Indians ever tortured women anyway, and not that the confusion made any difference to what we were about. These fantasies didn’t need to make more sense than dreams did, and we didn’t dare to take them out of fantasy. Terrell only hurt me inside, where it didn’t show.
Already he had his peculiar fascination for those Indian captives who were proud to take the punishment without flinching. A brave who’d seat himself on the spit, unforced, unbound, tranquilly smoking a pipe while his own flesh roasted. With that image raised before me, I learned to go toward pain like a warrior.
We used to smoke together afterward, Terrell and I, the Newports we had filched from Mom. Those were the only times I ever smoked tobacco; in other situations I never felt the urge. Two or three times a week we’d have a couple of hours alone after school, before Dad came home from work, the Mom-thing off at some meeting or club. We’d lie covered with the musky sleeping bag, paired filaments of smoke rising up from our nostrils, wreathing themselves among the snake skins that shivered from the rafters, first blue, then gray, then finally vanishing into the heavy air. My head gradually coming back together from where it had been scattered by our deeds, because whenever he did what he wanted a part of me would leave my body to hover in the sky, far above the peeling tarpaper shingles but still able to observe the girl getting fucked by her brother, to see and hear how she moved and moaned, writhing under the onslaught of sensations she didn’t even know how to distinguish as pleasure or pain.
And afterward, my head would be blank, empty as two halves of a vase, glued back together. Sometimes a voice appeared in the vacancy.
… Mae … Mae …
… …
I made nothing of that then. By nightfall, by suppertime, I wouldn’t remember that echo in the hollow of my skull.
Sometimes I heard a voice saying … I couldn’t make it out. Or maybe it only made sound, without ever naming.
And I seemed to feel the bayonet stabbing and stabbing, impaling something that first resisted and then gave way to a lurching emptiness inside, so that I bashed the heel of my fist against the spot where the hilt stopped. The shock of it up my arm to the shoulder, over and over again.
Terrell whetted the bayonet relentlessly, till it was sharp enough to shave. He let me try it on his calf, the silver edge of it bringing away the stiff dark curls from the pale skin, like at a hog-killing, I thought. Maybe I slipped and maybe I didn’t, but I nicked him slightly, so the blood rose up. He lost control and slapped me then—I saw the nowhere in his eyes and stiffened my neck like one of his Indians, left him staring, puzzled, at the red spot on his palm.
I touched my finger to the bead of blood and tasted it. His eyes softened, and went far away.
Here’s what I want to do, he said.
It was as if he had persuaded me instead of forcing it, but then it often felt that way. I lay with knees up and my legs open, green calico dress bunched above my waist, looking up at the daddy longlegs walking over the rafters, the slow tremor of the snake skins. Terrell held the blade at both haft and tip, like a bone scraper, and worked with an entranced, extraordinary care.
In all the times we did this thing, he never cut me there. I never looked but I always pictured it, the clean white edge slipping over the soft curve of flesh, the astonishing sensation of cool steel. Now and then Terrell paused with the blade, moistened the ball of his thumb with his tongue to smooth away the little hairs he’d cut. I couldn’t seem to stop myself (whatever self I had left then) from sighing as he stroked the new-smooth lobes … I bit my lip for a taste of my own blood. My brother kissed my blood away, snaked his tongue inside to claim it.
Sometimes, after such an afternoon there might be some careless, visible sign, a swollen lip or the fattening bruise on my jawbone where
Already he had his peculiar fascination for those Indian captives who were proud to take the punishment without flinching. A brave who’d seat himself on the spit, unforced, unbound, tranquilly smoking a pipe while his own flesh roasted. With that image raised before me, I learned to go toward pain like a warrior.
We used to smoke together afterward, Terrell and I, the Newports we had filched from Mom. Those were the only times I ever smoked tobacco; in other situations I never felt the urge. Two or three times a week we’d have a couple of hours alone after school, before Dad came home from work, the Mom-thing off at some meeting or club. We’d lie covered with the musky sleeping bag, paired filaments of smoke rising up from our nostrils, wreathing themselves among the snake skins that shivered from the rafters, first blue, then gray, then finally vanishing into the heavy air. My head gradually coming back together from where it had been scattered by our deeds, because whenever he did what he wanted a part of me would leave my body to hover in the sky, far above the peeling tarpaper shingles but still able to observe the girl getting fucked by her brother, to see and hear how she moved and moaned, writhing under the onslaught of sensations she didn’t even know how to distinguish as pleasure or pain.
And afterward, my head would be blank, empty as two halves of a vase, glued back together. Sometimes a voice appeared in the vacancy.
… Mae … Mae …
… …
I made nothing of that then. By nightfall, by suppertime, I wouldn’t remember that echo in the hollow of my skull.
Sometimes I heard a voice saying … I couldn’t make it out. Or maybe it only made sound, without ever naming.
And I seemed to feel the bayonet stabbing and stabbing, impaling something that first resisted and then gave way to a lurching emptiness inside, so that I bashed the heel of my fist against the spot where the hilt stopped. The shock of it up my arm to the shoulder, over and over again.
Terrell whetted the bayonet relentlessly, till it was sharp enough to shave. He let me try it on his calf, the silver edge of it bringing away the stiff dark curls from the pale skin, like at a hog-killing, I thought. Maybe I slipped and maybe I didn’t, but I nicked him slightly, so the blood rose up. He lost control and slapped me then—I saw the nowhere in his eyes and stiffened my neck like one of his Indians, left him staring, puzzled, at the red spot on his palm.
I touched my finger to the bead of blood and tasted it. His eyes softened, and went far away.
Here’s what I want to do, he said.
It was as if he had persuaded me instead of forcing it, but then it often felt that way. I lay with knees up and my legs open, green calico dress bunched above my waist, looking up at the daddy longlegs walking over the rafters, the slow tremor of the snake skins. Terrell held the blade at both haft and tip, like a bone scraper, and worked with an entranced, extraordinary care.
In all the times we did this thing, he never cut me there. I never looked but I always pictured it, the clean white edge slipping over the soft curve of flesh, the astonishing sensation of cool steel. Now and then Terrell paused with the blade, moistened the ball of his thumb with his tongue to smooth away the little hairs he’d cut. I couldn’t seem to stop myself (whatever self I had left then) from sighing as he stroked the new-smooth lobes … I bit my lip for a taste of my own blood. My brother kissed my blood away, snaked his tongue inside to claim it.
Sometimes, after such an afternoon there might be some careless, visible sign, a swollen lip or the fattening bruise on my jawbone where
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