Aimee Bender - An Invisible Sign of My Own

But if you ran for the joy of runningI interrupted. Whatever, I said. My voice was flat now. I patted her shoulder.

Thanks for everything, I said, and I walked away.

The morning after I found the marathon 50, I woke up in my clothes, 4:30 bright on the clock, each number a house of slim red parallelograms. I felt inside my pocket and of course there it was, and I took it out and unfolded it and the numbers were clear, and panic bloomed in my stomach again, an ecstatic flower.

I got a warning. No one gets a warning.

I wanted to marry wood. I wanted to chew down some two — by fours crawl inside a tree, slide elm into my aorta so that every beat of every second was a grand waltz with luck.

I was awake and alert right away. Got up. Went to the kitchen. My shoes were on already. I’d slept all night wearing shoes. I opened the cabinet underneath the sink and took out the ax which I’d stored there as soon as I’d come home because at the time it seemed like as good a place as any to store an ax. The blade smelled like lemon-fresh detergent.

The handle slipped from the sweat in my palm but the ax winked in the darkness like a glint from a reptile’s cornea and I sat on the living room couch with myself, in the dimness that comes before early morning, and wondered what was about to happen.

51: Humming, just around the corner.

On the lawn the day before, when I couldn’t stand to stare at the 5o anymore, I’d folded it into my pocket, hid the ax in the bushes, and gone inside my parents’ house. After choking down birthday cake with my mother, I watched TV with my father for hours. He said cake made him queasy, and sipped mineral water through a straw. He looked the same as always. My mother had wanted to know if I’d bought anything

for myself at the hardware store and I said, No? with a question mark and she looked at me funny. I’ll get something soon, I said. I need a shower curtain.

Before I walked home, she’d come out with me to the front lawn.

It was night by then, and the sky was crowded with stars, a geometric dream of pinpoints.

She said she remembered my birth. I said she should forget it by now. You, she said, touching my arm, you have so much ahead of you, I can just see it.

This felt vaguely like a threat. Bye, I said.

She stood under the front-lawn tree, and one white bloom drifted down the side of her face, a huge soft earring.

Mona, she said. She fixed her gaze right on me then, straight through the evening blueness, in such a direct way that I felt myself freeze, recede, loosen. I shook my head against it, reaching out a hand to touch the tree trunk. Between the bark and my mother’s straight — on gaze, I felt some kind of shimmer in the air. I couldn’t bear it.

Talk to you tomorrow, I said.

Once the door clicked, and I knew she was inside, I ran to the bushes and retrieved the ax, blade now cold from the night air.

The handle was a rush of relief in my hand. I didn’t need to touch any tree trunks with my palm pressed tight against that wood.

In my dark apartment, 4:40 in the morning, shaky from the absence of sleep, nothing made me calmer right then than holding that blond wooden handle and looking at that skirt of shining steel.

It felt right. It seemed possible, and useful: to join the troops. I considered some options.

The easiest would be a finger or a toe. This was the most conservative choice. Fingers would be obvious but I could hide an absent toe, maybe my whole life. I never wear sandals.

But big deal. Too small an offer.

I could slice off a kneecap, that smooth moving skipping-stone of a bone, shine it up and use it as a paperweight, give it to my boss as a holiday gift for her already overcrowded boss desk.

I could cut off my heel. I could cut off my hand. I could cut off my arm. I could cut off more.

Ears. Eyes. Nose. Calves. Shoulders. Legs. Breasts. Fists.

The ax was clean and bright and manly. There was a sick feeling in my stomach, this side of throwing up, but it had, within its center, the undeniable bubbling of excitement. I could change my life, right here. I could make myself different and I would be different that way for my whole life, forever, and this-right here would be the moment where everything turned.

Blam. New me. In the newspapers. In the butcher shop. Read about by Mr. Jones on the stool in his hardware store. I bet you remember me now, that girl around town with no head on her shoulders.

I held the handle close. Silly Mona, I said, and I almost got up to put it away but I didn’t move because I didn’t want to. The ax felt so good in my hands, so strong and real, so regular and steady, and that 50 was loud and clear on my bed.

I gripped the sturdy wooden stem and got up off the couch, stretching flat on my back on the carpet. Staring at the ceiling, I brought the blade into the air. It was heavy, and as I looked at it winking, I thought of something to do. My heart clanged, and thrill and terror dribbled through me, giddy and light, and I pulled myself up and stood,

almost burping up bubbles like bells, Holding the ax high in my right hand, I imagined it first: my arm, swinging down, a loose curve, swing down, and crash, crack, I let the blade bury deep down wherever the swing ends. Sshh, quiet, woozy, dreamy, the girl falls, sshh, tipping over, falling, some thing has been hit, timber, she’s over, there’s a slice in her leg, I’m bleeding all over the carpet, but there’s the towel! And there’s my father! And when someone asks at the hospital of glass, when they’re trying to cure my incurable wound, when they question me in high tones what happened, I say in a clear voice: I chopped myself down.

And then I’m the talk of the hospital for a while. It’s my best stint with fame.

My arm was up, ax up, high up, imagining this girl as me, loving it, heady with the image: I’m limping to the hospital, leaving a trail of blood on the ground; I’m pausing at the entrance where the building flies up in front of me like long hard water; I’m in the elevator, I’m in a room, ready to sneak out, preparing my escape so I can limp to my parents’ house and tell them I did it!

I saved the family; my hair is fetchingly mussed and the hospital gown is billowing up like a wedding dress, and I am as noble as the rest of them and I am a part of the team, I am a team player, and then, of all things, in the middle of this, of all people.

Lisa Venus popped into my head.

She’s in the hospital too, lost, peering out a blue window at the dark blue night, looking for the other wing, both of us imprisoned by the masterful glass architecture. I have a chunk missing from my leg and maybe I don’t have a foot-who knows-and she is walking through the halls, little Lisa, holding a drawing, and she’s asking where the cancer ward is because that’s where her mother lives.

And she sees me. Ms. Gray! she says. What are you doing here? But I’m weak in the hospital bed without enough blood and I can’t even sit up. You can tell she thinks I look bad without makeup. The hospital nurse comes to her side quickly because she doesn’t want this little girl with the nice drawing of the skull and crossbones, she doesn’t want this little girl to be talking to the nut who thinks she’s a tree to cut down.

Ms. Gray, says Lisa, and her face is screwing up and she looks like she’s about to erupt into tears.

In my apartment, I have MY arm to the sky and the ax is waggling in it and I’m a statue here; I’m waiting to see if I’ll do it.

Will I do it. Will I mark myself.

In the hospital, I tell Lisa: Don’t worry, I’m just here for a visit. In fact I’m right about to leave.

I try to get out of bed, but my head rushes from the weakness and the nurse has clamped a hand down on Lisa’s shoulder and is guiding her away. I can hear her start to cry in the hallway.