String Theory
Venita Blackburn
I did not speak until I was six years old. My laugh was pretty as new chalk, I’ve been told, and I attempted time travel at age twenty. No one ever told me “you’re not like most girls.” Some things I learned as I went along.
It was the first week of fall classes my sophomore year when I met Mariko and her boyfriend Alkie. I sat, as usual, between two empty chairs in the front row of the room. “Welcome again to Quantum Physics,” said the professor, a mid-twenties tenure-track phenom not yet jaded by the academic institution frequently referred to as “the tar pit.” His slack-jawed yet earnest response to every less than intelligent question endeared him to his students.
I loved math but liked to ask too many questions. Math requires acceptance, and I was too often compelled to ask why and how. I think I’m a philosopher and a mathematician. Only the theorists allow for both. Though I’m told it would have been difficult to say from my facial expressions at the time, this was my favorite class. On the first day, the professor presented a 3-D slide show on the theory of black holes, after which a young man inquired about the location of the nearest Applebee’s. The remaining seven minutes of class involved determining the fastest route to that particular restaurant. On the second day, however, the class paid more attention. My mind wandered, as I’ve been told it should never be allowed to do. This happened once before, when I was a junior in high school, and what followed was about to happen again.
My earth science class had spent a month discussing nothing but climate change. In my memory now the instructor is only a viscous blot of purple jelly with a voice like a public service announcement.
“You all might find this hard to believe,” the Blot said one day, “but the moon, as we learned, is a vital part of earth’s development. Believe it or not, the moon is gradually moving away from us.”
I stayed alert during these classes and wrote notes quickly, almost verbatim, but this announcement made me stop.
“That’s right. During early Earth, the moon was much closer and the days much shorter and hotter, but fortunately for us the moon kept spinning, much like a pendulum in reverse. Instead of the rotations becoming shorter and shorter, they grew wider and wider. The days became longer, giving the seasons time to develop and life as we know it the chance to prosper.”
This idea had a profound effect on me. I cried. As if in response, the Blot continued on like some sadistic emotional parasite, siphoning the fragile contentment from my body. The fixed and true universe I knew suddenly felt fraught with a violent uncertainty that I could not control and didn’t want to consider. To calm down I wrote down the number one followed by a zero, then another and another, without stopping.
“Can any of you guess the repercussions of such an event on the earth?” the Blot asked. “Longer days, yes, but without seasons, without tides. The earth will slow down, and if the earth slows down the planet will get superheated in some areas and frozen in others.”
Shoulder-heaving sobs escaped me and a few of my classmates noticed, concerned but too curious to act.
“There is a good side though,” the Blot said. “This will take billions of years to happen. By then the sun will have already eaten the earth in its fiery last stages of expansion before death.”
The bell rang to signal the end of class and I passed out. The students who had noticed my sobs dragged me by the elbows down the crowded hall while the Blot occasionally shouted “Get the fuck out of the way!” or “Goddamit move!” On the way, I regained consciousness.
Now I was holding a paper cup of water in my left hand and sitting up in a chair in my quantum physics class. The professor and Mariko Lee crouched in front of me. They told me I fainted. Mariko’s face had the shape and depth of a leaf. Her presence was that of a very large man even though she was only big enough to not be a dwarf. Her wrists were a mystery.
Something happens to people that rescue other people, a covenant of sorts. The danger can be big or small, dragging a man from a burning car, plucking a fish bone from a toddler’s throat, or giving water to one who faints and is thirsty. The promise is the same: when I see you, I will keep you safe. I looked at Mariko, the quasar of freckles between her eyes, and that promise was made.
The next day, Mariko entered the class trailed by her boyfriend, Alkie, just as the professor neared the Ts on the roster.
“Miss Lee and Mr. Brooks, welcome,” the professor said.
Mariko always entered a room like some fairy tale heroine whose mission is not half done. She always spoke a little too close to people, but because her eyes were black and her shampoo pleasant no one stepped away. She wore a satin ballerina outfit with matching slippers and white stockings along with an oversized dusty black gym bag. Something wasn’t quite in order: her face. There was a half-moon bruise along her cheek and a puffed lip with a slit of red and green on the right side. The swollen lip made her look catlike and dangerous. Beauty had eaten the beast and made a pretty monster. Even with that facial damage, Mariko’s powerful presence was not diminished. She and Alkie eagerly took the seats on either side of me. Mariko even smiled in my direction. I did not smile back. In the moment after, Mariko lifted her hand to her mouth, decided against touching it, and turned away.
During the forty-minute lecture, I took down every word the professor said except for “the,” “and,” and of course the “um,” “ahhs,” and “errrs,” which occurred on every twelfth or nineteenth syllable. When the professor concluded, I also wrote the numbers 4 and 186 in the margins. Each represented the number of times Alkie stealthily scratched his genitals through his jeans and the number of breaths Mariko took during the lecture, respectively.
