my mother says. “I could feel your knot.”
When my mother tells this story, I take long sips of my lemonade to keep quiet. I know she screamed the whole birth. I brought her the same pain she brought her mother.
“Your father says I went possessed. My eyes rolled back into my head.”
THERE ARE 4,500 DIFFERENT TYPES OF knots. There are 3,800 basic variations of these knots. There are an infinite number of ways to combine these knots and their variations. In this way, knots are like stars.
We could have been complicated: Figure eights, clove hitches, sheet bends, reefs, heaving lines.
But our knots are simple: Overhand. Our abdomens twist in and out just once, our bodies wrapping back into themselves, creating dark caverns, coiled as snakes.
IN OLD BLACK-AND-WHITE PHOTOS, MY young mother poses next to my grandmother. Both conceal their knots beneath billowing blouses, standing stiffly on a gray lawn, their gray lips strained into gray smiles over gray teeth.
THE ACRES WERE PASSED DOWN TO MY father from his father and his father before him. A small black sign with white paint says The Acres where our land begins.
We have an old white house and a rust-red barn. Our white house is all wooden floors, arched windows, linens to wash. Our barn is where the sleeping machines are kept.
The rest of the town stands a few miles back from us and our land. We are isolated in this way. Some days, only my family can see me, which is my freedom — no new stares, no new disgust.
The Acres are worth money is what my parents say. Here is why: At the edge of our land is the Meat Quarry. There, meat is harvested from the tall walls of a red, fleshy canyon.
MY MOTHER AND I KEEP THE HOME ON weekends. My mother is like weather in that she changes daily. Each day, I make a report of her.
Today, my mother is focused and sharp, training me to clean. Everything must be white, pristine, diamond. Specks of dirt taunt her.
A bucket of lemons rests at my feet. To keep a home, one must have hands and skin of citrus.
“Now, do it how I do it,” she says. “You’re old enough for a knife now.”
I have seen it: Her back hunched over the sink, the brown of her hair glinting in the sunlight, the fat of her upper arms warbling, the sawing, then the halves between her fingers, yellow half-moons in her palms, rubbing lemon over white wall.
I hunch over the silver gut of the sink. I cut the lemons down the center, one by one, arms shivering against the knife, separating the small citrine hearts.
I run the yellow halves over the white walls until they glisten, until the house tangs with the flesh of the fruit, until the juice of the citrus runs into the gutters of my gnawed nail beds then stings.
EACH DAY, MY FATHER AND BROTHER PULL meat from the quarry to sell in town like my father’s father and his father before him. Their bodies disappear over the green grass of The Acres, their figures swallowed by the thin mouth of the long horizon.
I have never seen the Meat Quarry, so I must invent it over and over again in my mind: Giant red walls of flesh marbled with the electric white of fat.
“You’re not meant to be there,” my father says. “Some things, a woman should not see.”
Has my mother seen it? I do not know.
“Does the meat glisten and glitter?”
“Enough. You keep far from there,” my father says. “It’s not safe.”
He drinks his liquor after dinner, eyes going red. My mother’s fury hangs at the edge of the table, growing with each sip he takes.
“Haven’t you had enough?” she asks.
“What does the quarry smell like?” I ask.
“Enough again,” he says sharply. “Both of you, drop it.”
MY MOTHER SITS NEXT TO ME ON WICKER porch furniture. We have finished our cleaning for the day. Now, it is magazine time.
My mother’s magazines are bright portals to new worlds. Women wear fantastic clothing, their faces dazzling up from the pages.
My mother reads me the new tips.
“This season, women need whiter teeth.”
I look at her teeth, their yellowing from years of smoke.
“Another trend is plastic fingernails. Now would you look at these?”
On the page in her lap, a pair of slender hands holds a glass of soda with a straw. The hands have long, bright red nails, shining, luscious, more perfect than anything I have seen before.
I look at her hands, their nails, which are short, unpainted, best for working lemon against wall.
The sun begins its fat drop into the horizon. A thin sadness leaks from my heart for her.
“One day, we’ll have white teeth and red nails, too,” I say.
Then I invent us like that in my mind: Our teeth gleaming, our nails red. I picture us beautiful, unknotted.
LATER, IN MY BEDROOM, I SHED MY clothes and take inventory of my body in the long mirror.
I am thin at the arms and legs, wiry brown hair down to my shoulders. My eyes are brown, flat. My jaw is large, my ears too big.
My breasts are small, and there is a bit of flatness before it begins. Just below my ribs, the skin changes. My knot is strained and stretch-marked, shining and hard.
I used to gasp when I saw it, but now it is my familiar. I have seen my mother’s, too, when she is changing, through the crack in the door. Her breasts sag over her knot. We are different in that way.
The cool air pushes in through the window and runs over that secret skin, a relief in that touch.
AT TIMES, I IMAGINE IT ALL DIFFERENT. Bright visions rush over me, scenes from a golden life in another world.
VISION
Alone, I shed my clothes and take inventory of my body in the long mirror.
I am thin at the arms and legs, brown hair down to my shoulders, bright eyes. I have small breasts, and just below my ribs, my stomach is flat.
I run my hands over my belly, skin smooth as a stone from a river.
The cool air pushes in through the window and runs over my skin, a pleasure in that touch.
I DIG THROUGH MY MOTHER’S OLD MAGazines in the attic. I flip through the old trends, admire the smooth women.
Tips are written in bold fonts:
