OCR Text |
Show Motherlunge a novel 190 Six days passed, twenty-four units. We were doing well. Pavia was coming back. Maybe the next day. Over the years, whenever anyone would ask me or Pavia if we had gotten along as children, we would either say yes or tell this story. We were at home and Dorothy was in the back bedroom and Pavia and I were arguing in the living room. We were shouting at each other, and then somehow we were wrestling. Pavia always says that we were fighting for possession of something-the TV Guide?-but I can't remember what I wanted. Everything? I only remember that I hated her. So we were on the carpet, gripped in each others' arms as in an allegory. We scraped and clawed; we rolled into a lamp, the couch. She was hurting me. And then with a shove she broke free of me. And she looked plainly at me. And she lay back down. I quickly scrambled on top of her and grabbed a handful of her hair and clenched my jaw and pulled. Her hair came away in my fist, the strands waving with the slight weight of the blood at the root. Pavia lay there with her eyes squeezed shut. My knees were on either side of her ribs, and together our breathing pushed out and in like two things trapped in a small cage, and I had her hair in my hand. Pavia tells it, "She ripped my hair out and I gave up!" Similarly I say, "I made her give!" But I know that's not the truth. I didn't force her; she chose. I scared her, and she wanted to know if I would stop. |