And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe

by Gwendolyn Kiste

  This is our cycle. She offers me what I want, and I take it. I’ll carve her up, piece by piece until the night the blade inevitably slips. Then Nathalie will become no more than resi-due beneath my hide, a heinous evening ritual cataloged and forgotten.

  And even if I leave with Emily tonight, anywhere we go, it will be the same. In this skin, I will be the same.

  “No,” I say. “I don’t need anything.”

  Nathalie tugs the sheet up to her throat. “Come to bed.”

  “In a minute.”

  The knife is heavy in my hands as I retreat to the bathroom and turn on the shower. Hot water, full blast. The heat will make this easier. As if anything about this will be easy.

  I shed my clothes and step into the tub. The water steams against my body. I pick a spot on my skin—any spot, it doesn’t matter. This task requires no precision, no steady hand, nothing except a fool’s willingness.

  The work isn’t what I expect. My hide isn’t tough or immobile. The flesh never did fuse to my bones.

  When I’m finished, my skin curls at my feet like an apple peeled in one long strip. It’s inside out, and the first piece is exposed. I’m looking at my life in reverse. The earliest layer I can no longer remember. And the final layer I wish I could forget.

  The shower cuts out, and water slides slowly down the slick of my bones. I sling my discarded flesh over my shoulder and shrug on Nathalie’s robe, the oil and knife tucked in the pocket. The terrycloth fabric is rough against my body. Without a thick casing to protect me, everything is rough and strange.

  Outside, on the crumbling boardwalk, the saltwater air chills my bones. Morning is brimming around the edges of the world, but daylight hasn’t broken. I’m safe in the open for now. Even if a fisherman hums by on his boat, all he’ll discern in the waning shadows of evening is the shape of a lonely girl on the shore. He won’t see me for what I am—a cage of beautiful bones I’ve hidden too long beneath other people’s promises.

  But hiding was never my choice.

  This is my choice.

  In this place of long forgotten freak shows and dime-store illusions, I walk with the measured gait of a soldier to the end of the pier and toss my skin into the sea. It bobs on the waves before sinking beneath the dark water.

  The knife follows, sheath and all, and I skip the flask across the waves like a river stone. The stench of turpentine is gone forever.

  In a dingy Greyhound station downtown, Emily will know something’s wrong. In her flesh, she’ll feel it, and the other girls will feel it too. They won’t know for sure what’s become of me until the tides wash my skin to shore, after the fishes and the sharks throw back the scraps like garbage.

  The horizon turns golden, and I realize what I should do. Take that last step and let this body fall into the gloom where it belongs. But diving into the deep would be too simple. Besides, if I change my mind tomorrow, the ocean will wait for me.

  I steal into the bedroom, where Nathalie breathes as softly as a lullaby. I could still catch that bus. How Emily would scream if she saw me. How everyone in this town would scream. All the soccer moms and hipsters who used to snarl at me in the coffeehouse wouldn’t snarl anymore. They’d cower before this body.

  But I don’t care about them.

  The robe dances to the floor, and I crawl beneath the sheets. Nathalie murmurs in her dreams, and I edge closer, desperate to rest a few precious minutes before she awakens and discovers what I’ve become.

  But the chill of my exposed bones rouses her from sleep, and she sits up, squinting at me in the darkness.

  “Clare?”

  For the first time, she sees me—the monster I’ve always been. I’m sure she’ll scream. She’ll shove me from this mattress, chase me from this bedroom, and deadbolt the door behind me.

  And I won’t blame her.

  Her gaze slides up and down my body like the soft caress of fingertips. I hold my breath and shiver.

  “You’re cold,” she whispers, and wraps the sheet tight around me before nestling against my body, our limbs tangled together, flesh against bone. She’s warm and feels like a summer memory, like a dream from childhood long ago lost but now reclaimed.

  The glint of dawn peeks through the boardwalk windows, and I bury my face against her, inhaling a clear breath at last.

