Emily emerges from the water, walking as though she’s forgotten how legs work. Tess climbs to her feet, staggers forward, and then halts, her mouth in a wide O. Beneath a mottled covering of viscous liquid and traces of sand—a nightmarish mockery of lanugo—Emily’s skin is sea-pale. Where once she had a navel, she now has a fleshy protuberance resembling an ornate skeleton key emerging from a lock. She blinks once, twice, and nictitating membranes roll back, revealing black eyes—shark eyes—and Tess swallows a scream. This isn’t Emily, it can’t be.
“Mommy?”
Tess’s entire body jolts. The eyes and skin might be wrong, but the voice and smile are all Emily, yet when Tess holds out her arms, Emily steps back, not closer, and lifts her chin. Moonlight reflects in the black of her eyes, and an image comes in view: a still-swollen abdomen, pendulous breasts, vulva concealed by a thick thatch of curls, long tentacular limbs, eel-like fingers ending in claws, a dark eye emerging from tendrils of coiling hair.
Tess backs away, her hands held palm out. Emily stands, face impassive. Her lips don’t move, but a deep, mellifluous voice says, “I see you, first mother of my firstborn.”
Tess bites back a sob. “What, who, are you?”
“I am the mother of all, she who birthed the world and made it whole. I am all that was, and all that will be.”
Emily takes her hand, and Tess hisses in a breath—Emily’s skin is cold, so cold—and the world melts away. Tess sees the shape, the mother, sitting atop a throne. Another being emerges from beneath the ocean floor and wrenches the mother from her place. Sand obscures a great battle, then settles to reveal black blood and lifeless limbs, and the mother, battered and bruised, crawling back to her throne. A second beast rears, rends; the mother’s mouth opens in a silent scream; battle begins anew. More blood and sand and fury. Endless creatures, endless battles.
Tess covers her eyes. No more. She can’t bear this.
Emily pulls her hand away. Tess sees her daughter walking on the beach and into the waves, into the mother’s embrace; sees inhuman hands guiding her between two great thighs, pushing her into a cavernous womb; sees Emily floating, sleeping with her hands clasped together beneath her cheek; sees small creatures crawling from her navel to drift and grow beside her in the amniotic fluid.
Emily withdraws her hand. “Now you see,” the voice, not Emily’s, says. “The usurper gods are finally dead, and it is time for my children to put the world right. The birthing is over, but your work is not done. You must open the door.”
“But why me? Why my daughter?”
“Because you are her first mother and she alone had the strength to answer my call.”
Tess swallows hard, pushes defiance in her words. “And what will happen if I don’t?”
There is a silence, a profound absence of everything, and stars glitter in the sky. Tess’s fingers tremble. In the black pits of Emily’s eyes, the mother quivers.
A peal of inhuman laughter slices through the quiet. “Then I will take my children back into my womb, and I will unmake the world.”
In Emily’s eyes, a face begins to rise to the surface, and every instinct tells Tess to avert her attention, to run, then the face slips into the depths again with more laughter.
Emily steps forward and touches Tess’s cheek. “Everything will be okay.” She takes Tess’s hand and places it on her belly.
The pulsing warmth of the umbilicus is unexpected, and Tess sobs, fighting the urge to pull away. It changes, softens, wraps around her fingers. The narrow strands dance across her skin, and in the center of it all, Tess’s fingertips meet a hardness. Emily’s gaze, with its strange, black un-Emily eyes, locks on hers.
Panic courses through her veins. What is she going to set in motion? What if this is the end of everything?
“I love you, Mommy. I’ve missed you so much.”
Tess sobs harder. The panic shatters. “I love you, too, punkin, with all my heart. I’ve missed you every single day.”
Emily smiles. “But now I’m back and everything will be okay, I promise.”
Tess sucks in a breath and turns the key. The umbilicus shrivels, turns the shade of an oyster shell, and falls to the sand. The weighted silence returns, hangs, and then comes the creak of a great doorway opening. From the water emerges a thousand, no, a hundred thousand Emilys, all black eyes and pale skin, but there is something inhuman in their faces, something painful to look upon, as though their Emily skin is nothing more than mimicry and a closer inspection will reveal the truth and send her screaming into madness.
