Sing Me Your Scars (Apex Voices Book 3) (24 page)

Facing:

He presents the ring one night after love. I hesitate a
moment too long, but I don’t mean to. The word
yes
gets caught in my
throat, all tangled up in the want and the need and the thought of forever.

The storm blows in and out again, leaving behind a neat line of
stitches below my right eye. The first I won’t be able to hide. But it’s okay
because now everyone can see that I belong to him.

§

I sneak out to surprise him with coffee and bagels, and as I
walk in the café, Renee is walking out. She stops. Pulls me aside. Touches my
face.

“It’s nothing,” I say. “I bumped into—”

“Stop this,” she says.

“What are you talking about?”

I step away because I need to get back before he wakes up. I
should’ve left a note.

“What did he do?”

“Nothing, he did nothing. It was an accident.”

She shakes her head. “What is wrong with you?”

“Nothing is wrong.”

I need to hurry. I wish she’d shut up. When I take another step,
she grabs my arm. Sees the ring.

“I don’t know why you stay with him, but this isn’t love. This is
something perverse and broken. You are better than this.”

I wrench my arm from her grasp. She doesn’t know anything. She
doesn’t know the shape his mouth makes when he says my name, the spark in his
eyes, the way I feel his touch on my skin for days, the way his stitches are
making me whole. Of course it’s love. If she were truly my friend, she’d be
happy for me.

And she isn’t right.

(Is she?)

I’m not broken.

Overcast:

“For always?” I ask.

“Of course.”

I touch the ring to my lower lip. Gently, so as not to tug on the
stitches there.

§

When he comes home from work, I see the gathering clouds. I
keep my voice low. Tiptoe through the room. I don’t ask him what’s wrong. He’ll
tell me if he wants to, and if he doesn’t, it isn’t anything I need to know.

After we eat, I put on the beribboned nightgown, tug my hair from
its ponytail, and give him the smile he likes best.

The clouds swirl anew. For
the first time, I scream. He covers my mouth so no one will hear. One, two,
three tears, and I feel the rips deeper and wider than ever before. He plucks
threads from himself with a grimace, slides the needle in. He doesn’t speak.
Doesn’t kiss me when he finishes, just tosses the needle aside and glares at me
with empty eyes. No storm. No sun. Nothing.

The stitches are crooked, and I find a piece of lace on the floor.
I hold it in my hand. This is the first time he’s torn a piece free. I replay
the night, trying to figure out what I did wrong.

When he falls asleep, I reach out my hand. The burlap is so
rough, my lace catches. This pain is new. Different. But I don’t make a sound.
I know better.

§

“For always?” I ask.

“Finish your coffee,” he says.

Tension:

I sense, not see, the clouds almost every day. His words
hold the echo of thunder, the weight of a tsunami. The house fills with a hush.
It hurts, this waiting.

I find strands of burlap on the counter. Entwined in the carpet.
Stuck to the shower curtain. I collect them all and wish I could thread them
back in while he sleeps but I’m afraid to try. I twist them together and tie
them around my wrist instead.

I find bits of lace, but I throw them away.

§

He reaches for me in the night. I taste the heat of ozone on
his lips. He pushes my face in the pillow, and we pretend to make love.

In the morning, there’s a new tear in my lining. He sees the rip,
I know he does, but he doesn’t pull a strand of himself free. He doesn’t get
the needle. I don’t know how to fix it, so I cover it with a scarf.

§

I remember our first date—wine and roses. A perfect cliché.
After dinner, he walked me to my door, brushed my hair back from my face, and
kissed me. He left so quickly, I barely heard his footfalls on the pavement.

He brought me a single rose on our second date. And on our third
and our fourth. I don’t remember how we went from there to here. I don’t
remember who I was before I met him.

(Would she recognize me?)

§

I call Renee, but when she answers, I hang up. She calls
back, but I pretend not to hear the phone ring.

§

When the storm finally comes, there’s no warning. There are
no words. He pushes me to the floor and rips and rips and rips. I can’t cry or
scream, the pain is too big. I’m drowning in the waves and every time I come up
for air, the wind pushes me back down.

