Her

This creative exploration is a study of how a girl comes to identify herself in an increasingly judgmental and harsh world. Her is a collection of short stories that are linked together through one character. The stories are intentionally fragmented to display the fragmentary nature of identity. Each story searches to find the main character through new experiences and constantly changing perspectives. Through these stories, and through this creative exploration, I have discovered that discovering who you are as a person is shaped by our reactions to the outside world. This character, her, she becomes a person who gives up on fighting the world around her. She gives into the perceptions that others make about her and becomes a fragment. She becomes the pieces that make up these stories. The intention of these stories is not to define this character. The intention is to show that definition of identity is constantly in flux. The nameless girl in these stories never discovers her identity because that identity is hidden between the lines.

HER by Morgan Gallegos A Senior Honors Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The University of Utah In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Honors Degree in Bachelor of Arts In The Department of English College of Humanities Approved: ____________________ Professor Michael Mejia Faculty Supervisor ____________________ Professor Barry Weller Chair, Department of English ____________________ Professor Disa Gambera Department Honors Advisor ____________________ Dr. Sylvia D. Torti Dean, Honors College May 2012     ABSTRACT This creative exploration is a study of how a girl comes to identify herself in an increasingly judgmental and harsh world. Her is a collection of short stories that are linked together through one character. The stories are intentionally fragmented to display the fragmentary nature of identity. Each story searches to find the main character through new experiences and constantly changing perspectives. Through these stories, and through this creative exploration, I have discovered that discovering who you are as a person is shaped by our reactions to the outside world. This character, her, she becomes a person who gives up on fighting the world around her. She gives into the perceptions that others make about her and becomes a fragment. She becomes the pieces that make up these stories. The intention of these stories is not to define this character. The intention is to show that definition of identity is constantly in flux. The nameless girl in these stories never discovers her identity because that identity is hidden between the lines.       ii   TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ii INTRODUCTION 1 TOUCH ME 6 IN PEACE 14 LEOPARD SPOTS 23 CONFESSIONS 32 ROAD KILL 39       iii   INTRODUCTION You have been labeled a slut during the critical time period when you are attempting to identify yourself as a human being. This label defines you in classrooms and hallways. You begin to wonder if the label is more than just a rumor. You wonder if the label is truly what defines you. This is what is occurring in the compilation of short stories I have written in Her. The main character is a nameless girl who is constantly searching for herself in others. During her search she becomes fractured by multiple emotional abuses from the death of her brother to rape. These events break the pieces of her she is attempting to place together until she is unable find which pieces went where. We enter her world through the initial piece titled “Like a Virgin.” In this piece she is being introduced as a sexual being. She is not promiscuous, but she is naïve. She uses sex in this piece as a means to establish a place. She is a character who is overly influenced by her environment. At home she is trapped between the neurosis of her mother and the abandonment of her father. Ty, her brother, is the one person who makes her feel like she belongs somewhere. She clings to his group of friends because they anchor her to a specific scene. They give her status. Unfortunately, her status in that group begins to slip away when she allows her home environment to pollute her emotions. Her dad leaves and she can no longer sustain the rejection. She returns to her former lover, Jeremy, and seeks to be the one in control. Ultimately, her attempts to gain that power are what lead to her failure. The next piece in the series is titled “In Peace.” In this piece, Ty, the main character’s brother, dies from an accidental drug overdose. The death of Ty is the death of a part of her identity. He was her connection to everything that made her feel like she     had a firm place in the world. He was her one link to any sort of home. At this point in the series the reader has already realized the main character’s drug use. Her usage increases after Ty’s death. She cannot replace the part of herself that Ty filled so she becomes more lost than she already had been. Jeremy’s label of her becomes more damaging because it begins to creep into the space that Ty left behind. She tries to embody aspects of Ty into herself, but she ends up as nothing more than a replica of his pain. She repeats his mistakes because she does not know what else to do. Her father has left and begun a new family and her mother is far from nurturing. The relationship she shares with her mother is illuminating because it mocks the idea of polluted environments. Her mother is obsessed with environmental activism and allows that to become more important than maintaining her family. She creates a family environment that is toxic. The irony of her mother’s activism highlights the main character’s desire to find an alternate place for herself. She wants to be defined for anything except for what defines her at home. We learn more about the main character’s other home in “Leopard Spots.” This piece takes place at her private Catholic school. This piece is purposefully more abstract than the initial two pieces in the series to reflect the main character’s slow disembodiment. She floats through hallways where she is nothing more than a slut. Her only escape is through the college courses she is taking at the local university where her mother used to work. She eagerly steps into college as an escape from the high school drama Jeremy has caused for her. Unfortunately, she cannot seem to completely escape the identity that has been shaped for her through the words of others. She attempts full escape by creating an alternate identity for herself in the form of Maria whose creation       2   we fully see in the final piece “Road Kill.” Maria is a persona that is ready to take on a future that the main character is still searching to realize. Maria seems older, more experienced, and mentally stronger. She helps the main character deal with the blows of high school and look forward to a future that is represented in her college courses. Unfortunately, Maria is created in a drugged haze. She is conceptualized through the main character’s drug use that is well known to the others who are judging her. In “Leopard Spots” the labels of “slut” and “druggie” are the aspects of the main character that take over. She is raped because she is perceived as being an easy target. I will reveal more about her rapist further along when I discuss “Road Kill” more thoroughly. The next piece in the series is titled “Confessions.” This piece, much like “Leopard Spots” is highly abstract to reflect the feeling of disembodiment in the main character. This piece takes place at her high school. The main character is feeling weighted down and angered by the perceptions of others. She decides to embody their ideas of her after she witnesses her rapist confessing to one of the priests that visit her school. She participates in a Catholic Mass. As she is walking toward the priest prepared to not receive the Eucharist, she reflects on this persona of herself created by others. She reflects upon false confessions she has made to the priest as she walks forward to participate in Communion. She repetitively says her last confession was three days ago because her initial false confession was three days after her rape. She lies to the priest to make herself sound like a promiscuous young girl with a large sexual appetite because she believes the priest has absolved the sins of her rapist because of the rumors of her promiscuity. Each false confession becomes more elaborate as she seeks to show the priest that she is judging him for judging her.       3   The final piece in the story, “Road Kill,” seeks to illuminate the other four pieces in the series by weaving together all of the fractured pieces that make up the main character. The piece begins by revealing more about Maria. This persona has been created as an alter ego to the main character because the main character is too weak to sustain the blows of her tarnished reputation and the loss of her brother. Unfortunately, the main character cannot keep up the strength Maria embodies and Maria leaves her while the main