Melanie Thon - First, Body - Stories

The house erupts. The boy hears this thought. Home . His voice is exploding glass, a tree limb torn.

He says, I had a mother once, stupid as you are now .

The boy says, I have names, things people call me, words my mother gave me — my father’s name, as if she always planned to throw me out .

Boys call me one thing .

Girls call me another .

But in my head I say these names: Ice, Mud, River .

I have enemies: the kid who owned this jacket, the rain tonight, my own memory .

Don’t touch me when I’m sleeping .

I hate fingers in my hair, fat women, the smell of baby powder .

I have a knife inside a secret pocket .

Surprise me and I’ll kill you .

I need gloves, a blanket, a place to lie down, a hole to hide me .

I don’t like birds. They scare me. All that noise. Their hunger. They remind me that I’m hungry .

I don’t like dogs. They make me bark. They make me want to bite them .

I killed a cat once. Not on purpose. But later I wasn’t sorry. It startled me, my hands around it, the way it twitched, the way it stopped twitching .

Mostly I hate pigeons, rats with wings — and squirrels, rats with bushy tails .

When I’m alone, I hate the sound in my own veins, the way it fills the room, like God whispering .

I love the dark, the sewer, the closet — all the places I’m invisible .

I love the water when it’s deep and wants to drown me .

I love the bottle in my hand, green glass, jagged edges. I love my cut palms, warm blood when it turns thick as pudding .

I love the bridge when the wind is cold and I’m almost jumping .

I love your house, the way locks burst and doors open .

I love the smell of rum and chocolate, my sticky fingers .

I love these walls so much I leave my handprints .

Am I really here ?

I am if you believe it .

I love the way I scare you, the way my heart becomes your heart, the way our pulse surges .

The boy cries at every door, Mother . Elena remembers Iris shut in the upstairs bedroom. Iris wailing. She remembers hiding in the basement, in the bathroom, with the water drumming.

So I wouldn’t hear her .

She was afraid of her own daughter, two months old, Iris whimpering. She was afraid of tiny arms and fragile fingers. Afraid of herself, what she might do to stop this squalling.

She locked all the doors between them.

The boy howls. He knows this. He says, Put your hand on my head, feel how flat the back is .

Yes, she understands. If you leave a child long enough, the soft bones of the skull will flatten.

He says, No wonder we hate you .

Elena whispers, But that didn’t happen . Elena says, Iris has a perfect head, a lovely curve — I didn’t hurt her .

The boy laughs. The boy says, You think I don’t know that ?

The boy says, You think I haven’t touched her ?

He says, She lived in the jungle eight days last summer. I remember her voice. She’s sweet, your Iris. But mostly it’s her throat I remember. So white I wanted to snap it. I wanted to lie down beside her with my eyes closed. I wanted to rub naked against her until her skin was sore and red and mine was healed .

Why should I be me? Why should she be Iris ?

One night she must have heard me. My thoughts. She must have dreamed the words inside me. The next day she disappeared. Came home. To you. To this house. Not because she loves you. Only because I scare her. She’ll get over that. Don’t think that you can keep her .

The boy says, She told us where you live, how easy it would be to rob you . He says, When I saw you on the Ave. that day, I knew we were meant to be together .

Elena wants to tell the boy, Everybody suffers . Wants to say that children who live in cars and children who live in castles sit awake all night watching stars, wondering why meteors don’t set the earth on fire. Children everywhere wonder why their mothers refuse to answer. Children lie in the grass, waiting for fathers who never come to save them.

The boy is very practical. The boy says, You sleep in the car. I’ll sleep in the castle . He says, You eat from the dumpster. I’ll eat your salmon and raspberries . He says, I’ll lie under the down comforter. You can stuff your pants with newspaper .

He says, Maybe you’re right . He says, Maybe I’ll still suffer . He says, I’m willing to try it .

He hasn’t been this warm in years. He says, I think I’d like to die here . He says, We die every night in the jungle. Last week it was a migrant. One of those fools who forgot to go south for the winter. He ended up with us instead, under the freeway, in a house made of sticks and cardboard. He was hacking yellow phlegm and bleeding from his asshole. Maybe you’re right. When it comes to this, it doesn’t matter if you’re in the car or in the castle. On the white bed or the cold vinyl. But if I had my choice, I’d stay in your house forever .

We didn’t let him die in the dirt. We made a bed of leaves, wrapped our hands in rags to lift him. Someone covered him with a silver blanket. Our astronaut .

He asked us to find the sin-eater. Who knows how many of us there are? Ten thousand in this city? But we found her, the one he wanted, shriveled-up old spook of a woman. She came and sat beside him. Ate everything we brought her — boiled cat, raw fish, roasted squirrel. She swelled and swelled. Choked down his evil. Drank gallons of water. Belched and farted. She chewed till her eyes rolled and she toppled over. We thought his sins had killed her. All that meat, his poison. She slept two days. Foul. We had to tie shirts over our noses. The man burned. Riding that horse. No one could stop him. But his body wanted to stay with us. It breathed and bled. It snorted. Once its eyes opened .

On the third day, the sin-eater woke. Small again. Her withered self. Wind blew through the stick house. Rain washed us. We smelled like the ocean, salt and seaweed. We were clean, in a way, as clean as we can be. Our astronaut was wet and cool. His blanket shimmered like liquid silver. We wrapped it around him. A girl with little hands sewed it shut with tiny stitches .

That night we carried him to the highway and left him on the shoulder. We were too tired to dig a hole. And there are too many of us to bury. We could dig all day every day, turn this jungle to a graveyard .

If you leave a dead man on the road, someone always takes him .

He disappeared at daybreak .

We have this kind of magic .

When it was dark again, the silver blanket burst above me. A billion stars exploded. I was afraid. I thought it was his body breaking. If blood splattered in my eyes and mouth, I’d be the next one dying. But there were only stars and the black sky between them .

The boy is very tired. Too tired to keep talking. He whispers his last words to Elena. He says, Every night ends if you live through it .

This night does end. The rain is soft now. Elena climbs out of the trunk. She’s not scared. She knows the boy has vanished.

Room by room, she’ll find everything he’s left her.

In her bed, she’ll find his imprint. Everywhere he’s been, he’s carved a hole, a space for her to enter. Yes, it’s true, when she touches the spot where his head lay on her pillow, she knows how flat his skull is. Between the sheets, she feels his short legs and curved clavicle, the three places where his arm was broken.