We are Wormwood (27 page)

Mama ran her fingers through Lily’s hair.

“Darker,” she said, “I think you should go darker.”

I went into my bedroom. I slipped off my clothes and climbed
into my pajamas. The warm mirror reached up from below and enshrouded me. Every
part of my body splintered off into fragments. I not only had one hand, I had
six, each one with different coloring, different weight.

I was not a person but a splintering of possibilities. I
lost my body and am living as a reflection.

I collapsed into bed. I could see Lily and Mama through the
doorway.

Mama started making Lily Pop-Tarts. She wrapped Lily in a
soft blue towel. They could have each other. I would be here in the back room,
unable to move my head, watching my limbs multiply through waves of distorted
time.

Someone rapped on my bedroom window.

“Have you seen my teddy bear?”

I couldn’t speak.

“Have you seen my Little B?”

Go away.

Lily tried to eat the Pop-Tart and smeared chocolate
frosting all over her face. Mama fetched a towel and wiped it off her mouth.
Lily faded in and out of existence. I could see her becoming darker, thinner.
Her eyes stretched out and her mouth thinned. She was becoming me.

Percocet shouldn’t be making me see these things. Maybe
someone switched out the bottle of pills. Maybe I’m going crazy in the way Mama
always wished she could have.

The rapping on the window continued.

Go away.

I wanted to get up and wrap my hands around the new
Phaedra’s throat. I wanted to tell her, it’s not worth it to be me. Please go
back to who you used to be. We will not be fragments together; I don’t even
know how to keep one story straight.

Paris would never be like this. Paris would never have me
staring out my bedroom door, a purveyor of my own life.

There was a scratching and whining at the kitchen door. It’s
Miss Margot, and there’s sharpness to her mewling I’ve never heard before. Mama
let her in, and she darted through the kitchen and jumped onto my bed.

Her eyes were gone.

I jumped up in bed, my paralysis gone, and I grabbed her.
She shook and bled, soft caves cut into her skull, collapsing light. I was
screaming. I knew I was screaming because of the tightness in my chest, though
I couldn’t hear a thing.
 

I was screaming.

Charlie.

Lily and Mama ran into the room. I wouldn’t let them take
Miss Margot away from me, not even to clean and care for her. I held her to me
and rocked her and kissed her. I fell off the bed, sobbing, and collapsed onto
the floor with Miss Margot held tight to my chest. She wouldn’t stop shaking.
Lily lay down beside me. She tried to tell me things like this happen all the
time. I rolled away from her.

I didn’t remember much after that day. Everything became
static. I dressed. I spoke when spoken to. I fed Miss Margot and I went to
school and I kept putting on the dark lipstick, but I ceased to be a living
resident of my own body.

I cut out my cerebrum. All of my memories lived in my
foreign spine.

They rolled through me like wisps of gritty factory smoke,
blown in from the north side of town.

Years passed this way.

It was dark and I was dragging a boy through the dry woods
underneath a yellow moon. We rolled through the fog, fog like dry ice in a
Halloween machine. We kissed and collapsed into a rotting tree. We were not
alone.

I was in the restroom of a gas station with an older man. He
told me he was a musician. Then he told me he was a computer engineer. He
talked slow, like it was difficult for him to remember the meaning of words. I
didn’t even feel a pinch when the heroin plunged into my blood.

My father, who I hadn’t spoken to in fifteen years, sent me
a check for college, in the mail, with a written letter of apology. I tore up
the letter. I cashed the check and spent it on a pair of white Valentino heels
and a vintage party dress.

I saw Samantha Hall walking down the high school hallway,
seven months pregnant, and I started laughing at her. I laughed because I knew
she’d never be pretty again. She looked at the ground and avoided my eyes. If
she had looked up, I would’ve scratched them out.

I went into a party wearing a stolen coat and my party
dress. There’s marijuana in my pocket and heroin in my boots. I start dancing
in the middle of the floor. There’s no music playing, but my heart won’t stop
pounding. Someone calls me a slut, but in the crowd, I can’t tell who it is. I
start grabbing people’s bottles and smashing them on the ground. I smash the
jug of vodka. I smash the glasses. The boys grab my hair and my arms, and I
bite someone’s neck until blood wells in my mouth. I’ve never been more bored
in my entire life. They throw me out into the darkness and I go.

