All The White Rabbits

a story

1.
Once, I bought me a white rabbit. He was so cute, I tell you, I got him from a store, he was fluffy and cuddly and trusting, I’d pet him, and he’d close his round eyes, as if he’d been a puppy, he was clever, I let him run a lot around our place, I loved him.

“Our place” was Oleg’s, and Oleg was a guy whom I met when I was getting clean. Actually, I was already clean, from the heavy stuff I mean. 

Wasn’t easy, and I didn’t have a place to stay, I’d go to a women’s shelter, sometimes this one, sometimes that one. I don’t like shelters, even if they’re mostly okay, because some women, they get too loud, gets on my nerves, also sometimes there’s a lights- out, and you can’t read a book, in short, I was tired of shelters. 

I tried to pick up a job. I distributed flyers, about this or that place that had just opened, it’s not hard but really boring, you stand on the street for hours, rain or shine,  and handle out flyers to people who hurry, and are not in the mood, even though most politely take the flyers, they’ll drop them after in some trash can, yet my job is done; and some try to flirt and all that. 

So, I went and found some clubs, most were just dancing and all, and a couple private, lucrative ones that were really out there. 

But it still didn’t pay enough-I somehow lack something. Say, we had this Oksana girl, and she’s less pretty, but she’s, like, really aggressive in how she dances, and approaches men, really wild,- and they go wild too, she got tons of tips, it’s like she had this talent of getting their money out of them, they became transfixed as if she was some fakir playing on a flute, and their dicks became snakes, she got showered in dollars night after night, this Oksana. 

I don’t have it in me, this aggressiveness, even though I dance well, and they’d all tell me oh how beautiful I was and shit. So, I never could make a lot of money, somehow. 

In short, I met this Oleg, and we kinda hit it off, he was a small-time thug, that dreamt of being a big-time thug, and it was quite interesting to listen to him, he had stories to tell.

In a couple days, he’d be like “come to live with me”, and that’s what I did, he wasn’t half-bad, sex was nice, and I had now a home of sorts, also nice, after all this time.

I cooked and cleaned, and he’d be at home sometimes, we’d smoke and all, and talk, and fuck, and sometimes he’d leave to do his business whatever this was, and so we were living together, like a boyfriend and a girlfriend. 

So that was when I brought to his place my white rabbit, and the three of us shared that home, like a small family. Oleg was okay, but I loved the rabbit, to tell you the truth.

This Oleg, he considered himself a big macho, and sometimes would blabber non-stop about how he’d seen the world and what a cool guy he is, and he had knives and a gun, not that I remember, maybe he had several. He was very proud of having me living with him, would brag and show me off, then I am used to that, so whatever rocked his boat. 

So, once he invited his friends, thugs too, but even smaller-time ones, and they start to drink, and Oleg, when drunk, becomes even more “how cool I am, be scared you all”, and all those guys look at him with reverie and jealousy and remark about how he’s a true man, and lucky to have me as his girl. And he’s bursting with pride. And he shouts at some point: 
-My girl, she does what I say. Say, I’ll tell her: bring your dear white rabbit, and we’ll kill him, and make a nice soup, a rabbit soup to eat, for all of us-and she’ll listen. Wanna see?

Hey, he tells me, bring the bunny.
. 
And they all look at him and me, with much interest, and everybody’s drunk, and I learned a long time ago not to defy guys when drunk, especially not somebody like Oleg, also I can’t question his authority in front of them, also I don’t know what overcame me, only I freeze inside. And outside- I smile and say:

-Of course, I mean, everything for my man.

I tell you that now precisely with that smile I had then, my smile that can launch a thousand ships, as someone told me once, I don’t understand why I must repeat this smile, yet there it is, does it launch a thousand ships at you?

And I bring to them my rabbit, my rabbit, and Oleg kills him right there and instructs me to make a soup out of him right now so we all can have fresh soup soon, and I do as I am told, I boil my rabbit, cook him, like in that freaking movie. And they all having fun of their lives, and shout remarks of approval, but I can hardly hear and hardly see, and then the soup was ready-I don’t know how I made it, standing there over the pot, but later I am at the table with them,  only I couldn’t swallow a spoon of that soup, even though they really wanted me to, and then I ran to another room and locked the door and I refused to come out for hours and cried and cried.  But there was no bringing my rabbit’s back, so I unlocked the door and left the room at some point. 

 And I left Oleg after that at some point too.

I tell you all that, and you look at me with your deep lovely eyes-they usually have trust and love in them, like in my now-dead rabbit’s, along with the flicker of your fire-I came for your fire once, what I’d return for? Fire, yes, but also that trust and love. I got used to it. You must have tamed me. I hate to be tamed, yet here I am. 

And I want to see the pain in your eyes now, for my murdered rabbit, for half-murdered me-and there it is, the pain, but there is something else too-fuck you-what is it? 

 It’s like a rift when the Sea of Reeds parted-and you leave me on one shore, and you go through the parted waters to another shore, and you just leave me here alone, why? Fuck you. Fuck your fucking Sea of Reeds. It’s me again who’ll leave again-but we don’t know that yet, neither you nor me. 

2. 
Decades go by, and you’re in the airport, the one that’s closer to the Sea of Reeds, it’s not that you think about me at this very moment, you don’t really think, you’ve been too overwhelmed, you did think about me some time before, about my melodical voice telling you about my rabbit, my smile which I repeated for you, and you did understand, finally, why I listened to them that day, how I wanted you to hug me-only I am too far, and you can’t convince me that you understand now, you don’t know where I am, maybe I left the States even, maybe I'm nowhere to you.

 I am crazy or so you think-and I know you’re right, but why do you think I’m crazier than you, that still beats me. You’re mad as a hatter, you think you made it to another shore, but you just got stuck in the reeds. No Pharaoh’s daughter to send a maid to reach you. I’m for sure not your mistress and maid. 

 I might miss you too, sometimes-but there’s no bringing me back, I am long gone, like my rabbit. 

You’ve been carted through the airport, you gave up on your pride at some point, and you’re trying not to think of it, and you look straight ahead-but they put the hostages’ photos along that corridor, the ones that are still there, there’s a lot of big, big photos with names, 130 plus photos? 

It’s hard not to look, and once one looks, he starts to see.

And then you catch a glimpse of a face you know, -a friend of a close friend, so young, years younger than even I was, that day at Oleg’s place, letting them kill my bunny rabbit. 

Huge photo, handsome face, with a smile that can launch a thousand ships, was just in the wrong place, wrong time, and now where is that smile, is it ever coming back, repeating itself, repeating itself for real, not just on the photo with name and age?

And out of a sudden, whatever kept you together today, it breaks apart- you start to wheeze, to choke, and all the faces are floating in the air, coming at you, becoming bigger and bigger, all the white rabbits, beloved, betrayed, bereft, begging, boiled, breathless. 

And you, shame on you, you fall apart and start wailing like it’s a funeral-you wail, you try to cut it out but you can’t, you say in between the sobs “I am sorry, I am sorry”, it’s not really clear, are you sorry for your part, because you’re crazy, and you imagine everything depends on you, even if it doesn’t, and then everything is your fault, or because you’re in a full hysterical mode in the middle of the airport and all can see it? 

I know you, and I know it’s both, dear. 

You continue to sob hysterically, unable to stop, and the airport guy continues to push your chair along, tactfully, in deferential silence.