They move with odd, liquid strides and when they pass, each pauses to pat Emily’s shoulder and whisper, “Sister.” Tess catches sight of jagged teeth, too many teeth, and where navels should be, they have a circular patch of translucent skin that reveals not organs, but a darkness hiding in a shifting sea. As they leave the beach, disappearing into the shadows, Tess whimpers. What are they going to do? What has she unleashed? And how can such wrongs set anything right?
“Don’t worry,” Emily says. “They won’t hurt you.” She blinks and familiar green eyes replace the black, wraps her arms around Tess and the cold is gone, too.
Tears turn Tess’s vision to a blur, and she can’t speak, can only hold Emily tight, breathing her in, terrified to look too close, to see beneath the camouflage. But she has her daughter back, and that’s worth everything and anything at all. No matter what, it has to be.
A Lie You Give, and Thus I Take
Don’t be fooled by the breadcrumbs in the forest. This is not a fairy tale.
* * *
The first lie is pretty and spirals from your mouth like candyfloss; sweet, so sweet, and I’m melting under your tongue. Baby, baby, baby, you say, and I gobble it up, unaware that every word you say comes with a candy thermometer and you’ve made me your latest caramel bonbon.
(We’ll get to that later.)
It isn’t your fault that I’m starving. It is your fault that your recipe is gourmet bullshit, and you want to know what I look like with the apron strings tied around my neck and how best you can fit me into your oven.
(This is where I admit I’m caught by the sugar rush, but you already know that, don’t you?)
You’ll be safe here, you say. You’ll be safe with me.
How perfectly charming. Obviously you’re not a witch, and my brother is nowhere in sight. Things get lost in translation. Things get changed. And there’s no reason for me to doubt your royal peerage—you have the epaulettes and posture to prove it. I think you expect me to curtsy, but the moment passes and I wipe icing from my lips instead.
Your house, in the middle of the woods in the middle of a town in the middle of a muddle, is small, but it’s bright and cheery and my feet sink into marshmallow fluff. It’s the sort of floor on which a girl could dance a pirouette and a woman, a waltz. I do neither, afraid I might trip over my own aspirations. I suspect even a queen in heated shoes could find comfort. Marshmallow root is good for burns, or so I’ve read.
Do you invite all the lost girls here, I ask.
You smile and say of course not. You’re special.
The words are strawberry shortcake, a little cloying, the portion too large, but I swallow it all.
Okay, I say, and I want to smack myself because it’s late and I should be heading back, but the only thing waiting is a woodcutter’s axe with my name on it, so I say okay again. The light changes and for an instant, your teeth are canine sharp, your jaw a little too long, but that’s the wrong story, isn’t it?
(You might think the axe is from the wrong story, too, but there’s always a woodcutter and always a blade waiting around the corner.)
Anyway, your teeth are fine and if you bite a little when we’re in your king-sized bed, it’s okay. I may have a sweet tooth but I’m not delicate.
* * *
In the morning, you’re already up when I wake and I hear you in the kitchen: wire whisk against glass bowl, mortar and pestle crunch, metal teeth tearing wa
x paper. I whisper good morning and look for the coffee, but you’ve got a piece of marzipan at the ready.
I’ve been waiting for you my whole life, you say, and the sweet sticks to my teeth and there’s a cyanide burn when I swallow it down, but I don’t pay attention because you’re already pushing another piece between my lips.
Then you hand me a bucket and a scrub brush and I’m confused; that’s definitely the wrong story, no tricks of light required, and you flick one hand.
All the stories are the same story, you say.
No, you’re wrong, I say.
Your mask slips again and what big teeth and what the hell? A blink of an eye and you’re back.
Good trick, isn’t it, you say, but there’s something hiding in your eyes and later, when I’m scrubbing meringue from the linoleum, I realize you quite neatly sidestepped the whole story explanation bit. Clever.
When I finish the floor, you kiss my pruned fingers and I swear I see those teeth again, but maybe it’s the fumes from the cleaning solution.
I’ll keep you forever, you say.
