Waking Up

By Isabelle Ghaneh

Julio Cortazar is walking backwards in a dream. He is standing on a riverbank in Argentina. He is speaking but no one can hear him. No one understands what he is saying, he may not understand himself. Discouraged he picks up paper and a pen, and then he writes, an unsigned letter to anyone. He drops this letter in a bottle and it floats down the Argentina river and deposits itself on a sandy bank far up north. I pick it up.

I am growing another thumb. It is on my right hand. I noticed it last night. I thought perhaps it is because I have gained weight and the extra weight had expanded to new places, including my hand. It seemed as if the new thumb, which had sprouted in-between the old thumb and the index finger, would cleave unto the index finger, and perhaps be thought of by others as just one huge index finger. I hope this is true. I do not want to be noticed or ostracized and I do not think I can wear gloves everywhere I go.

I used to wake up in a state of panic. This went on for years and years. It lasted for five to ten minutes. I never knew why, only that when I awoke, my stomach was in knots and my hands were sweating and I was afraid. It was only when I went to see a friend of a friend, Uncle Mike, a psychic who lived in a haunted house, that he told me I suffered from anxiety attacks first thing in the morning. Until then I never knew what was going on.

I thought perhaps my new thumb was a result of this, although I haven’t had anxiety attacks in the morning for years. That is in the past. So at first I thought maybe this new small appendage was just a hallucination, left over from the nighttime life I live in half remembered dreams. A carry over of my sleeping life, as opposed to my waking life. It’s true, sometimes I could not tell the difference in the past, but now I can. So that’s all over. And still here I have this new thumb.

When I am dreaming I don’t know it. Does anyone? I am looking out a window and walking through it and not falling, not at all, and it seems real but I awake to find, no, it’s not. Then I get up and make coffee and the day starts. So that was just a dream slice of life, no more no less.

I’m on anti-histamines and they make my dream life more vivid but they don’t cause new thumbs to grow. They make me itch less and sleep more but again I didn’t notice anything in the warning guide included with the medication about new bodily growths. That’s my only contribution from the pharmaceutical world.

I am having problems with the department of motor vehicles over insurance compliance questions, but I have had motor vehicle run-ins before and they never caused me to sprout a thumb. I have had problems with hot water not coming from the bathtub faucet when I needed to take a shower, and pipes that froze or heat that didn’t come on. All this plus more occurred in my daily life; presents that needed to be returned and bullying bosses and obnoxious co-workers and still no new thumbs.

It is now three days and still the thumb is there. It has not gone away or merged completely with the index finger. It just juts out and stays there. I cannot type anymore with my right hand and I am right handed. I finally decided to tape it to the lower part of my index finger, the part that combines with the palm of the hand, and that worked but was bulky. I have to type slower than I usually do. I work in the stifling world of office non-entities. One can only guess at the gossip that will result if I have to parade myself and my new thumb in public.

I am afraid to show this to the doctor. I don’t know what he would say or think or do. You must be very careful with doctors, they don’t listen, they overmedicate and sometimes they have no clue what is going on, so they prescribe a series of tests for you, which cost a fortune, even after insurance, and still they come up with nothing. Then you get the anti-depressants and anti-histamines. Of course, if they do find something, you get chemo or radiation. Sometimes they even cut into your brain. That’s how I sit with doctors and the medical profession, heartless as I know it sounds. I don’t trust them with my new thumb, I just don’t.

I have learned how to drive with my new hand and even to make change at the cash register. I bought those clinging gloves you see in Vogue and put them on. Nobody notices, especially since it’s not hot yet. What I will do in the summer I don’t know, but last year it rained all June and then got cold in September, so that wasn’t too bad. I can make do with the bandage if I have to. It’s amazing how the body adjusts.

Julio Cortazar would have known what to do, what happens when you are gazing into a fish tank day after day and then all of a sudden discover there you are, actually one of the fish, being stared at by the oblique eyes of distant strangers. He knew what to do when you wake up in the morning and its really the day, and not dreamtime. He knew what was real and what wasn’t. God bless him, he knew.

My thumb has now reached full potential. It is slightly smaller than the original one and yes it has been trained to sit placidly next to the longer, more important index one. I rarely notice it anymore. I keep bandaging it up and then unbandaging it at night so it can breath when I sleep.

It’s been a year now. At night when all is still and quiet I like to look out the window at the moon. If the moon has gone into hiding, I look at the stars. There’s always something shiny in the distance; so far you can’t touch it, but so near you want to try. Nothing ever changes that.

*Previously published in Culture Star Reader

Isabelle Ghaneh My publishing credits consist of the following:

Poetry: Arabesques Review, Her Circle Ezine, Dimsum-Asia’s Literary Journal, The New Verse News, Ink & Ashes, The Magpie’s Nest, Pedestal Magazine, Surface Art Magazine, Pennine Ink #26, (my poem in Pennine Ink ‘Slivers of Ice’ reviewed by New Hope International Review) , SNReview, The Fairfield Review, EOTU Ezine, Club Romance, The Copperfield Review and The Ridgefield Press. A poem ‘in support of free speech’ was read on KPFA.

Short Stories: Coal City Review, Culture Star Reader, The Circle Magazine, The Copperfield Review, The Ridgefield Press, Wilde Magazine-The River issue, and silverthought, also included in their anthology of best short stories, Ignition.

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