Little Nothing by Marisa Silver

step on or a chicken to behead. They are all of them nothing more than tubers. They have been planted by their parents, their fathers’ seeds in their mothers’ bellies, in order that they grow and prove useful, and when their usefulness comes to an end, they will be discarded. They are struck through with that queer feeling they experience as a shiver in the bones on those rare occasions when the moon passes over the sun and day and night switch places, orwhen they receive an unexpected look of love from a father: they realize how brief and illusory is their happiness.
    â€œDoes it hurt?” her old schoolyard nemesis Gita Blažek whispers, unsure if she should venture words in this sacred space of revelation.
    â€œIt stings a little,” Pavla admits.
    â€œDo you want some chewing gum?” Gita’s older brother, Radek, asks.
    â€œYes, please.”
    Radek removes the piece he was working. Some of the others reach into their mouths and contribute. Gum is a rare and expensive treat, and Pavla is moved by the sacrifice. As her teeth close down on the rubbery clot, it emits the taste of masticated potatoes and sweet tea, and the faintest trace of dejection.
    Hours later, after the sun has lowered and her friends have gone home to do their evening chores or have sneaked behind barns to kiss and touch, or to do more than that, as is the case with Petr of the mapped genitals and Gita, who will end up with a baby before too long, Pavla’s skin begins to burn. The next time Václav and Agáta administer a round of treatment, the oil, once as comforting as the infusion of boiled water into a tepid bath, touches raw skin. Pavla shrieks for Agáta, who in turn screams at Václav, who tries to be forceful, telling each of them not to cry. But he is weeping, too. Pavla begs and pleads, and he cries out for her forgiveness, and the three of them compose a trio of wails so furious that the neighborhood dogs yowl in response.
    And then suddenly, with no warning, the pain seems to slice right through her bones so that not only is her skin aflame but her insides feel as if they have been struck by lightning. She cannot cry. She cannot speak. She cannot even think beyond the suffering. Her mind recalculates and, determining pain to be its new equilibrium, adjusts itself accordingly, shutting down all her other faculties in order not to disrupt the sensation in any way.
    Then something astonishing happens: the pain becomes so total, so obliterating, that anything corporeal and sensate buries itself deeply in her center and she perceives it as virtually nonexistent. She feels like nothing so much as . . . well, her schoolmates were right all along—she feels like nothing.
    â€”
    N IGHT FALLS and with it the temperature. Agáta adjusts a woolen hat on Pavla’s head and ties a scarf loosely around her neck. She tries to get her daughter to speak or even hum along to her favorite lullaby, but Pavla can’t make a sound. All she can do is stare out into the night sky. Once, she would have said that night was simply black. But now she knows differently about color and pain and delusion. Russet red, indigo blue, brown, ocher. She chants this litany to herself over and over, building up a wall of words that protects her from the sound of her mother’s voice, the feel of the chill on the tips of her ears and nose, the smell of chimney smoke carried on the wind. She needs to block out any intrusion that threatens to remind her of her being.
    Agáta kisses her daughter and returns to the house. Václav, wrapped in a comforter, settles down to sleep beside the hole. “I’m here, my Pavlicka,” he murmurs groggily until his words are replaced by his light snores.
    He is here. But where is she?
    She is with her mother at the flower stall on market day. Agáta is frustrated with her because she has not chosen which flowers to buy. But the roses look sickly and the edges of