Her Body and Other Parties

by Carmen Maria Machado

  “THE THIRD GUY”: Stabler never told Benson about his little brother. But he also never told her about his older brother, which was understandable, because he didn’t know about him, either.

  “MISLEADER”: Father Jones has never touched a child, but when he closes his eyes at night, he still remembers his high school girlfriend: her soft thighs, her lined hands, the way she dropped off that roof like a falcon.

  “CHAT ROOM”: Convinced that his teenaged daughter is in danger from cyberpredators, a father takes a crowbar to the family computer. He throws the pieces into the fireplace, strikes a match. His daughter complains of a light head, a burning in her chest. She calls him “Mom” with tears in her voice. She dies on a Saturday.

  “CONTACT”: Stabler discovers that his wife believes she saw a UFO, back when she was in her early twenties. He lies awake all night, wondering if this explains the memory loss, the PTSD, the night terrors. His wife wakes up weeping and screaming, on cue.

  “REMORSE”: At night, Stabler makes a list of the day’s regrets. “Didn’t tell Benson,” he scrawls. “Ate more burrito than I had room for. Misspent that gift card. Hit that guy harder than I meant to.” His wife comes up behind him and rubs his shoulder idly before crawling into bed. “Haven’t told my wife today. Will probably not tell her tomorrow.”

  “NOCTURNE”: The ghost of one of the murdered, misburied underage models begins to haunt Benson. She has bells for eyes, tiny brass ones dangling from the top of each socket, the hammers not quite touching her cheekbones. The ghost does not know her own name. She stands over Benson’s bed, the right bell tinkling faintly, and then the left, and then the right again. This happens four nights in a row, at 2:07 a.m. Benson starts sleeping with a crucifix and pungent ropes of garlic, because she does not understand the difference between vampires and murdered teenagers. Not yet.

  “SLAVES”: The precinct’s interns are monsters. When it’s slow, they dick around on the phones. Into the dial tones, they chirp, “SVU, Manhattan’s rapiest police department!” They have theories about Stabler and Benson. They place bets. They place lilacs (Benson’s favorite) in her locker and daisies (Stabler’s) in his. The interns drug Benson’s and Stabler’s coffees and then, after they fall asleep in the back room, the interns shove the cots close together and place both the detectives in compromising positions. Benson and Stabler wake up hours later, their hands on each other’s cheeks, both wet with tears.

  SEASON 2

  “WRONG IS RIGHT”: Benson wakes up in the middle of the night. She is not in her bed. She is in her pajamas, in the dark. Her hand is on a handle. A door is open. A confused-looking panda is watching her with dewy eyes. Benson shuts the door. She passes two llamas chewing thoughtfully on the sign for a hot dog stand. In the parking lot of the zoo, her car is idling against a cement post. She changes into the spare set of clothes she keeps in the trunk. She calls it in. “Ecoterrorists,” she tells Stabler. He nods, jots down something in his notebook, then looks back up at her. “Do you smell garlic?” he asks.

  “HONOR”: Stabler dreams that a man at a Renaissance Faire insults Stabler’s wife, and Stabler punches him in his self-satisfied face. When Stabler wakes up, he decides to tell his wife this story. He rolls over. She is gone. Stabler has never been to a Renaissance Faire.

  “CLOSURE: PART 2”: “It’s not that I hate men,” the woman says. “I’m just terrified of them. And I’m okay with that fear.”

  “LEGACY”: Over breakfast, Stabler’s daughter asks him about Benson’s family. Stabler says that Benson doesn’t have a family. “You always say that family is a man’s one true wealth,” says Stabler’s daughter. Stabler thinks about this. “It’s true,” he says. “But Benson is not a man.”

  “BABY KILLER”: Benson keeps the condoms in her nightstand drawer refreshed, and throws the expired ones away. She dutifully takes her pill at the same time every morning. She makes dates and always keeps them.

  “NONCOMPLIANCE”: The girl-with-bells-for-eyes tells Benson to go to Brooklyn. They can communicate, now, with the bells. (Benson taught herself Morse code.) Benson never goes to Brooklyn, but she agrees. She rides the train late at night, so late that there is only one man in her car, and he is sleeping on a duffel bag. As they shoot through the tunnels, the man looks blearily at Benson, then unzips his duffel bag and vomits into it, almost politely. The vomit is white, like Cream of Wheat. He rezips the bag. Benson gets off two stops too early, and ends up walking through Prospect Park for a very long time.

