This experimental CNF piece is the first of my published nonfiction work. Oddly enough, I wrote the original before I knew what genre it fell into. Enjoy!

**It was published in issue 64 of filling Station in autumn of 2016.

The Gods, Looking Down

1.

Although Travis Maxwell was not always good at expressing himself, he could, apparently, express my future. He knew, before the rest of us, I would be left breathless. I wonder if Trav knew he sometimes left me gasping for air with my heart aflutter? He seemed pretty oblivious.

One day, probably in our grade twelve year, my left lung must have spoken to him while he was sitting in the back, at the red Formica table. I wonder if my lung spoke through the steam of Travis’ hot chocolate or if the spongy grey-pink organ appeared across from him, perched on the edge of the red Formica bench. I do know that Travis sat at the table on his supper break, drinking hot chocolate. Fifteen minutes later, our paths crossed—our shoulders may even have brushed in the crossing—as he came to the front and I went to the back.

I sparked my lighter and took in a deep breath of smoky nicotine, closed my eyes and slid into the red Formica booth. My hand must have brushed against the note Trav had written. It was addressed to me. My heart skipped a beat. I felt breathless. I held my breath, letting the acrid smoke sit in my lungs a few moments longer than usual, exhaled and took in a breath of fresh air.

I was ready for his declaration of love.

2.

My mother had no idea I’d become an addict until I almost burned down my bedroom when I was on the cusp of sixteen. The firemen had found an empty pack of Du Maurier Kings on my bedside table. I swear I had actually quit at that point. She was shocked. Of course she bummed me a cigarette. We simultaneously sucked on her cancer sticks, both in shock with what had come to be. She finally chastised me, but it was already too late. The internal ripping had grown too loud and I’d been drowning far too long.

3.

I am no stranger to bronchial issues. Mom says at times the area around my lips would turn white. It must have been frightening for her. I remember being afraid of the sound of my cough. I don’t remember the pain that must have ripped through my childish chest, but I do remember the drowning sensation and my inability to breathe through the sound of the ripping. I remember the fear making strange strangling noises that gurgled up from my throat.

The gargling sounds of agony enraged my father. His punishment was the sting of a hundred little wasps repetitively pricking me. The fear made me cough, made the ripping sounds I feared. I was drowning. I was afraid of drowning. I was frightened of my father more than I was afraid of the refusal of my lungs to draw in oxygen.

4.

For years I hid my mother’s cigarettes or ripped them apart by the carton full. It was a game I had devised to prove just how much I loved her.

I decided to steal a pack from her stash in the deep freeze. I was in a bad place at the time. I was thirteen years old and my hormones must have been raging. I was drowning in a pool of rage. I would punish her by smoking her sacred cigarettes. In hindsight, I likely just wanted attention. I wanted her to tell me to stop. To stop the internal ripping I feared so much. I wanted her to see I was drowning in my misery.

5.

It’s been fifteen years since Convocation Day. Usually, I am over the whole ordeal, but today it smells like campfire.

The knife-stabbing-into-my-shoulder pain reminds me not to open the windows to cool down the house. Smoke cloaks most of Saskatchewan today. The fires are raging in the north. The flames are ripping through the forests, drowning them in flames. It’s all over the news and on Facebook.

The health advisories on the evening news say we are at high risk and not to go outside. Friends are worried I might be breathless. I am.

“There won’t be rain for days,” says the weatherman, “One hundred and twelve fires are ravaging the north.”

So many communities are losing everything. They are drowning in the smoke. I chastise myself for being so worried about getting to the weeds in my garden.

6.

But there was no love declared. It was a plea.

The note was scrawled in pencil, in Travis’ hand, but it was clearly written on behalf of my lung. I folded the note in half and tucked it into my pocket.

Was the ripping sound in my chest my heart breaking? Was it the final punctuation, delivered creatively by my left lung?

I was drowning in sorrow.

7.

My childhood friend’s husband has committed suicide. I am breathless, frozen mid-gasp. I have lost my ability to breathe. I have lost my ability to speak.

Her mother, Beth, has a vice grip hold around my shoulders as she tells me, rather desperately, almost harshly, “Just make her laugh with your stories, Rachel. That’s all you can do.”

I inhale. I’ve almost forgotten I used to be quite long-winded. I finally decide on the story of Kim One Lung. It will be like a life preserver on such a solemn occasion.

It’s good to tell a tale of misery to overcome drowning from sorrow.

8.

“Gather round, friends, mourners. I have a story of woe to tell. This is the story of Kim One Lung”, I begin.

Serious eyes I vaguely recognize probe deep into mine. There is a real look of concern in those orbs, so I play along. I try to be serious.

——————————————————————————————————————————-

Me: Did you take the whole thing, Doctor? (I feel like I am in a soap opera.)

Doc: Yes, I’m afraid we had to. We couldn’t save any of it. We tried to do the sleeve resection, as discussed, but the damage was too extensive… Would you like to see your family now?

Me: Yes…Yes, send them in, Doctor. (I’ve concocted a plan, but I don’t know what it is yet. It’s going to be a good one though! I am known for these spur-of-the-moment plans. I fake a dramatic swoon.)

9.

I often envision the gods looking down on me. They are usually chuckling and making ambrosial toasts. The clinking of their glasses is so delicate, a sound not unlike the flutter of butterfly wings against the windowpane.

I’m such a good sport. Sometimes I don’t even think I mind what they dish out.    At least I am never bored.

Maybe I’ve always wanted to be an entertainer.

10.

On the Six-Month Anniversary of the Lung, the gods looked down, searched for me, finally resting their tireless collective gaze over the mountains of Miryang, South Korea. They were ready to toy with me. I came home to a broken elevator.

What was I to do? I started trudging up the fourteen flights of stairs. I saw the humour in it. In fact, I sort of welcomed the challenge. I’d grown bored. It gave me a chance to prove, once again, my invincibility.

I made it, but just barely. I was crawling at the end, up the last few flights and weakly pounded at the front door, on all fours. I managed to croak one word: water.

As I drank from that glorious glass of crystal clear water, cool against my parched lips, I turned my face up to the heavens and smiled. If I’d had enough air I might have managed a short laugh as punchy punctuation: they’d have to try harder next time.

11.

At some point after midnight of January 1, 1997, I put down my beer and stump out my cigarette. I can’t stop the spinning in my head or fluttering wings in my chest.

The next day I hold my breath. There is a plus sign on the pregnancy test’s indicator, indicating pregnancy.

I break my own cigarettes. I rip them apart. There are no cartons. There is no deep freeze.

12.

Moments later. Enter my family, stage left.

Y.S.: How are you Toqui-ya? (My mom squeezes my hand. Yang Sop, my husband of the time, is on the other side. My brothers are at my feet. Where is my sister? She must be watching Jesse.)

Me: Gather round. (I cough…it’s actually hard to breath. There’s a phlegmy, wheezy rattle trying to drown me.)…I have something important to tell you.

Lynn (Please don’t tease him …it is common for Fransaskois boys to be named     Lynn.): Hey, Rachel, is there anything I can do for you?

Me: (Another internal moment of hilarity) Yes, I could use a foot massage.

(My brother hesitates before touching my feet. Again, I am dying inside. I can’t believe my brother is touching my feet!)

13.

I’ve tucked it all into two muddled drawers I hardly ever open anymore. The filing cabinet contains the remnants of my childhood.

I come across the infamous note, scrawled in Travis’ hand. The teacher in me is dazzled by the eloquence of his writing: he truly captured the spirit of my left lung. For a fluttery moment I remember the few times we kissed, how he left me breathless, how fleeting it was. But the words, spoken through the guise of my left lung, say just how much he really cared, deep down inside where his organs lay so tidily. He cared enough to use up his break communing with a raspy, tar-filled windbag that kept running out of air as it spoke.

I must say, Travis Maxwell had guts. No wonder he joined the army shortly thereafter.

14.

Mom: What is it?

Me: Well, I have a Korean name now.

All: Huh?

Me: Kim One-Lung. (I grin. This is hilarious!)

They all look at me, confused.

15.

My mother contends that these moments—when I drown so vividly, when I am breathless beyond all reason, when the sound of internal ripping obliterates all other sounds in the room—these moments stem from my time in utero.

She says I almost drowned inside of her.

You see, my father liked to drink whiskey. When he drank, he liked to use his lovely young wife as a punching bag. I guess I was weak. I couldn’t take the beatings like she could, so I fluttered about until I almost drowned.

At emergency, they threw me a life preserver. The bleeding stopped, but they couldn’t promise any more than that.

I was almost born in a toilet, a month and a half premature. I just couldn’t wait to get out of the punching bag. I could have drowned. Perhaps my downy hair skimmed the surface of the water in a gesture of pre-baptism. I just hope the toilet was sanitized. It’s bad enough that the first sight I saw was a shithole.

My mother read somewhere that these events could have lead to the rotting of my bronchioles.

16.

Shortly after the Battle of the Fourteen Flights, Yang Sop takes me to a clinic to have a chest x-ray. I am a little nervous because my Korean is minimal. Sure, I can shop and take a cab, but this requires an explanation. There is no way I can get across to the young Korean man that the x-ray machine is not broken, that the film has developed correctly. That I am an internal amputee.

I laugh breathlessly, telling him, “Quin-chun-ahhhh!” It’s okay!

He has trouble believing me.

17.

Suddenly we all start laughing. It took them a moment to see what I had done. I have a coughing fit. We are hysterical.

Enter nurse.

Nurse: Sorry, guys. This is ICU. You are going to have to keep it down.

Me: So, Yang Sop, what does it mean?

Y.S.:(Slowly responding…translating in his head) The root… of wisdom.

(Laughter from within the room.)

We tend to be giddy when our emotions are heightened. Yang Sop is learning to go along with it. In my family, we combat our problems with humour.

Me: It’s perfect!

It is May 25, 2000. I am alive.

It is Convocation Day. I will live. I will teach. I am alive.

—————————————————————————————————————————-

And this is how I came to have a Korean name.

“Eventually,” I add, “The drugs wore off and the pain came, but the moment held.” The End.

18.

In light of all that’s happened I shouldn’t complain about the cloak of smoke hiding the sky or the weeds thriving in the garden. Even though I promised myself I’d get to them on the first day off. I guess I should just see it as a time to reflect, a time to rejoice and thank the gods for another little test: will I allow them to deter me, once again, from my plans?

I admire their wit.

19.

Maybe I’ll start the holidays rummaging through the chaos jumbling the drawers of my childhood.