character is raped. Maria’s departure is the catalyst for the main character’s destruction of herself. We learn that the main character is undergoing counseling sessions at school after her brother’s death. The main character spends a lot of time reflecting on her counselor’s ideas of how to heal from loss. She begins to mold the loss of her brother with the theories of Freud she has been learning about from one of her professors. This particular professor also happens to be her counselor’s husband. The counselor’s husband is also the main character’s rapist. The professor is obsessed with the theories of Freud to the point where he believes women need to be filled because they have been castrated. He rapes the main character because she is an easy victim. He knows of her reputation through his wife, he knows of her drug use because it is written on her skin (track marks), and he knows where he can find her alone because he follows her. She is raped on the stage of the theater department at her high school. Her rape becomes a performance just as the different personas she embodies are performances. Her rape leaves her feeling completely unreal. She tries to separate herself from her physical body because her identity has led her body to be completely abused. She kills herself to achieve the ultimate disembodiment. She kills all identities that have been made for her.       4   She becomes nothing except for flesh on the side of the road. To her, this feels like freedom. I began writing Her long before I knew who she would be. I decided never to name her because I wanted to show that she could truly be anyone. She became a creative exploration into the fight for identity. I explored the long debated topic of nature vs. nurture to study the idea of our environments defining who we are as people. My main character fought to define herself but was met with the identifications others made for her. The identities others shaped for her proved to be stronger than the ones she was able to make for herself. She was nurtured into a state of disembodiment that led her to kill herself.       5   LIKE A VIRGIN Woe to you, my Princess, when I come ... you shall see who is the stronger, a gentle little girl who doesn't eat enough or a big wild man who has cocaine in his body. – Sigmund Freud You ask me if I’m sure. I say, “Yea, I am sure.” You undress me from the waist down. Next time, you tell me to take off my shirt. I tell you no. You don’t understand. I can’t explain how naked I feel. I can’t be completely unclothed by you. Not yet. I have been naked before, shirt and all. My skin aligned completely with another’s. It felt so cold. So distant. So I let my shirt linger. You told me I was different. It was the most ironic of clichés. You told me you wanted to kiss every inch. You were only my second, and I believed every word. Sure, I wasn’t a virgin, but I felt like one with you. Maybe I had been listening to too much Madonna or maybe my number just didn’t weigh as much as yours. No one knew about you, but everyone knew about me. Everyone knew I had been fucked. Even when I still thought I was making love. “Slut.” You told me you had never touched a girl the way you touched me. I loved the way your lips made my skin feel like ice. You used to tease me about my sensitivity. You continued to tease when you saw the tears caught in my eyelashes. “Oh come on babe, you didn’t think this was exclusive did ya?” The answer was no.       6   My brother laughed at me when word got around about my second stint in the sack with another one of the guys from our incestuous little group. He didn’t appreciate my girlish banter about Jeremy telling me what we had was “real.” I should have known. Reality is relative. My brother was also not really the type to sympathize. He was caught up in the “living in the moment” phase that everyone seems to feel the need to experience during his or her youth. He also wasn’t exactly the traditional, protective older brother. He was constantly thrusting me out of my comfort zone. He would pick me up from school and we would smoke outside a dingy bar that granted us entrance as long as I hiked up my skirt a little more. In between puffs he would tell me that he thought I was being too sensitive too. “Stop with all that romantic bullshit; you guys fucked. Not everything can be like the pretty little words you read in those books.” Dad was protective. At least before he became an intermittent father. He was protective over his kids in the way my mother was protective of our ozone. He indulged my mother’s eccentricities and even encouraged her lecturing us on the importance of Mother Nature. Then mom went from being on track for tenure to unemployed and my dad went from doting dad to absent father. I understand why he decided not to stick around, and I even understand why he didn’t bring us along. Mom had a way of making you want to scrape your way out of your own skin. She made you feel dirty because the world was dirty. Dad used to get a break from her when she was lecturing other people’s children but then she got fired, and we were the ones who suffered the consequences. He moved to Michigan.       7   He had plans to save the automobile industry out there. That was what dad did, cars. I don’t know how he ended up with mom considering mom only rode a bike in order to save our world from just a little bit more pollution. She didn’t use to be so neurotic about her beliefs. I can’t really pinpoint the place where she became obsessed since it started when I was too young to remember anything different. Dad stayed for a really long time. He sold his projects: his mustang, his VW bus, and his truck. He used the money to put my brother through his one and only stint in rehab and then he left. I think he was sick of working on projects that he couldn’t fix. Ty, my brother, was so far gone that his sobriety lasted three days after his return from rehab. He told me he wasn’t doing anything wrong. He said sobriety made him feel, and being in a family like ours made feeling toxic. He fought with dad for two weeks straight before dad finally packed a backpack and bought a plane ticket to Michigan. He talked about that state like he was a kid dreaming of space. He made one last attempt to be my protective dad: “You can’t hide behind Ty forever.” “At least I’m not running away from him.” “He’s going to run himself into the ground, and he’ll take you with him.” My green eyes met his. I walked right past him. I would ignore his phone calls. This would be our last conversation before he got a woman named Betty pregnant. Michigan was just like space: space from me, space from Ty, space for a new family. The night he left, I fucked Jeremy again. He liked seeing me in my uniform so I wore a purple dress instead. He told me I looked like Barney as my hands fumbled around his belt. Zipper went down. Pants fell to       8   the ground. Panties were released from hips. Pants lingered around his ankles. He tripped into bed. Hands pinned above his head, shirt groped against his skin. Dress floundering around my body. I swirled around him until I melted a part of me that I didn’t know was heated. He was still alert as I slipped my panties back up my thighs. “Babe, you forgettin’ something?” Again, the answer was no. “Bitch, I’m gonna get blue balls. It’s my turn.” I got down on my hands and knees and unlaced the pants from his ankles. I sneaked the shirt covering his scraggy limbs. I walked out the door. I left him there, naked. Ty thought it was a riot, but Jeremy decided it was grounds for ruination. He created a persona for me that was more durable than the one I had created for myself. I didn’t tell Ty that his “lil’ sis” had become as damaged as one of the characters from a Hawthorne novel. I found myself a part-time job working fast food at the mall food court where I met a dealer so I didn’t have to rely on Ty for my balloon supply. Ty gave me the taste, but Jeremy gave me the appetite. I found myself happy to obey the orders of my mother when she requested that I start taking more classes from her former place of employment. I think she wanted to use me as her way back in because she exploded when I told her I was going to take some English classes. She told me that was all just bullshit, and I should be more concerned about the shit spewing out into our air. I placed myself on a track where I would have my associate’s degree by the time I graduated high school. By my senior year I was mostly free from the hallways of my pious private school. Jeremy had marked me and I kept       9   drawing his words up and down my veins and ignored the comments about everyone who had explored between my thighs. The school counselor was ecstatic about my academic progress. Most at my high school probably didn’t know that I was speeding through life at a much quicker rate. The counselor recommended classes for me and probably spent more time mulling over class descriptions than I did. With a blush, she recommended her husband. He was a professor at the university, and he