  “ASUNDER”: Stabler works out every morning at the precinct. He does tricep curls. He does crunches. He jogs on a treadmill. He thinks he hears his daughter’s voice crying his name. Startled, he trips on the treadmill and his whole body slams against the cinder block wall. The path rolls toward him in endless loops.

  “TAKEN”: “It was dark,” says Stabler’s wife. “I was walking home alone. It was raining. Well, not really raining. Spitting, I guess. Misting. It was misting and the light from the street lamps was all pooled and golden and thick as oil. And I was breathing deeply and it felt healthy, healthy and right to be walking through that night.” Stabler hears the drumming again. It shakes the water glass on the nightstand. Stabler’s wife doesn’t seem to notice.

  “PIXIES”: “Get out!” Benson screams, hurling pillows at the girl-with-bells-for-eyes. She’s brought a friend this time, a small girl with hair in tight cornrows and her lips stitched shut. Benson gets out of bed and tries to push them away, but her hands and upper body go through both of them as if they were nothing. They taste like mildew in her mouth. She remembers being eight and kneeling before the humidifier in her room, taking in the steam as if it were the only way she could drink.

  “CONSENT”: “Stabler?” says Benson carefully. Stabler looks up from his raw knees. Benson unfolds the tiny square alcohol wipe and hands it to him. “Can I sit here? Can I help?” He nods wordlessly, lets her rub his knees. He hisses with pain through his teeth. “What did you do?” she asks. “The treadmill? Are these from the treadmill?” Stabler shakes his head. He can’t say. He can’t.

  “ABUSE”: More regrets. The lines crowd the page. “Showed Benson my skinned knees. Allowed her to assist me. Told my wife nothing was wrong. Let my wife tell me that nothing was wrong and didn’t tell her that I could tell she was lying.”

  “SECRETS”: The girls-with-bells-for-eyes tell Benson to go to Yonkers. Benson refuses and begins to burn sage in her apartment.

  “VICTIMS”: Her apartment is so crowded with ghosts that, for the first time since she can remember, Benson stays at someone else’s place for the night. Her date is an investment banker, a boring and stupid man with a fat, piss-mean tabby who tries to suffocate Benson with her bulk. When she returns to her apartment the next morning, sore and angry and smelling like cat pee, the girls-with-bells-for-eyes are waiting for her, draped over every surface like Dalí’s clocks. They crowd around her as she slowly brushes her teeth. She spits, rinses, and turns. “All right,” she says. “What do you want me to do?”

  “PARANOIA”: “I’m not suppressing anything!” Stabler’s wife yells at him. “Tell me about the night with the aliens,” says Stabler. He is trying to learn. He is trying to figure it out. “It was misty,” she says. “It was spitting.” He hears the banging again, the tone, sounding from somewhere in the house. It makes his head ache. “Yes, I know, I know,” Stabler says. “The light pooled around the lampposts. Like oil. There were so many iron gates. I walked past them and ran my fingers over their loops and whorls, and then my fingers smelled like metal.” “Yes,” says Stabler. “But then what?” But his wife is asleep.

  “COUNTDOWN”: The madman promises that there is a bomb hidden under a bench in Central Park. “Do you know how many benches there are in Central Park?” shouts Stabler, clutching an intern by his shirt collar. They send police officers to Central Park to chase people off benches as if they are pigeons, or the homeless. Nothing happens.

  “RUNAWAY”: The gi
rl-with-bells-for-eyes sends Benson into every borough. Benson rides the subway. Eventually, she has seen every stop at least once. She is beginning to memorize the murals, the water stains, the smells. The Columbus Circle station smells like a urinal. Cortelyou smells, unnervingly, like lilacs. For the first time in a while, Benson thinks about Stabler. Back in her apartment, a girl-with-bells-for-eyes tries to tell Benson a story. I was a virgin. When he took me, I popped.

  “FOLLY”: “There is a case,” says the captain. “A young boy has accused his mother of beating him into unconsciousness with a toilet plunger. This is a tricky one, though. The boy is the son of a political heavyweight with deep pockets. He golfs with the mayor. His wife is—Benson? Benson, are you listening?”