Spinning.

I wandered through downtown, drunk. I went into the boutique
where I bought my heels and they kicked me out. I don’t know what I did but the
sales girl screamed, her face distorting into a ghoul’s face. The pounding in
my head transformed into a river and the noise carried me away.

I went next door to the dollar store. I wandered the aisles
of cheap candy and clothes. The cashier followed me. I thought she would kick
me out as well, but she remained silent as she stalked me. I pretended not to
notice her.

I caught my reflection in a small hand mirror on the shelf. I
found dried blood smeared across my mouth and nose, butterfly shaped, an old
nosebleed.

I didn’t have the energy to run to the bathroom and clean
myself. I kept looking through the shop, until I came across her.

She sat on a shelf by herself, in a glossy red pot, her
spiked mouths agape. I watched a fly buzz around her for a long time, before
landing on one of her green pads. It brushed against her hairs. She closed her
mouth. She devoured him slowly, elegantly, no longer a mouth but an eye, the
eyelashes brushing against the squirming insect. She was a demure lady, an
unfortunate killer. The victim was gone, locked into her center, swimming in
secreted enzymes, to never reappear.

Venus Flytrap. Dionaea muscipula. I want to be you.

I paid for her and took her home.

At home I cleared my desk away and arranged a shrine for her
near the mesh screen window, near smoky sunlight. In a place where other plants
died, she grew big and richly colored. As I slept with Miss Margot in my arms,
the plant’s shadow lay across my bed.

I
caught flies for her, slowing them down by placing them in the freezer. Just
like feeding a lover drugs, my fingers rubbed raw with their use. My memories
came back to me. I stopped going out every night while Mama slept, detoxed from
the heroin and the wine. I pulled my reflection back from the mirror.

***

When I slept, my dreams were clear for the first time in
years. I dreamt of walking through a thick, ancient jungle, with nothing but a
machete and a small girl as my guide. The girl came from a poor village, and
yet she wore golden bangles around her wrists and ankles. She wore a red jewel
around her throat, and the jewel sang like a bird. Her exposed belly swelled
with milk, and her lips were full with blood.

They were given gifts, she said, because they took care of
Her.

I hacked away tree limbs and vines that reached out from the
woods, dripping with steam, to grab me.

In a clearing we came to Her. The great Madagascar tree with
the head of writhing snakes. The small girl clapped her hands. She said, Momma.
Momma, I’ve brought you a gift.

The snakes embraced the small girl. They lifted her up from
the dirt, bent her head back as if in a kiss. They pinched the back of her neck
with their teeth. Her body went slack, without a sigh. They devoured her and
dropped the red jewel at my feet.
 

When I woke, Miss Margot was gone. The Venus flytrap had
caught a Daddy Long Legs whose gray legs were sticking out of one of her
mouths. Birds were singing outside the window, birds with voices like the red
jewel from my dreams.

***

I went looking for Miss Margot in the house, and then in the
garage. After she lost her eyes, she often hid underneath shelves or in between
the car tires. I did not find Miss Margot, but I found, underneath a tarp next
to an unused lawnmower and a rake, a white package of unmarked seeds.

In our yard and backyard, nothing grew except crabgrass and
weeds. The Homeowners Association was always trying to knock down our door for
not mowing the lawn. Mama would appear in the entryway, stumbling, shielding
her eyes from the light.

“I have a medical condition,” she said, “I have a rare
genetic disorder. I have cysts in my kidneys. Do you think I can mow the lawn?”

They fled.

I pulled weeds and planted the seeds in the backyard, the
first time I’d ever done so, in a soft patch of dirt. I raked the dirt back
over them with my fingers. I watered them with a ceramic cup.

Inside, Mama was making herself a cup of valerian root tea.

“Have you seen Miss Margot?”

She poured the boiling water into the cup. Her fingers were
red and her face flushed with heat. The wallpaper had unfurled above her head
and was hanging down, like a reaching hand.

