The Book of X

by Sarah Rose Etter

  “Great! Fine, really. The weather is great. How is it back home?”

  “Oh, you know, just the way it always is. Boring! And you know your father, out in the damn Meat Quarry. Your brother, too. I might as well not even exist!”

  “That’s not true,” I force myself to say.

  “Oh, you know how the boys are. I will say, business has slowed down, so they are working overtime to make up for it.”

  “Why is it slowing down?”

  “You know, too many people selling the same thing. Can’t transport the meat as fast as some others. What about you? Any men in the picture?”

  “Nothing serious. How is your knot feeling?”

  A small silence.

  “It’s been acting up,” she says. “You know how it is. It comes with time.”

  The pain she hides radiates through her voice. I can feel it coming for me. I can feel it breathing down my neck, my terrible ancestor.

  IN THE BAR, BOTTLES LINE THE MIRrored walls. I catch a glimpse of my eyes between their necks.

  A man sits next to me. His nose is sharp, his eyes are deep green, his hair brown. His smell is my father’s same smell: sour, sweet, a thin layer of meat at the base of it.

  “Hello,” I say.

  “Hey there. You come here often?” he asks.

  “No, I usually just stay home and cry in bed,” I say.

  He lets out a laugh.

  “What do you do?”

  “I type the company notes every day,” I say. “What do you do?”

  “I’m a law man,” he says. “I deal with the laws.”

  “Oh.”

  “Does that impress you?”

  “I guess.”

  He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a handful of gold coins. He sits them on the bar. I smell him again, that deep smell, and I want his hands on me.

  “Does it now?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  His hand finds my leg and squeezes. I let it happen, I want it to happen, I follow that feeling with him, out into the night, then into my apartment.

  IN THE DIM LIGHT OF MY SMALL KITCHEN, he puts his hands on my shoulders. I keep my mouth on him. He tastes sharp.

  “You smell so good,” he says into my skin, into my shoulder. His hands slide down my arms to my waist, where they discover my knot.

  “Wha...” he asks.

  “Oh, it’s just... I was born with it.”

  “What the hell is it?” he asks, his fingers digging into the curves.

  “It’s just this thing... my mother has it too, it’s a knot...”

  “Your body is a knot?”

  “Well just... my stomach, yes...”

  “Show it to me, right now.”

  I step back and lift my dress slowly, until his eyes can take it all in, my warped body.

  “Look, you’re great. You are. But I don’t... I don’t think I can do this,” he mutters. “This isn’t for me.”

  I drop my dress back down over the knot. I nod.

  “It’s OK, I understand.”

  A succession of sounds: Doors opening and closing, the car engine starting, tires kicking up loose rock from the asphalt, then the silence again, always only silence for me.

  “YOU WERE LATE THIS MORNING,” THE boss says, standing over my desk. “I came looking for you and couldn’t find you.”

  My hair is dirty. There are dirty half-moons beneath my fingernails. I notice the faint scent of filth wafting from between my legs. My blood is sand in the veins.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I overslept.”

  “Work late,” he says. “Don’t let it happen again.”

  A brief hallucination: I smash the windows out, scream until the metal cabinets collapse, until the fluorescent lights rain down on my face in a shatter of glass, blood streaking my face. Then I leave early.

  Instead, I put my head down. I work.

  At lunch, I eat a hamburger, let the clear pink juice run down my lips like an animal. The leftover liquor in my stomach makes the food expand, my knot thick with bloat.

  Later, I sit at my desk, a good worker until the sun sets, until the clock’s hands touch a certain number, until it is time to pack up, walk back to the bar.

  SOPHIA CALLS AGAIN WITH BIGGER NEWS.

  “I’m pregnant!” she says.

  My vision gets small.

  “That’s beautiful,” I machine into the line. “When are you due?”

  IN A DREAM, MY ABDOMEN SWELLS AND swells. Yet I do not give birth. I rub my hand over my distended belly and listen for the sounds of child. There is nothing.

  “We can’t tell what’s wrong,” the dream doctors say. “We just don’t understand this baby.”

  This goes on for months until I get fed up. I make an incision in my own belly. It barely hurts. I part the wound to find my child, but there are only bright white worms, eyeless, writhing.

  AN ACHE BEGINS IN MY KNOT. THE LANguage of pain means nothing: Do I mean a cramp? Is it a fire? Is an ache a roar?

  I look for cures. I rub the knot with Epsom salts. I attempt a self-massage. I drench myself in expensive healing oils.

  SPECIAL HEALING OILS

  Created under a full moon and with the use of crystals, this series of oils will realign your chakras and remove pain from the body. These claims have not been validated by the FDA.

  The hurt persists beneath the oils. I count the rhythm of the pangs on the walk to work.

  My mind starts to unravel. The scenery warps. The world flattens around me. The busy street I’m standing on is just a painting, a canvas I could punch my fist through.

  THE BREAK ROOM AT WORK IS PAINTED orange. The refrigerator is filthy white from our fingerprints. A low light buzzes above my head. I spoon my soup into my mouth, split pea green between the lips.

