LOOK AT ME!” I yell back.
I pull up my dress, bare my weak fangs, my knot bright in the sunlight streaming through the windows, a single eye of flesh daring them all to move, to come closer, to try me.
VISION
I’m the queen now. All the students surround me with their offerings at lunch.
“I’ve brought you an orange,” says a boy with one lazy eye.
“Thank you,” I say. “That’s very kind.”
“I’ve brought you crackers with cheese in the center,” says a girl in a plaid dress.
“Wonderful.”
They come forward one by one, each with a treat. I smooth my own dress down over my flat stomach. The offerings rise up around me, growing like sweet palaces.
IN BED THAT NIGHT, I SLIDE MY HANDS down. I run my fingers over my knot.
I try to tell myself I don’t mind it so much. Under the light of the moon, I picture my teeth growing into big fangs. I widen my mouth, let them catch the breeze. I close my eyes and try to believe, half-girl, half-snake.
THE NEXT MORNING, MY MOTHER SITS at the kitchen table. Her yellow house dress tents over her knot, big as a cheap sun. I spoon cereal into my mouth.
“Will you call the doctor?” I ask. “Will you ask him to unknot me?”
“That’s not how it works,” my mother says, smoking. “And it’s the weekend. They don’t work on weekends.”
“Why don’t you ever try?”
“We’ve been over this. The doctors don’t give a damn about it.”
“They screamed at me again. At school.”
“I used to spit at them when they spat at me,” my mother says.
Then she stares out the window into the long horizon as if in a deep trance, as if staring into another time, as if I were not there, never born.
THAT AFTERNOON, WE’RE IN THE LIVING room. We are cleaning again.
“These curtains are a mess!” my mother says.
She lifts the fabric of the curtains like strange brocade hair.
“And now what is this?”
She pulls one of my father’s bottles from the ground, half-full of liquor.
“Motherfucker,” she whispers. “Motherfucker.”
She slams the bottle on the living room table, then sits down beside me on the couch, so close our knees bang. We face the bottle. Anger shimmers off of her in hot waves. I stay quiet. I know how this goes.
“Now,” she says, “we wait for this motherfucker.”
The sun sets, and the moon rises. We fall asleep on the couch. When the sun rises again, my father still hasn’t come home.
“Time to get ready for school,” my mother says.
She slides the bottle back behind the curtain, a strange magic trick, the evaporated day.
VISION
My father has special places for the bottles: Behind the toilet, in the back of the truck, beneath the pillows of the fancy sofa, beneath the chair in the living room, in the shower, in the trash can.
“You’re hiding them everywhere,” I say. “I found one behind my bed last night.”
“It’s not what you think. Please don’t tell your mother,” he says.
“It is too what I think. What will she say when she finds out?”
“You can’t tell her. You can’t, I’ll stop.”
The world will spin on as it does until you do something to change it. I pull each bottle from its special place. I stack the glass bottles, half-full of clear liquid, on the front lawn, in the sun.
The pile is bigger than the front door, bigger than the truck. I hurl my body at the pile of glass and begin to smash the bottles one by one, shards glinting in the sun like a new future.
AT NIGHT, I LAY MY HEAD IN MY mother’s lap.
“Unknot me,” I sob. “Please make someone fix me.”
“There’s nothing we can do,” she murmurs.
“Kill me then,” I say. “Please.”
My mother exhales smoke, stubs out her cigarette, then puts her cool hand on my forehead, a rare touch.
WHEN THE HOUSE IS SILENT, I SNEAK into my father’s office. This is my favorite place.
The room bursts with him. The shelves are lined with his favorite objects: Paused lava rocks, bleached-white bones, books about meat, empty bottles that catch and refract the light like diamonds.
I sit at his desk in his red leather chair. I spin the chair a few times. I open his desk drawer. The silver key to the Meat Quarry gates glistens against the black liner. I clench my fingers around that cool metal until it aches, then slide the key back into the drawer.
A map of the Meat Quarry lines the office wall behind me. The quarry is mapped like veins of a heart: fat arteries, thin arteries, all connected and winding. Areas with the best meat are marked with a red X.
I run my fingers over the map, trace the arteries, memorizing paths until I hear the front door open. I sneak out, heart in my throat.
EACH DAY AT SCHOOL, I STARE AT BODIES, memorizing their limbs, their smooth lines. The body of Sophia is my favorite.
A PORTRAIT OF SOPHIA: LONG BROWN hair which shimmers where mine is dull, narrow shoulders where mine are gangly, long legs, no knot where I am knotted.
IN THE MORNINGS, SOPHIA WALKS SLOWLY into the classroom as if covered in sleep. Sophia wears a red dress, then a blue dress, then a green dress. In the afternoons, Sophia laughs in the lunchroom, and light bounces off the white of her teeth. Sophia knows a joy I do not know.
I watch Sophia move and I want to move like she does. Some days, Sophia catches me staring and waves. Sometimes, I lift my limp hand and wave back.
I don’t know if my wave tells the truth, which is: I want to move like you do. I want to slice you open with a knife. I want to hide my body inside of yours.
TODAY, MY MOTHER WANTS TO HELP. SHE closes
