The Broomstick and the Leper

JOY WILSON-YOUNG

I’ve been sitting next to my fiancé on a green velour couch in his brother’s house for the last three hours and my ass is asleep. I’m surrounded by six women I’ve met before but who all act as if I’m a stranger. They’re somehow related by marriage to my fiancé’s brother, so I can’t just get up and say My ass is asleep. Besides, I’m on the comfy couch with the men so I shouldn’t complain. The women have brought in ladder-back chairs from other rooms, and they’ve fashioned them into a horseshoe shape so everyone can have a clear view of each other and the Cubs game on the television. But we haven’t come here to watch TV. We’ve driven from Mississippi to Tennessee with my soon-to-be in-laws to watch my fiancé’s brother’s wife in a community theater performance of Macbeth. The play doesn’t begin for another four hours and I’m unsure why we’ve traveled so far so early. Usually on a Saturday I sleep in. Today, though, I was up at six and out the door by six-thirty and packed into their car for the two-hour drive. I fidget with my newest piece of jewelry, the antique engagement ring. I wiggle and try to get my ass to tingle, then I check my watch again—three hours, fifty-nine minutes, and thirty seconds.
A pug who belongs to one of these distant relatives is rubbing against my leg with a look in her eye like my lap is a ham. Everyone else sits quietly in the horseshoe, holding glasses of sweet tea and talking about people they’ve heard from—explaining to those of us who don’t know who they are and what they do for a living, how many kids they have, and whether or not they see them during the holidays. I smile, pretend to listen, and swat the pug on the nose. 
There are days I really hate being alive.
At some point they’ll want to talk about china patterns and dishtowels. Or worse, wedding plans—monogrammed reception napkins with embossed pithy platitudes like Two Hearts, One Mind. How to explain to these women I have no intention of donating my brain to science on my wedding day? To head them off, I take out my notebook and pretend to work on a bit of writing I’ve been chewing on for months. Really, I’m writing this. 

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