Katherine Dunn - Attic

When it burns out it seems like there must be another hole — it feels further forward and very small but when I feel there is only the one hole all the lips and the ridges leading into the one hole — it gets wet all in there as though it just rushed from the one big hole and when I hold the little mirror there and spread the lips it is all so confusing and red and wrinkled like the wrinkles were all accidents from the loose skin pressed together by my legs and I can’t tell and the hole itself is so small looking and I can hardly tell unless I touch which is really the hole and not just deep wrinkles — the picture on the Tampax instructions isn’t clear and I do it all by feel anyway and when I clench the muscles inside even with the mirror nothing shows but in class or when I’m listening to someone it must show in how steady my eyes are — how still my face is that I am concentrating somewhere inside flexing the muscles inside and learning how to tighten them separately from the asshole and how to push down and how to just close them without pushing so I can hold him there afterward and make him feel me even when he is small and soft and how to pull him back in with only those muscles when he is almost out and how nothing else moves but those muscles invisible and for so long I didn’t even know they were there until the first time it was good when it had not been before and I lay so surprised and felt those muscles tightening and opening like fists when you die.

Each cell has a little toilet in the back wall and there’s a towel jerry-rigged in front of each one but I don’t like to go there when there’s anybody else in the cell. There’s a toilet in a booth in the bull pen next to the shower but people can tell you’re going in there.

She would come in and pull the covers far down in one motion and grab both my hands to her nose with her mouth thin sniffing to see if I had been touching myself there. The smell isn’t bad but tart and brittle not like the pee smell of pants and the wet is wetter than water — why do they always think you put things into you bottles and candles and doorknobs they make jokes about thinking it’s instead of them and don’t understand it’s just the touching gentle and fast and the coming is different almost not there but all I can think about is them touching and them pulling it and the moving and their moaning in the dark and even though it’s not the same I think of nothing afterward but float and so awake before and so wild inside and afterward sleep is so easy lying still tired in all my parts like after he has come in me — how even when he makes me come — wild till I cry and then come laughing I don’t feel that used up — that tired until I feel his come hot into me and stay and I tilt up to keep it and don’t want to go to the bathroom or stand up but just lie there still and full of him and warm in myself and he warm and tired in me and sleep — and sad in the morning to feel it coming down and have to go and wash it away.

But here no one looks at anyone under covers — here when the lights are out no one knows or wants to know and I lift the blanket in a little tent over the hand so no motion would show even if someone looked and no one talks about it except to be mean if you really hate them because it helps and makes you calm and you can sleep.

I am lying on a mattress on top of the tower — it is pale and tall and the steps circle it going up like Babel in the pictures — each step carved into the face of the tower — and the tower narrowing to a point with only room for a mattress and me on the mattress and on each step a man stands faceless — formless — only the pricks distinct — standing red over purple balls — they are all waiting in line to get to me — on the thousand steps and the line ends here — and I lie still and do not move — my legs spread — my ass on a pillow — my head turned to see the line and not the face of the one on me now — I feel them — the thump as they fall on their knees on the mattress — sometimes they walk up between my legs on their knees — sometimes they fall on me with their legs straddling mine — forcing mine together once the prick is in — sometimes they kneel and lift me onto them — I always limp — unmoving — not pretending anything — they come in and drive deep and almost out and then all the way in again — their balls slapping against my ass and the crotch below the hole and sliding almost to the other hole as they come in — there is no pause between them — they finish and disappear — maybe there is a stairway down — maybe they fall off the edge — their chests do not press on mine — they hold themselves up by their arms — only our bellies and groins and thighs touching — the moving in and out is always slow and steady — I always feel it — I am never too dry or too wet — they all come in me but I am never full of it — they are all enormous — and they continue and will continue as long as I want them.

I can think like that at night when there is time and no one but Blendina — in the day I try not to — I turn away when they touch or kiss trying not to remember — only a moment — a particular lunge — the sound of them groaning over me — the sensation at first when they are very large — it all makes me sick to remember in the daylight — shuddering hungry all through me and I lean my face against the cool steel and close my eyes until it goes away.

Yesterday I wanted to leave. That was the first time. The food’s good. It’s warm. Outside I could only shiver and scrounge. It must have been the truck. I was looking out the window. I stand on the crossbars to see down because the window is across the catwalk between the bars and the wall. I could see the street, not clearly without but lots of traffic lights and the busyness on the sidewalks that means people. It was all gray. The sky the buildings, inside, outside all the pink and green in here all the colors out there all gray and then this truck — bright yellow like the buckets of daffodils the bums sell in the gray spring in Portland. Then the light changed and it went around the corner. I guess I wanted to see it again. I went to the door of the matron’s room. The lever wouldn’t open it. I knocked on the steel. She came and looked at me through the little window. The glass has crinkled steel wire running through it in a checkerboard. It was Glad-Ass. Even her dark face looked gray, neutral. I’d like to leave now. I want to go out. She laughed, her teeth showing and the dark gums, a ropy sound coming through the glass. The girls in the bull pen looked at me and nudged each other. Please, I’d like to go now. Glad-Ass laughed again and waved. I saw her pink palm moving across the glass as she turned away. I tried the door handle but it didn’t turn. The door was made of pink steel.

There’s a church on the street where my parents live. I used to go there in cold weather when I was staying away from home. One wall was all grained white glass, translucent and cold. The panes were held by black wooden frames and the light fell through onto the floor in shadows like bars make. I used to wonder if those bars were meant to keep sin out or sinners in. At least the bars that cast their shadows across my bunk in 4 cell are totally unambiguous.

She is shaking — red — her gray hands are white around the pointer and she slaps it on the desk like a golf club — she says Stomach —very clear and loud— Stomach — Navel — Stomach — Navel —and I standing by the seat whisper Belly Button — Belly — where the Injun shot me — it pops out with the knot at the end like a sock half rolled into itself — it pops out when I put my finger into it and pull and it sticks out from my belly — the short pale tube stiff with the knot at the end — if you’ll stop yelling I’ll show you how my belly button pops out — I sit on the pot with a bobby pin probing in my belly button and smelling at the soft white wet that comes out and then pop it out — pulling out on its sides till it pulls inside out and stands straight and hard — I thought boys had belly buttons that popped out and girls had just holes into themselves and the boy put his into her belly button — when she found the bobby pin on the washbasin she came looking for me with the plunger saying I had put it in the other place — Belly — don’t you ever let me hear you use that word while you’re in this school — it’s stomach —nice people don’t use that Other word.