I beg him to stop, to let me go. I hate the sound of my voice,
the taste of my tears. And I go under again.

When the water recedes, my head is in his lap. He touches my
cheek, my lip, brushes my hair back from my forehead.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

But it’s too late. I see pieces of lace caught between his teeth
and under his nails. I pull free and try to crawl away, but he won’t let me go.

He brings out the needle.

“No,” I say. “No.”

“Shhh,” he says and plucks a strand free from his arm.

I stare at the wall as the needle slides in. It doesn’t even hurt
anymore.

I didn’t know it would be like this.

But I love him

(Don’t I?)

Hem:

He kisses me on the forehead before he goes to work. I curl
up in the middle of the bed and trace my fingers over the stitches. I can’t
even see where he ends and I begin.

I pluck one of his strands free, and it leaves an ugly mark
behind, all twisted and uneven. Maybe love always leaves scars. I reach for the
needle, but my hands are shaking. I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t know
how to fix
me
. Inside, I am cold, so cold, as if a blizzard blew in when
I wasn’t looking.

I pull another strand free. Then another. And another. Snowmelt
blurs my vision, but my fingers don’t stop. His strands aren’t strong, they’re
sharp, cutting the soft pads of my fingers. The pain is bright. Hard. My mouth
works, but not a sound emerges.

He would be proud of that.

The bed is littered with a hundred pieces of him and a hundred
pieces of me that broke off in the process. My lining is full of holes, like a
dress left too long in an attic trunk.

I climb out of bed. Arrange all the loose threads in the shape of
a woman. She has no voice, no opinions, no needs. I slide the ring from my
finger and slip it on hers. Maybe he won’t even notice the change.

I wipe the tears away, but they won’t stop, and my heart is a
tangled knot. I struggle to catch my breath. Stumble as I try to walk. I think
of calling Renee, but I’m afraid of what she might say. I’m afraid she might
want to help, and I don’t want her to see who, what, I’ve become.

Threads are still unraveling, falling to the floor in a trail of
broken. He can have those, too. I leave the front door open behind me because
if I touch it again, I might change my mind, and I know I can’t. His threads
were never meant to hold me together.

The clouds outside are grey, like my heart. I turn my face up to
the sky, and rain mixes with my tears. I make it to the end of the street, turn
right, and keep walking. More threads drift free. Am I a patchwork doll leaking
from the seams or a snake shedding the old to reveal a new?

I don’t know how far I’ll get before my lining gives way
completely. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to face a sun. I don’t know if
there’s anything left of me at all.

Johnny is angry again. I hate this part, but I won’t try to
stop him. I would feel the same way, too.

“It’s not fair,” he yells, spit flying out of the corners of his
mouth. “And it’s not right. Why can’t they figure out what this is? Why can’t
they fix it?”

Music blares from the speakers. The walls are paper-thin, but our
neighbors aren’t home, and Johnny shouts over the lyrics, demanding to be
heard. He paces back and forth in our tiny apartment with its drafty windows,
his walk an awkward, lurching stumble. He only has one toe left, the baby toe
on his left foot. And in the space where his other toes used to be?

Nothing. Nothing at all.

“Eventually you won’t even remember what I looked like,” he says
and sinks to the floor, holding his hands around his head.

I shut off the music and sit
next to him, breathing in his scent, a soft, musky smell with something new
hidden underneath, a smell like charred wood in a long dead fire. “That’s not
true.”

“I’m only twenty-six years old. It’s not fair.” He holds out his
arms. The inside of his elbows are marked with swirls of purple and yellow.
“I’m not going back to the doctors anymore. What’s the point? They don’t have
any answers. They’ll just stick me in a corner room and stare at me like a
circus freak.”

I take a sheet of paper, the
surface slick beneath my fingers, and fold it until a dragon appears. I learned
how to fold paper from my mother, as she learned from hers. She told me her
mother learned from Akira Yoshizawa, the great master of paper folding, when
our family still lived in Japan.
Washi
, the traditional paper, is the
best to use, but I make do with what I find in craft stores, even though it
tears easily if I’m not careful. My mother says the best origami holds
something inside—love or anger or hurt. Something to make it real.

