After she made sure she couldn’t
see my face, she spit out that something.
“You could be straight
if you wanted.”
I knew it.
I knew it was this.
What I didn’t know was
why it hurt so badly, those words.
Why they made me hotter than hot. So that my crooked bones
felt like they were searing through my skin,
burning the whole of me to white ash.
She fell asleep,
while I was on fire,
leaving me to cool in the dark.
You could be straight
if you wanted.
Sawed open.
Rearranged.
Stapled shut.
Pain
IT’S DARK.
I’m tangled. I need my meds. Fucking Nancy and her fucking PT.
I can’t turn. I’m pinned to the bed. Godfuckingdamnit, I need my medicine.
Mom, I mouth without sound, like a goldfish… then I remember her speech, the door closing.
I throw my body to the side and the pain shoves its fist down my throat, choking me.
I want OUT. Out of this bed. Out of this brace. Out of this body.
Desperate, I tear at the sheet and roll for the Roxy. The pain attacks again, sinking its metal teeth into my stomach.
The feeling suffocates me and I fall back, trying to catch my breath.
Because there is only one way out of this, I roll with everything I have toward the orange bottle.
Managing to make it to my side, my body shaking and wet, my nose smashed up against my pillow and my own hot breath slamming my face over and over again, I reach out and grab for the bottle, knocking it to the floor.
Help. Help me. Someone help me.
She’s got to be home.
The bell.
Clutching it, I jerk it about. Its only sound is a dull clang. I switch it to my left hand, but my fingers are too sweaty and shaky to hold it by the knob at the top—and the pain is coming again, it’s coming again. Hugging my plastic-covered body, I close my eyes and groan in fear as the attack approaches.
Lunging, it tears into me, ripping me apart until pain zings out of my eyes like lasers. I gasp, holding back the sobs.
Working the bell’s knob into my fist, I slam it against the bed and am rewarded with a clear ring. I slam it again. And again. And again. Ringing the bell over and over and over until it slips away and flies out of my hand, hitting the floor with one last clang.
She isn’t coming.
No one is coming.
I clutch at my blankets, shoving my face into their hotness. It hurts too much, nothing should hurt this much.
The force of the vomit rolls me to the side of the bed. It pours from me in gusts. Onto my bed. Onto my floor. Onto the bottle of Roxy.
Hanging from the bed, I snatch up the wet bottle and roll back, clutching it against my heart while the pain eats me alive.
Cracking it open with one hand, I pinch out a pill.
I’m not supposed to chew it, but I don’t give a shit right now.
I stick my thumb into the bottle to keep my precious Roxy from spilling out over my sweat-soaked sheets while I swallow lumps of chalky medicine mixed with the sour taste of vomit.
My body rasps out a gag. And another.
Shit!
Opening my eyes as wide as possible, I try to unglue myself from my body, like I can somehow project my brain onto the ceiling of my room until my stomach has ingested this pill.
“Eve,” he calls.
I groan to shut him up—it hurts to hear.
Seconds seem like minutes. Minutes. Years.
Why isn’t it working?
Crying is like blood in the water to the pain, but I can’t hold it back anymore. I’m breaking down.
“Six more minutes,” he soothes, “and you’ll feel better.”
“I’m dying,” I shout into my pillow, my mouth full of spit and tears and chunks of Roxy.
“It’s working,” he says in his thick, calming voice.
“No,” I gasp, “no, no, no.” But the pulsing pain and I are slowly separating.
He is right.
Right.
Right.
Right.
“Better?”
His voice is soft in my ears, making me sink deeper into my bed.
“Will I ever be?” I ask, panting and wet with sweat and not looking or caring for an answer.
“Telescopes see the past, Eve,” he says. “Not the future.”
The past?
I hear the echoing crowds of the mall. Giant green-leaved plants. The smell of popcorn. And the pain. Not the brutal, searing kind of being sliced through with a sharp blade, but the extraordinarily aching kind where every atom of you attempts to split. The kind you can’t chew your way out of. Or can you?
And so I chew.
Again. Shivering. Cold.
“What about Minnesota?”
He answers
with a tinge of pink
behind my eyelids,
a warm spot in the center of my chest
that grows… and grows
until my hands are warm.
My feet are warm.
I am warm.
Because it is summer,
of course.
The Burger Hut
We were fourteen
that July,
and therefore eligible
for our first jobs.
The Burger Hut needed
two people willing
to dress as a
hamburger and french fry.
