Melanie Thon - First, Body - Stories

Clare said, I tried to come home once, but the birds had eaten all the crumbs. There was no path .

The next night, another lover, another man with gifts. Two vials of crack we smoked, then heroin to cut the high. Got to chase the dragon , he said. No needles. Clean white smack so pure we only had to breathe it in. Safe this way , he said. He held a wet cloth, told me, Lean back , made me snort the water too, got to get the last bit . When he moved on top of me, I didn’t have a body: I was all head.

Then it was day and I was drifting, knowing that by dark I’d have to look again.

Emile appeared on Newbury Street, shop window, second floor: he was a beautiful mannequin in a red dress.

Listen, you think it’s easy the way we live? Clare told me this: I never had a day off. I had to keep walking. I could never stay in bed .

So she was glad when they put her in a cell, glad to give them all she had: clothes, cash, fingerprints. She said, I knew enough not to drink the water, but nobody told me not to breathe the air .

No lover that night. I found a cardboard box instead. Cold before dawn, and I thought, Just one corner, just the edge . When the flames burst, I meant to smother them. I felt Earl, his cool metal grasp. Get out , he said. Ashes floated in the frozen air, the box gone that fast. Clare said, Look at me: this is what they did . Later my singed hair broke off in my hands.

In the morning, I called Adele again. Tell me , I said.

I thought she might know exactly where and when. I thought there might be a room, a white sheet, a bed, a place I could enter and leave, the before and after of my sister’s death.

But there were only approximate details, a jail, stones, barbed wire somewhere.

No body . She meant she never saw Clare dead.

Clare said she tried to get home in time, but the witch caught her and put her in the candy house instead.

Busted. Prostitution and possession.

Let me answer the charges.

This is Clare’s story.

Let me tell you what my sister owned.

In her pocket, one vial of crack, almost gone. In her veins, strangers’ blood. She possessed ninety-six pounds. I want to be exact. The ninety-six pounds included the weight of skin, coat, bowels, lungs; the weight of dirt under her nails; the weight of semen, three men last night and five the night before.

The ninety-six pounds included the vial, a rabbit’s foot rubbed so often it was nearly hairless, worn to bone.

Around her wrist she wore her own hair, what was left of it, what she’d saved and braided, a bracelet now. In her left ear, one gold hoop and one rhinestone stud, and they didn’t weigh much but were included in the ninety-six pounds.

She possessed the virus.

But did not think of it as hers alone.

She passed it on and on.

Stripped and showered, she possessed ninety-one pounds, her body only, which brings me to the second charge.

Listen, I heard of a man who gave a kidney to his brother. They hadn’t spoken for eleven years. A perfect match in spite of this. All that blood flowed between them, but the brother died, still ranting, still full of piss and spit.

Don’t talk to me about mercy.

The one who lived, the one left unforgiven, the one carved nearly in half, believed in justice of another kind: If we possess our bodies only, we must offer up this gift .

You can talk forever about risk.

New York City, Clare. Holding pen. They crammed her in a room, two hundred bodies close, no windows here. They told her to stand and stand, no ventilation, only a fan beating the poison air. And this is where she came to possess the mutant germ, the final gift. It required no consensual act, no exchange of blood or semen, no mother’s milk, no generous brother willing to open his flesh.

Listen, who’s coughing there?

All you have to do is breathe it in.

It loved her, this germ. It loved her lungs, first and best, the damp dark, the soft spaces there. But in the end, it wanted all of her and had no fear.

December still, Clare eight months dead. Adele knew only half of this.

You can always come home , she said.

I went looking for my lover, the fat one with the car, anybody with a snake on his chest.

I found three men in the Zone, all with cash — no snakes and none that fat. Tomorrow I’d look again. I wanted one with white skin and black hair, a belly where my bones could sink so I wouldn’t feel so thin. I wanted the snake in my hands, the snake around my neck; I wanted his unbelievable weight to keep me pinned.

Ten days in a cell, Clare released. Two hundred and fifty-three hours without a fix — she thought she might go straight, but it didn’t happen like that.

She found a friend instead. You’re sad, baby , he said. She dropped her pants. Not for sex, not with him, only to find a vein not scarred too hard. When your blood blooms in the syringe, you know you’ve hit.

Listen, nobody asks to be like this.

If the dope’s too pure, you’re dead.

This is Clare’s story. This is her voice speaking through me. This is my body. This is how we stay alive out here.

Listen. It’s hope that kills you in the end .

On Brattle Street I saw this: tall man with thick legs, tiny child clutching his pants. Too beautiful, I thought, blue veins, fragile skull, her pulse flickering at the temple where I could touch it if I dared. The man needed a quarter for the meter. He asked me for change, held out three dimes. A good trade , I said. He stepped back toward the car, left the girl between us. I crouched to be her size, spoke soft words, nonsense, and she stared. When I moved, she moved with me. The man wasn’t watching. I wanted to shout to him, Hold on to this hand . I wanted to tell him, There’s a boneyard in the woods, a hunter’s pile of refuse, jaw of a beaver, vertebrae of a deer . I wanted to tell him how easily we disappear.

That night I found Emile sleeping in a doorway. Shrunken little man with a white beard. No blanket, no coat. He opened one eye. Cover me , he said.

I held out my hands, empty palms, to show him all I had.

With your body , he said.

He held up his own hands, fingerless. I froze once , he said.

In the tunnel I found the Haitian man. Every time a train came, people tossed coins in his case and left him there. Still he sang, for me alone, left his ragged words flapping in my ribs.

Listen, the lungs float in water.

Listen, the lungs crackle in your hands.

Out of the body, the lungs simply collapse.

For my people , he said.

His skin was darker than mine, dark as my father’s perhaps. His clothes grew bigger every day: he was singing himself sick. By February he’d be gone. By February I’d add the Haitian manchild to my list of the disappeared.

But that night I threw coins to him.

That night I believed in the miracles of wine and bread, how what we eat becomes our flesh.

It was almost Christmas. I put quarters in the phone to hear the words. Come home if you want , Adele said.

Clare made me remember the inside of the trailer. She made me count the beds. Close the curtains — it’s a box , she said.

Clare made me see Adele at the table, the morning she told me she was going to marry Mick. It’s my last chance , my mother said. I wanted the plates to fly out of the cupboard. I wanted to shatter every glass.

I smoked a cigarette instead.

I was thirteen.

It was ten A.M.

I drank a beer.

I felt sorry for Adele, I swear. She was thirty-four, an old woman with red hair. She said, Look at me , and I did, at her too-pale freckled skin going slack.