Body and Bread by Nan Cuba Page A

for me to crawl through the square opening.
    We walked along the lobby to a double stairway. On the second floor, we found offices and exam rooms. The third floor was the top one, and when doors opened onto the lab, chilly air smelled of camphor, Lysol. The sun’s last rays trailed through giant skylights, casting beams at angles across the floor, then up walls. I grabbed Sam’s arm, pressed next to him. Huge jars lined shelves along both sides of the auditorium-sized room. The crocks were round or rectangular, with lids as big as my waist and human body parts inside, floating. One contained a leg with the outside layer of skin peeled away, the white tendons and bone and red muscle exposed, labeled with tags, spelling out long names ending in “ula” or “dorsi.” A hand floated in another, the fingernails glistening silvery blue. The delicate ligaments looked as perfect as spider webs, the joints like intricate gears ready to whir. Next was a man from the chest up, his right side perfect, his left neatly whacked off through his ribs, past his nose, the top of his head. He wore a stony gaze, as though he hadn’t noticed his condition. Farther down, I saw a brain, light gray, velvety, with its convoluted parts and purple veins, followed by other organs, rust-colored ones—a heart, lungs, a kidney, sliced and opened. Next to my shoulder, a baby’s face stared from the single eye in its forehead, a tiny Cyclops, partially skinned. At the end of the room, a bookcase held more jars, these with tagged heads whose faces tilted, their swollen lips kissing the curved glass.
    I stepped back, grunting. “Are they real?” No wonder my family didn’t seem fazed by cruelty. What was it like to work here every day, where a body was only pieces tacked together? Robots. Zombies.
    “Of course.” But Sam was looking somewhere else. Two rows of coffin-sized metal boxes lined the floor. Over each, a light hung suspended from the thirty-foot ceiling. Sam stared at one of the caskets in back. “Come on.”
    Up close, the metal container reminded me of a torture chamber, of hunched clubfooted men pouring smoking liquid into beakers. Sam bumped me when he yanked down on a side latch. A clank echoed. One side of the lid slid back, and something rose on a plank inside. It was huge and must have been immersed in liquid, because there was a rush, like the sound of someone rising out of a swimming pool, dripping, splattering. A soiled sheet covered it; a sickly sweet smell flipped my stomach. Sam pushed the handle on the other side. Pulley ropes crept through their slots. The rest of the lid swung around, the plank rose again with a swoosh, the bang ricocheted.
    Sam pulled the sheet back: A man, with flattened gray hair and a wide, slanted forehead with his eyes partially open. His face’s left side pressed against the shoulder, wrinkling his cheek, puckering his crooked lips. His right calf and foot had been sliced, shredded—a scarecrow losing his stuffing. Above that lay the man’s sagging genitals.
    I knew what they were because I’d seen Hugh’s—when he’d tear off his clothes and run down the street in front of our house—and Kurt’s and Sam’s too, as they each stepped out of the shower, before wrapping towels at their waists like skirts. Sam laughed at my accidental glimpses, but Kurt accused me of spying, yanked at my shorts until I screamed, then tightened his towel before walking to his room. I felt relief when those parts were covered, not only because my brothers usually spotted me watching, but also because I believed their bodies were too mysterious for careless exposure. Such marvels needed protection, secrecy, the bulges they formed in clothes hinting at something I didn’t yet understand but longed to.
    I stepped back from the cadaver, embarrassed but determined to watch whatever Sam might do. If the men in my family could look at a naked, plucked, dead man, so could I. But I moved around the feet, stood next to