“Don’t go,” he said. “You’re very good. An artist. You could transform people.”
“I can’t even transform myself,” she said. She put on her clothes. Her entire body hurt.
“I could help you get started,” he said. She was quiet. “Stay until the scabs are gone, then.”
“All right,” she said. “I’ll at least stay the night.”
He started to touch her arm, but he stopped. “I’m going to bed,” he said. He slowly walked up the steps to his loft.
Rose went to the office and sat on the couch. Her body was now covered with her memories. It ached with them. She took off her shirt; the throbbing lessened somewhat. She wanted to cry. The memories burned her skin. Hurt. Too much. She stood up and took off her pants. How could she live with it all? Stand it? She touched one of the faces on her body that was Bobbie. He peered at her from her right shoulder. She shook herself, like a dog shaking water from its fur, and the scabs fell away from her body, becoming flower petals, red, yellow, blue, floating slowly to rest on the carpet. Now she could clearly see all her memories. Her life was etched into her skin.
She went into the bathroom and stared at her body in the mirror. Her ruined body. Bobbie had ruined her. Killed her. Doomed her to sleep until she died. Her mother had ruined her. Her father had ruined her. She had only been a child. They had all taken pieces of her and had forgotten to give them back.
She started to cry. She thought of those hours when she hadn’t remembered anything. When Nurse White had turned her over. A babe from the womb. Being taken care of, loved, patted. She had known nothing. Now she knew everything.
Bobbie drank too much. His wife had left him. Her father was dead, never forgiving her. Never realizing it had been his responsibility, not his daughter’s. Her mother was dead. Never caring what she left behind.
“Time to wake up,” she whispered to her reflection.
She reached down and pulled a briar away from the patch that circled the rose on her butt. Her skin itched. Crackled. She sat on the floor and pressed the thorn into the top of her head until she drew blood. It had been good to remember. Blood ran into her eyes. To realize she had only been a child. Her mother had chosen to die; Bobbie had chosen to hurt her; her father had chosen to blame her. It was past. Time for reclamation. Seeing it all had made it, somehow, understandable. She remembered touching the snake skin when she was a child, being amazed that it could just start fresh, shed its old life.
She stretched and creaked and rubbed herself along the carpet and her past started to fall from her. She sat up and helped it: she peeled away the dead skin. It felt dry and cool, just as the snake skin had. Lifeless. No power. The flowers came away, Bobbie’s face, her mother’s eyes, the weeds, the ship on her back, the snake, the blood. All of it. She stood and dropped the past onto the carpet. She shook herself, causing the last pieces of skin to fly away. She looked down at her body. She was white and pink. New. Only the rose on her buttock remained, without the crown of thorns.
The tattooist stood in the doorway. He leaned over and picked up the skin.
Rose touched his arm. “Leave it,” she said. “I don’t need it anymore.” She reached down and smoothed her hand over her rose tattoo and smiled. “I am myself again.”
MOM SCHOOL
by Rand Soellner
“Faster, faster!” J’hompool ordered.
“I’m going as fast as I can,” Txly answered. Txly’s dark talons clawed at black soil in the lightless hole, scraping it around her furry gray body. J’hompool pushed it down the opening behind them. Their round bodies bored a four-foot tunnel up from the cavern under Muncie, Indiana. “The sun’s down. I can feel the difference,” said J’hompool. “We need to hurry. There is much to do tonight.” Txly bit her gray, wormlike lips and continued her angled ascent. After several hours, they neared their goal.
Thirty feet above, Mrs. Kraft warned her daughter Kate, “Your teeth are gonna rot outta your head!” Kate finally relented and jammed her toothbrush into her mouth. She and her little brother Kevin never brushed or spent much time grooming unless Mom made them. Kevin smiled his buck-toothed “Ha-ha You Gotta Do Something I Don’t Gotta Do” smile at her from across the hall; he had missed this routine. Kate did not care. She and her brother helped each other get away with lots of things. She did not believe her teeth or Kevin’s would really rot, but obeyed her mother’s incessant orders because Mom was bigger than she was, and Kate had learned that You Better Do What Mom Says if you want to keep your privileges. Thirteen-year-old Kate had experienced a full day: birthday party, afternoon rock concert, video tape movies with her friends in the family room until midnight, and crude instructions from these same friends on the proper usage of tampons. She had received several miniskirts and low cut blouses and looked forward to wearing them tomorrow along with her usual gloppy mascara and eyeshadow.
“Good night, dear,” said Mr. Kraft, winking at his daughter as he plodded to his bedroom. His graying hair was as rumpled as his pajamas.
“Nighty-night,” added Mrs. Kraft. She looked immaculate in her pressed housecoat and fresh, though modest makeup. Kate had never seen her sweat. Neither had Mr. Kraft.
“Night, Mom and Dad,” Kate responded, drooling mint Crest into her sink. She held her blonde hair back as she rinsed.
“Don’t let the bed bugs bite,” called Mr. Kraft with a tired smile.
“My, she’s getting old,” Mrs, Kraft whispered to her husband. “On her way to becoming a woman. Just think. Some day, she’ll be a mom, too.”
“Not too soon, I hope,” commented Mr. Kraft as they entered their bedroom. Kate’s parents loved her dearly and wrestled with the problem of how to educate her in the ways of adulthood.
In her room, Kate jumped into bed and turned off the light. She gathered her stuffed animals around her: Mr. Bunny-Hugs, Lady SoftAsMink, and a time-worn Teddy. She knew her friends would have made fun of her had they known she still slept with these toys, but she was used to Teddy and the others; they made her feel safe and soft and warm inside. As her head hit the pillow, a pile of earth puffed out a four-foot pit below the raised floor of her bedroom. This crawlspace gave Mr. Kraft a place to store tools. He had also stuffed pink fiberglass insulation between the joists to insulate the floor against the harsh Midwestern winters. Although it was only September, the trees were rusting, losing their green clothes. Kate did not understand that. Soon it would be cold. If she had to stay outside all winter, she would want a thick coat to keep warm, and would not take it off.
“What’s that?” Kate wondered.
Rats? Sometimes they got under the home and into the crawlspace.
Two round shapes the size of her father’s snow tires burst up through the floor. Through Kate’s window, pale moonlight revealed little, only their rotund bodies and shining green eyes. Their hind claws grated on the maple floor. Kate’s eyes widened and cold sweat popped out on her forehead. She trembled under the blanket and sheet, her arms stiffly clutching them to her chin. The creatures’ shining green eyes scanned the room, casting emerald sabers like flashlights, then fixed on her quivering lump on the bed. Before she could scream, one invader rolled to her bedside, bumped into it and lifted a stuffy arm. From its armpit sprayed a purple fog that made Kate groggy. The gas smelled like sweaty cinnamon toast. The…
For a half hour Kate saw nothing. Black on black. Smells of earth. Clawed hands pawing at her, dragging her relentlessly down, down. Green eyes suspended in darkness. Her thin cotton nightie scraping against dirt walls.
