Oh Zone!
Episode 31
It was very pleasant being planted in this garden with the earthworms. An aptly named animal; the abundant inhabitant of every part of the planet; thousands of them occupying the same volume as her one body. All she could hear was the gurgling sound of their hydraulic muscling through mucus-lubricated tunnels. Some not bothering with copulation, eschewing the exchange of male gametes from their simultaneous hermaphroditic bodies, to parthenogenically create offspring who would be fully grown in a year to help with their most important job of eating the world and excreting it into something useful. She didn’t feel hunger or thirst, absorbing water and minerals through the spaces that the kind worms had provided. The wildly increasing sucking sounds of the disturbed worms alerted her to the intruder treading on the ground nearby. Suddenly she felt a tugging on her clothes, and then her clothes were being shredded and ripped from her body. Cerberus, the three-headed dog, unchained from hell’s gate was dragging her, tearing her clothing, gnawing on her face.
“Max, what the hell have you dug up?”
“Max! Leave it! Leave it! Max, let’s go boy.”
“Max, I’m going to kick your ass if you don’t get over here right now.”
“Goddamn you, Max!”
The lord of the underworld reared up on its hind legs and cried out, challenging the god of the heavens for the soul of the mortal.
Zoenelle wished they would leave her alone with the worms.
The god of the heavens answered the dark lord’s challenge; a great red light flooded the area and white light flashed, glinting from the armored plates of the winged beasts that swooped from the heavens and gripped her limbs with their talons, lifting her into the air. The minions of hell shrieked their alarm. The lord of the underworld commanded the hell-bound to rise up against the earth and a wave of rising crust struck her in the back, breaking the heavenward flock’s grip upon her and the long arms of the underworld wrapped around her, clasping her tightly to the flat hard ground. The gates of hell, one then the other, slammed shut and she was moving at a rapid speed, headfirst, toward the bowels of hell; she could already hear the shrill wailing of the tormented. She squeezed her hand and reassuringly felt the dirt packed tightly in her fist. They couldn’t keep her; she was still of this earth.
The courtroom ceilings were three times the height of an average human being; there was twice as much area above them where nothing occurred, as the space dedicated to their activities below. She was sitting in the third row, on the dark wooden benches split by a center aisle and flanked by ceiling to floor windows, overlaid with a gauzy, bluish plastic film that deflected sunlight and the penetrating gaze of spectators, although specks and slits and several freely peeling panes glowed with sun-illuminated glass. Fluorescent tubes shone pale white from brass fixtures between the windows. The broad strips of crown molding that overlapped the ceiling and walls were intricately carved with whorls and swirls. The elevated tiered platform at the front of the room was surrounded by a waist-high picket fence, with a swinging gate that the bailiff opened inward to allow entry onto the malachite green, black-streaked marble floor. A man in a black gown sat at the top of the tier like a graduation cake decoration. She thought of the picture of her father, in his graduation gown, smiling widely, standing on the white steps, with her mother, who was also smiling, but only politely, for the sake of the picture.
The attorneys, the ones with speaking parts in the performance, who cued each other to sustain the narrative, were dressed handsomely in three-piece suits, obviously new with their stiff, unsmudged cuffs. Their clients, as audience members, or extras, playing incidental parts in the spectacle, appeared dressed in costumes from the leftover bin. The production was directed by the central figure in black, who consulted sheaves of paper on his big box desk and nodded or occasionally spoke to ensure adherence to the prepared script.
The lawyers’ primary objective was to minimize the valuable time and limited space in the halls of justice; this was not a show they deigned to perform without extreme justification. Her lawyer’s stratagems had progressed from the postal exchange of heavy bond letterhead stationery requesting conventional primary custody for the mother with fatherly weekend visitation, alternate holidays, etc. which Gary rejected, to a face-to-face mediation across the table, a game of tennis with Theo as the ball, which ended in a draw, to this ultimate stage. The compulsory legal separation period was becoming almost as lengthy as their marriage.
She continued to rent the too large and too expensive house based on her attorney’s advice, also her best excuse for preserving Marguerite’s presence. Marguerite had left without her belongings, concealing the finality of her retreat from Zoenelle that day when they knew Gary was less than a day away. She moved Theo’s crib into the master bedroom and slept in Marguerite’s abandoned bed, keeping Marguerite’s things exactly as she had left them. Zoenelle sat on the closet floor with the door closed, crying, pressing her face into the smooth silk and soft wool fabric of pant legs and skirt bottoms, immersed in Marguerite’s scent; an earthy herbal fragrance, so un-cosmopolitan, as if her origins emanated aromatically from her, or she actively sought and applied the synthesized scent of bucolic familiarity. She recalled in excruciating detail their four days alone together; the rough carpet pile itching and rubbing against her naked thighs and bottom she eventually emerged wondering if it had been a dream.