  Her skin’s as sweet as honey.

  BY NOW, I'LL PROBABLY BE GONE

  By now, I’ll probably be gone.

  Just so you know.

  ***

  I love you.

  That’s the first thing.

  Really, that’s the only thing. There isn’t much that matters more than you and me and all the secrets and all the laughs and all the silly rituals we used to share. Like how we’d sleep in on Sundays and get up at noon and make ourselves brunch in the kitchen, both of us still dressed in our old flannel pajamas.

  What music would we listen to? Was it the Ramones?

  (I was always so punk rock.)

  Or your Gordon Lightfoot records?

  (You were always so not-punk rock.)

  I can’t remember which it was now. Isn’t that a shame how the little details slip away? We hold on to the memories we don’t want, and we lose the ones we cherish. Scientists should figure out a way to preserve happiness in a jar of formaldehyde, like that vivisected bullfrog we saw once at the Natural History Museum. Then we could smile all the time.

  But who knows? Maybe that leathery frog under glass is the embodiment of happiness, and we haven’t realized it yet, haven’t realized how stasis is an underrated luxury.

  (Did you realize it, and just not tell me? That would be like you, deciphering a secret of the universe but keeping it to yourself.)

  ***

  I want you to be happy.

  That’s the second thing.

  A clichéd thing, I know. Don’t all former lovers wish their old paramours happiness? Okay, the vengeful ones probably don’t, but I try not to be vengeful.

  (Was I vengeful? That wasn’t my intention.)

  ***

  I never meant for it to go this far.

  That’s the third thing. Maybe the most important thing too, even more important than loving you.

  (You already knew I loved you, right?)

  Everything got away from me. I never intended to toss down the decanter on the kitchen tile when we were making buckwheat pancakes for dinner.

  (Remember how we used to make breakfast for dinner? Weren’t we a fun couple?)

  But then I never intended to smell her perfume, as sweet as fresh honeysuckle, on the collar of your jacket.

  Your face bloomed a thousand shades of red when I accused you, and I’ll always remember the heavy footfalls when you stormed out of the apartment. When you went to meet her, one of your “late-night business meetings.”

  (Since when did they start calling it “business”?)

  It was good you left when you did.

  I wanted to hurt you.

  (I couldn’t hurt you.)

  So I poured the pain into myself.

  (What else could I do?)

  The glass was already shattered on the floor. It didn’t take much to find a vein.

  (My blood on the tile looked thick as maple syrup. I faded out still thinking of dinner with you.)

  ***

  I don’t want to stay here.

  There are a hundred places we visited where I would prefer to be.

  The Eiffel Tower, for one. Or how about the Redwood Forest? Even the trolley station down the block would be a welcome change. This apartment is uglier than I remember.

  Garish lighting.

  (How did I ever apply my makeup in such harsh fluorescents?)

  And terrible company.

  (I hear you whisper to her on the phone. You haven’t changed a bit.)

  I know you won’t bring her here until you’re sure it’s safe.

  And as long as I keep zapping out the light bulbs in the hall and moaning the night before your bi
g presentation at work, you’re sure it’s anything but safe.

  (How charming of you to bring in that exorcist last week! I haven’t laughed like that since before those late-night business meetings of yours started last year!)

  But don’t worry. Even though your priest and his holy water didn’t so much as tickle, I’ll quiet down for now. I’ll let you get some rest.

  ***

  And here’s the last thing.

  I might not leave at all.

  I might wait here, pretending your exorcism drove me out.

  (I couldn’t hurt you once before.)

  You’ll think it’s safe. You’ll bring her into this place where you and I danced together, where we pretended to believe in forever.

  (But I’ve learned a few things since then.)

  You’ll light a row of pink candles, just for her.

  (Those were my candles, you know. My sister gave them to me last Christmas.)

