The Operation: Page 3 of 3

The morning the President came to power I was running late.  Marie did not wake me up—or at least that is how I rationalize it.  I still have problems being completely honest but as long as I know the truth there really isn't a problem...

That afternoon when Marie and I returned home from the hospital, I noticed, when I looked in the mirror, two small bumps, or ridges, that were formed on the side of my face, just along my hairline and above my right ear.  The back of my head was certainly swollen and it still hurt from when I had fainted, but I had no clue what these painful knobs were forming on my head.  My hearing was being affected and there was an elastic delay, a slight reverb effect on everything that was being said to me.  Every voice had an echo and memories seemed to spill out from those painful caves on the side of my head and soon I didn't know who was talking or what was being said or what was memory or what was present.  Marie had pretty much stopped talking to me by this point, but when she called me into the kitchen it sounded as if she were islands away or as if she were screaming to me from the opposite side of a train platform.

I rinsed my face and stared in the mirror. I blinked and a flash appeared and I saw the president in the mirror and the lines across my face said:

B-I-T-C-H

And I smashed the mirror, then laughed, but I still couldn’t get those vile terrible words out of my mind.

*

Marie helped me off the floor and led me to the bedroom.  I wanted to ask her about today, about the president's speech, what it was like seeing him, about when I fainted—but I could not form a sentence.  Hours later, as I walked into the living room, I saw Marie watching television eating cereal.  Marie is a schoolteacher.  And all she eats is cereal.  It is the only way we can afford our apartment.  I work as a cameraman and that just barely covers our rent.  Marie used to say I should be making more money and she is right but I slapped her that afternoon and told her "Money isn't everything." 

When the woman on TV appeared in defense of the President, I froze.  I do not recall that civil rights book saying anything about this woman, about her future, about the gains.  Perhaps we deserve her.  But she does not deserve us and as soon as I get this operation I will let her know.

That afternoon as I watched the footage I had shot downtown, I felt my life come to an end as I struck Marie repeatedly, and heard the voice of the President tug at my ears: "Well, he's got a good heart and he knows what he's doing."  Had it been a record I would have burned it, for fear of playing itself backwards.  I told the police it was not I who beat Marie.  I told them I was just like any ordinary man who hated his wife, and yet when my hand rose—it was mine.  I begged to see a psychiatrist, then a priest.  I read every book I could find on possession.  No one will believe me that the demon in me is running the country.  And that the bible-fearing woman defending the president is all we have accomplished and I tell the doctors that we must hate ourselves, then, and they do not respond.

I tell them to put themselves in my position, but they cannot.  Other than their passive-aggressive support of the oppression of women, they cannot relate to me.

*

I re-read and re-read and re-read the book on civil rights.  Nothing.  There is no mention of anything I am experiencing, of what Kiona said, of how my mother died, of the repercussions of what I did to Marie.  My ancestors fought for the right to give men who despised them their hard earned money.  Tomorrow is a civil rights holiday where the entire city shall commemorate what was accomplished.

What was accomplished?  But I do not like the past and so I will not be there.  I am not crazy.  Tomorrow, I will get an operation.  And I will assassinate the president. 

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