Psyche in a Dress

by Francesca Lia Block

  We went to a small glass café overlooking the dark water

  and drank something I didn’t recognize

  in the red leather booth

  “You are corrupting me, my darling,” I said

  having another bittersweet sip

  I felt my body melting under the table

  The waves crashed against the rocks

  What if I couldn’t get up and leave?

  Would you desert me here?

  No, you took me home again

  You bit me gently, not drawing blood

  You fed me pomegranate seeds

  I sucked the clear red coating off the sharp white pith

  The taste was sweet at first

  and then dry as dirt, as bone

  “I love you so much that I don’t care if I die,” I told you

  So what if you didn’t say it back?

  Your hair was always cold against my burning skin, cold

  and smelled of smoke

  Your skin was always cool and sleek

  Hades, my love

  Are you just one more task

  to bring back the lover I burned with my candle wax?

  with the flame of my doubt?

  One day after we had eaten oranges in the rare sunlight

  I remembered him

  the pressure of his lips on my forehead

  and at my throat—

  making my hot skin feel icy with their burn

  The calluses and soft places on his hands

  The vibration of his voice in his chest

  as he gave me the myths again

  I told you the story then, and you said

  “He was a monster to do that to you

  Did he think he was so much better than you

  that you couldn’t see him?”

  I told you about Orpheus and you said

  “Maybe he didn’t kill himself

  Maybe his girlfriend shot him in the head”

  You had different ways to bite

  I wondered how much more pressure it would take

  to make the blood come

  Once we drove all the way back to the city I’m from

  We passed the cattle waiting for slaughter

  by the side of the highway

  The air reeked with fear

  You said you grew up on a farm

  You saw cows killed

  When I asked you to tell me more

  about your childhood you just laughed

  cranked up

  the music and rammed

  your foot against the pedal

  We didn’t stop in the city

  but drove all the way through to the border

  There were signs along the highway

  of silhouetted, running people

  holding the hands of their children

  like animals, like targets

  At the border you turned off the music

  smoothed your hair with some water

  from the bottle you had gripped between your thighs

  You took off your sunglasses and spoke politely

  “Yes, Officer, no sir”

  No one would have suspected you

  No one would have thought, This is Hades himself

  In the border town the light was harsh

  Dust motes looked as if they were catching on fire

  You took my hand and we ran

  through the unpaved streets, past the little shops

  We bought loads of black leather belts

  and cuffs studded with sharp silver

  You pulled me down some stairs

  into a dark bar where you made me drink tequila

  I marveled at the worm saturated with poison

  My head was pounding as we emerged

  back up into the sun

  A lovely girl had a huge tumor in her neck

  A man was missing his hand

  We found a punk band playing in the dust

  The lead singer was a Mexican albino

  with tattoos all over his body and shaved head

  The band was good, really fast

  You gave them your card and spoke to them in Spanish

  I was so thirsty

  We ate some greasy food and you ordered beers

  There was a tiny building that said CASAMIENTOS

  and you said we should get married

  You laughed

  and I felt like the worm in the tequila bottle—

  bloated, sick, greenish-white, trapped, in love

  That night there were fireworks

  You grabbed my hand and we ran through the streets

  as the sky exploded

  There was panic in your eyes I didn’t understand

  Maybe I had imagined it

  I was wearing my mother’s green satin cocktail dress

  hemmed short, above my knees

  and dusty black cowboy boots

  We headed back that night

  and slept by the sea in your truck

  I vomited on the sand

  You carried me into the ocean as the sun rose

  “Good for hangovers,” you said

  I was so cold

  I didn’t stop shivering for hours after I got out

  The sun turned the water to aluminum foil

  I was afraid it would all just burn up

  anyway

  Then suddenly you stopped wanting me

  You turned away

  You wouldn’t touch me

  I lay staring at your cold, muscular white back

  your blue-black shiny hair

  I wondered what I had done wrong—

  I had lost weight, so my belly was concave again

  I was seeing a dermatologist—

  Or maybe I was being selfish

  Maybe you had been wounded when you were younger

  Maybe you had been damaged and this wasn’t about me

  at all

  I tried to ask you if you had been hurt

  “Do you know Philomela?” I asked

  “Who?”