also pretended to be blissfully unaware of my mother. “What do women want?” he asked (He looked vaguely similar to Mel Gibson, which may have explained the disproportionate female to male ratio in the classroom). He had me hooked from the first word. College gave me the chance to pretend I was moving toward something. I didn’t really care what I was moving toward as long as it was away from Jeremy and the scarlet letters he had emblazoned on my forearms. The professor made me contemplate what I wanted for me. Most of the time I sought to fulfill the immediate desires. Usually that entailed sneaking into a bathroom stall or creeping into my high school’s drama room to get high on the unlit stage. In class I fought passionately for the activity of women, for our ability to be able, for having a hole that didn’t need to be filled. Outside I passively ignored the chatter, I fed my bloodstream with enough heroin to make me as able as a wingless pigeon, and I created more holes than could never be filled with liquid happiness. Sometimes I saw that professor at my high school. It was like both of my worlds were meeting and I hoped they wouldn’t collide. I was in the process of becoming two. Both versions were personas created on the stage of my favorite fill-up station in the drama room. One was Jeremy’s me and the other was Maria. I discovered her in between       10   the lines of my favorite pieces of literature. She wore stilettos, makeup, and perfume. She looked 23 instead of 17 and she didn’t have to show extra skin just to get into some dive bar. Ty hated her. He was fighting against himself just as I was fighting against myself. I needed more me’s to fulfill everyone’s ideas of me. Ty accused me of everything from being a poser to suffering from dissociative identity disorder. I knew I wasn’t crazy. I was just fractured. “This is me Ty, pieces. I am nothing but a fracture that can’t be mended. I stand up, I fall, and I break. That is my pattern. I’m repetitive destruction.” I was busy making metaphors to define myself. I was searching for meaning in the words of others. Maria helped me find a character that I could define myself. She was spawned on a soggy summer night in between the pages of one of my dad’s left-behind books. Words rubbed beside one another like bodies in need. Unexplored areas fondled, converged, and caressed. Maria, produced from pages. She stepped forward as if straight from a Polaroid picture hung on a clothesline on a sultry Sunday in June. By Fall, I was Maria. It was my last year in high school and all but one of my classes were at the university. I signed up for two more classes with my counselor’s husband. Jeremy had somehow managed to graduate so everything looked good for me. Unfortunately, Jeremy’s version of me outlasted his departure. I was still a slut. I accepted my duality. I started acting. I already loved the stage in the drama room for its dark privacy so I chose to act on it as an actress for the drama department at school. It gave me an excuse to linger after hours poking needles into my skin.       11   I think my school counselor talked about me at the dinner table with her husband. Maybe she felt like their mutual knowledge of a version of me granted reason for discussion. I knew she heard about me in the hallways. I’m sure she was curious about what haunted the hallways in my other world. Her husband, my professor, I’m sure claimed he was immune to my whore-ish diagnosis. “The discovery that she is castrated is a turning-point in a girl’s growth” (From Freud’s Femininity). Oh, Freud. When I first started reading his work, I laughed, laughed until I snorted. My professor took him very seriously, but not seriously enough to make every woman in his classes turn against him. He rocked us into Freud like babies on the edge of a tantrum. We felt safe, cradled in his arms. We tottered through theorists with lingering moments of Freud until I found myself in winter preparing for performances and finals. For drama, we were performing Othello. I was Desdemona. From her moans and from her cries I garnered a standing ovation. My counselor and her husband, my professor, were in the front row. Dad decided to make an appearance. He brought me flowers: daisies, the happy flower. We awkwardly hugged, he showed me pictures of my not-so siblings, and he left again. I added another circle to my ever-growing collection of track marks. Ty found me passed out on the linoleum of the stage. I don’t know when I fell asleep. I promised him I hadn’t taken more than a needle-full. He looked at the fresh wounds staining my flesh. He didn’t approve. I don’t know how a drug addict can judge another drug users drug use, but he did. He screeched, screeched like a fucking rat. He slammed his way through our condo’s doorway still screeching. Yelling to mom about how I was poisoning myself. She said we all are poisoning ourselves. Her voice was an       12   ethereal whisper. I couldn’t pinpoint her location, but I could hear the scrubbing, scrubbing away at another feigned contamination creeping in the walls. “Don’t be so fucking stupid.” “You’re this fucking stupid.” “And you think you want to be just like me?” I did want to be just like Ty. I had tried. He just seemed to be so heavy-duty. I liked the idea of being the opposite of whatever-myself I was embodying. I just kept interfering with my embodiment of him. Somehow other personas always seemed to interfere with a full conception. I was always getting in the way of me.       13   IN PEACE The deep–throated screams reverberated off his vocal chords. Soon, my screams would rumble off the lonely walls of a cold bathroom stall just like an echo. My flesh would freeze into the marble similarly to how the couch melted into his flesh as he sweat out the alcohol and pain. That night I was forced to hear the stories that had been left unsaid for so many years. I tried to smother the sounds. I tried to unhear those shouted secrets. In rare unity, my mother and me, were headed to a film that night. I was enabling her obsession with environmental pollution because I loved the irony of her ignorance to her own polluted nature. The screen was still dark when we left the theater. I told my mom that “bad vibes” were “entering” me. Using the right words was essential when speaking with my mom. She wouldn’t do anything if it didn’t “feel” right. Bad vibes meant it was time to go home. Apparently, bad vibes also meant that my brother would be passed out with a needle puncturing his arm. One brave druggie was left standing next to him. Another had punched my brother in the face and left him there to drown in a puddle of his own puke. The girl who stayed told us that he had consumed copious amounts of alcohol in addition to sizable amounts of heroin. We loaded him onto a couch and propped him on his side. We hoped this would prevent him from sinking.       14   He woke up screaming. I told my mom he needed a doctor. She spouted off some conspiracy theories. She continued to spew idiocy as we drove away in a red ambulance. I walked home from the hospital. It was only a mile away and I couldn’t handle being confined within another vehicle. I found myself at the park behind our condo. I didn’t bother reporting to my mom. I didn’t need another lesson. I needed her to be my mom, but she was too busy reveling in her unemployment. She lost her job as a professor three years ago and lost her job as mother before I was ever born. At the park, I stripped and sat my bare ass on the black plastic seat of the swing. I sat until my ass went numb. I started pumping just to remember the determination I’d felt when I was younger. My legs moved in and out: faster, faster, and faster. I wanted to go higher, to fly, to chase after innocence. I fled in the form of retraced childhood footsteps. I had never thought I would want to cower back into those small shoes. I forced the swing set to tremble like it did back when I was young. I never knew that the shudder was just a hint of what was to come. Metal pounded into metal. A clang, a bang, and a crash threw me back until I realize that I have swung high enough. Sand invades the air as he approaches, and I know I have been waiting, waiting for him. I stop the now habitual movement of my legs and release the cold metal entangled around my hands. Flying, and I know he’ll catch me.       15   His arms embrace me, embrace me like it’s not goodbye. The swing set looms before us, but he leads me away from the sand toward our condo where we can safely hide away and set one of our famous traps; I build the slides that will house the marbles that will sound if any intruders approach while he flips a chair mat upside down to fight against the feet of any who enter our world, “We are masterminds,” he says. It’s just the two of us. I dash upstairs to find something that will make him smile. I find it stashed in the darkness that is the room of our mother. Clue, it’s our favorite game. I spy a red dress hanging in the back of my mom’s closet. I slather myself in its folds. I become