  And you’ll take your lover, still sweet-scented like honeysuckle, to the bed that was ours— is ours.

  But I’ll be there too, twisted between the sheets.

  She’ll tell you the room’s suddenly cold. You won’t listen to her.

  (You never were good at listening, were you?)

  My body no more than a shadow, I’ll wrap my fingers like ice around her pale throat and make you watch as I turn her blue.

  Then, when you’re dialing for help, I’ll emerge, just for you, in the glow of candlelight.

  Your scream will sound like a serenade.

  The ambulance will wail, but all the best doctors and all the best nurses won’t bring you back again.

  You’ll belong with me.

  (Will we make a good family, the three of us?)

  I bet you’ll hate the lighting as much as I hate it.

  (Does your lover like brunch, too?)

  I bet you’ll hate the company as well.

  (Does she like to sleep until noon on Sundays?)

  I bet you’ll wish you were as lucky as that museum frog, splayed spread-eagle for the rest of time.

  (Do you think eternity is long enough to earn forgiveness? Because I’m not so sure.)

  ***

  By now, I’ll probably be gone.

  Unless, of course, I’m still here.

  THROUGH EARTH AND SKY

  If they listened, they’d know your people don’t live in pointed tents. Some don’t live at all, invisible like ghosts, reduced to kitschy feather knickknacks kept on mantles.

  If they listened, they’d know you and your sister have no mantle or anything else besides a loan on a mattress that’s more rust than springs and faded linens the color of urine. You don’t even own the clothes on your back. The women do, the ones with tight-knit mouths and rulers always ready to smack wayward fingers. They own you as well as the other children who saw their parents vanish, dead before their time. That’s the way it goes with people like you.

  If they listened, they’d know you like magic, the same magic all kids share—secrets you keep, wishes you make, silly incantations you recite to the darkness where no one can hear.

  But here inside these walls, where lonely children live, you aren’t supposed to care about spells or magnetic sand or dream-catchers in windows. Magic can’t be yours. That’s what the unsmiling women tell you.

  “Besides,” they say, “it’s a cliché that your people like magic. You don’t want to be a cliché, do you?”

  Yet magic is all you have.

  If they listened, they’d know what happens when children have nothing else. What they do have becomes more powerful, more potent than it would be in a happy child’s hands, a child with two parents and a pretty house and a baby doll that cries ‘Mama.’ You and your sister have no baby dolls, but you have each other, and together, your words, your wishes, your secrets become real. A sunny day when you say so. A ruler broken in two before it reaches your cheeks. Little things, in-significant things, the only things that matter.

  Soon you grow older and can’t recall what your childhood secrets were, but the wind remembers for you. The wind is your companion, and it never turns you away. It always listens.

  And the wind is a good listener.

  If they listened, they’d know why two girls with no family except each other marry the first men who will have them. The cruel women give you no other choice, but matrimony brings a different kind of rules and rulers. In this mining town, faces and hands and men become hard and weathered, and the black ash of West Virginia blankets everything, inside and out.

  On your wedding day, you can hardly see the men’s faces—they’re caked too thick with dirt and dust. Not even your magic can fix that.

  If they listened, they’d know love cannot be captured in a potion, no matter how hard you try, and when your hair is a gloss of black and skin a perfect copper, love will only come after years of marriage, if it comes at all. Even once they claim they love you, the men won’t let you forget how you’re lucky to have them, lucky to bask in the glow of their pale skin, however sullied from years of work. Being near them will make you whiter, won’t it?

  If they listened, they wouldn’t wave you off when you rail against your sister’s husband.

  “He goes to work, day after day,” they say, “and that’s enough.”

  But the glint in his eye—that wandering eye—says it’s not enough, not when he quaffs a bottle of cheap whiskey instead of bringing home his pay, not when that whiskey boils inside him, coursing through his veins like fire, not when he raises his hand to your only sister and brings it down again and again until her skin is a tapestry of welts.