“Now you all need to take copies of this before you begin the group activity on page seventeen,” the professor said. “There is a $5,000 prize at stake for each of you in the physics department. You can work together outside of class as a group, but only one student can enter and win. The contest is simple: create it or prove it. Come up with a new theory on the function of the universe as we know it, or prove a theory already in existence. Submission deadline is November. Now get to work on page seventeen so we can review.”
“Looks like we’re a team today,” Mariko said. With all the gauze stuffed under her lip, it looked like a lacerated caterpillar was trying to escape in between words.
Alkie laughed and shook his short dreadlocks. He had a Caribbean accent and smelled like blueberry hookah and popcorn. We were the same color—oxygenated apple meat. Mariko, however, looked like a peeled apple, untouched.
“Shut uff,” Mariko told Alkie, then turned to me. “I know I sound terrifle. It haffened at fractice. I’f just starting, so I need to fay fore attention. You fust think I look awful too?”
“No,” I said. “It just seems that ballet is dangerous business.”
Alkie let out a laugh loud enough to quiet the room for a few seconds. Mariko smiled in pain.
“Fallet class is this afternoon. I had fixed fartial arts this forning.”
“Mixed martial arts,” Alkie said. “She wants to be an Ultimate Fighting Champion. Good luck.”
There was little confidence in Alkie’s tone. I did not laugh, only nodded. Mariko leaned in closer to me far beyond the ordinary uncomfortable distance she normally maintained with people. “We saw your name in the Student Daily this morning,” she said. “You’re Reese Fairmont, a Presidential Scholar?”
I confirmed.
“Whew,” Alkie whistled. “That’s really phenomenal. Full ride, plus you stay in those swanky dorms.”
“My sister was one three years ago,” Mariko said. “I only got 50% tuition waived. I might earn an athletic scholarship.”
“Title IX whore.”
Mariko gently stabbed Alkie with her ballpoint pen. No penetration. She began to study the contest flyer intensely. In the close proximity I saw that no matter the devastation to her face Mariko would always be lovely. I would not be pretty for another four years, and even then it would last only six. Mariko touched her tongue to the green stitch just above the gauze and crossed her legs with the grace of a calla lily bending in the wind.
“Those skank ballet twats kicked me out of the club!” Mariko stomped, slammed, and screamed herself into the living room of her apartment where Alkie and I waited for her. This was our first meeting to decide what to submit for the theoretical physics competition. “They said my image is ‘too brutal for this delicate endeavor.’ Well those asshole tongue fucks can suck it! What’s the matter with you two?” Mariko said.
There must have been something peculiar in our demeanor, mostly Alkie’s, for mine did not change so dramatically. Before Mariko arrived, Alkie, in his island voice full of careful vowels and half-hearted consonants, asked: How are you? Where did you get that belt? Why don’t you talk more? Do you think Mariko is crazy? Are you hungry? To which I replied: Fine. My father. I don’t understand. The possibility exists for us all. And no, not at the moment.
He wanted a peanut butter and plantain sandwich, so I waited on the couch while he went to the kitchen, which was just another part of the living room. I could see him operating over the bar used to divide the space. With his side to me, I could see him slice the plantain. He held the fruit and knife close to his chest like he was breast feeding a small animal with ill-designed man-nipples. With his sandwich in both hands, he took a deep bite and exhaled heavily through his nose. The sound was that of water and air like a faucet shuddering on after a long time off. Before that bite reached its natural end, another and another collided. Alkie put his hands on the counter and worked nothing but his jaw to free the roof of his mouth of the gummy clog. Soon his knees bent further and he coughed the way one does when peanut butter touches the lung. He eventually pushed himself upright again, his triceps vibrating like a strummed guitar. It was a desperate act, hurried and impatient. When complete, there seemed little gratitude, as if the food was never there, never there at all. He then moved—slow and contented—while he made another sandwich, as if the room was filled with invisible smoke and water, everything sweet, everything salty. I know now that it meant happiness.
Alkie brought over the second sandwich and offered it to me. “Now I get to watch you eat.”
He smiled and placed the food on the coffee table next to a box wrapped in a patchwork of black construction paper. With his index finger he lifted my entire hand and moved it a little closer to the table. Instead of the sandwich I reached for the gloomy box, but Alkie moved it away.
“You don’t want to look in there.”
His mood changed so completely that I noticed new colors in the room, a lime green lamp that burned hot in the corner, purple and orange paisley prints on the rug. Then Mariko came home.
“We were just waiting for you,” Alkie said. “I guess this means cello lessons in the afternoons?”
“Fuck a cello,” she replied.
“Sounds complicated.”
“I’m sorry. I’m just so angry.”
