Baby Have You Got No Soul / Is Your Heart a Gaping Hole?

Kim is here for 12 days, visiting from Quakertown.  She is sleeping in what used to be my spot in the bed, long ago ceded to the invisible presence of el pinché motherfucker. Kim is the loveliest of humans. 12 days though? 

I slept in the big red chair downstairs in the unheated basement rather than sleep on the living toom sectional couch, trying to maintain a modicum of privacy. Glad we got rid of the sleeper couch, I finally understand the urgency of getting rid of a couch in a room with a door. Or not.

In preparation for the guest's arrival, Jenny and I cleaned and organized the bedroom closet.  We managed to fill a black lawn and leaf bag with clothes to give away. As I was winnowing my t-shirt collection, I came across the EJI t-shirt Jenny gave me as a gift after returning from Alabama in 2019.  She went with her friend "Ike" a 70-something teacher at TOPS and Eric the pinche motherfucker. Ike wanted to see and show them the seminal sites of the civil rights movement in Montgomery, Alabama. 

Back then I had suspicions, but thought them was ridiculous.  I even mentioned it to a friend, but brushed it off as ridiculous. As the lodestone of their trip,they intended to visit the Equal Justice Initiative's Legacy Museum, dedicated to remembering every African-American lynched in post-civil war America. EJI's primary mission, however, is to provide post-conviction representation for people who have received capital sentences. Alabama has no public defender system, so many people sentenced to death likely had terrible representation at trial and were sentenced too harshly or were innocent. 

EJI has become well-known over the years because it's founder, Professor Bryan Stevenson is an amazing advocate, speaker, author (Oprah Book of the Month Club book), and subject of the movie Just Mercy.  That Jenny went to Alabama, to EJI with the pinche motherfucker, now, this hurts me so incredibly.  Learning of the affair, and realizing they went there hit me like an Acme anvil. Has she no shame, no guilt, no ability to be remorseful?

I worked for EJI as a 3L. I flew down to Alabama from NYC on my 35th birthday.  The flight out of JFK left on the afternoon of September 10, 2001. Jenny was 4 months pregnant with Leiney, and I left her alone for a month, to handle a death penalty appeal for a prisoner on death row.  

September 11, then, was inextricably intertwined with my love for my pregnant wife, my guilt for leaving her and the life growing inside her alone in Manhattan, . The fear I had  for her safety that day, when no one could reach NYC by phone.  .  . I finally had to call Seattle to speak to Jenny's mom to verify she was ok.  But the experience brought us closer together, and my being at EJI and being stuck there in Alabama is central to that period in our lives. It was, I thought, defining and inviolate. The act of taking Eric the pinche motherfucker to what is hallowed ground in our relationship is a desecration, a renunciation, and a revelation.  

Jenny lies to me about a lot of things.  She lied to me when I found her out, said the affair started in Feb 2020.  As I excavated the truth, and found evidence of infidelity with el pinche as far back as March of 2018,  where the trail went cold, (but I don't think was the beginning of the affair), the trip to Alabama began to loom large in the mercator map of betrayal I have built in my mind.  

So, emptying out the closet, I tossed the EJI t-shirt she had given me on the get rid of pile, and Jenny said, "That was a gift from me."  A t-shirt given to me while she was intentionally sullying and rejecting this part of our lives is as welcome to me as a blanket full of smallpox.  Without looking at her, I grunted an uh-huh, and continued sorting through t-shirts.

Also, if I'm being completely frank, I feel utterly bereft and alone.

Title from the lyrics to Killer by Kali Uchis.