my character and dig a little further to the part of the closet where pieces of my dad remain. Gifts in hand, I close the door of her room. One step. My eyes dart down. I howl in accordance to memory. I hardly feel the stairs as they slam against my little body. I reach the bottom with a high that cannot be simulated with certain illegal liquids. He rushes to my side with a smile and a wink. I manage to retrieve the souvenir left on the stairs just for me by him: a little rubber snake. “Keep it,” he says, “In defiance of the end.” With a twirl I say, “What do you think of my dress?” He tells me that I don’t need to pretend. He tells me that dressing up as Scarlet won’t change the crimes he has committed. He makes me feel so small. I skip across the living room and begin to lie out the board. He obliges my fantasies and dresses as the Colonel. He walks toward me looking like he just returned from a safari. Behind his back something glimmers, and I giggle as he unveils a pair of red scissors. I continue giggling       16   as I watch each piece of brown hair tumble to the ground. He looks at me with his signature smirk creeping across his face, “I just wanted her to be a boy.” I would be anything for him. He hands me one of my Barbie’s, the Barbie’s with the headless bodies, as a peace offering. Now we are ready for play, just like before. Was it Col. Mustard in the library with a knife? Or was it him in the living room with a bottle of whiskey? The crime will be solved. I won’t swing back into a world without him. We just have to play the game. “Look for a candlestick in the study!” “Check the cellar for a revolver!” “Mrs. Peacock was in the kitchen!” I screamed the board obscenities to the wind as my legs slowly unwound from the momentum of my flight. My ass began to feel like my ass again, but I kept my eyes closed until my eyelashes dammed the tears. White. White was all that was left. I walked through the door of my condo. Mom was busy scrubbing away at some stomach spew left over from the events of the evening. She smelled like bleach when she hugged me. Not one drop of liquid tumbled from the ocean of her eyes. She was just as dried up as the vomit she was attempting to clean. “He left us quite the mess.” “He left me with you.” “Yes, it’s just the two of us.” Mom never knew when I was insulting her. She was an expert in toxic environments with a PhD in environmental studies. She was really upset we didn’t get to       17   see that movie. It amazed me that druggie-girl was more helpful in caring for someone else’s child than my mother was at caring for her own. She came home, she saw the upheaved bodily fluids, and she got out the bleach. She donned a mask, rubber gloves, and scrubs to attend to her son’s excess while I raced to the hospital in a car full of strangers. Mom had forced me to start taking college classes at the university where she worked. She disagreed with my fascination for English literature, but I insisted on reading my way into obscurity. I romanticized about Poe and daydreamed about being the next Virginia Woolf. I tried to wrap my head around Freud and found myself wondering if I was entering the stage where I hated my mother for representing my castration. My brother made me realize that I just hated her for being herself. Now my heart felt like it was enlarging inside of my chest to the point that it no longer seemed to fit within the confines of my caging ribs. Dripping blood seemed to be seeping, creeping into my stomach like a rainstorm of crimson flooding my interior. I bite down still hoping to feel his arms embracing me. I’m shivering from the chill of the marbled floor of this bathroom. Each shiver like a reflection of his. My screams ricochet until it meets the ears of partying strangers. My shrieks are attempts to forget, to repress memories that flush my insides. “Where the fuck are you? Why did you fucking leave me? Why can’t I fucking find you?” The barely-men that fucked me pretend that I hadn’t once come to these parties entangled in their freshly grown bodies. The girls that knew what it was like to be laying       18   on a random person’s bathroom floor looked at me like I was the freak. I screamed, screamed to bring him back. They all knew me as his “lil’-sis.” They even called me “lil’Ty.” As I started growing into my body and stopped being little in all of the important places, they wanted a piece. I would say they wanted a piece of me, but whatever me they thought I was didn’t exist. I was just “lil’-Ty.” I only met them because I had no one else but my brother. I was so shut up in myself that I couldn’t release enough sound to tell them my name. I think they started liking the idea of making all the noise for me. Now too much sound was leaking from my lips. Most of the commotion came in the form of “blahs” and “blehs”, but even that was too much. Without Ty, I had be reduced to “lil’.” Too small to make an impact. Too small to mean something. Too small to cause an uproar. I heard a few people trying to get me hustled out so I would stop bringing down their buzz. “Girl can’t hang.” “Someone get her home.” “Ty used to be the life of the party.” I wonder what they would think of Ty if they saw him as I did that night: curled up like a baby who couldn’t reach its mother’s tit. Pathetic. He had shown me a world of artifice that could be manipulated with tools like pipes and needles. Together we marked ourselves with our version of stigmata. He had more wounds than me and I was trying so hard to keep up with his pain. My brother grew up at a time when my mother still tried to be a mother. She was still married to my dad, and pictures seemed to suggest that she was happy. At least on the surface. To me that was all that mattered. Don’t they say, “Fake it ‘til you make it?”       19   He told me that striving for tenure made her “lose her shit.” She became obsessed with embodying the ultimate activist for Mother Nature. She became the woman who bitched you out for a little piece of paper tumbling out of your pocket and into the grass. “You should be more attentive. Mother nature deserves better.” Most of the time people responded with raised eyebrows and a refusal to properly dispose of anything that fell from their pockets, backpacks, or purses. She would huff, and she would puff, and she would blow us all down. I came to know her as the woman who spouted off conspiracy theories about how the government was controlling us by releasing pollutants into the air. Supposedly these pollutants “entered” you and controlled you. Basically, we were getting mind-fucked via smog. Instead of establishing a sibling rivalry, Ty and me established an adherence. Outside of our condo, we loved to fuck with Mother Nature. We couldn’t fuck with mom, so we trashed all that she represented. Got plastic? Good, burn it. Got recyclables? Throw it anywhere and everywhere except for a recycling bin. It was innocent rebellion. Mom found out about it and didn’t find it to be so harmless. She fed us nothing except brussel sprouts for three days. Luckily, we loved brussel sprouts. Luckier, mom didn’t know it. Mom was fired after a heated yelling match between her and a student from a prominent local family. I’m sure mom was going off on one of her crazed “Vaccinate Our Children” speeches, and I am sure the student made a comment about how helpful vaccinations were for our community. Mom probably got a little hulk-ish when she realized they weren’t referring to the same vaccinations. Mom agrees that vaccinations approved by the FDA cause autism and a variety of other health issues. Mom yelled really loud when she got angry. She also threw things. In this particular instance, she       20   started throwing pencils. She didn’t think pens were useful tools because they were too permanent so she always carried around a pack to hand out to ignorant students. She always made sure they were sharpened. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to wonder why the student went home to daddy to complain about the cracked-out professor who nearly gave her led poisoning. Mom didn’t receive tenure. She was home all of the time. We couldn’t escape her because we were the only pupils she had left. She had us tune in for daily lectures that were even more painful than the ones she had continually given us when I was younger. These lectures were more intense. Ty would squirm through the lectures with me and together we would escape to the park behind our condo. We would take turns flying through the air like clumsy little birds. By this time, I had grown out of the size that would make me easy to catch, but I always knew he would try. The memories of him serve as unsympathetic flashbacks with my screams as the soundtrack. I’m replaying the good while reliving the pain. He screamed for me not to turn out like him. He screamed to me that he was going to die, screamed all night long. I should have listened. I’m reliving his mistakes because I need to feel him again. I need to remember his words. I need to confront myself: little me and big me. He told me not to be him. He told me he was going to die. “Don’t you ever fucking turn out like me.” “I’m going to fucking die here.” “I don’t ever want you to fucking turn out like me.”       21   His final words were a warning. He was always warning me, warning me to be cautious. Sure, he introduced me into this world. Sure, he handed me the needle. Sure, he was a drug addict, but I was…am too. I hear that the first step to recovery is to admit that you have a problem. I just want to be like him. That’s my problem. I want to be like my brother. And my brother is dead.       22   LEOPARD SPOTS I can feel their chatter moving inside of me as he is pulling out. But, as it turns out, gossip is prophetic. “Slut” has always been just a word whispered through injected lips, but now it’s a substance. It’s threatening to leave the confines of my veins: the needle puncturing my core. But the verdict of plaid-wearing Jesus lovers isn’t worth striking the gavel. Needles and I, we flirt with friendship, but I prefer the low-key romance of “fuck buddies.” I let the needle fuck me up in return for the two minute high. It’s similar to sex minus the vulnerability. Drugs have a healing power that only a true liquid-lover could fathom. Sex is just sex: naked, stripped. Exposure is what sex craves, and I have never been much for fame. But once that healing-liquid hits my bloodstream, my mind is free to roam. And my favorite fantasy is hidden under the white button-up of my uniform: It’ the form of a blemished beast. Track marks aren’t so noticeable under my flecked hide. Hide. I can feel their chatter moving inside of me as he is pulling out.       23   I slink across the stage; my skin sliding across the linoleum. I’m the star of men’s perverted imaginations: a Catholic school girl. But, I never meant for the marks of my drug fetish to take center stage. Private schools prepare predators; it is home to a completely new breed of hunter. Their fur is made of wool. Their claws are manicured. Their muzzles are trained. A true wolf dressed in manufactured sheep’s clothing. “Slut” flicks off their perfectly pointed tongues. The red drool drizzles down my babybottom cheeks. Tides of the savior substance are threatening to exit my system. I cling to the happy ending. Actuality attaches me to the numbed pain of being too long on my back. I crave the gentle spine-crack that brings relief to the anxiety of paralysis from the waist down. Plaid fabric constricts my waist. Breathe in, breathe out. In and out, in and out. I can feel their chatter moving inside of me. I have been searching for that punctum Barthes describes in Camera Lucida. It’s that distraction you cannot escape. I focus on the titillating gold glinting off the neighboring finger of his left pinky. The discharge of leaking words is enough to fill my head with lines more pleasing than the grunts of my current soundtrack. My vocal cords dam up the outflow of commands attempting to rise to the surface. Silence. As he is pulling out. I always say the wrong thing. Quiet.       24   Claws dig into my wrists just above the spots streaking across my veins. The pressure of his weight against my pulse causes my latest injection spot to leak. Blood is officially spilling. His crimson drool still seeps. It’s now bubbling on my chest. Drip, drip, drip. I catch a glimmer of gold as warm fluid slides, with a velvet caress, across my useless limbs. The last of my manufactured delusion flees my body. He pushes himself into me as the final drops of my liquid salvation ooze out my pores. Their chatter moves. Inside of me. Nothing but words travels through the bruised streaks that once circulated blood and puréed painkillers. I should be experiencing the sensual, erotic, and fleshly but I’m just undergoing temporary paralysis. Time. Right now is a moment, nothing more than a moment. Groans force themselves into me. The interference in my thoughts is enough to bring me back to it. Sex. It’s begging for fame. He is pulling out. The treasure clasped to his possessed finger is my remaining chance against despair. I may remain unknown. I feel the bruises intermingling with my druggie holes. I feel the vibration of his footfalls as they saunter in the opposite direction. Shoes meet linoleum.       25   It’s so loud. My paralysis has developed into a scalding blaze of pain. Should I be pleased I can feel again? Their chatter is moving inside of me. Private school halls becoming mocking mirrors. I readjust my ruffled skirt. I tug against the fabric, praying for a release of extra cloth. Gazes prick my pelt. My steps reverberate against this vast linoleum gallery known of the drama club stage. I am making so much noise. I suppose the female lead should be accustomed to the effect of her entrance. I’ve been forced to submit. They know. It was prophesized. Gossip is the highest form of flattery; it’s the greatest way to obtain celebrity status. Chatter. Whispers are just loud enough to detect. “She did…with…Slut…” My hide becomes a sore spot for my own eyes. Once I see myself reflected in the eyes of my audience, I know I never stood a chance. I’m a sell-out. Exposure has always been its goal. Sex craves fame. Being beastly comes with expectations. So today I hid my spots for the first time. Because, unfortunately, no one calls it rape when you’re a leopard. The morning after I again find myself sprawled across the linoleum stage of the theatre department. My thighs burn with the memory of one of my final high school experiences.       26   I make a pit stop at the little girls’ room. I claw at my bag searching for my cover-up. Bruises and holes streak my arms and thighs. I pull at the ends of my sweater, begging for some cloaking cloth. I splash water between my legs before pulling my P.E. sweats over my plaid skirt. My steps echo against aluminum lockers and closed doors. I’m released into the dreary dawn by a surprised janitor. The dim lighting outlines the buildings surrounding me. Other than these lights, I’m surrounded by shadow; smog can even turn light into dark. Cars speed past on a nearby road, racing to the comfort of home. I imagine the occupants of these cars arriving home to the sweet smell of gingerbread. Their houses are decorated with red and green. The man of the season, Mr. Claus, stands revered on their front lawn; his red-nosed sidekick frolics nearby. Carolers will ring their doorbells encouraged by the cranberry covered wreathe hanging on the center of the door. Their voices will delight the neighborhood bringing forth the predictable feeling of glee. My daydream is interrupted -- I spy the oncoming train as it slices through shadow and announces its arrival with a loud ring. The doors of the train welcome me inside and soon the wheels beneath me start to whirl. I see the surface: A hipster sits nearby, nodding off as the train continues on. He’s huddled up in his washed out jeans, white T, and pinky ring. He looks my way. What does he see? His icicle blue eyes communicate exhaustion, but still I search. A businessman boards with briefcase in tow. He types frantically on his blackberry, unable to leave the workday behind. Seven days until Christmas and he chooses to work himself       27   into a frenzy instead of getting caught up in the frenzy of the season. His Rolex tells me it’s 11:00 a.m. I still have an hour and a half left to go. I arrive at my first stop and I prepare to switch traveling companions. My transition is complete, and before me I spy a college student unprepared for the harsh, bitter snow of winter. Inside the college student sits in a short-sleeved shirt and gym shorts while outside the storm establishes its presence with piercing hail and spluttering snow. I hear music connoisseurs listening to a repetitive tune, “I can be what I wanna be… I know I can…” It’s the first sound of hope. Do they know? The tune fades away as the connoisseurs and college student exit the train. The train is empty. I am alone. Now all I hear is the robotic voice of the train speaker narrating my travels. A workingman soon accompanies me; he’s dressed in boots, jeans, a baseball cap, and sweater. The only wear you can see is on his jeans. He is smiling, happy and greets a new passenger with joy. His new friend is a unique character, adorned in pink with a fishing cap to top it all off. She is friendly, eager to talk, and pleased to be so easily accepted by this random stranger. Their light chatter rings like a jingle. I can almost hear the bells of the season, but my ears hesitate. Chatter. Everything is silent. I have been sitting and watching each new passenger come and go, passing judgment on those I do not know; becoming a gossip. I am finally caught in action by the man himself in his intimidating and fierce, red wheel chair. His Santa beard is not joined with a jolly grin, and his hands are folded around his chest when his eyes meet mine. Did he hear? My game of “I Spy” ends as I come to the realization that I have been judging the unknown.       