  “Whatcha got there?” asks Brenda.

  The pain still trembles through my knot, a pain Brenda cannot see or comprehend. Brenda has chopped brown bangs, watery brown eyes. Her shirt hangs sloppily over her thin frame. A small barrette holds back her bangs, giving a childlike appearance to her grown body.

  “Soup,” I say, gesturing to the soup.

  “Ooooh,” she says. “Soup! What kind?”

  This is an attempt at friendship, a forcing, another labor among the current labor.

  “I wish I had some soup!” she says, pulling her own lunch from her bag: A sandwich on square white bread with a limp piece of green lettuce between the crusts. She slides the sandwich between her thin lips, takes a bite, then speaks.

  “You know, I know a guy who fixes that,” she says, her eyes on my torso.

  The longer her eyes are on my knot, the brighter my rage glows. I stuff it down into my belly.

  “Oh?”

  “Yep, he’s even been on the local news,” she says. “His name is Dr. Richard Richardson.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Mhmm, he’s got these special injections to help girls like you. He’s a miracle worker. I went to see him for the corns on my feet. He fixed all 12 of ’em, they never came back. He froze them right off!”

  I picture a dozen pieces of bad toe skin fluttering to the floor, one by one. She takes a pen from her back pocket and jots the number in black ink on a white napkin, which I jam into my back pocket.

  “Thank you.”

  I wash my bowl in the sink, imagining her awful feet, the awful frozen skin of her toes fluttering to the ground around her, the shed petals of a dead flower.

  VISION

  A perfect day in early fall: The sky bright and blue with the right style of clouds. I hold Jarred’s hand in the art museum, the old works of art looming over us.

  There is a painting of bright flowers on a dark background nestled around the skull of a shark.

  “And this painting, created in the 1900s, is fucking terrible,” he whispers.

  My laugh bounces off of the canvas and back at us, an echo.

  There is a statue of a woman draped in a snake, holding a mirror u
p to her own face.

  “And this is a sculpture of a stuck-up bitch,” he hisses, pinching my side until I laugh.

  There is a room made to look like Paris: Pastel walls, long mirrors, dazzling chandeliers. We are sore thumbs in all black, pricks of negative light in the setting.

  “I hate this,” he whispers.

  “It’s too perfect,” I whisper.

  Then, we make it ours: We claw at the pastel walls. We lift the tufted chairs and smash them through the mirrors.

  We dance on the shards, weave our bloody fingers together, our mouths meet in the center, over our reflections in the rubble.

  THE OFFICE OF DR. RICHARD RICHARDSON is in a squat building with an orange roof. It looks too small next to the rest of the buildings, as if it comes from another time.

  The sign with his name is aging, fake gold script that spells Dr. Richar and fades off.

  Inside, the waiting room is marked by several ferns and stacks of magazines with the bottom corners torn off to hide home addresses.

  The blue eyes of the receptionist peer over the high black counter at me.

  “And are you Cassie?” she asks.

  “That’s me.”

  “Well, that’s just great! I just have a few forms for you to fill out here and the doctor will be right with you!”

  I take the clipboard to the waiting area. I fill out: Name, Address, Emergency Contact.

  On the third page, there is a bold headline over two outlines of a generic female body.

  PLEASE CIRCLE WHERE YOU ARE SUFFERING, THEN RATE YOUR SUFFERING ON A SCALE FROM 1-10, WITH 10 BEING THE MOST SUFFERING.

  One outline shows her front, with little circles for breasts. The other outline shows the back of her body.

  I circle the torso then I circle the torso again. I try to calculate my suffering on a numerical scale, assign a value. What is 10? The hottest sun?

  I write the number 7.

  “Thank you!” she chirps when I hand her the paperwork. “We’ll call for you shortly.”

  In the waiting room magazines, faded recipes measure out ingredients that combine to make: glazed ham, Jell-O salad, a slick series of shiny tortes.

  “Dr. Richardson will see you now!”

  I follow her down a short hallway full of fake body sections: Plastic heart, plastic spine, plastic liver, each split to show their arteries, vertebrae, veins.

  “And you just put this on, he’ll be right with you!” she says, pressing the standard paper gown into my hands.

  I strip down and put on the gown, skin pricking beneath in the office cold.

  “Cassie!” his voice booms when he steps in. “You decent in here?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  He has the face of a Roman god, but old and tired under the eyes, fatter around the middle.

  “I’ve been reading your paperwork,” he says, thumping the pages. “Seems like you’re a perfect candidate.”

  “For what?”

  “We’ll get to that, but first let’s take a look under the hood, shall we?”

  “The hood?”

  “Why don’t you just let me have a look at the knot?”

  I lie down slowly. He stands next to me, sliding the gown up, resting it below my breasts, cutting me in half, a magician’s trick.

  “Well, this is one hell of a knot,” he murmurs. “Big guy. May I?”

  I nod.

  He runs his hands over the knot, fingers probing the crevices, the twists, the turns I’ve already memorized.

  “Good, good, now sit up for me and pull that gown down. Let’s talk about our options.”