You’re so sweet I can feel the cavities take root in my teeth, and what am I, a toy, I want to say, but I can’t talk around the chocolate-covered cherry and you’re laughing when you wipe the sticky syrup from my chin.
You pat my hips, my thighs, my stomach, but I haven’t been here nearly long enough yet, have I? Later, I touch the oven to make sure, but the burners are off.
* * *
You leave me alone most days and I pluck gingerbread from the roof to tide me over. I take naps in the afternoon or try to anyway, but I can’t ever fall asleep. And yes, I’ve checked beneath the mattress for a pea. No such luck, not that I was counting on it. Still, a girl can dream.
At night, babylove tastes like peppermint and dark chocolate; always is orange marmalade; forever leaves a dusting of confectioners’ sugar on my lips.
But I’m still hungry.
I feel your eyes watching my ass; when you’re not looking, I check it in the mirror but it still looks the same to me.
* * *
I’m searching the cabinets for a package of chicken soup or even a cube of beef bouillon to rid the sugar residue from my throat when you storm in, your epaulettes crooked.
You were with the dwarves, weren’t you?
I laugh because I’m certain you’re joking but you whip out a handful of Polaroids and shove them in my face.
How is that even possible, I say, looking at the tangle of limbs and the woman in the center. The photos all seem to be variations on the same theme. I’d say they’re from a staged photo shoot, but some things can’t be faked.
That isn’t me, I say. I don’t know any dwarves. They’re not part of this story.
This isn’t a story, you say.
I nod toward the pictures. Those are a story, I say, and definitely not mine. Look, she has a birthmark, you can see it on her leg. I offer my thigh as proof, the skin as pale and unblemished as freshly fallen snow. (No, I’m not that girl. She’s yet another story. In spite of what you may have heard, fair skin isn’t unique.)
You move my leg this way and that and then drag me over to the window so you can examine me in the bright sunlight. I hold as still as possible because you have thorns in your eyes. You keep muttering under your breath and I wonder if it’s a spell and you’re trying to magic the birthmark into existence.
Fine, you say as you let go of my leg and stomp off, crumpling the photos in your hand.
But that night you bite a little too hard, a little too many times, leaving me with a set of oddly-shaped, half-moon bruises.
I stare at the ceiling, so exhausted I can’t sleep, and listen to the rumbling of my stomach.
* * *
You never apologize. Not for the bruises or the false accusation. Love, oh, love, I’ll never leave you, you whisper instead.
Tiramisu, my greatest weakness. Funny how you figured that out so quickly. Then again, maybe not. Maybe before the lies, you read everything you needed in the spaces between the grains of my own sugar.
You measure the width of my hips with your hands, frowning all the while. Love, oh, love, right?
I toss and turn beneath the sheets, drum my fingers along the xylophone of my ribs, and wish I had an enchanted spindle to help me to sleep.
* * *
I love you, you say, and then a name, but it doesn’t feel like my name. The syllables are wrong, all soft and slippery instead of hard and clipped. I have the sensation of falling, falling through layer after layer of whisper-thin vellum, and I’m not certain how I got here at all. Then you touch my arm and the sensation ebbs.
And I can’t remember ever being this hungry before.
* * *
I stop eating bits of the house when you’re not here. My vision gets swimmy, my hands shake, and my stomach feels as if it’s caught in a battle between a tin soldier and a goblin, but my thoughts are sharper at the edges. I find a sheet-covered mirror, but the distorted face inside the glass belongs only to me and there’s nothing magical about that.
When you get home, I’m caught in the taffy pull of your hands again. Every morning, I stick my finger down my throat, but it’s always too late, and nothing comes up but bile.
* * *
I’m scrubbing the floor again when I hear a tiny squeak. I follow the noise until I get to a closet door I’ve never noticed. The door isn’t locked, and surely if you didn’t want me to look you would have locked it and given me the key with strict instructions never to use it.
I reach for the doorknob, but hesitate. What if the door is booby-trapped so you’ll know I’ve opened it? What if there are severed heads inside, runnels of red dripping down ornate pedestals? I scoff and open the door—I’ve never been afraid of a little blood and I’m fairly certain Bluebeard’s last wife escaped in the end—and there’s a tray of chocolates on the top shelf. All the sweets are marked with the impression of your teeth and before I can wrap my head around that little fact, the air shimmers and there’s an old woman standing with a wand in her hand.