  “MANHUNT”: Stabler has determined that he is not even a little bit gay. He swallows his disappointment. His mouth tastes like orange peel.

  “PARASITES”: “Oh fuck,” says Stabler’s wife. “Fuck. Sweetie, the kids have lice. I need your help.” They stand the kids in the tub. The oldest daughter rolls her eyes. Her mother helps them scrub their scalps, and the younger three whine that the shampoo burns. Stabler feels serene for the first time in months.

  “PIQUE”: “The victim has ties to the modeling industry,” says the captain. “But we’re having trouble tracking down where she lived. She might have come from another country. She was only fourteen.” He hangs her autopsy photo on the bulletin board, her face fiat and pale. The thumbtack pops into the cork and Benson jumps in her chair.

  “SCOURGE”: Stabler hears it again. The sound, the drumming. It seems to come from the break room. When he goes there, it sounds like it is coming from the interrogation room. Inside the interrogation room, he hears it again. He bangs his hands on the two-way mirror, imitating the sound, hoping to lure it to him, but all is quiet.

  SEASON 3

  “REPRESSION”: In the middle of a sermon, Father Jones begins screaming. His parishioners look on in fear as he clings to the pulpit, wailing a name over and over. Convinced that this is an admission of guilt of some kind or another, the diocese calls Benson and Stabler. In his office, Benson knocks a pen off his desk, and Father Jones dives after it, howling.

  “WRATH”: Benson reaches up from her bed, like a baby. A girl-with-bells-for-eyes stands over her, like a mother. Benson grabs at the bells, pulls them as hard as she can. The girl-with-bells-for-eyes jerks violently, and every light bulb in Benson’s apartment explodes, covering the carpet with glass.

  “STOLEN”: First it’s a candy bar. The next day, a lighter. Stabler wants to stop, but he learned long ago to choose his battles.

  “ROOFTOP”: “Just tell me what you remember, Father.” Click. “Okay. Her name was—well, I don’t want to say it. She hated water and grass, so we picnicked on the top of her apartment building. She lived in that building with her mother. I loved her. I lost myself in her body. We lay a blanket over the gravel. I fed her orange slices. She told me she was a prophet, and that she had a vision that one day I would take an innocent life. I said no, no. She climbed up onto the cement wall that circled the roof. She stood there and declared her vision again. She said she was sorry. She didn’t even fall like I expected. She simply knelt into the air.”

  “TANGLED”: Stabler finds Benson sleeping on a sagging cot in the back room at the precinct. She wakes up when the door opens. She looks like she has “run the gauntlet,” which is something Stabler’s mother used to say before she left. Come to think of it, it’s the last phrase Stabler can remember her speaking before that door swung shut.

  “REDEMPTION”: Benson accidentally catches a rapist when she Google-stalks her newest OkCupid date. She can’t decide whether or not to mark this in the “success” (“caught rapist”) or “failure” (“date didn’t work out”) column. She marks it in both.

  “SACRIFICE”: Benson leaves her handsome date at the table, in the restaurant, waiting for the drinks. She turns down an empty side street. She takes off her shoes and walks down the center of the road. It is too hot for April. She can feel her feet darkening from the blacktop. She should be afraid of broken glass but she is not. In front of a vacant lot, she stops. She reaches down and touches the pavement. It is breathing. Its two-toned heartbeat makes her clavicle vibrate. She can feel it. She is suddenly, irrevocably certain that the earth is breathing. She knows that New York is riding the back of a giant monster. She knows this more clearly than she has ever known anything before.

  “INHERITANCE”: The phrase run the gauntlet is stuck in Stabler’s head, like water dripping and sluicing around his inner ear. He presses the muscles at the hinge of his jaw and cracks it. The crack takes the place of the single syllable of run. He does it again. Crack the gauntlet. Run the cracklet. Run.

  “CARE”: Stabler is worried about Benson, but he cannot tell her.

  “RIDICULE”: Benson does her twice-monthly grocery trip. She drives her car to a grocery store in Queens and buys three hundred dollars’ worth of produce. It will make her fridge look like the Garden of Eden. She will not eat it while she gnaws on chewy French toast in the Styrofoam container from the diner. The produce will, predictably, rot. Her fridge will smell overwhelmingly like dirt. She will collect it in garbage bags and throw it in the public trash can near the station before her next trip.

