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The Book of X. Sarah Rose Etter
Читать онлайн.Название The Book of X
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781937512828
Автор произведения Sarah Rose Etter
Жанр Зарубежная классика
Издательство Ingram
Under his skin is an anger that casts a shadow around him.
“Why are you always looking at me?” he asks.
I lift my eyes and stare right into his face.
That’s when I realize it: His left eye is lazy, the pupil unfocused, staring off into another world. His right eye pierces into me like a knife.
I TELL SOPHIA WHAT’S IN MY INSIDES.
“It’s awful inside of me,” I say.
“What’s in there?” she asks.
“I have a pit of badness in my stomach,” I say.
Then we sit in the quiet of the confession.
VISION
Under the fluorescent lights, I am gaping wide. My incision is wide and long, from hip to hip, across my flat belly, right where a woman would grow a baby.
With each breath, black blood gurgles out from the slit. My insides are no longer red. Now, my organs are black, no longer soft, now covered in dark sparkling crystals.
I can’t stop looking at my terrible insides, at how wretched I have become there, how beautiful the rot is.
My wound keeps glittering with each breath, a terrible evening of stars shimmering inside of me.
EACH WEEK, MY MOTHER TAKES ME TO visit the bodies of my grandparents. We walk to the edge of The Acres where there is a cemetery squared by a low white fence.
“It keeps the wolves out,” my mother says.
Crooked white crosses spell out their names in script above the dates of birth and death. We place small offerings on low grassy mounds.
“They’ll love this,” my mother whispers.
The offerings: Flowers, small sugar cookies, rosaries, a small cheap statue of an angel. Against the crosses, the gifts look wrong. They will spoil in the rain, melt down to strange, warped blobs of colored sugar and plastic.
“Now, isn’t this nice?”
My mother sits between the graves and caresses the grass.
“I just miss you so much,” she says to the ground, her sob a fist which clenches the heart in my chest.
I leave her side, wander the edge of the cemetery. My eyes land on a black shape beneath the grass, a rocky mound. I lean down. It is a tiny tombstone, smaller than the crosses.
Stephen X B: Jan 3 D: Jan 5
“Don’t look at that,” my mother hisses. “Get over here, that doesn’t concern you.”
“Who is it? Who is Stephen?”
“Who do you think it is? Use your head.”
A hollow feeling enters my chest and stays there through the drive home, through dinner, until I am in my bed, wrapped in my sheets, still as a body in a grave.
VISION
My father guides the truck over the land through the town to the big cemetery. Here, the strangers are buried. The sun is fat and hot in the blue sky.
“You ready to play our favorite game?” my father asks.
“Yes! Let’s play it!”
He stops the truck and we climb out. The steel black gate lets out a low moan when he unlatches it. We step into the cemetery, long green grass sprouting up between the headstones which jab up out of the ground like strange granite teeth.
“And... GO!” my father shouts.
I work my way through the cemetery, weaving through the graves. I get lost in the names, the small tombstones.
My father is always faster than I am. He starts shouting his numbers. “1913! 1908! 1898!”
I shout mine back once I catch up, heart pounding. “1916! 1884! 1911!”
“1879!” my father yells, and he is the winner.
We climb back into the car. He puts a very sad song on the stereo and hums along as he drives us to the ice cream store, the second part of our ritual.
“I’ll still buy you one,” my father says.
We both buy vanilla. We don’t speak on the drive home, just listen to the very sad song again and again as he navigates us home.
ONE AFTERNOON IS DIFFERENT FROM the rest. Sophia and I are alone in the house, which is quiet. I like the silence like that, a blanket.
“I want to teach you a new game,” Sophia says. “I learned it from Jarred. Let’s go into your bedroom.”
In the dull afternoon light, she climbs into my bed with me.
She slides her knee between my legs.
“This is called rocking horse,” she says. “Jarred loves this game.”
Then she moves her leg until my face flushes and my body trembles, until pink sweetness explodes from between my legs and floods my veins.
AT LUNCH, I CHEW A SANDWICH. JARRED does the same. His eyes catch mine. We lock gazes until he slams his sandwich down on the table.
My pulse quickens as he walks to my table. He gets close enough to drop his head to mine, his lips near my ear.
“Stop looking at me, you fucking freak,” he whispers. “You’re disgusting.”
He walks back to his seat and sits down. I keep my head down, fill my mouth again with bread.
VISION
I go straight for my father’s tools. I find a screwdriver and a pair of pliers. The tools are heavy and cold in my hand. I trust metal.
In my bedroom, I strip off my clothes. The pliers in my right hand, the screwdriver in my left. I wrap the mouth of the pliers around the first twist of the knot. Ijam the screwdriver into the knot’s crevice.
I pull with all of my might, my teeth grinding against each other. I want the pliers and the screwdriver to splinter me, I want to undo myself. Blood rushes from my knot in thick red streams.
My bedroom door opens, and my mother fills the doorway.
“What are—” she starts. Then she is on me, ripping the tools from my hands.
“What is wrong with you?” she demands.
“I want it gone!” I scream. “I want to be like Sophia!”
My mother puts me into the bath, both of us silent, only the pink water making sound. Soon I’m surrounded by the warm water, eyes closed. Then my mother’s hand is on my cheek.
SOPHIA LIVES CLOSER TO THE SCHOOL. She takes me home one afternoon. At her house, everything is proper.
Her mother is in the den. Her mother is a thin, sharp woman. She is precise as a knife. She says, “No sugar, remember,” and hands us carrots to eat.
At Sophia’s house, there are rules about sugar, screaming, laughing too loud. We go to Sophia’s room, which is pristine and pastel pink. We sit on her bedroom floor. I confess again.
“I feel