  “The myth

  She was raped by her sister’s husband

  When she threatened to tell, he cut out her tongue

  She turned into a nightingale

  She sang her story”

  “Do you want to know why we don’t have sex?”

  you asked

  I started to cry and you said

  “Not everyone has been molested, okay?

  Maybe I just don’t want to fuck you anymore.

  Have you ever thought of that?”

  “Is there something I could do differently?” I asked

  “We could try it different ways,” I said

  You smiled at me

  Your incisors sharp

  Your eyes were two dark bandages

  “I thought you’d never ask, baby,” you said

  The more punishment, the sooner I will be redeemed?

  You had finally earned your name.

  Hades

  Hades grew up on a farm in an old red house next to a dilapidated barn. There were cornfields stretching to the horizon; maybe they went on forever. Hades believed they were haunted. The wind in the corn sang strange whispers. Sometimes he’d catch glimpses of emaciated people, thin as scarecrows, with corncob pipes, straw hats, missing teeth, wading shoulder deep through the cornfields. Sometimes he imagined he heard children screaming.

  Once at baseball practice he was almost struck by lightning. It hit a tree beside him instead, charred and gnarled it, and he kept imagining his own body ruined like that.

  In the winter it was so cold that Hades got frostbite. He had stayed out too late in the snow making angels, not wanting to return home. His father told him he might lose his fingers. He lay in bed trying not to cry, imagining the stumps on his hands.

  In the summer Hades was always bathed in sweat from the humidity. His mother screamed at him to bathe. “You stink!” At night he ran through the meadows catching fireflies in jars. Then he took them home
and watched them die, the lights snuffed out.

  He saw animals born and he saw them slaughtered. Blood was just something that was on your hands all the time. Blood was just another bodily fluid. There were more interesting ones.

  When Hades wet his bed at the age of five his mother put him back in diapers. She stuck the pins into him. She kept diapering him until he was twelve years old.

  When Hades had an erection his mother locked him in the closet. Sometimes she even beat him. This didn’t stop Hades from getting hard. It made him harder in every way.

  Hades’s father waited for him when he came out of the shower. He commented on the size of Hades’s penis. He showed his son his own. There was something odd about the way Hades’s father taught him to slaughter a cow. There was some kind of pleasure in it. Sometimes Hades’s father would set off fireworks from behind the barn and watch to see his son jump at the noise.

  Hades’s mother did not like how her husband looked at their son. Because of this she beat Hades even harder. She beat him and locked him in the closet and finally Hades left home.

  He had been born an unscarred, sweet-smelling baby with pale down on his head that soon fell out and blue eyes that turned pupil-less black. He had been born loving animals and tractors, getting lost in the lightning bug meadows, lost in the angel-making snow. He had become something else entirely. So he decided to become something else again. He changed his name, he changed the color of his hair, he wore eyeliner and grew his fingernails, changed his skin with ink tattoos of devil girls. He went alone into the desert to set off fireworks to immunize himself to loud sounds. He developed an insatiable appetite for meat, any food that bled, that had once had eyes. He became rich, a businessman. He listened to the loudest music, sought it out, to further immunize himself.

  Hades saw Eurydice and plucked her like a flower. He became for her the god of chaos, the god of hell. This was why he wanted her. She was proof of his success, his change.

  Persephone

  At last, she came for me

  I had waited forever

  I took the train home from my hell god

  It was late morning

  My mouth was parched

  My skin felt raw

  My eyes ached in the sunlight

  There were bruises and bite marks

  hidden under my clothes

  One of my ribs was dislocated

  I heard it pop out when Hades took me from behind

  and every time I breathed

  I felt the scrape of it

  I did not think of myself as damaged, as a victim

  I saw myself as a woman in love

  I had forgotten that this was just maybe another trial

  another task I must accomplish

  another test

  She was waiting for me in the lobby of the building

  where I lived

  Someone had let her in

  She had slept all night on the horrible, scratchy sofa

  She had gained weight and she had wrinkles

  and she was so beautiful to me

  I wanted to jump back inside of her

  That was all I could think of

  She didn’t say anything, she just held me

  I wept into her long white linen trench coat

  My rib hurt more when I cried but I didn’t care

  She smelled like wildflowers, and that is not the same

  as other flowers but much lighter—

  a little acrid and sun-warmed and windy

  She wore beautiful Italian shoes and no jewels

  We went to the hotel where she was staying

  It was a small villa overlooking the city

  She ordered room service—

  poached eggs under a silver cover, smoked salmon,

  fruit and cheese, sparkling water

  She made me take a bath

  using the tiny bottle of green bath gel

  and the soft white washcloth

  When I came out

  wrapped in the white terry cloth bathrobe

  we sat on the bed and ate our meal

  I realized how hungry I was

  “How did you find me?” I asked her

  “Your father”

  “You went to him?

