The green’s floating at the bottom of my sister’s swimming pool like graceful moving jellyfish. I could drown there.
Or in the ocean. Daddy’d take us once a year. Throw us in and say, “This’ll get the ticks and fleas off ya.”
That’s where I came up from the water and spat water in My Man’s face for the first time. Then every shower. Except not the one I took earlier today. He won’t there. I don’t even remember now our last shower. We would wash each other’s hair.
I want to be warm. I want to hold My Man’s hand. I have to believe one day I’ll be able to show My Man now the tops of the tombstones are silver little fingernails. A field full of half moons.
The last time we argued was about me going to the dentist. He said I needed to go. That he’d pay for it. I said I wouldn’t ’cause as soon as I opened my mouth the dentist would say “You’re a dumbass,” and I’d say, “No I’m just poor.” And I didn’t want to have to say that.
I remember being in Christian camp and the Preacher made us feel like it was us who put Jesus on the cross. My sins of jealousy and not singing enough songs that praised the Lord. In the sweet by and by we will meet at that beautiful shore.
My body belongs to some creator. And I move because of it.
And I was taught every sin I committed was a strike into Jesus’s back, ripping it open. We all watched that movie together in youth group, The Passion of the Christ, laying in the floor of the fellowship hall, for a sleepover. Jesus had to pull himself up with the nails in his wrists, not in the middle of the hands, which is traditionally what art says, and push himself up from that long nail in his ankle in order to take a breath because of the weight of gravity.
Paul wrote, “I rejoice in my suffering.” And later, “For when I am weak, I am strong.”
A hit. A hard one. I cough real bad. My stomach muscles cramp from where I was cut open like a hog. And I’m bending over, holding myself on the ground.
When I look up all the stars twinkle down on me.
My Man is fucking his girl in the truck, in the zoo parking lot and she doesn’t know where to brace her feet to make it best but he doesn’t care. Because he’s not thinking about me right now.
I’d like to be hit even harder.
I bite my wrist as hard as I can and I get back in my car. I check my phone and I’ve got a bunch of missed calls from my sister. She says Daddy’s home called. And Daddy was playing moving his cup all around his plate like he always does now, dropping bread in it. And another resident got upset about it and punched him twice in the face. Sister says Daddy didn’t fight back. He won’t even bruised but they had him on seventy-two hour watch during which they would check on him every thirty minutes. She is on the way to see him. I tell her I love her.
Driving now is floating just above the road and all around me is the flat, flat land. The tall shadows of the woods cut between the fields and sky. I really like the feeling when you’re choking and he holds you down longer than the time before. More and more closer every time to a place I don’t know.
I want to see Daddy’s chopping block. So I drive to that house on Chestnut Street. I will go up and ring the doorbell. If no one comes, I will punch the window next to me and see if I can unlock the door. If no alarm goes off, I will make my way inside.
No lights are on in the house. The chopping block is in the middle of the kitchen floor just like old times. The knives are next to the stove and the one I want to use is good and sharp. I spin the tip into the end of my finger like the movies.
The fridge’s got an untouched, brand new rotisserie chicken. I’m another person in another time with my same blood running through me, standing on the back steps, looking at my great grandma in the backyard holding the chicken above her head, breaking its neck with the flick of her wrist.
I grab the chicken where its neck ends and put it on the chopping block. I stab it, rip it in two. Down into the bottom of the valley in the chopping block. Where Daddy showed me the wood wore down when I was little. Where the butchers cut the meat up the most.
I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound; everywhere and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.
I’m being still now, to listen. To see if God will have anything to say.
I hear the steps of a little child coming to me. One I can tuck into bed by reading a book.
Before she goes to sleep tonight, my sister’s saying a special prayer for that little one year old boy down the road who shot himself in the heart with a staple gun.
But the sound is not from a child, it’s a light coming on and that couple coming on either side of me. They’re telling my name to me and they’re telling me it’s okay. “Calm down, now,” they’re saying with calm faces.
The chicken meat sticks to me like slugs. I want to go home and cry in my bed. I want to cry until I am empty.
They have taken away the knife and are on either side of me, leading me out the house. They have soft hands. The woman is stroking my arm. The man gets in a car and the woman stands in front of me. She holds both my shoulders. She says, “Let’s get you home.” She pulls meat out of my hair.
They turn the heat on in the car and it feels so nice. I remember to tell them I’ll fix their window. I don’t know how, but I’ll do it.
And they say “Okay.”
They don’t ask me where I live. Everybody already knows.
Notes
Several of the stories first appeared, in slightly different form, in the following publications:
“An Unspoken” in The Paris Review
“The Virgin” in The Oxford American
“Charlie Elliott” in 3:AM Magazine
“The Locket” as “Norma” in Joyland
“Snowball Jr.” in New York Tyrant
“Uncle Elmer” in Juked
“Lorene” in People Holding
“Sister” as “June Bugs” in Empty House Press
“Shania” in The Nervous Breakdown
“Sleepovers” in Hobart
“The Chopping Block” as “In Dreams” in Vote No On Amendment 1 E-Zine
“Return to the Coondog Castle” in Parhelion Literary Magazine
“Mind Craft” as “Mine Craft” in SHOW YOUR SKIN
“The Bass” in Bull
“The Truth About Miss Katie” in Tusk
— C. MICHAEL CURTIS —
SHORT STORY BOOK PRIZE
The C. MICHAEL CURTIS SHORT STORY BOOK PRIZE includes $10,000 and book publication. The prize is named in honor of C. Michael Curtis, who has served as an editor of The Atlantic since 1963 and as fiction editor since 1982. This prize is made possible by an anonymous contribution from a South Carolina donor. The namesake of the prize, C. Michael Curtis, has discovered or edited some of the finest short story writers of the modern era, including Tobias Wolff, Joyce Carol Oates, John Updike, and Anne Beattie.
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