Uzair and the Bear, Fiction by Rachael Biggs
Uzair and the Bear
By Rachael Biggs
I sit in my tiny home moisturizing my elbows by candlelight because I have committed to youthful elbow skin and to solar power, both of which can be sparse at this time of year.
It’s not a palace, but I do love my little house. It makes me feel practical and economical but also magical with all of its hidden compartments and everything having dual purposes. The kitchen counter pulls out into a dining table and the stairs double as chairs with just a change in their first two letters. My bed folds up into a couch and the television screen pulls down from the ceiling where it remains discreetly tucked away for the hours I like to pretend I’m truly living off the grid.
The front door is a mix of branches and twigs, woven together and stained so that a neighboring hobbit would feel right at home coming by to borrow a cup of sugar. A cup of sugar would be all the sugar I have room for incidentally, but I’d give it to him because think of how novel it would be to have a hobbit come knocking at your door.
I am fully self-sufficient—a universe of one, and probably appearing like I don’t give a good goddamn. Maybe that’s true. Maybe I gave up hope when Allen died and left me to grieve through the last of my youth.
Pneumonia—it sounded like such an olden day affliction, but that’s what did it. He never recovered from Annapurna. As many times as I told him to go to the doctor he wouldn’t, so we kept traveling hoping that the air or sunshine of our next destination was all he needed. Eventually it was too late for doctors and I had to leave him in a hole in the ground drowned in the fluid of his own lungs, stubbornly mistaken about not being ill. For once I hated being right.
The sadness I felt when Allen was no longer was incalculable. It was messier than grief, much less dignified. Grief seemed to imply I wore navy blue pants suits during that time and didn’t look up from thick Russian novels, while dining on lukewarm broth through barely parted lips. A widow grieved, but what I did was more what you’d expect from a seriously deranged homeless person.
On Wednesday I had to switch dentists because I called the receptionist an incompetent twat for misspelling my name in spite of my being a patient there for nine and a half years.
On Friday, tired of my meager selection of stale BBQ corn nuts and neon yellow margarine, I went to the grocery store. I wandered the aisles and picked up items that were once familiar but looked alien now. When I snatched a carton of eggs from the painfully slow cashier and they smashed on the tile floor, I was escorted out by security.
I lost the ten pounds I’d been trying to for ten years and then I lost twenty or thirty more and I finally looked as bad as I felt. My clothes hung off of me like a 90s supermodel and my nose protruded with a vengeance amid the lack of facial fat that once made it blend in.
Nights were awful. After a few days, when the shock wore off and I realized this was actually happening, that I was a widow, like for real, I cried so hard I gagged as though I might throw up, but as far as I know grief-vomiting only happens in movies.
No amount of bargaining or money could undo the truth. It no longer made sense to pray, even if I had believed in prayer, raising someone from the dead seemed like too much to ask for and the lack of control I felt produced ungodly amounts of snot and demonic sounding wails.
I cried like a banshee for about two weeks. I thought about blowing my head off or jumping off a bridge, but I couldn’t get it together long enough to deal with that level of logistics.
Friends came by and brought cans of soup and frozen pies, since we were modern folk and no one knew how to make casseroles anymore. My half-sister and her husband sent a card, but we’d never been close and my dad called a few times, but he didn’t know what to say and I ended up comforting him, so I stopped answering after a while and I guess he assumed I was fine.
Death discombobulates people because we need to believe on some level that our loved ones are immune to mortality. To really consider the pain of loss is unbearable when we love someone deeply, so we get twitchy and say things like “I can’t imagine” but what we mean is “I don’t want to imagine and you’re making that really hard. Please get away from me. Oh, but here’s some food so I feel less guilty.”
Three years later, my counselor tried to insist I date, but the idea of making polite conversation with strangers only deepened my longing for my dead husband, so I stopped seeing her. To say I craved a Tuesday night on the couch with Allen cooking, reggae music playing and a neglected book beside me was the understatement of all understatements. Allen was no longer the husband who offered familiarity and solace; he’d morphed into a phantom limb as I groped the dirt trying to pick my heart up without him.
Eventually, I had no fight left in me and instincts suggested flight.
The city, with its vacant crowds and relentless noise no longer appealed to me and I thought about a country home. The irony was that Allen had always wanted us to move the country and I was adamantly opposed, but it made sense now.
