My sister’s hair, honeyed from the hair salon, fell between us. The tips of it brushed the
menu we shared. We sat side by side since the booths were comically huge, like everything else at The Cheesecake Factory in Pasadena. I almost tucked her hair behind her ear, my older-sister instincts rearing up even though we weren’t kids anymore and hadn’t been close for years. Her lunch invitation hadn’t been unexpected. It was the summer of 2007. I’d traveled from Florida where I was in graduate school to our home state of California to be the maid of honor in her wedding. The event was three days away and there was so much left to do. Tanning bed appointments, mani-pedis, a champagne brunch, bridesmaid dramas I’d been tasked with diffusing via flip phone, eyebrows to be waxed into thin perfect lines. After we ordered our salads, I thought we would talk about those things. Instead, she stared straight ahead out a picture window that faced onto Colorado Boulevard and roped me into helping her reconstruct the plot of One Magic Christmas. It was her favorite holiday movie as a kid. A father shot to death on Christmas Eve. His children driven off a bridge into an icy river. A mother grieves. The angel Gideon appears. “I need to tell you something,” she said after the waiter left our salads. I perked up, wondering if it had something to do with her fiancée. His favorite things were green smoothies and making fun of ugly people and he always pointed out when my sister had seconds. I put down my fork, hoping for a called-off wedding. She was a quietly intelligent nursing student. A hot girl who had been getting into Jesus. She was only twenty-two. Women keep secrets all the time. It was my mom who taught me to keep my secrets. She believed we
women were meant to swallow our pain, our questions, our discomfort for men, for anyone really. When I would ask her why she would answer, “That’s just the way things are.” She felt pride about how well she could keep her secrets of unhappiness. But the truth was, it was no secret. It was written all over her face, in her tone, in her living. The only ones oblivious are ourselves. I have secrets of how I lost my virginity. There was coaxing, manipulation, and the giving of Xanax to help keep me quiet. Most of my sexual relationships have been pills to swallow, both literally and metaphorically. Lies, abuse, and manipulation from boys led to the constant stream of pill-taking, to normalize all the things I had to keep secret. Friends would talk about their first times, and I would make up some story so as not to get asked, “Are you okay?” I had no idea if I was okay, which is what the pills and all the drinking were for. I didn’t want the question in the room, so I made up a normal story, a story anyone could believe. Shame comes with secrets, and eventually, shame eats us all whole. You start to feel disgusting that you have things to hide. Not because you did anything wrong, but because they happened and you regret them, hoping they would go away forever. –––– The room was tiny. $975 a month, and yet my suitcase just barely fit into the open patch of floor
between the bed and the desk. Jumbles of my clothing covered every available surface, half sorted into piles. It was small, but it was home. Or rather, it was going to be. Despite the muggy heat of the Toronto summer, the first thing I had done upon entering the room was rush to the window. Cracking it open, I was accosted by the clamor of the city. Car horns honked, and street cars rattled. People in expensive suits scuttled below me, eyes scanning their phones, hands clutching their lattes. The skyscrapers across the street appraised me from beneath scrunched eyebrows, their roofs stretching up to touch the cerulean sky. Climate-controlled air rushed out and in crept the smell of grease from the corner hotdog stand, woven together with the nauseating stench of the subway. It was all so overwhelming. So loud. So foreign. What an adventure I told myself, pausing to look in the closet mirror and bare my teeth like a used car salesman. In the name of Jesus the Messiah,
I declare that I am born out of God, Carved and painted with the envisionment of evil. Black hair runs down my curves and red lips, sweet with sin, Make me a victim of temptation and vengeful lust. Father forgive me for the falsehood Of desecration of holy marriage unions And Adam's taste for the Apple- The truth is choked in his throat and in the blood of the first murder on record. In the name of Jesus the Messiah I declare that I have never harmed a child- My spirits find safety under my wings and wisdom in my fall. I embrace the moon and it's four stages, worship my dark, inner feminine energies, and Her divine manifests. Content Warning: This short story includes scenes of bullying, violence, and slight gore