She was totally willing.
Because it meant money
for the hand.
I was totally willing.
Because it meant dressing up
as food.
Lidia studied the Burger Hut’s history.
We watched training videos on YouTube.
Then she suggested we memorize
the Burger Hut Mission.
That is going too far,
I said.
She laughed.
At the interview
I stood, hunched, next to
the deep fryer with my hands at my sides,
my eyes forward,
sweating,
like a guilty suspect in a lineup.
Lidia answered the questions
glancing at me
as if I was in on it all.
She wore
long sleeves. I wore
many yards of fabric over
hard plastic.
She still had one hand.
I was still crooked as hell.
This wasn’t going to work.
But then
Lidia placed her hand on her heart.
I did the same.
And together,
we recited the Burger Hut Mission
as if it were the Pledge of Allegiance.
We got the job.
“Lidia”
“LIDIA?”
“Lid?”
“Stop talking, you’re moving your feet.”
Her voice is muffled down at the end of my bed where she is painting my toenails.
“Lidia.”
“Eve, you’re killing me.”
I pick up my foot. “Is that red? I thought I said blue.”
“Blue makes your feet look veiny.”
“Are my feet veiny?”
“Stop moving.”
I slowly turn my head to face my telescope, wondering if Lidia considers this moving. Dust sparkles around him in the sunbeams like it can’t settle on something so darkly beautiful. He brought her. To me.
“Lidia?”
“Eve!”
“No, I was going to say something.”
“What?” she asks, sitting up from my feet and glaring at me. But it’s her loving glare.
“Well?” she asks.
“Now I forgot.”
She le
ts out a frustrated huff and returns to my toes.
I didn’t really have anything to say. Besides her name. Which she knew.
The sun is shining into the room. Another day. Here. Inside. Staring at my collages moving like snakes across my walls.
Outside, in the world, things may be happening. Cars driving. People working. Clouds drifting. Trees growing. But in here, all is still. The only sound is the soft murmuring of Mary Fay and my mother working together out in the living room.
“Remember the Burger Hut, Lidia?”
“Why are you thinking about that dump?” she says, her hot breath tickling my feet.
“It wasn’t a dump,” I say.
She doesn’t answer.
“Lidia?”
“Eve! Really?”
Oh my god. Did I just say it again?
“I’m so fucking sorry, Lid. It just slipped out.” I laugh. I can’t help it. I laugh and laugh and it sounds like I’m laughing inside an empty tuna fish can.
“‘The Burger Hut promises…,’” I say, positioning myself for the pledge.
She jams the nail polish wand into the bottle and shakes her head no.
“‘… every burger will be the most delicious charbroiled burger,’” I continue in a solemn manner, “‘ever to be flipped on a grill.’”
“‘To be joined…,’” she grumps. She can’t help herself, and we finish strong. “‘… by the crispiest fries. The iciest drink. The cleanest table. In the happiest of huts.’”
The doorbell rings.
My mother’s voice. Speaking Spanish.
Thomas Aquinas is here.
She always has to do that, annoyingly practice her awful Spanish the second she sees him.
His deep voice speaking slowly and clearly has me immediately pull the sheet up closer to my chin while I do not picture him standing twenty feet away from me on the front steps, in one of his yellow T-shirts, his long dark hair tied back, that old jean jacket, his thick wrists—
The front door closes.
I hear my mother walk into the living room and off into the kitchen.
Then, silence.
I do not look down at her.
“He brought my homework.”
“Hmm,” she says.
“School Within a School program partner. He has to.”
“Hmm,” she says again.
I rummage for a Roxy and then turn my head to change my view. To change my thoughts. My hair scratching against the pillow. Blinking up at the ceiling, I try to sigh without moving.
“Lidia?”
She doesn’t answer.
“You forgot your hand during the pledge,” I say.
“Are you sure you want to talk about hands?” she asks.
I close my eyes. Because my head hurts from the throbbing in my back, my hips, my heart.
The Hand
The hand was due to arrive
by UPS
at any moment.
Maybe this moment. Multiple
sketchy
tracking numbers
making it impossible to
know.
Our chins bobbed to attention
at the sound of every
motor sloshing over
wet road.
Though Lidia and I
both knew
the sound we sought was the
slow, low rumble
of a
large brown truck.
Keeping it secret
from her parents
meant the hand would
ship to me.
Cosmetic hand prosthetics
custom made of
silicone,
the website read.