28   I embark on the walk of shame to my next train. I had hoped that my little game would prove to me that the season of cheer was not simply a façade. I have wandered from train to train in search of a face, a sound that would show there is hope. Instead I saw a reflection of him in every person I have encountered. I step into the fluorescent lighting of yet another train and am welcomed by the Host. The Host is draped in tinsel but his greeting lacks conviction, “Happy Holidays,” he says. I head up the stairs to the top level of the train. I find a reclusive corner seat and look down at myself. I’m hidden in a shroud of clothing: my red and green nail polish has been chipped away, and my half-hearted attempt at applying makeup this morning did nothing to disguise my bruises. This time of year is supposed to bring about joy, but all I feel is emptiness. Today the only light surrounding me has been of a fluorescent variety, the only sound I heard was chatter, and the only touch was a nightmare relived. I have tasted nothing but the bitter snow, and the sweet scent of gingerbread was only a fantasy. I need to experience the feeling of hope promised to me in the carols I have sung since I was a child. I have searched for this hope in every person I have encountered, and yet I am unfulfilled. The jolt of the train brings me back. The conductor announces my arrival; it’s only a short fifteen-minute drive until I am finally home. I say my farewells to the Host and step into the chill. The hail threatens to pound me into the ground, and I am tempted to give in and allow the weather to abuse me further. The walk to my car is longer than his quick stroll across the linoleum. The weight of the hail and snow continue to pour onto me. Words jingle through my mind and the combination of weather and gossip are too much to handle. I break down. The ground slips underneath me as I tumble further and further. I stumble into my car and clumsily drive. I know what to expect. My condo       29   will not be decorated, I will not be aroused by the scent of gingerbread, and I will not hear the soft voices of the carolers. I Spy nothing. I hunt through the darkness, clawing my way toward some semblance of a reality. But Sanity is a crazy thing. Sometimes I can’t tell if I am sane or absolutely insane. It’s a weird feeling. Almost as if nothing is real. I am surrounded by façade. I’m such a great actor, even I can’t tell I’m putting on a show. What do you do when you feel yourself somersaulting down the slope of a seeming dementia? The first tumble started with a thrust but now the fall is natural. A habit I can’t break. The thing with somersaults is, they’re amusing. They seem to capture a childlike quality even as I am tumbling further and further down. What I am dealing with is something an adult should really handle. But the line between childhood and adulthood is so blurred. Everything is covered in a hazy smog. I feel the moisture creeping into my skin. Where am I? I can’t tell if I am still in motion. I am neither promoting the movement nor deterring it. I graze something? Did I feel it? Did she feel it? Did it feel it? Did anything feel something? Should I be happy nothing can feel? My paralysis has returned. I think I may be dizzy, but who am I to say? I don’t know who I am. I can’t even feel. This all seems so expected, and yet it feels so surreal. I can’t tell if I am living in the present, the past, the future or even living at all. What is living? Is it the simple inhale, exhale monotony? I think I’ve gotten breathing down, but who’s to say I’m breathing at all. Breathing is a façade. We go through the motions without thinking, without realizing, without understanding what we’re doing. Everything just happens. Where are you now God in all your omnipotent glory? Are you here with me? Are you falling with me? Augustine would say you are always present, but your presence is a       30   haze. It’s almost as if you have lost control as I have lost control. Where are we going God? Can you tell me that? You should be able to Mr. Omniscience. Where were you when I needed you most, when all the lines seemed so clear? I’m not moving forward nor am I moving backward. I am just moving. Moving alone is a nice change of pace. I was destined to fall as we all are destined, but some fall further than others. Have I climbed my way back up that ladder Mr. Omnibenevolent? Do you pity me yet? In and out, in and out. Quick breath. Phew. Short breath. Trying to find reality again, but I can’t tell where the real ends and the concealment begins. It’s all smoke; and not the good kind. Reality isn’t real. Nothing is real. His reality is not mine. His wife’s reality is not mine. My reality is not mine. I don’t know what is what. Crazy, crazy, crazy. Maybe if I say it enough, it will stick. Stick to me? Maybe. Or maybe “I am rubber and you’re glue and whatever I say will bounce off of me and stick to you.” See I am a child again, swinging on those monkey bars, somersaulting in the bitter snow. It takes me back. Maybe back to what you claim is reality. Blasphemy! I’ve always loved that word. A sin against god. A sin against man. Think of it like importing and exporting. We’re making a trade. Original sin. Man fell. Fell from where? God. Isn’t him letting us fall a sin in its own way? Oh but that’s right, a sin is defined as being against god and god alone. But sin should be reciprocal. Justice. I think justice is all bullshit. Let’s roll out the red carpet with matadors surrounding the arena. Let’s see how big of a scene we can make. Maybe then God will notice. He sure as hell didn’t notice my recent bout with fame. Omniscient my ass. God fucked us all over, you got fucked, I got fucked. We all like to fuck.       31   CONFESSIONS A full moon of lavender grows on the surface of my skin as my legs rise before quickly sinking again like the waves of brisk night. I’m almost lured to sleep by the gentle lullaby of falling: a swish of decline. I stand quietly and sit back down: one of the many amongst these wooden pews. What remains of my childhood resides in these walls where Jesus drapes across his cross, demonstrating that my wounds could never match his. The guilt of my peers is reflected in the glass they have stained with sins that can never truly be redeemed. The arches of the ceiling are no more reachable than they were to me then. I guess empty optimism left me hoping that I really could reach the sky. If only I could grow. Here I am a child again. I wrap my arms around my chest: X. I am forever marked as a nonbeliever because Jesus is merely a statue and the ceiling will always be too high. “Forgive me father for I have sin.” “Sinned, my child. It is in the past now.” I wonder if he recognizes the outline of my shadow. Instinctively, I reach to pull down my skirt. My lips stumble across words that should be recognizable to his ears. Only repetition will help him understand who is the sinner and who are those sinned against. His face is but a shadow.       32   “It has been 3 days since my last confession: I’ve allowed many to come into me. Welcomed all with open legs.” I pray to a woman who is blessed for her lack of sexuality: “Hail Mary, full of grace.” The only thing she is remembered for is being the vessel through which the ultimate son was born: “The Lord is with thee.” She is known for keeping her legs closed except to deliver the holiest of holies. She prays for us sinners in the present and in the future: “…now and at the hour of our death.” The words of her prayer dismiss the past. “Remember.” “Amen.” My feet twitch forward becoming more lost with each step. Sauntering toward Jesus is like rambling through a half-hearted confession: I wonder how much of Your flesh I must consume before I am worthy of holding You inside of me. I question how much of Your blood I must drink until it alone circulates through my veins. My arms drape clumsily around my ribcage while Yours are forever pinned for the sins of humanity. I couldn’t carry Your weight. Your cross is not mine to bear “Forgive me father, for I have sin.” “My child, tell me your secrets.” His voice is but a whisper.       