Mariko cast her body down in front of me with her chin to chest, ready to be smote or knighted or held. Her genuflections often came that way, sudden and unwarranted. She hugged my knees and put her head in my lap. I did not hold her or stroke her hair or tell her that the world hurts sometimes but we all get through it. I didn’t know that was expected. Mariko eventually sat back on her heels.
“I had a fish once,” she said. “I loved to pet him. My mom told me not to do it because he wouldn’t like it, but I didn’t believe her. I had to pet him. He felt nice too, smooth like jewelry. I rubbed his side every day after school. He got patches and died. His name was Jennifer.”
Mariko looked at me with such sincerity and understanding that I almost touched her.
“That story is so fucked,” Alkie said. “I hope you never had a puppy. Jennifer? It’s all so very fucked.”
Mariko looked at Alkie, then at the uneaten sandwich and back to me.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “Did you eat? No? I need cheese and bread.”
“Frozen or Delivery?” asked Alkie. “Oooh, I have an idea for the competition!”
Alkie rushed back around the bar to get an apple from the kitchen. He paused in front of us and held the apple out at his side. He let it go.
“With bacon,” Mariko said.
“Don’t you get it? Relativity! We’ll do something to prove it, debunk it, expand it.”
Mariko turned to me and asked if I had any pizza topping preference. I asked for olives.
“What is wrong with relativity?” Alkie asked.
“Nothing,” Mariko said. “That’s the problem. We are not going to win the most prestigious award in the whole department by boinking around with outdated theories. Let me go check in the textbook. There might be some inspiration there. Don’t forget the olives!”
Alkie went into the hall to phone for pizza and Mariko went into her bedroom to retrieve her physics book. I reached for the little box on the coffee table. As soon as I lifted it the contents began to escape. Gray sand sprayed the table and rug. I acted with more care. Inside the box the sand reached the top of the lid with a corner of white paper semi-submerged like a bottle in the ocean. I pulled the paper only to see the bleak remains of a photo folded over and over like a riddle. The image had deep crevices cut along the heads. They were all Mariko’s head but not hers completely; there were a man, a woman, and a young woman who appeared as funhouse versions of the actual Mariko, diluted by light and mischief. All of the dreary contents I returned to the box.
Just over a week later Mariko and Alkie arrived at my parents’ home to work on our submission. The home I grew up in was beautiful, with bay windows that looked out on a peach tree planted thirty years before my birth. In between its beauty and my family’s arrival, the house endured a termite infestation, raccoon nesting, two recessions and a flood, plus the neighbor’s garage burned down along with the peach tree, and three separate gangs claimed the street as territory. My mother and father opened the door with the same interest in their guests as they might show a pair of butternut squash. Mariko, however, entered as though she might bear hug my father around the waist. My mother insisted on sitting down to a snack.
Mariko: We’re lucky to have Reese as a partner. She’s brilliant.
Mariko took a bite of a generic brand vanilla sandwich cookie.
Mom: Reese never had many friends.
Mom did not eat.
Alkie: That presidential award is hard to get. Only three in the entire entering class are awarded.
He pushed an entire sandwich cookie into his mouth.
Mom: Reese never had a boyfriend.
Alkie inhaled a crumb from his sandwich cookie and gagged.
Dad: Have you been taking your meds?
Dad tapped his cookie on the tray like a cigarette.
Me: Yes.
Dad: No episodes?
Me: Not for a while.
Dad opened his sandwich cookie carefully as if the truth lay inside and might be damaged if handled poorly.
Mariko: Um, I’m trying for an athletic scholarship. No one in my family is good at anything like that.
Mom: Reese never played sports.
Me: Let’s go to my room now.
They say parents are the mirror in which we glance to determine our whole value. Perhaps that is true enough. I’ve always thought of that green paste dentists use that dulls the pinch of the actual shot just a little. Soon the paste has no effect as the needle enters the quick of the gum, the crunch of the nerve and the spill of medicine turns half the mouth to meatloaf, dead and warm. To my parents, my own nerves were the enemy and had to be battled with vigilance. Some of us feel everything more than is reasonable. I remember being very young. I laughed at cartoons and sometimes commercials with animals in pants or hats. I would laugh so hard the room changed colors and I’d vomit. The sound of crickets made my eyes jitter and caused headaches that lasted for hours. Every part of the world had a song and screamed it over my shoulder. The doctors gave me pills then. The doctors gave me pills that made me sleep eighteen hours a day. They gave me pills to teach me to speak. They gave me pills to make the other pills work. The doctors eventually found the combination of drugs to make me closer to everyone else. The sounds of insects in the nighttime didn’t hurt anymore, but the color of people’s tongues couldn’t make me laugh. When the pills took my skin and wiped the bare muscle and tissue with that green dentist paste, everyone seemed satisfied. I refused my medication only three times: once in high school, once before this semester, and once before attending an all-girl cage fight.