I set the dragon on the floor next to my feet. Johnny saves them
all, even the ones that turn out wrong. He lines them up on the windowsills and
calls them his gargoyles. They’re not watching out, but watching in. Watching
him.

“I’m glad my parents are dead,” he says. “So they don’t have to
see this.” He grabs my hand and gives it a tight squeeze. “Will you stay with
me all the way to the end?”

“I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

He leans over, rests his head on my shoulder. Tears burn in my
eyes, but I hold them in. Johnny hates to see me cry.

§

A week later, his feet are gone.

§

After his legs vanish from the knees down, I make a red army
of paper swans and set them on top of the refrigerator. He’s sitting at the
table, ripping paper into tiny shreds, and from where I stand, I can’t see the
missing parts and can almost pretend everything is fine.

I don’t watch when he crawls to the bedroom, but the sound echoes
back.

§

His knees disappear next.

“It hurts when they go,” he whispers. “And even when the pieces
are gone, I still feel them. I know they’re gone, but I still feel them there.”

§

Johnny’s reading in bed when his fingers go. One minute he’s
holding the book; the next, it tumbles down onto the blanket, landing with a
tiny thump. He gives a little grunt, and his mouth twists down. I know what
I’ll see, but I look anyway. His fingers are pale and vapory, narrow ghosts
fading fast, and then they’re gone, leaving behind a little more of that old
wood smell and a little less of his.

“It was a stupid book anyway,” he mutters.

I scoot over, not touching close, but close enough. He turns to
me and presses his lips against mine, offering up what warmth he has left. He
hasn’t kissed me since he lost his feet.

In his kiss, I taste oranges and despair.

§

“Turn on the music,” he says. “Please.”

I do.

“Louder.”

I turn it up until he nods. He shouts until the neighbors pound
on the walls.

I turn the music down and make
a bird, another dragon, and something that’s supposed to be an elephant. A
baby’s wail creeps in through the plaster followed by the muted tones of an
argument.

“Can you put that one on the nightstand?” he asks, his voice
scratchy and dry, nodding toward the not-elephant. “That’s my new favorite.”

“But it doesn’t look like anything.”

He smiles, the first smile I’ve seen in weeks. “It does to me.”

I put it next to the alarm clock.

The rest of his hands are gone. His wrists, too.

§

“Please don’t forget about me,” he whispers.

I wonder if there’s another room somewhere, with someone like me,
waiting, and another, like Johnny, going away.

I hold in my tears and pour my sorrow into a paper crane the
color of a summer sky.

§

A week later, his arms vanish. He doesn’t shout. He doesn’t
say a word. Instead, the silence hovers, a sharpened guillotine waiting to
strike.

I make another elephant; this one turns out perfect. I unfold it,
rip up the paper, and throw the pieces away before Johnny can see.

§

When there’s nothing below his waist but air heavy with the
scent of char, I sit in bed and he rests his head on my lap. I play with his
hair and run my fingertips across his eyebrows. There’s a knot inside my chest;
with every passing moment, it twists a little more.

“I’m afraid,” he whispers. “There won’t be anything left to bury
or burn. It’ll be like I was never here. Say you’ll remember me. Swear it.”

“I won’t ever forget you. I promise I won’t.”

“Can I have the elephant?”

I set it on his chest.

After Johnny falls asleep, I touch the empty space where the rest
of his body should be. The knot inside me coils tighter. I stay awake for hours
turning paper into shapes while the not-elephant moves up and down as he
breathes.

“Zou-san, zou-san,” I sing, keeping my voice feather soft. The
words are part of a song my mother sang to me when my fingers were still too
chubby to make paper animals.

But I can’t remember the rest, no matter how hard I try.

§

When the end comes, it happens fast. I sit by his side,
talking about nothing until a lump in my throat steals my voice away. I kiss
his forehead, and he closes his eyes against the pain. The air shimmers like
crushed pearls caught in moonlight.