33   More than the sins of Catholic school children blemish these walls. Perceptions linger in the hearts of men that hold secrets untold and transgressions taint the bodies of young girls. I trade black ballet flats for stilettos and slip myself out of my plaid and pleated skirt. A cardigan is essential for covering the painful inscriptions that disgrace my porcelain skin. But now is time to let it all hang out. Water should have drowned the remnants of my humanity. Instead I have been drowned by divinity, denied entrance. “It has been 3 days since my last confession. I was never baptized.” Isn’t it beautiful how we fill silence? It’s deafening. It’s the sound of a bell that has been struck once, but that one strike echoes. It ricochets off my eardrum and tickles the delicate hairs. It’s sound in its purest form. It’s so fundamental that it cannot be described without our superficial notions of noise. I listen as their feet touch the linoleum. I hear the sounds as they recoil off of each idol. I close my eyes as I prepare to follow the sounds. Sound, not faith moves me forward. Our Father, I have spoken to you before. Can you recall the sound of my voice? Have you already granted yourself forgiveness for forgiving the unforgivable? “Thy will be done.” He has finished. Lying on that cold linoleum floor, I performed a role that was       34   scripted for me through the words of others. “Forgive us our trespasses.” Everyone believed that I had given in to every desire. “Lead us not into temptation.” They had faith in words untrue. Father, honesty was given to you. However, you turned the other cheek. “But deliver us from evil.” How many prayers of penance did he kneel down to God for? “Amen.” “Forgive me father for I have sin.” “My child, reveal your soul to me.” His scent is that of fresh death. “It has been 3 days since my last confession. I worship another God. I worship myself as an image of him. I kneel down to myself and to every man. After all, we are made in His image. A part of Him is within me. His representatives deny me so I worship the only God I know. I kneel down before my reflection, I submit myself to modern day Adams. I slither into their skin and slide into every created crevice. Our bodies meet with a collision of flesh, evidence that there is still an Eden on Earth.” We fell, only to rise again. “World without end:” Three days ago, as I peeled my skin off of the drama club’s stage, he was shedding his soul unto you. The footsteps ringing across the floor reeled me       35   in from that platformed prison. I peered through the church doors and watched as you anointed him with holy water. You granted him a baptism that I had always been denied. “As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.” I concealed myself in the restroom, splashing water between my legs. “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.” “Amen.” I carry it with me, to the top of the hill. I am stripped of all. Blood drips into my eyes as I tumble forward. All is present. The past is never history. I feel the eyes on me as I make my way toward the man in black. I worship the eyes more than I worship the man on the cross. I pray only to his image. X: I am still marked. The man in black beckons me to continue. “Forgive me father, for I have sin.” “My child, bare all unto me.” His taste is unknown by my lips. “It has been 3 days since my last confession. I am not a believer.” I unbutton my white polo: the cleavage standing in contrast to the cross I am forced to wear across my neck. I peel off my white knee-highs and hike up my skirt to       36   show a little thigh. I already have the messy sex-hair look for the performance. I walk up to the confessional and watch as your gaze flickers up and down my body. “I believe in …the resurrection of the body.” I let the final word linger on my pink lips. I remind you that “he shall come to judge the living and the dead.” Then I let the scripted lines fall from my lips. I bite into every word. “He descended into Hell. The third day he rose again.” I want you to feel guilty for wanting me. I want acknowledgment that guilt should be felt. I don’t want forgiveness. I want condemnation. Not for me, but for him. What were you supposed to do when “the life everlasting” seemed like too much to bear? I had been marked from the beginning. I was designed to fall. “Amen.” Red. Drooling across my veins: imitations of Christ, False stigmata. Making my body a replica of his pain. Adorned in white, I succumb to His hand. Following where it is my duty to follow, I arrive at His representative’s feet: black. All is black. “Forgive me father, for I have sin.” “My child, all shall be atoned.” His presence is judgment. A priest once told my mother she was an unfertilized egg. I remember asking God what that meant for me. One word: bastard. I am illegitimate. I bowed at your pedestal. I knelt at your feet. Your destination was my desire. Your heart in your chest, mine on my       37   sleeve. We let go and alone, I fell. Together we were something. Now, temptation is my fuel. Denial only got me so far. “It has been 3 days since my last confession. My mind has made a hell of heaven.” I did and do not have the “Soul of Christ.” He did not “make me holy” by placing my body on exhibit. “Wash me clean Passion of Christ, strengthen me kind Jesus, hear my prayer.” I just want you to perceive the sound of my voice, Father. I want you to hear my false confession one more time. To forgive is to give power. You forgave him for abusing my lack of forgiveness. You allowed false perceptions to become truth. I have lied to you because you have lied to yourself. You judged me and so I judged you. “Hide me within your wounds and keep me close to you. Defend me from my evil enemy.” Your duty can be summed up in the lines of the prayers you forced me to recite for sins I never committed. Still my wounds will never be revealed. Forgiveness is granted to the liar so that “I might sing your praise with them for all of eternity.“ “Amen” I cover up every trace of You. Line my lips in the color of Your blood, powder my cheeks with the blush of fresh sex. I kneel before him prepared to worship him as an image of You. I turn my eyes to the heavens, but I only see the ceiling.       38   ROAD KILL I always wanted to embody someone else. I used to spend hours facing the mirror, not out of vanity, but out of a desire to see something change right before my eyes. I called her Maria, the girl in the mirror. I’m not sure how I arrived at that name, that label, but I watched her faithfully. I doted upon her image as if she was God. I watched her transform by my hand. Her eyes changed from brown to green at my command; her brown hair lightened to a dirty blonde, with assistance from grocery store chemicals. She became anyone I wanted. Maria became a religion for me. I spent hours with her. We powdered our cheeks to give the illusion of a tan, we lined our eyelids with the same shade as my brother’s ashes, and we tinted our lips the color of his blood. We made quite the pair. I worshipped every part of her body. I fed her mind with substances that I was told brought you closer to God. I made her feel as if she was truly divine. Maria left me lying on a cold linoleum floor. He had taught me that women suffered from a great loss that they only realized once faced with opposition. I was not a virgin. I knew what a penis was. I knew what it felt like as it filled me, but I never felt dismembered. He wanted to introduce me to the grief I had been missing. He found Maria and me in an altered state.       39   Afterwards, Maria did not stare back at me. She couldn’t be found in the puddles of melted snow, hanging out in asphalt potholes. She exited me the moment he entered me. I was alone. I remember how spotlights of sunshine would make her face the center of the world. Somehow I felt as if I possessed her. She was only significant because I found her staring at the sun. I used to let her name linger on my lips like a much-desired kiss, “Maria, Maria, Maria.” I dreamed of Maria as if she was still standing in the park behind my condo, staring at the sun. Her gaze never met mine yet I felt as if blue blobs of false light from ogling the sun consumed my vision. Maria was merely a haze. I watched as she walked away. I saw that she was escaping my observation. Maybe, I only need a representation of her. She is my creation therefore her body is insignificant. Her body is a physical presence – something that is untouched and unexplored. I can imagine it as I want. The actuality of it has no meaning. My mind feels her; my mind reveals her, as if she never walked out of the scene. But the sun still faces where she once stood. It still lingers after the lost.       40   The sun has always reflected off of me like a mirror. My skin remains as pale as the snow that covers the ground. From the neck down I remain unblemished by birth except for the freckles tickling my porcelain skin. Each year my spotted face fades a little more. Age erases the features that distinguish me from the crowd while experience scars me with marks unseen. Injecting needles into my body once seemed like a good insurance policy against fading into the background. Surfaces, images – those are the marks we leave behind. My brother alerted me to this reality. He didn’t want to be forgotten either. By embodying his ideals, I memorialize his existence. He once warned me about forcing a connection to reality. Instead of taking his warnings at surface level, I read between the lines. Through streaks of cocaine and needles full of heroin, I discovered his life’s work. I found all that was lost to me in his death. I found connection. I found her. When my brother died, my mother had him cremated. She claimed it was some sort of divine justice that his body literally went up in flames. She said he had been playing with fire for too long. Maybe my death will be her karma. My mother has this monologue: “Children become a part of their environment. Once