Just the two extra bodies in my bedroom made the space lose all right angles. The walls and windows seemed more like domed glass, and the three of us confined in a snow globe. Mariko and Alkie leaned in on me, their knees almost on my shoulders asking me questions about my medication, the dosage, the cost, to which they mostly replied, “Wow, that’s a lot.” Soon Mariko found the conversation dull and took out her phone and checked a message. She had good news to share from her coach. Her first qualifying mixed martial arts match would take place in a week. She delivered a jab-uppercut combo to the air. Alkie made himself comfortable on my bed, and Mariko flopped down on his lap. She had to share the good news with her family and called home, but her sister answered.
“Put Mom on the phone…Just do it!…Where did she go?…Well, I have good news…No, I didn’t get the scholarship yet, but I’m close…I have a match next week…Not ballet you…I had to quit ballet!…I know she wanted…Can I finish please? Thank you. The match is next week and I want you guys to come…yes, you too…what…of course he’s going to be there…”
Just then Mariko put the backside of her knuckles to Alkie’s cheek and showed more tenderness than I had ever seen between two living people outside of movies and TV. Still, their faces were not of happy lovers climbing the soft hills of romance together. I realized someone thought their affair unreasonable. Like so many other things I suspected Mariko was told to leave alone, she couldn’t resist. Alkie wasn’t the type to get patches and die. He could be petted freely. Mariko proved that. She counted him a victory when those dearest could not. The two of them sat on my bed with the look of a couple scaling Mount Everest in tank tops and Bermuda shorts, Sherpa-less.
“I have an idea for the competition,” I said.
Mariko stood up and came to me without a word as if she’d been waiting for this, as if the lives we lived apart were just bad movies that were finally ending, as if we were fugitives from other worlds trapped on a cruel planet, as if together we might now go home.
I told them about strings, about the little vibrating bits of us all inside of every atom, inside of everything. Each moves at its own frequency but they are all the same, revolving belts of energy. In theory we can’t prove they exist because our technology can’t see on such a micro level yet. I proposed we design a program that could see for us. The idea was half science, half fiction and all Mariko could have hoped for.
“I need to use the restroom,” she said. “I’ll be right back. You just tell us what you want us to do.”
Once Mariko left the room, Alkie pulled me toward him, away from the door, the way secret keepers do when the secrets can’t be kept.
“I think she’s going to ask you to let her submit the project in her name.”
“You think I should let her?” I asked.
He shook his head furiously, the scent of blueberries everywhere.
“You should do what you want. Mariko has her reasons, but you should do what you want. You could do a lot with that money.” He looked around. “Your family could.”
Mariko returned.
“What are you two up to?”
“You ask that a lot,” Alkie replied. “You know that?”
Mariko’s cage fight took place at a small downtown arena that smelled like mid-summer public transportation. A wire fence fifteen feet high—no different than any low grade street fencing—surrounded the center ring. Mariko was scheduled to open for the main event between two fat free men resembling hairless bulldogs that taunted each other by pointing proudly to their abdominal regions. The young woman who Mariko prepared to meet in the ring had the bone structure of a mailbox, all steely round edges. Alkie and I waited with Mariko in the locker room. She held her head between her legs and had already thrown up twice.
“Go check again for me, OK.”
Mariko wanted Alkie to check the stands for her parents. He’d looked four times already and from the sound of Mariko’s voice this would be the last time. While Alkie was away Mariko came over and sat next to me, close enough for our arms and thighs to touch. Her hands were tucked into those gloves like two puffed mangos, and her shampoo smelled sweeter than I’d ever noticed. She looked like a woman already defeated. We had only two things to say to each other. Two promises to make.
“I think Alkie likes you,” she told me.
“I want your name on our submission,” I told her.
It was done. If possible I would have fought for Mariko in the ring with mango fists as well. In that moment she didn’t seem to care about the impending bodily harm she would soon endure. Her fighting skills had not improved since the first day she walked into class with a swollen lip and all the possibilities on earth. She would lose that fight and win the physics prize. Her family attended the award ceremony, and I took a photo of them. Alkie and I would never see the beating in the ring that night because she told us to stay in the locker room. He asked me what I was thinking and I told him blueberry pancakes. He smiled and the pink of his gums made me giggle, a feeling that spread fast and hard from my cheeks to tailbone like paint thrown on a canvas. Alkie hovered over me and pushed my shoulders down onto the bench. The harsh fluorescent lights fluttered like a hundred hummingbirds. He pressed hard against my ribs and navel, pulling my upper lip with both of his. We made our exchange, Mariko and I, two lives borrowed for as long as possible. Alkie kissed me with such familiarity that I knew I’d lost myself, every memory only dreamed and time rewound to another life unequal in scope and imagination, one of frayed liquid ropes that brush every atom of the universe.