instead: Slender, cheekbones sharp, mouth pursed, thin thighs, thin arms.
I slide the rock into my mouth.
“I WON’T GO OUT INTO THE QUARRY today,” my father says at the breakfast table.
His face is strange and gray. A sour smell fevers off of his body.
“What’s wrong?” my mother asks, exhaling smoke. “Too much again last night?”
A silence comes down on the table. We wait for a fight like this most days. Some days a fight comes, some days it doesn’t. Today, it passes by.
“You’re on your own today,” he says to my brother. “Go to the side lands and look for a new harvest.”
My brother nods. My mother exhales smoke, eyes sharp on my father, dissecting.
“I’m going to see Sophia today,” I say.
“Fine,” she says. “Get out of our hair.”
AFTER BREAKFAST, I SLIP INTO MY father’s office. I slide the gate key from his desk drawer. The metal is hot in my hand, my secret lights a fire in my veins, it thrums in my body, my knot humming.
“Goodbye,” I shout on my way out the door.
I cross the fields, heart racing. All of the sky big and blue as ever, and I am free in the world. The meat is on the air already, the red wounds of the quarry in the distance. Rings of sweat begin beneath my arms.
A latticed black gate rises up before me, the entrance to the quarry. Through the slits in the gate, I can see glimpses of the meat. I slip the key from my pocket and into the mouth of the lock.
The gate swings open with a long, low creak. The path is shallow at the start, with low red rocky walls on either side.
A small set of tracks lines the ground. Metal carts sit silent and empty. I follow the tracks deeper into the quarry. The earth around me gets redder with each step, the scent of meat filling my nose and mouth.
The red rocks gradually morph, the stench growing stronger, almost choking. Slick wet spirals of meat surround me, rising above my head in high walls, thin veins of white fat running through the redness.
The meat glistens like a rare gem, a beautiful hypnosis. Chunks have been removed from the walls here, places where my brother and father tore the meat from the earth to eat and sell.
I run my fingers over the slickness, get red up to the wrists, lick the blood from my fingers.
I move closer, press my body against the meat, press my mouth against the wall, let the blood soak into my face.
THEY’VE TAKEN ALL THE BOYS AWAY. IT IS time for sexual education.
I sit next to Sophia. We dart eyes at each other until the teacher walks in.
A diagram is on the wall, and it shows the female body, the muscles drawn in beautiful gray lines.
“Today,” the teacher says, “we’re going to learn about sex.”
Nervous laughter pecks up out of our throats. Sophia makes a gagging face at me.
“Now, this is what the inside of your body looks like,” the teacher says. “These organs here? They are how you become pregnant after intercourse.”
Another burst of laughter comes forward.
“Calm down, now calm down,” the teacher says. “We have to get through a lot today. Be mature here.”
The teacher glances over at me.
“Oh, oh, I should say,” the teacher says. “You’re something else altogether. I’m not sure how your body works. Maybe just ignore this.”
My throat closes up. I stare down at my desk. Sophia reaches over and pinches me. I look up.
“Fucking shithead,” she mouths at me.
“Now, when you have sex with a man, his sperm will travel up the vagina to the uterus then to the cervix,” the teacher continues. “If the ovary has created an egg and it is nearby, the sperm can swim to it and enter it. This is called fertilization, and we do not want it to happen. I simply cannot stress this enough.”
◆The uterus is roughly the shape and size of a small pear
◆In Ancient Greece, the uterus was believed to be an organ which wandered around the body, causing all emotional and physical female problems
◆Uterus didelphys is a rare condition which causes women to be born with two uteruses
◆One in 4,500 women are born without a uterus
◆The uterus is the only organ that can create an entire other organ; during pregnancy, the placenta is grown inside the uterus
WE ARE ALL PILED INTO THE TRUCK. MY mother sits up front next to my father, smoking. My brother stares out the window from the seat beside me as we cross the land.
“River day,” she hums. “Are you excited for river day?”
Dread takes root in my gut and grows.
“I don’t feel good,” I say. “I think I’m getting sick.”
The tar of my anxiety spreads through my veins.
“Can we just have a nice day?” my mother snaps.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
The river is crowded with the faces of people from town. I see Jarred across the water.
We strip to our swimsuits. Then my mother and I stand next to the river. I can feel the eyes of everyone around us on our knots, on my knot. I flush with shame.
“We came here to swim,” my mother says, voice like metal.
My mother pulls my hands from my stomach. We move to the water.
“Isn’t this nice?” my mother says, but there’s no joy to it.
I dive beneath the water. I go deep, then even deeper. I try to go deep enough to drown the knot.
VISION
The sign at the entrance says: THIGH RIVER PARK. NO TRESPASSING, but Sophia tugs my hand and pulls me in.
We walk down a long path until we reach giant dark rocks.
“We’re going to have to climb a little,” she says.
She starts to make her way up the rock. I watch her maneuver, then follow her motions. I can hear water in the distance.
“There it is,” Sophia says when we reach the top of the rock.