that environment has been polluted, they are intoxicated. We need to renew our world before the toxic is widespread. A contagion can be released in an invisible veil. We cannot hide from that which we cannot see. Preventative measures can be taken by opening the eyes of the children. Expose them to the disease then vaccinate.” This has been on repeat since I was a child. As soon as the words rambled from her mouth, my       41   father would sit my brother and me down on our pleather couch. He would sit in between us and pinch the backs of our necks for each keyword of her rant. A “polluted” pinch would follow a “toxic” touch. Sometimes I think that the show my parents put on for us contributed to my desire to be disembodied. My mother’s tirades increased after my brother filled his body with too much of his favorite formula. She told me he was an addict. I told her he never grew up. Drugs were his breast milk. The school counselor forced me to read through pamphlets and brochures about the stages of grief. I waited to hear all about my lacking. I listened as she apologized for my loss. Apparently the first stage is denial. My brother is dead. I guess we can move to the next step. The counselor would place her hand on my shoulder. Once, a small diamond ring released one of the threads from my cardigan. She apologized. I told her to get her ring resized. I told her it needed to fit just right. She stuttered before asking me how I was feeling about my loss.       42   She was working on abstraction. She refused to name the person that was my brother. I felt that she was trying to push him out of the frame. She told me I had moved to the second stage of grief: anger. The day before my brother died, he told me that I was “sacrificing existence.” He didn’t seem to realize that I had never really existed at all. I am only a perception that has been lost amongst the various interpretations. I have become so many different versions of myself. In an ideal world these identities would all come together in a wonderful medley that I could claim to be me. Yet I feel as if I only exist in a metaphor. “I am ____.” Filling in the gaps and picking up the pieces are actions that have become too cliché. I do not want to find myself as a member of the-everyone-else. “Maria, Maria, Maria” -- A few consoling words for the lifeless martyr that may or may not be myself. I hated my brother just as I came to hate Maria for leaving me behind. I began to feel false. My skin appeared to be bleached. I realized that my flesh is nothing more than a disguise, an excuse for existence. Lying on that linoleum floor, I hated myself. I had allowed myself to become a victim. I was as passive as my rapist had accused. I tried to console myself by repeating the words, “I knew grief before.” Somehow loss had become my protection. I didn’t think it made sense to be a victim in more ways than one. The visits to the counselor had started to feel eternal. I spent an hour with her five days a week. She told me the school was concerned for me, that they cared for me. At       43   some point she revealed she had heard rumors bouncing around the hallways. I told her I would make her a deal. I had reached the next stage in my grief: bargaining. She was wearing a long navy blue skirt with a white cotton shirt. Her feet were adorned with a pair of elaborate, open-toed, canvas pumps. I looked at her feet for a while longer. She had no idea that I had already made my sacrifice. I told her that if she promised not to refer to me as a slut then I would tell her a secret. She replied that it would not be professional of her to speak to me in such a manner and that she would never think of me in those terms. My eyes were green that day. Hers were blue. I asked her if she had gotten her ring resized. She told me her husband had taken it to the Kay Jewelers in the nearby mall. I told her that her husband had raped me. Maybe at this point of my memoir it seems like I am saved. I had confessed. Unfortunately, confession has never really worked for me. At least this time, I had told the truth.       44   My pamphlet told me that the next stage was depression. I didn’t understand how they had chosen the numerical order of grief. I felt like I had been dealing with depression during stages 1-3. Actually, I had probably been suffering with depression since zero. I had started spending a lot of time roaming the streets in my car. One night I witnessed a moment of pure and unadulterated happiness. A man danced underneath the moon. He became the only moving shadow amidst the stillness of the night. I envied him. Later, I cried so hard that I imagined I created my own rainbow. This served as some sort of fucked up reminder of that false covenant man made with God: an arch as a symbol of a union with the ultimate absent father. The boundaries between the different stages of my grief had become as blurred as the white lines marking the road ahead of me. I was depressed because I was alone. I was angry because God had allowed me to be alone. I felt as if he was mocking me for the creation of Maria. “I have known grief before.” I repeated these lines to my steering wheel as I searched for her in my rearview mirror. She didn’t appear. I had reached the final stage: acceptance.       45   She wasn’t coming back. I already knew my brother was dead. I had reached the final stage of my grief for him long before I had reached the final stage of my grief for Maria. Sitting underneath the fluorescent lighting of Wal-Mart’s advertising, I welcomed another day. The sun warmed my skin and reminded me of her. I crawled back into the front seat of my car and began my descent down the highway. Corpses lined the sides of the road: cats, dogs, foxes, raccoons, and skunks. The fox was torn in two. He was surrounded by clumps of red flesh that I imagined were once his organs and intestines. It almost looked like he was doing the splits. Meanwhile, the skunk seemed to be entirely intact. He lay there, lifeless, but his scent invaded my air vent. The smell penetrated my pores. I felt dirty. I couldn’t bring myself to look too long at the cats and dogs. They were too close to home. I never understood mile markers. It’s probably really simple but I can’t seem to reconcile my ideas with the numbers that cover the signs. If I understood, I would tell you how far I had come. It wasn’t that far. Part of the mountain had been leveled to create a natural setting for three large crosses. I drove past these crosses every day, but I still can’t tell you who they represent. It seems like a divine coincidence that there are three. I suspect they represent the authorities, by which I mean the police. Authorities are always given the most space. They seem to have more effect.       46   Today, I am reflecting on these crosses at approximately 77 mph. At this speed, they blur together in one haze of white. Some say white represents purity. I think it represents nothing. These crosses are empty symbols. We have made death into a spectacle. The men immortalized by these symbols can never rise to Jesus’ fame. A brown body stands before me. My body reacts by pumping my breaks and swerving my car toward the white crosses. The avoidance of death sounds like the screech of tires. Further up the road, a less-lucky body is smeared across the asphalt. It almost looks like art. Is it wrong to display the demise of others? God did it with Jesus. I wonder if road kill tastes like rubber. I let the steering wheel slip from between my fingers. Death lingers in my peripherals Surely, people will be surprised that a car was the vessel of my death. I want my body to lie with the remains of scattered organs and fur. Track marks and freckles will be disguised by road rash. My remaining porcelain skin will reflect me in a new light. “Maria, Maria, Maria.” I could bleed into the earth and allow nature to consume my tainted blood. I want the earth to swallow me whole since society already tried and spit me back out. I’ve been       47   consumed and reproduced as the vomit that society cannot repress. Only nature will have me now. My mother never did get around to vaccinating me or my brother. With every groan, the counselor’s husband told me I didn’t deserve my body. He was attempting to fill a hole while I was creating more with every prick of the needle. I have come to like the idea of finding my body lifeless on the side of the road. The image reminds me that what is there is just flesh. To be separate from it, even for a moment, is orgasmic. It’s the only time I could really envision myself, not the me that was my brother, not the me that was Maria, not the me that became the slut. Just the me that was undefined. Yes, a union with the flesh is the very simplicity that I am craving. To be nothing more than a body is a release from the pain of the soul imprisoned within. My mother was wrong about her notion of poetic justice. Maria was lost to me. I knew how to find her again. All that will be left is a simple note: I am disembodied, and it feels so good         48