I liked the idea of a small place. Just mine for this new chapter of my life that would also be just mine. Maybe if it were itsy-bitsy it would feel less Allenless and maybe downsizing would eliminate the space I’d kept for self-pity.
I sold our apartment in three days and purchased a small piece of land with a creek and a pear tree about an hour south. It happened fast enough that the angry, rail thin, sob-a-holic I’d become barely noticed until I was at the hardware store for the eighteenth time and had a sink, tiles and wood flooring as well as what one might call friendship with Herbie, Dave and Pablo who worked there. I looked forward to our easy conversations about lumber and staining and how to install lighting fixtures without getting electrocuted. They never asked me personal questions and that was ideal, so when Herbie offered me a job, I said yes. I didn’t need the $15.75 an hour, since Allen’s insurance plan had left me in good shape, but the companionship and daily routine were very welcome.
Settling into my new life was made easier by the new surroundings. Day-by-day being alone became my new normal and I was no longer a gaping wound. I was able to get through the basics. I went to work, I came home, ate and slept and though joy was not in my repertoire, I no longer assaulted egg cartons.
I learned about caulking, insulation, different types of nails and their uses and my mind was filled with practicality instead of connection to other humans, until one day a doleful brown-eyed man came in asking for a job. His shoulders hung forward slightly, but his face was earnest and he had beautiful hands. I hired him on the spot in despite not having the authority to do so.
His name was Uzair.
“What does your name mean?” I asked him one day when we were walking out, he to the bus stop and me to my car.
“Helpful,” he smiled, as if that were the best thing in the world to be.
“Do you want a ride home?”
“That would be helpful, yes, thank you.”
I smiled at his sweet joke and we formed an instantaneous friendship, as if we’d known each other for 400 years.
“What do you do when you’re not working, Uzair?” I asked him one afternoon.
“I am studying life. Learning how I can help people become better people.”
“Psychology?” I asked.
He shrugged, without commitment and I dropped it, not wanting to pry.
“Do you think we are born into our names or we become them subconsciously?” he asked pensively.
“My name means bear, so if that’s the case, I’m in trouble.”
He grinned.
“Ursula the bear. Not as good as yours.” I felt embarrassed for a moment, cursing my parents for not naming me something feminine and sweet like Ella or Chantal rather than a lumbering old bear that slept for six months of the year snoring the whole time and living off body fat.
He was looking at his phone now, probably scrolling dating apps for an Ella or Chantal.
“Ah, here we go,” he said, “this makes sense. Bears symbolize courage, physical strength and leadership. They are good omens and convey authority according to the Natives.”
“Do you see me as an authority figure?”
“Yes!”
“Why?”
“The way you carry yourself; confidently, like you can take care of things.”
“I’m tired of taking care of myself.”
“Can I help?” He reached for my hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.
I felt my heart fuse together a centimeter or two.
“Do you want to come over and listen to records?” I asked.
His eyes got wide.
“You know...records? They came before tapes, which is what came before CDs, which is what came before Napster and iTunes and Spotify, and well, I don’t know what comes after that.”
“I know what records are; I’d love to! That’d be cool.”
Cute. Enthusiasm. Does that fade for everyone or just sad old widows?
We started hanging out a lot. I got acquainted with his face, his voice and the way his mouth moved when he ate. We danced on my patio and sang loudly into the night air alongside the crickets and slowly, without announcing itself, happiness crept in.
I didn’t acknowledge my romantic feelings for him until his soft, pillowy lips met mine with the bravado of youth, sprinkled with the shyness of every good first kiss. It was best that the feelings crept in because I might have fled in guilt or fear or just because that’s what a bear does when she feels like she could get trapped.
About three months in, we were laying on our backs on a blanket spread out under the stars when I had to pee. It was most inconvenient. Practical things like piss have no place in the first smitten months of a love affair. Neither did the darkness I felt in him as strongly as the urine pushing against the walls of my bladder.
I ran off into the bushes, not wanting to bother fumbling for light switches or taking off my shoes.
As I squatted, I could see the whites of his eyes watching me and I liked feeling seen again.
The rain came, then the snow, and by Spring Uzair opened himself to me like the petals of a peony. He told me of swimming in a saltwater lake and of the pomegranate wine his father would brew that made him a town hero due to the scarcity of alcohol in Maragheh.
He’d come to study architecture and I thought of how helpful it would have been to consult with him instead of the countless YouTube videos when I was building my house, if time had no meaning and now could be then.