The stone hit Ava in the back of the head. She stumbled and fell, spilling her schoolbooks out of her arms and onto the dirt road in front of her. Gravel dug into her palms as she threw out her hands to break her fall. Her knees skidded painfully across the ground. “Have a nice trip!” a boy’s voice called out from behind her, to a chorus of laughter. “See you next fall!” Ava brushed her long, black hair out of her face. She was hollow-boned and delicate, looking far younger than her 11 years. Her dark eyes welled with tears. She quickly wiped them away with the frayed cuff of her sweater. A chilly autumn wind blew across the Kansas field, causing the corn stalks lining the road to whisper in the breeze. Somewhere in the distance, faint and far away, a gas-powered tractor growled. It was probably from Mr. Conklin’s farm – he was the only farmer in the area who was wealthy enough to own a tractor – but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t close enough to help her. Nobody was. She was on her own. A group of kids about her age, two girls and a boy, ran past her. One of the girls stuck out her tongue. The other laughed. Their shoes kicked up clouds of dust into Ava’s face as they passed. The girls were sisters, Sarah and Beth Winters. They were pretty and clean, with crisp red bows tied in their flaxen hair. They were the kinds of girls who had everything they needed and got everything they wanted; they never had to ask for anything twice. They wore matching blue dresses with warm red sweaters that looked like they were bought from a department store. Not handmade, like Ava’s shapeless brown smock. They weren’t twins – Sarah was two years older than Beth – but they were inseparable. Even now, they held hands as they skipped away into the distance. Ava hated them both, equally. Yeh-Shen’s golden slipper kept shrinking one inch
Smaller until it found its rightful owner When footbinding was in vogue in China, the most Desired shape was the three-inch golden lotus It took two years to achieve this revered shape, girls Had their feet bound from the age of five or six Sometimes binders opted for a slightly softer Shape – the butterfly or cucumber foot It was a cold, clear day in the second week of April.
I remember that it was a Saturday and that I was in the kitchen making coffee for the two of us. I remember taking the cup from me and holding it up to the light to see if it was clean. There was a smear of coffee on the rim, but the coffee inside was still clear. I remember how the light shone through the coffee and made the liquid glow. I remember how he stood over me then, and how my heart fluttered like a bird. I froze. He took the cup from my hand and threw it against the wall. It shattered into a thousand pieces and I remember watching as they fell to the floor like rain. I was the river god’s daughter,
And a daughter is nothing more than a blank page after all, waiting to be written. When Apollo was my pursuer my father, transformed me to a laurel tree. It did make great poetry of course; and there was justice too in the sense of order or what they call balance, a cleverness; Rapunzel had been waiting years for this moment.
She let the information slip casually, playing it off as a mistake, but knowing that Mother Gothel would be furious with her for allowing anyone else into the tower — especially a prince. Therefore, she was expecting a punishment. So, when Mother Gothel pulled a pair of shears from her cloak, Rapunzel acted quickly. She seized the witch’s wrist, twisting it as hard as she could. Mother Gothel let out a cry of rage, not only at Rapunzel’s defiance, but also at her unexpected strength. But Rapunzel did not falter; after a moment longer of struggle, she was able to tear the shears from Gothel’s grip and pierce them straight through her heart. Rapunzel pulled the shears out of Gothel’s chest — allowing the body to collapse on the floor with a thud — and stood up, pushing her hair back over her shoulders as she admired her work, chest heaving with her heavy breaths. Of course, there was the matter of getting rid of the body and cleaning up the copious amount of blood before the prince arrived for their nightly meeting; she couldn’t have him suspecting anything was wrong — not with what she had planned for him. It was exceedingly difficult, but Rapunzel managed to get the job done before nightfall. She dragged Gothel’s body to the closet that held her cleaning supplies — including the mop that she needed to clean the blood that was now smeared across the dark hardwood floors of the tower. How they threw themselves
into projects like us, poured their secret desires and fears and fetishes into our lands, our laps, all to starve their own souls of humility, and paint our faces with their reflections. Polarity might breed division but Nuance makes way for indifference And wasn’t it good men who stood by and did nothing that were the ones who let evil win? |