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Collage by Krista Beucler

The Refusenik

by Sue William Silverman
Winner, Summer Writing Contest

        

1.
From my second-floor window, I watch the landlord walk around the side of the apartment building to perform his ritual inspection of galvanized garbage cans. The four cans are neatly aligned in the driveway. Every morning he removes the lids. He pulls out each bag of refuse. He unties the knots, peeks inside, shakes the contents, searching to ensure each tenant follows the rules: Do not place spoiled food in the same bag as paper products; keep spoiled food to a minimum; most spoiled food should be ground up in the garbage disposal; no heavy or sharp items should be placed in cans whatsoever; all items must be in a plastic bag, nothing loose. No explanation is given for the regulations. Maybe it’s a city ordinance or simply personal preference. Who knows? It’s a mystery.
        This is the point during the initial tenant interview, before my husband and I moved into one of the four units in the building, when I stopped listening. Now, well into our lease, we receive handwritten warnings, slipped under the door, about inappropriately disposed garbage. I take the warnings and toss them like unrequited love letters into the trash.

        

2.
The landlord lives in the apartment across the landing from ours. Catty-cornered from this two-story red-brick building, in this older downtown neighborhood in Liberty, Missouri, is the Second Baptist Church. On Sundays, from my front living-room window, I watch well-dressed parishioners stream inside in search of God, forgiveness, or the meaning of it all.
        Sometimes you can’t decipher a thing simply by looking at it. For example, homographs are words spelled the same with completely different meanings depending on pronunciation. Consider “refuse” (garbage; trash; rubbish) versus “refuse” (decline to accept or submit). Also, “bow” (as in tying a trash bag’s drawstring into a neat bow) versus “bow” (as in, to bow down before the Lord thy God).
        The landlord wants me to be a REFusenik (someone who properly disposes of rubbish, who plays by the rules); while I want to be a reFUSEnik (a person who declines to play by the rules because she is secretly pissed off, as if about to explode).
        However, you wouldn’t know this just by looking at me.

        

3.
Today, while I spy on the landlord during his refuse inspection, Ronald Reagan is being sworn in as President. He stands on the West Front of the Capitol with a view of the Presidential memorials and Arlington National Cemetery. I wish Jimmy Carter, for whom I voted, was delivering the speech instead. Most pundits claim Carter lost the election because of his mishandling of the Iranian hostage crisis.
        As Reagan delivers his speech, the 52 Americans held hostage for 444 days are released. A distant relative of my husband’s is one of them. We carefully followed the crisis since the hostages were first captured on November 4, 1979. The relative is a “diplomat,” though my husband is sure he works undercover, in secret, for the CIA.
         Maybe the reason our landlord diligently inspects the garbage is that he, too, is working undercover. Maybe he’s looking for evidence of a crime: mayhem, espionage, treason, or voting Democratic.
         During the campaign, Reagan held a rally a few blocks from our apartment outside an elementary school. Although I don’t like him on any level, I attended out of curiosity. Only a small crowd gathered. He said a few words about the greatness of America. As he spoke, he gazed above the heads of the crowd not seeing, I’m sure, any of us.
        The celebrations and inaugural balls last well into the evening, but I turn off the television, refusing to watch.

        

4.
Earlier this morning, I stood by the window watching my husband leave for work. It’s an easy walk up a hill to the college where he teaches. Once he’s out of sight, I exhale, feeling lighter. The apartment buzzes with emptiness, a more soothing sound than when he is home.
        A few weeks ago, my husband removed my Smith-Corona portable typewriter, upon which I write every day, from a corner of the bedroom. Glaring at me, he squeezed a tiny desk into an alcove at the intersection of the dining room and kitchen. He deposited the typewriter on it. He objected to the wads of paper strewn around the bedroom, which is why I’m now relegated to the alcove. He objects to the fact that I write, period. He objects to the fact that I’m a terrible cook who fixes messy, uninteresting dinners. He objects to me altogether.
        He wants me to clean the apartment, make interesting (or at least edible) dinners, stop writing. But I refuse.

