Katherine Dunn - Attic

I’m glad there are no full-length mirrors here, only the small mirror bolted to the bulkhead at medium-height eye level. I weigh one hundred and eighty-five pounds today. They took the bandage for the boils off my back and weighed me and took my blood pressure. One hundred eighty-five pounds sixty-six inches tall. My legs don’t cross any more above the knee. They touch above the knee even when the feet are a foot and a half apart. I wear a size eighteen uniform now. It used to be a twelve for comfort and a ten for fit. I don’t recognize myself any more. I couldn’t fit into Dogsbody if she were here. There are no bones anywhere — not at my knee or ankle or wrist or collarbone. My skull is only there when I poke for it. The white hair is long and straight on my calves and when I put my feet up the flesh hangs away from me. When I raise my arm straight up in the bunk it all falls down away from my wrist and the freckles are far apart and pale. My hands don’t close all the way the fingers are too thick and stiff to bend in. When I lie on my back my face is heavy toward my ears. I sleep a lot and wake when I’m hungry.

He’s thinking maybe I’d go easy for him, he has that — and the others just think they’re dogs “gay dogs” the words mean that to them. It doesn’t touch me at all but them, working all around them. They are not hungry there, but in the space behind the eyes where the empty is frightening and they try to fill it with themselves. It would not frighten me. I want it so, to sink into empty and not even dream. They are so afraid of not wanting. I would be so glad not to want again.

There were two slugs in the path through the field, gray green and glowing with dew. I stopped in the morning. They went toward each other not moving and almost passed each other but stopped no head to no tail. They were still and the sides opened toward each other. A hole in something just opened, fell open it was so heavy, and a bubble came white and thick and they lay with the bubble between them, not moving, paying no part of them to the path or me crouched watching and the bubble did not change or move though they were alive in it and secrets were happening, passing in the bubble with its skin glowing white as the sun came up.

The next year he was on his knees watching something on the walk. I stopped. It was a slug. He poured salt from a paper box. It shriveled and moved one end and the other and the middle but always in the salt. It kept moving and every time the lumps on the head started to come he waited till they stood out and then poured more salt. The white grains sticking. The salt sticks to the slug and all around the slug on the concrete is wetness and from the slug to the grass is a shining and if a grain of salt falls into the shine it sticks. What the salt does to it is secret and invisible, like in the bubble.

I wanted to be away but not alone. I wanted the final touch for my new façade, my new image, the black thing, the pale and dark thing moving in darkness. I wanted something that belonged totally to me — adored me only. I wanted power over another powerful thing. So I got the dog. I had plans for a noble fantastic name. None of this Rex and Bingo jazz, but Shiva . When I got him at the training kennels he was huge and all black except for two peaches over his eyes and his name was Prince. I registered him as Black Prince Shiva the Destroyer and told that to anyone who asked but he never answered to anything but Prince. He sat and heeled and lay at the end of a steel chain and he was a poorly trained guard dog. His bark was terrifying, he attacked skillfully and would have been an adept killer but none of it was on command.

He slept in my bed when I was alone and resented it when I wasn’t. I put my hands into his drinking water and dipped out his dry food with my hands so that my smell would be a part of everything important to him. He had to love me. He was as lean as his jaws all over and weighed seven pounds less than I did at the time. We walked at night down the hill from the village where my little house was once with the others a tent for the lung sick. The windows look out through the trees from my mattress in the morning on Portland, Oregon, in mists and rain with the Pacific Power and Light signs flowing in the gray. We walk down the hill in the night, the black dog silent beside me, my black clothes thin in all the crotches of my body. We walked around looking for trouble, beneath the bridges, down Market Street to the river — up First Street to Burnside and the small dark streets behind. We terrified the winos in the Blue Mouse Theater and fascinated Reed College students with ghosty driftings through the swamp. We sat in dark cafés, he beneath the table silent, his head on my boots. Red lights in the eyes of the auto harp singer in Laundromats where the night people go, on curbs with our hands and ears and noses cold across from bars with cars in front where young women sat together and whispered. He was not house trained. We spoke to no one. He laid huge stinking turds on the green rug of my living room. We sat on the roof with sunshine and peanut butter and half gallons of milk. He pissed crouching and virgin. The hawthorn tree dropping red flowers. He killed a miniature poodle bitch in the street when she would not let him mount her but he was horrified by it and it was plainly a mistake. I left him alone in the house after the men came. I went days away never seeing the hill or the house and each time I came back the books were gnawed and shredded, the curtains were torn about the room, the rug full of tooth marks and shit and on that first night, my first night with the who upon me and the dog chained at the foot of the bed, he cried and slavered, his spine arching convulsive, rubbing himself on the bed, the chair on himself and screaming when he came. I wanted to love him — to care for him — I was proud when the people turned to look at us.

Dogsbody was born that year and we took lovers in the catacombs beneath the hill with the toilet running and a gas range behind the furnace. The wall was black and pieces of steel hung on threads against it. A midget in a yellow derby told stories for the forty-two-cent macaroni dinner. We told everyone we were brother and sister but he didn’t believe until morning and blood was there though that only proved his innocence. He was silly and would never say he cared but he fed me and I slept there every night and made the bed in the morning. He always said I made a good bed. I took his friends in with me while he was at work and cried to him when they left me but he would not say he cared. I begged him to lock me in a closet. Finally he told me his friend the painter had gone to a concert in a tuxedo. I said I think I’ll go to Seattle. He wouldn’t walk me to the train. I had ninety-five cents after the fare. I took a bus saying How do I find Melrose Street, my brother, I’ve come from Minneapolis to find him. He was really an insurance salesman and had lived above the catacombs. We had sat on the steps of demolished houses so I knocked at his door and sat on the arm of his chair in my long pink nightie. There were two beds. I got into the other one. He was so cold. “Do you feel like sex tonight?” The next morning I answered the ad and joined the magazine crew.

I am just sitting smoking though I do not smoke — I am taking care of cats. There isn’t much to it — you feed them — they ignore you — you watch a while and then ignore them — so I’m just sitting smoking — a cat brushes past my cigarette and starts to burn in a line down his belly from the throat — I pick him up and throw him into a bucket of water — plastic pale yellow bucket just happens to be sitting there — cat curls up on the bottom of the bucket and won’t come up — lies there smooth — nose in tail and drowns — what to do — nobody will ever believe this — such an accident — can’t even take care of cats…