  I thought you were never going to talk to him again”

  “Everything was dying,” my mother said

  “I was killing it; I couldn’t help myself

  Without you everything was dead

  and I knew I had to see him again

  To find you

  Anything was worth finding you”

  “What did he make you do?” I asked

  I knew my father. He didn’t do things for free

  “Oh, nothing, don’t worry, darling,” she said

  “Eat your eggs”

  It was dark in the room

  The pale green drapes were drawn closed

  The sounds of the city were soft, faraway below us

  “Now, who did this to you?”

  She put her hand on my rib cage

  Her fingers felt so good there, so cool

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not naïve, you know

  Remember who I married?

  I see all the signs”

  I shook my head

  “It’s not like that”

  I didn’t want to tell her about Hades

  Or even Orpheus

  I wanted to tell her about my first lover, Love

  The one who never hurt me

  He killed me but he never

  hurt me

  Do you understand?

  “I know that you are here with the god of hell,” my

  mother said calmly. “I know because for me everything

  is dying. I want you to come

  back with me so I can come back to life. We can live together. You can go to school

  there. This place is terrible for you. Look at you.”

  But it wasn’t as simple

  as that

  What if I returned with her

  and left my god of darkness?

  Would I ever grow up?

  Would I ever pass the test?

  Would my first lover be mine again?

  No, I would stay

  a strange little girl, living with her mother

  until they both died in some ritual

  holding on to each other

  the flowers blooming around them

  killing them with beauty

  “I can’t,” I told her

  “It’s more complicated”

  “Let’s go out,” my mother said

  as if she wanted to show me

  that the beauty of the world would not destroy me

  That it was ours

  The sun had come out and the city smelled of flowers

  Trees were heavy with pink and white blossoms

  The fog lay across the bay where Hades lived

  It had not come over the bridge

  My mother and I went to a café full of lovely people

  We ordered brightly colored Italian sodas

  and French pastries

  Then we went shopping

  The store windows were full of ballerinas

  and brides in tulle

  My mother bought me a white lace vintage dress

  with a full skirt

  and pale pink leather boots with sharp heels

  We went to the art museum

  and looked at the visiting exhibit—

  boxes full of weird things

  china dolls’ heads and hands

  tree branches hung with crystal eyeballs

  shattered pocket mirrors, a dead bird with one wing

  paintings of goddesses that looked like men in drag

  We sat beside a fountain and petted a golden retriever pup

  Art students had set up their easels to work on the plaza

  A clown was juggling

  There was a skateboarding couple with dreadlocks

/>   There was a man in a white shirt

  with the sleeves rolled up, showing off

  his brown forearms

  He was reading a poetry book

  and he smiled at us—bright teeth—

  a toss of brown curls like a god in a painting

  It was as if my mother had planned the whole thing

  to show me what she could give me

  That night my mother wanted to meet Hades

  I told her no

  We could go out together instead

  The movie we saw

  followed the lives of a group of children

  Every seven years

  the filmmaker made a documentary about them

  The same children who had seemed so charming

  and full of promise

  changed

  grew fat, sad, strange

  I wondered how we keep from spoiling the angels

  who come to us

  I thought of the men I had known

  what they must have been like when they were born

  So gentle and small

  I wondered if I could ever have children

  knowing how I might damage them

  Afterward my mother and I ate miso soup

  and nightshade vegetable tempura

  in a restaurant decorated with purple irises

  She told me she still wanted to meet Hades

  These mothers, they can be persistent

  “It’s really not that serious,” I said

  “I want you to know I don’t blame you”

  said my mother

  “I blame your father

  And my father for setting such a bad example”

  My mother’s father had swallowed her whole

  and vomited her back up

  My father had become a bull

  a swan

  a cloud

  a shower

  of gold

  so that he could have sex with other women

  It made sense that I would choose Hades

  Who else would I choose?

  I slept next to my mother