I told him about the time my mom went to her sister’s for the weekend and never came back. That she had long curly auburn hair and how I could never understand why mine was blonde and straight. That was the same week Rebecca Munroe had knocked the wind out of me with one punch to the stomach, after I’d taken my scissors to her favorite doll’s face. I didn’t want her cheeks to be so rosy, so I tried to scratch them off. I denied it and she got sent to the principal’s office while everyone huddled around me coddling with concern.
I didn’t talk about Allen. That was between me and Allen.
One night as we lay in bed listening to a thunderstorm that had threatened for three days, Uzair confused and then intrigued me with a question.
“Would you hurt me?”
I rolled over and took his face in my hands.
“No, kitten. I respect you. I care about you.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“We’ve all been hurt. It’s okay.”
“I’m not the man you think I am.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.”
“No, tell me.”
“I didn’t leave Iran to come to college.”
“Goodness is relative. Morals are objective. Don’t buy into that crap.”
The clouds overhead hung low, full to capacity and backlit by the moon.
“I got my girlfriend pregnant. She wasn’t a girlfriend though, not in the American way. She was a neighbor that had eyes for me and when I was fifteen I succumbed.
The clouds opened up and rain began, drip, drop, dripping from the sky.
“I didn’t want to marry her, particularly because I could see how excited she was that she had finally got her way, and her impoverished confidence turned my stomach.
I liked the way her body felt in the dark behind the rock pile, but that was all. I didn’t care for talking to her; she was simple, one-dimensional. She would meet me, I would fuck her and I would leave feeling lighter in my step, less burdened by my responsibilities; like there was more to me than the responsible eldest son.
The pregnancy emboldened her and made me dislike her even more. She told her sisters that I was to be her husband. She told them that I was a prince and that she would be my princess and I hated her juvenile lies, so I stole from my father and mother and I hitched a ride to Tehran. I haven’t talked to anyone from there since.”
The sound of raindrops was forceful now; it sounded exquisite on the tiny tin roof as I tried to process my lover’s hostility toward a woman I’d never meet.
“What was her name?”
“They stoned her to death in the square after her family fled in shame. They probably used the same rocks she used to spread her legs behind.”
“What was her name?”
His voice cracked. “Roshan.”
I sat up and I walked around the bed to his side. I felt strength in my bones as I hoisted him up like a loose bag of dirt. He stood with his head bowed as I closed my fist, punching him hard in the chest.
He winced, but stayed put, and I liked the way the resistance to my rage felt.
Exhilarated by his steady stance, I took the heel of my hand and jammed it into his forehead as hard as I could, feeling my power like I hadn’t in years. He stumbled and fell back on the bed, looking a little surprised. I mounted him, pinning his arms and meeting his eyes with mine. We stared at each other for a moment, swimming in the depths of our pain.
“Go on,” he said.
I reached for a handful of his thick black hair, so soft that it was hard to keep my grip, and pulled him up to a sitting position.
I took him by the shoulders and shook him like he was a large bottle of Kombucha. When I tired of that, he scooted back a little and I slammed him in the headboard, his neck lolling dizzily.
While he got his equilibrium back, I tore my fingernails down his arms and then twisted his skin back and forth, smiling as he cried out in pain.
I pinched the inside of his thighs and gave his penis a forceful yank.
“Owww!”
“That’s from Roshan, you shit! How could you leave her?! She needed you!”
He hung his head.
“How dare you! How dare you leave her!”
“I’m sorry.”
“You left!”
“I won’t leave.”
I slapped him hard across the face.
“Say it again.”
“I won’t leave you.”
He pulled me down on top of him and the fallacy that I was in physical control evaporated.
He held me tightly as I burrowed into his neck and inhaled the scent of our tears.
Rachael Biggs is a ghostwriter and author whose memoir Yearning for Nothings and Nobodies was published in 2012. She studied creative writing at Langara College and UCLA and holds a screen writing diploma from Vancouver Film School. Her most recent publication is a short fiction piece called Green for the Dalhousie Review. Look for Rachael on Instagram as @rachael_biggs_author
Inquiry
The following has been provided by the author:
In a world where we are so sensitive to offending people that we wouldn’t dream of beating the piss out of one of them, this story flowed from me as a welcome change to keeping things bottled up.
These two characters found each other and in that relationship, a physical manifestation for their grief and guilt. The honesty of that excited me. When shit gets real and both parties stay, it’s the beginning of love and while I thought I was writing about loss, it went another direction.