Aimee Bender: An Invisible Sign of My Own

I quit dessert to see if I could do it; of course I could; I quit breathing one evening until my lungs overruled; I quit touching my skin, sleeping with both hands under the pillow. When no one was home, I tied ropes around the piano, so that it would take me thirty minutes with scissors to get back to that minuet. Then I hid all the scissors.

Instead of working out her problems, Mona develops a habit of knocking on wood, and sometimes knocks for an hour before getting to sleep. Eating soap is her other dark indulgence: a surefire anti-aphrodisiac that she calls on whenever she feels sexually attracted to a man.

There was this kingdom once where everybody lived forever. They’d discovered the secret of eternal life, and because of that, there were no cemeteries, no hospitals, no funeral parlors, no books in the bookstore about death and grieving. Instead, the bookstore was full of pamphlets about how to be a righteous citizen without fear of an afterlife.

The problem was that because of this life spurt, the kingdom was very crowded. The women kept having more and more babies, and the babies had no place to sleep because of the fourteen great — great — grandmothers and great-great- grandfathers that were crowding up all the bedrooms. All the old people were getting older and older, and there was no respect for elders because the elders were just like the youngers; there wasn’t really a whole lot of difference anymore. Space was the real problem. So the king, getting crowded out of his own castle by the endless royal lineage, is sued a decree.

“Everybody in my kingdom,” he said, “please pick one person in your family to die. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it goes. If you don’t want to do it, please leave.

We will have a mass execution on Friday, and it will bring forth much more space and everyone will forever honor those who gave up for the cause. ” So on Friday, the town congregated. A few folks had packed up their bags and left, but most stayed on the land they loved. The remaining families had spent the week choosing their offering.

This wasn’t as hard as might be expected; to be forever honored was ap, pealing, and plus there was an unspoken curiosity in the town about dyinVit was sort of like going on a trip to an exotic place no one had ever been before, and just having to stay there for good.

So that afternoon, each family that showed up in the town square had chosen one martyr to die for the cause of greater community space. There was a lot of weeping and praising going on, and finally everyone pushed forward a volunteer; that is, all except one family. This family simply could not pick. First the mother had said she would die, and then everyone in the family protested, and then the father said he would die, and everyone protested, and then the daughter said she would, and no one liked that idea, and the son offered, but that was no good either, and then the baby cried and they thought it meant she would, but she was the baby and that didn’t make much sense at all. The whole family was arguing and crying and volunteering and pushing and shoving and finally the mother moved forward and said to the king’s executioner: “We cannot pick, so we would all like to die together.”

“Well, that’s ridiculous,” said the town executioner.

“Then there will be none of you left. That spoils the whole point.”

The rest of the town was irritated as well. They didn’t want the whole family gone. This family ran the bakery and was particularly adept at making a fine sausage roll, with ground-up meat and nutmeg inside, so delicious it tasted like dessert.

The family took off to the sidelines to discuss. The rest of the families waved tearfully at their martyred volunteer, who each waved back, hands shaking with goodwill and terror. Finally, the difficult family stepped forward.

“Well,” said the father, “how about this. We would like to offer a piece of each of us. With all these pieces combined, it will be as if one less person lived in town.”

The town executioner cocked his head.

“Continue,” he said, interested. The mother stood forward, and said, “You may have my leg.” The father said he’d gladly cut off an arm. The daughter said she’d remove her ear. The son said he’d cut off all his hair, and perhaps a foot, too. They let the baby be.

“We need a head,” said the town executioner.

“Fine,” said the father.

“I will also deliver my nose.”

This seemed to satisfy the executioner, so after all the other people were killed, the family was cut up and the pieces were laid out on the ground in their correct places to make a partial person who was the sacrifice to the kingdom’s population control.

The town dispersed, disoriented, unsure how to mourn their losses.

The cut-up family, after recovering, still made their sausage rolls, but no one could stand to buy them anymore because it was so disturbing to go into the store and see the noseless father, with that strap around his face, or watch the legless mother hop in to ring up the cash register, or to have to shout the order at the daughter since she only had one ear left. The family, broke, was forced to leave. They moved to the next town, which wasn’t so bad after all, and opened up a new business, and since no one there had ever seen them whole, here they accepted the family of pieces without a problem and bought sausage rolls day after day.

Each family member lived a long long time, and only the baby, who was complete, contracted any disease. When she did, at age twenty, they nursed her and nursed her until her leg fell off with gangrene, and then they had a party to celebrate her arrival.

That’s the story my father told me at bedtime on my tenth birthday.

On my twentieth birthday, I bought myself an ax.

This was the best gift I got in a decade. Before I saw it, shining on the wall of the hardware store like a lover made from steel and wood, I’d given up completely on the birthday celebration.

On my nineteenth, my mother had kicked me out of the house. On my eighteenth, I had a party of two people, and after an hour, both claimed allergies, and went home, sneezing.

On my seventeenth, I made myself a chocolate cake, but since I didn’t really want to eat it, stirred bug poison in with the mix.

It rose beautifully, the best ever, and when I took it out of the oven, a perfect brown dome, I just circled the pan for a few hours, breathing in that warm buttery air. Some ants ate the crumbs on the counter and died.

On MY sixteenth, MY aunt sent me a beautiful scarlet silk dress, which smelled and felt as delicate as the inside of a wrist.

Stroking it in my lap, I sifted through the phone book, finally picking out the name of a woman who lived at an address with i 6s in it. Then I mailed the dress to her. Red is not my color.

On my fifteenth, fourteenth, thirteenth, twelfth, and eleventh birthdays, my mother and I went shopping, and each year, by the end, one of us was in tears of frustration because I didn’t like anything, and I said I really didn’t want anything, except, maybe, a new math workbook. You had to send away for those. They came from a big number barn in the South. My mother shook her head; she refused, flat-out, to buy me math supplies for my birthday, so finally we just put the money in the bank instead.

The year of my tenth birthday was when my father got sick, and that’s when I started to quit.

I’d always loved the sound of pianos, so I signed up for lessons and took them for six weeks, and at the end of six weeks we had a recital. I wore a dress and played a minuet and my two hands were doing two different things at the same time and when it was over I drank juice and got hugged and the melody crooned inside my head. I walked my piano teacher to her car, and she smiled at me, proud. The sky clamped down. I lowered my voice: Listen, I said, urgent. You are never, ever to set foot near this house again.