  “MONOGAMY”: Stabler wakes up one night to find his wife staring at the ceiling, tears soaking the pillow next to her head. “It was spitting,” she says. “My fingers smelled like metal. I was so scared.” For the first time, Stabler understands.

  “PROTECTION”: Benson crosses the street without looking. The taxi driver slams on his brakes, his bumper stopping a hair’s width from Benson’s shins. When she looks through the windshield, she sees a teenage boy in the passenger seat, eyes closed. When he opens them, the sun glints off the curves of the bells. The taxi driver screams at Benson as she stares.

  “PRODIGY”: “Look at me, Dad!” Stabler’s daughter says, laughing, twirling. As clearly as if he were watching a movie, he sees her in two years’ time, swatting a boyfriend’s hands away in a backseat, harder and harder. She screams. Stabler starts. She has fallen to the ground and is clutching her ankle, crying.

  “COUNTERFEIT”: “You don’t understand,” says Father Jones to Benson. There are dark curves under his eyes, sacs the color of bruised apples. He is wearing a terry cloth bathrobe that says “Susan” in machine-stitched cursive letters on the breast pocket. “I can’t help you. I’m having a crisis of faith.” He tries to close the door, but Benson stops it with her hand. “I’m having a crisis of function,” she says. “Tell me. What do you know about ghosts?”

  “EXECUTION”: The medical examiner pulls back the sheet from the dead girl’s face. “Raped and strangled,” she says, her voice hollow. “Your murderer pressed his thumbs into the girl’s windpipe until she died. No prints, though.” Stabler thinks that the girl looks a little like his wife’s high school photo. Benson is certain she can see the jelly of the girl’s eyes receding beneath their closed lids, certain she can hear the sound of bells. In the car, they are both quiet.

  “POPULAR”: They question everyone they can think of: her friends and enemies. The girls she bullied, the boys who loved her and hated her, the parents who thought she was wonderful and the parents who thought she was bad news. Benson stumbles into the precinct late, bleary-eyed. “My theory,” she says, drinking her coffee slowly, with shaking hands, “my theory is that it was her coach, and my theory is that the missing underwear will be found in his office.” The search warrant is issued so quickly that they find the underwear in his top desk drawer, still damp with blood.

  “SURVEILLANCE”: Benson doesn’t know how to explain to Stabler the heartbeat beneath the ground. She is certain that she can hear it all the time now, deep and low. The girls-with-bells-for-eyes have taken to knocking before coming in. Sometimes. Benson takes taxis to faraway neighborhoods, gets down on her hands and knees on the street and the sidewalk and, once, in a woman�
�s vegetable garden that took up her entire postage-stamp lawn. She can hear it everywhere. The drumming, echoing, echoing in the deep.

  “GUILT”: Benson can translate the bells so well, now. There is no delay between their chiming and her understanding. She pulls her pillow over her head until she can barely breathe. Give us voices. Give us voices. Give us voices. Tell him. Tell him. Tell him. Find us. Find us. Find us. Please. Please. Please.

  “JUSTICE”: Benson gets a pack of small children. Their bells are especially tiny, the ring higher than most. Benson is drunk. She holds her bed, which feels like an amusement park ride, pitching and rolling. We will never ride the Tilt-A-Whirl again, ever. Get up! Get up! they command her. She puts her head on her cell phone and uses speed dial. “My theory,” she says to Stabler, “my theory is that I have a theory.” Stabler offers to come over. “My theory,” she says, “my theory is that there is no god.” The children’s bells ring so furiously that Benson can’t even hear Stabler’s reply over the din. When Stabler comes over and lets himself in with the spare key, he finds Benson bent over the toilet, heaving, crying.

  “FREED”: “It’s the whole city,” Benson says to herself as she drives. She imagines Stabler in the seat next to her. “I’ve been all over. It’s the whole fucking city. The heartbeats. The girls.” She clears her throat and tries again. “I know it sounds crazy. I just have a feeling.” She pauses, then says, “Stabler, do you believe in ghosts?” Then, “Stabler, do you trust me?”