  Together, your magic could overwhelm him, but she won’t make a wish against her husband.

  “I’m his wife,” she says. “I can’t betray him.”

  If they listened, they’d try to help you.

  But they don’t listen. Only the man you loathe notices you, how the wind wraps around you as you fill your sister’s pockets with smoky quartz, desperate to protect her.

  “Witch,” her husband says, and you smile.

  If they listened, they’d know magic is imperfect. Sometimes, it fails, especially when a spell needs two. And you no longer have two. Your sister disappears into the night without a word. There is no body. He hides it well. The hills of West Virginia hide it for him.

  “He did this to her,” you tell them, but they don’t listen. She’s just another tally mark, vanished with the rest, dead before her time. The way it goes with people like you.

  If they listened, those with the fine carriages and finer lace, they’d know justice is more than a gavel and a courtroom and a man yelling ‘Order!’ Here in your house no more than a shack, justice is a pot on a stove and the remnants of a chicken. You ate the meat last week, but that doesn’t mean the leftovers—the blood and the bones—can’t still do some good.

  If they listened, they’d know the recipe you use to raise your sister’s bones, bring her through earth and sky, bring her home to you. While your husband and children dream their lazy dreams, her bones sit with you at the rickety hand-me-down table. Her bones tell you secrets. These are secrets you and she will never forget.

  Her husband runs because he knows those secrets are no longer safe. After all, a witch can’t be trusted.

  If they listened, they’d know magic pays distance no mind. It doesn’t take long for the wind to find him, and a little bit at a time, his ulcerated guts tie into knots. He must suffer as you suffer, slowly and without end. At night, you can hear him scream over blue-green mountains and valleys built from coal and sweat.

  If they listened, they could hear him too. But they don’t listen, and this time, it’s probably good. Because if they heard him scream and knew you were to blame, they’d burn you on the nearest pyre.

  If they listened, they’d know you leave that mining town. Your husband earns a good job by the sea, and while you’ll miss those hills that brought your sister back to you, albeit for one night, you won’t miss t
he stink of death and the cinders that permeate everyone and everything there. Before you leave, you drive past the building, the prison, where you and your sister stayed as kids. It’s converted to offices now.

  If they listened, they’d know your children grow and have children of their own, but your mind never strays far from the place you left behind. Where others smell the salt of the ocean, you can remember only the acrid stench of smog. Your sister should be here with you instead of in the earth where you laid her bones. She rests but you cannot. The wounds inside you never close.

  Far away, her husband’s guts remain in knots, but his life continues, and he eyes another young wife whose face his fists will mar. He never changes, so you must be the one to change him. It is your duty to protect those like your sister, those who can’t protect themselves. You muster every bit of magic left in you and ask the wind to cross a thousand miles. A stalwart friend, it obliges. Her husband screams out a final time and then retreats to silence even blacker than coal. The past is bones now and nothing more. In your fine house, no longer a shack, you recline in your rocking chair, smiling to yourself. At last, you feel complete—or as complete as you’ll ever be without your sister. Your partner in magic lost forever.

  But a new partner is waiting, his chestnut eyes staring up at you.

  If they listened, they’d know about your grandson. Whenever he misbehaves, you laugh and put the evil eye on him, your gaze narrowed, your gnarled hands suspended in the air, but you don’t scare him. He just giggles and scurries away. It never occurs to him how strange it is his grandmother’s a witch. He accepts it like the wind and the sun and the color of your hair—bolts of nighttime hidden inside the gray. His grandmother is gray and she is a witch. These things are the same in his eyes, and neither one is wrong.

  If they listened, they’d know that little boy with the ornery grin gives you hope. You watch him speak to trees. You watch the wind protect him. You protect him too, but you won’t always be here. The earth and the sky will, and they’ll care for him well.

  If they listened, they’d know all these things and more, a world beyond, so much greater than them and greater than you. But they don’t listen. And they never will.