Who are you, I ask.
No one to concern yourself with, she says and waves the wand.
The chocolates drop to the floor and change shape and color. Grey fur, tiny feet, whiskers, and long tails emerge and a swarm of mice run between my feet and head toward the front door, the little old woman following close behind.
You’re a fairy godmother, aren’t you, I ask.
She rolls her eyes. What, she says, did the wand give it away?
Do you think you could give me a hand?
Sorry, she says. I’m not your fairy godmother, so step aside and let us out.
On the front lawn, she waves her wand again, and the tails and whiskers and fur fall off. Another wave of the wand and women stand in place of the rodents. They huddle in a circle, squinting in the sun and covering their nakedness with their hands.
They’re lovely, that goes without saying. I wonder how long they’ve been here and who’s writing this story after all. I wonder if the women walk on mermaid feet of broken glass pain, but the air shimmers again and I hear a ruffle of paper as they slip back into their own stories and it’s too late to ask.
Probably for the best. Some tales shouldn’t overlap.
* * *
Every morning, you disappear into the forest. I’ve thought of following you but it takes all my energy to keep a smile on my face. Are you pining by a glass casket? Waiting for a gullible girl who’ll believe she can spin straw into gold? Or searching for elves so you can start a new career in shoemaking?
I’d like to think clearly. I’d like for something to make sense. Maybe it’s the hunger pangs. I’d give my kingdom for a slice of roasted chicken right now, but that’s never on your menu.
When you return, you poke my side, and tell me I’m too skinny, I need to eat. I point to the raspberry preserves you’ve shoved in my mouth to remind you of the folly of your statement. You scrape the spoon against the side of
the jar and tell me to open up.
* * *
The ceiling in the bedroom has a crack in the center I’ve never noticed before, or maybe the crack wasn’t there before at all. I ignore the noises from my gut (in truth, they sound a little like Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique) and dig through the kitchen drawers until I find a pastry knife.
I stand on the bed and wield the blade until the ceiling starts to break off in chunks. And here then, is your story, hidden behind the sickeningly sweet fondant. I’d recognize your handwriting anywhere.
This story doesn’t have a proper narrative arc or a clear-cut plot. It rambles like lost children in a dark forest and here and there, things are scratched out and rewritten and scratched out and rewritten again where you’ve altered things to suit your fancy.
It’s nothing more than a vignette made up of all the leftover bits of other stories, but the pieces don’t quite fit together, no matter how many once upon a times you’ve scribbled in the corners. I chip away more fondant to reveal that I’m neither princess nor captive nor anything at all. I’m a character with no face, no self. Quite interchangeable with almost anyone really.
In the kitchen, I take a good look at your recipes, running a fingertip down the list of ingredients. Sure enough, your creations are as wrong as your story. You’ve been feeding me saccharine and genetically modified flour. This is why my ribs are showing, why my skin looks like the inside of a well-used cast iron pan.
And I’m not surprised. Not at all.
* * *
You walk in all smiles and lollipops, and I hold out a recipe card.
How was I supposed to exist on this, I say. What were you thinking?
It’s nothing, you say. You are my everything.
Your hands are on me before I can blink, and I taste licorice in my mouth. Black licorice. I can’t stomach the stuff. It isn’t candy at all, merely some vile substance cooked up in a kitchen full of grim. I spit it out onto the floor and wipe my lips with the back of my hand.
That isn’t the way this works, you say. I don’t like girls who won’t eat.
The skin of your face splits in the middle and the two halves fall apart to reveal another face as much unlike your face as it is the same. Yet these eyes hold no expression, this mouth no mirth or kindness. You’re a blank slate and for the first time I’m afraid. I can’t tell if you’re a wolf in sheep’s clothing or a rabid sheep dressed in wolf skin, a bear in a man-suit or a man caught in a bear-suit in desperate need of a good fitting.
Cry Your Way Home Page 17