Cosmetic.
As if a hand was the same as
longer eyelashes or
redder lips.
Another motor.
Another car.
It was late.
It would not
be today.
So Lidia
went home, but
I stayed
at the big picture window.
Waiting.
Dreaming.
Of it arriving
when Lidia was absent
because I
loved imagining
the moment
I’d call and shout,
Your hand is here!
There’s always a difference, though,
between the imagined moment
and the real one.
The Real One
You were cranky.
I wasn’t ready when you pulled up.
“As usual.”
But god, Lid,
you knew how hard it was to
wrap a body in a brace.
But I know
slow can be frustrating.
Slow can suck.
Plus,
it was New Year’s Day and that meant
no box—so no hand, leaving us
no choice but to head to the mall
to spend the day looking for—
sigh,
hats.
You were going through a hat phase.
You were always going through
some phase.
The slippers-as-shoes phase.
The two-pairs-of-socks-at-once phase.
The wild-patterned-tights phase. And now
the very long-running
hat phase.
That morning
you were wearing a hat
I’d never seen before.
A little black fedora.
You caught me eyeballing it as I
struggled into the passenger seat
of your rusty Toyota.
“Respect the hat,” you said,
completely aware of the shade
I was throwing.
Okay—so you looked
fucking adorable in it.
Maybe this was why
I hated the hats.
Because you looked
so good in them.
Hat, cute skirt, and
your usual—
an oversize hoodie to
hide the hand you didn’t have.
Along with my ankle boots
you’d borrowed a year ago and were
never planning on returning.
You looked good in those, too.
You looked good in everything,
because your bones weren’t
twisting in circles like
some sort of lazy river.
I also wore my usual—
overalls to hide my brace
on the inside of my clothing.
Was it a better look
than wearing my plastic shell
on the outside?
Probably not,
but it made me feel better. Even if between
the clasps of the overalls and
the Velcro straps of the brace, I had to
regulate my liquid intake
because stripping down to pee
in a public restroom was
seriously impossible.
Before you pulled from the curb,
you reached into your lap and
brought forth a floppy knit visor.
For me.
This was not your
first attempt to
bring me on board
with your hat phase. But it
was the first time I
stuck one of those hats
on my head.
I needed to tell you
something I hadn’t told you.
Something I should have told you
six months earlier.
Something I should have told you
right then, sitting in the car.
But when you clapped your hands
in corny glee
at the sight of me in that
silly visor—
I couldn’t.
For the same reason
I hadn’t told you
all the
hundreds of times
I’d meant to.
Because it hurt to
wipe away your joy, Lid,
for any reason.
But especially
for this reason.
Eve and the Serpent
I’M NOT AWAKE. OR ASLEEP. I’M SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN.
I like it here.
Suspended.
“How are you tonight, Miss Abbott?” he asks. His voice is soft inside my ears. I like it when he calls me Miss Abbott. Although I like it even more when he calls me Eve.
“I am…” But I really don’t know how I am, so I just return his question. “How are you, sir?”
He does that bowing thing, where he tips the large eye of the telescope down toward my rug. “I am always well when I’m with you.”
My telescope is so nice.
I sigh.
“Yes, Eve?” he asks, making every hair on my head tingle. He doesn’t move but seems to breathe in slowly, ready to absorb all I’m about to say.
“I am… wondering about my spine.”
“Nineteen degrees,” he says.
“Nineteen degrees,” I repeat. “Fifty-seven degrees closer to zero than I was before. And I hope… I hope that it looks straight. I think I can feel it, you know? I think I feel the straightness.”
He doesn’t respond, and now all I feel is trapped, alone, in some hot place… and hoping? For what?
“Never mind,” I mumble, reaching into my drawer and riffling about for a Roxy. I’ve hidden a nest of them in an old sock so the empty bottle would prompt my mother to refill the prescription.
Sucking up a bit of spit, I swallow. It’ll take more than a Roxy to bring me back to the cool, suspended place—it’ll take a Roxy and ten minutes. And before the seconds can tick by, fear flutters in my chest. Who am I now? Like this. I don’t want it anymore.
Arthritis. Osteoporosis. Kyphosis. Lordosis. Spondylolisthesis. Impaired mobility. Diminished lung capacity. Enlarged heart. Early death. These are real. Real results of staying crooked. And anyway, it’s too late.
Too late.
“Say something,” I beg.
Fix Page 4