probably hold onto you all the way into the courtroom. What would the judge say?

“The relationship has not irretrievably broken down,” you whispered for him. So soft only you could hear it. Maybe she heard it too. Because she held you a little tighter.