“Mama.”

She didn’t respond. I realized I hadn’t seen her sober eyes
in as long as I could remember.

“Miss Margot is gone.”

The steam boiled and rose in a plume around her face. It
encased her head in a shroud. Underneath the shroud, her skin shifted. My Mama,
all these years, was not a human being, but a lizard. The skin was like a
bandage to cover the wound, perforated at the edges. The steam had curled her
disguise, like it curled the wallpaper.

“Mama”

She turned to me with flakes of green on her face. She was
an old lizard and sick, her scales the color of dulled vegetation, left out in
the sun to dry. I pulled at my own skin. At my elbows. My fingers. Please,
don’t let there be tears in this costume.

Please, don’t let me be my mother.

“Mama, do you ever think about anyone but yourself?”

The steam boiled in the air. I knew if I touched it, I would
burn.

“Mama, have you ever loved me?”

But there was only the sound of her skin tearing. It fell in
a pile around her feet. She raised the cup of tea to her mouth.

I knocked it out of her hands. It shattered onto the ground
and I immediately regretted it. She fumbled for another cup. She crushed the
porcelain underneath her feet, crushed it in a tincture of her own blood.

“I just wanted you to love me,” I whispered.

It didn’t feel true, even as I said it, but a part of my
brain, a lazy, steamy part, believed it so.

I ran out into the street. I ran calling for Miss Margot. I
knocked on Lily’s door. I’d choke her if I could. If she hadn’t come into my house,
high as fuck, and opened that door, none of this would’ve happened. Miss Margot
would still have her eyes, I would still know which way was upright.

Her mother answered the door. She lurched forward when the
door flew open, her body like a hot coiled wire. She smelled musty, an attic
thing, her body covered in rags. She wore a gazelle skull mask that hid
everything except her eyes, cracked white and wide.
 

“Where is Lily?” I asked, my throat closing and heart
screaming, “I need to talk to her.”

She pointed toward the woods.

I ran. Urgency struck at my back. The air pounded at me like
an abusive father. It was too early for darkness, but the sun took one look at
me and plunged downwards. Hot red streaks of sky gushed from the top of the
tree line, like the sun impaling itself below.

“Miss Margot. Miss Margot.”

“Lily. Lily.”

Even as I called for them, I knew I searched for something
else.

For the great Madagascar Tree that took one look at me, its
new sacrifice, and ate the child it once cared for and dressed in gold.

For the carnivorous bellflowers that lured rats and birds to
their sloping containers of mouths. Promised nectar, and delivered acidic
enzymes.

For a garden I’d grow, in which I’d no longer be a
splintered mirror. For she could see me for who I was, and there’d be no need
for reflection.

I remembered the moment when the mask dissolved. It was not
a mask pointing outward, but inward. I thought my facade of painted face and
painted eyes was so clever. Instead I wore a costume that only fooled myself.

The woods grew darker. The trees paled in color, the exposed
roots, albino, the leaves ivory, as if they’d never seen sunlight. I stopped,
gasping. My organs felt too big in my body. I hadn’t run that fast or that far
in years.

It’s quiet here, but I’m not alone.

My shadow turned.

It peeled from my skin

It walked away, and I followed.

Plants with teeth bloomed from the earth. They opened their
mouths like oozing sores. They reached for the mosquitoes that landed on my
bare hips and ate them alive. My shadow didn’t look back to see if I kept
following. But I did. Stumbling, acid-eaten, and sore, I followed.

My shadow found Miss Margot on her back in the weeds. She
was whining, and scabs covered her legs. I picked her up and cradled her to my
chest. She’d thinned. Her ribs were like needles, sharp against my palms.

Moonlight bounced off the grass, and that’s when I saw
something shiny and wet in the weeds.

An eye. A cat’s eye, yellow and white, with a black pulsing
center.

Another rolled at my feet. My shadow cupped its hands around
it. My cat’s shadow batted it like a toy.

The weeds crunched behind me. The trees bent down, moaning.
I knew if I looked, my fingers would forget how to make another mask. I’d be
naked forever. Self-deception would be a memory.