Three weeks after Marguerite left, Zoenelle was sitting in the Molecular Biology department chair’s office, nervous and excited about the opportunity to discuss the laboratory procedure she had developed. She hadn’t had the time or concentration to organize her laboratory notes and rewrite them into a formal report. She had put copies of her notebook pages in her advisor, Dr. Jenkin’s mailbox, after finding his note on her desk in the lab, requesting updates on her research. She had only seen Dr. Sebastian once or twice and only recognized him by his name on the door. Dr. Sebastian’s desk was surrounded by three walls of books; its surface unevenly extended by black metal file cabinets on both sides; it was positioned off-center in the room to provide access on one side to the chair behind it. Dr. Jenkins moved boxes of papers, and Zoenelle inched her chair forward, to allow him to swing the door closed. Dr. Jenkins was a recent graduate from Johns Hopkins; he always wore a clean, pressed, hospital blue lab coat, with his name stitched onto the breast pocket, instead of the white lab coats provided by the university. Dr Klein looked at her with his kind, sympathetic eyes. She had known Dr. Klein since her sophomore year as an undergraduate. She thought he must have someone who cares about him very much, with his old man face and white hair, she couldn’t imagine he would make the effort himself to dress in the bright, blue-striped shirt, coordinated solid blue tie, and contemporary tailored suit. She had chosen him as her graduate advisor because of his soft-spoken, gentle manner. But Dr. Jenkins had been assigned, or volunteered, she didn’t know how or why, to be her co-advisor.
“Mrs. Montague,” Dr. Sebastian leaned both elbows on his desk, his head poked forward, suspended between his shoulders. “I understand that you are having some personal, err, family issues right now, that have required your attention, and that your graduate studies have suffered because of it. You didn’t attend the fall semester. Your attendance has been sporadic this spring.” He looked at Dr. Jenkins. “You have not provided your advisors with adequate progress reports on your research.”
“I submitted copies of my laboratory notes to Dr. Jenkins,” she said. She focused on Dr. Sebastian; she thought that if she looked at Dr. Jenkins, her words would sound angry and if she looked at Dr. Klein, she would cry.
“Dr. Jenkins examined your laboratory notes sufficiently to determine that you are not following the doctoral research project you prepared,” Dr. Sebastian said.
“That’s true,” she said, “because I discovered…”
“You discovered?” He looked at her.
“I invented. A new procedure,” she finished.
“I see. And have you prepared a revised dissertation proposal and submitted it to your advisor, err, co-advisors?” he asked.
“No. But I have performed enough experiments to demonstrate the validity of the procedure. The essential aspect is the heat stable polymerase that won’t denature during the DNA separation phase. Have you even read my notes?”
He was looking at the sheaf of papers he held in both hands; the first phalange that attached his thumb to his hand was long and jutted out at an odd angle as if it were another index finger. “There is also the matter of the unauthorized use of laboratory facilities. Materials ordered without approval through the university.”
She knew Brenda wouldn’t have told anyone about her overnight laboratory sessions, perhaps one of the other security guards had reported her.
“You brought a baby into the laboratory?” His head was bent; he continued to look at the papers on his desk.
“He was sleeping. In his portable crib,” she said.
“Mrs. Montague, I know you do not want to risk your baby’s health, or your own. I’m sorry, but the university has decided to dismiss you from the graduate program. We hope that when you have settled your family situation and can devote the time and attention required for graduate level studies, you will consider returning.”
She stood up and slammed her open hand on the desk. “I am never, never coming back here.” She turned to Dr. Jenkins. “You son of a bitch, I want my notes back.”
“Oh, Zone.” Dr. Klein stepped toward her, touched her shoulder.
Dr. Jenkins stood stiffly, his hands in his lab coat pockets; pockets not positioned to hold hands naturally, his wrists hung out over the sides and his elbows jutted out awkwardly as if he were poised to draw six-guns from his sides. “They belong to Cornell University. All of the research performed in the university laboratories, with laboratory equipment and materials funded by the university, belongs to the university. I am sure you are aware of that fact, Mrs. Montague.”
She grabbed the door handle and yanked the door open, knocking it into the chair she had recently occupied; the sound of wood on wood of the chair crashing to the floor assuaged her angry tears. In the lab, she stared at her desk; the black marbled composition books, labeled by date, bulged with photographs, print-outs and graph paper sketches taped into their pages. It was her they had rejected, not the work. They had not said her research lacked value, lacked merit; her scientific acumen was not in question. But she had been found lacking. They had kicked her out of school; a place she had always belonged. She had purchased these notebooks blank, she had written every word, and taped every scrap into them. She packed the notebooks into her backpack.