        

5.
The downstairs neighbors are a fundamentalist married couple. I hear their door close as they leave with their stack of religious pamphlets to proselytize. They knocked on our door as soon as we moved in. I told them I’m Jewish, which is true. I didn’t mention I’m a secular, non-observant Jew. What’s a little sin of omission? They know my husband teaches at William Jewell College, part of the Southern Baptist Convention. Is he home? they asked. He wasn’t. And I convinced them that, despite his place of employment, he’s an atheist. Vehemently so. They looked at me doubtfully.
        William Jewell College requires every faculty member to write a religious testament. This is required for the college to receive funds from the Southern Baptist Convention. My husband struggled to write it, finding it more difficult than completing his PhD dissertation, Literary Realism and the Ekphrastic Tradition. Finally, he wrote about his religious experience reading James Joyce’s Ulysses. Apparently, this was acceptable. Or maybe the college never sent it to the Convention, or filed the evidence away where no one would discover it. Or simply threw it out.
        I closed the door on our downstairs neighbors, gently but firmly. I did not bow my head in prayer.

        

6.
By early evening the downstairs couple returns to their apartment. Since our building was once a single-family home, there’s no real soundproofing between floors. Now, while I’m in the kitchen tossing together a last-minute dinner of grilled-cheese sandwiches, I hear them clanging pans. Their voices are muffled. Maybe they’re talking about God, or the Rapture, or the wages of rejection.
        The scent of roast beef wafts from their kitchen. Maybe it’d be worth converting if they’d invite my husband and me to dinner.
        Later, lying in bed beside my sleeping husband, I hear the religious couple having sex. I’m sure they don’t suspect that the sound, like the smell of roast beef, rises up profusely as prayer through the floorboards.
        I also envision the landlord across the hall. Anything is better than focusing on the couple downstairs being fruitful. The landlord’s wife died years ago. He lives alone. I wonder if, right now, he’s sorting through what to save, what to discard—like God deciding the fate of those who believe in Him versus those who refuse—and ensuring the latter are relegated to the proper circle of hell.

        

7.
Several months later, taking a break from writing in my cramped alcove, I watch Prince Charles and Lady Diana marry on television.
        Did I suspect, even then, the marriage between Charles and Diana wouldn’t last despite, or because of, the lavish nuptials, the royal carriage, the fairy tale celebrations?
        By then, I’d been married approximately three times longer than the hostages had been held captive by the Iranians.
        There was no way you could lump Diana and me together. You could easily tell us apart just by looking. Or could you? We were both preparing to decline, reject, spurn. Diana had to wait for all the confetti to be swept away; I had to wait to write something I didn’t want to shred.

        

8.
After the couple downstairs quiets, I imagine sliding out of bed, gathering the stack of paper beside my typewriter, pausing outside my apartment. No slit of light beneath the landlord’s door. I creep down the stairs careful the papers don’t rustle, the floor doesn’t creak. If the landlord heard a footfall, he’d open his door to investigate, to see who dared to wander his domain late at night.
        Literal Refuseniks are Soviet Jews trapped in the USSR because the regime refuses to issue them passports. The papers I lack are those decreeing a divorce; therefore, I am trapped in a marriage that is only metaphorically Siberian.
        I walk outside around to the side of the building. Snow crunches under my feet, cold blasting my face. I pry off the top of a galvanized can, the metal freezing my fingers. I dump my typewritten papers inside. I glance up at the window to my apartment. My mind’s eye sees a hazy reflection of gray night clouds darken the glass. That, and a shard of light, like a searchlight, from the streetlamp at the corner.
        No one appears to be home; I listen, but only to silence. Or maybe I refuse to toss my story into the pail—my confession about a woman who flees her husband. . . flees Missouri, driving a car west, staring straight out the windshield at swathes of blue sky toward the expansiveness of empty, horizonless desert.
        I open the car window. Page after page flutters out, leaving a paper trail of refuse behind me along the vast tract of landscape. But it will be years before I have the words.

                                                                ***
          

Editor’s note: Although the word refusenik has come to refer to any person who refuses or declines something, the original term referred to Soviet Jews who were denied permission to emigrate, primarily to Israel. They suffered harsh consequences for simply making the request and wanting to live freely as Jews. Their struggle grew into a dissident movement against an oppressive regime that became a remarkable victory for human rights. Among the better-known refuseniks: Yosef Mendelevitch, Ida Nudel, Vladimir Slepak, and Natan Sharanksy.