  “Options?”

  “Well, the techniques have advanced,” he says. “I’m the only one in the city who can do it. Some would say it’s the forefront of medicine.”

  My heart begins to open slowly, a tentative flower in early spring. I allow myself one moment to imagine it: My body knotless, normal, free.

  “Yes, go on. What is it?”

  “Well, it’s known as the Sugar Water technique,” he says. “It helps loosen the knot through a series of 37 injections to the—”

  My heart snaps shut.

  “Stop right there.”

  “Well, just conside—”

  “No, thank you, please let me get dressed.”

  “I can he—”

  “I’m getting dressed.”

  THE HALLWAY IS EMPTY WHEN I LEAVE, the fake organs reversing their order: Plastic liver, plastic spine, plastic heart.

  The ride home is dizzying, the city whipping by in a montage: Trucks, buildings, dumpsters, women screaming, business men laughing, sad women, small children, clouds darkening above our heads.

  In my empty apartment, I climb into bed and wrap myself around the knot, wait for the storm to come down.

  ◆In the early 1900s, physicians injected gold salts into limbs to reduce the pain of arthritis

  ◆The word pain derives from the Old French peine, from the Latin poena for penalty

  ◆Hippocrates wrote frequently about trepanation, a practice wherein doctors would cut holes in the skulls of those in pain to release their suffering

  ◆Plato and Aristotle theorized pain originated outside of the body, descending upon it like a demon

  ◆The Egyptians placed eels over the wounds of patients, noting their shocks could relieve pain symptoms

  VISION

  A man stands on the black sands. His white robes billow in the breeze. He has a thick brown beard and opaque eyes. He reaches out and takes my hand.

  “Come with me,” he says.

  The beach is so black it could be ink. We are walking through a film negative — white sky, dark sand, foaming white ocean. The bodies of silver fish litter the shore, their translucent bodies shimmering against the dark earth.

  Nearby, high mossy cliffs serve as home for flocks of white birds which soar and nest in the craters. At the base of the cliffs, a small black mouth opens in the rock.

  “This is where I will cure your problems,” he says.

  “I only have one problem,” I say, gesturing to my abdomen.

  “You have more problems than just one,” he says. “Many more.”

  He bends down and moves through the low entrance. I follow him into the belly of the dark cave. A match is struck. He lights one candle, then another, then another, then another, a table of white pillared wax coming into view and casting light.

  The walls of the cave look more menacing now that I can see them. In the rock, I can make out the dull scratches of men who have been here before, small etchings of men on fire.

  He pulls a box from below the table of candles, then steps toward me.

  “Please, sit,” he says, gesturing to a big rock.

  He places the box next to me and kneels before me. He stares deep into my eyes. The white film of his gaze unnerves me.

  “Are you prepared to trust me?” he asks.

  I stare into his milky eyes, his wrinkled face. I weigh out my days of pain, my weeks of agony, my years of sadness, my life of walking the earth in this body.

  “ Yes.”

  “Then let us begin.”

  He opens the box slowly. Inside, there is water which refracts the candlelight.

  “What is the water for?”

  “Ah, my dear, it is not only water.”

  He opens the lid wider. More light creeps into the box, and I can see bodies slithering beneath the water, slick, scaled. Suddenly, a small face comes into view beneath the surface: two eyes, strange nose, a mouth.

  “Eels,” he says. “For you.”

  Another face appears in the water. The two eels keep moving, curving around each other.

  “Why eels?”

  “They will use their current to help you.”

  “Current?”

  “Yes, their shocks will help you.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Where is your faith?”

  “I don’t believe in anything.”

  “You must b
elieve in something on this earth.”

  “ I don’t.”

  “Please, show me your knot. Let me.”

  I slide off my dress. There is nothing sexual to it — he does not stare at me and I do not look at him. In the flickering candlelight, my body is a deeper puzzle: the shadows make my curved abdomen stranger, more menacing, the neck of a dark swan curled in on itself.

  “Now please, if you will, lie down.”

  I do as I’m told, the cave dirt pressing against my skin.

  He slides on a pair of thick gray gloves and opens the box. He moves quickly and with purpose, seizing one eel and raising it out of the water. The eel writhes in the air between us, wet body glinting.

  “Are you ready?” he asks.

  I nod and he moves toward me without hesitation. Then the eel is laid over my knot, curling into its crevices.

  For a moment, the eel is still, which lets my heart rest for a beat. For a moment a new future flashes into mind: the eel and I living together in harmony, its black body attached to mine, a new knot.

  Then shock roars through my body where it touches my skin, the black slime of the eel hot with electricity, the light of it tearing through me, making me bright white, writhing, the pain bigger than any I’ve ever felt.

  When I come to, the man stands over me, gloveless, the eel peeled from my body. There is an extra step in my heartbeat. I run a hand over my knot, which is sore to the touch.

  “How do you feel?” he asks.

  “The same.”

  “Well, one more time then,” he says before I go under, the dark cave closing its mouth around me.

  SOPHIA CALLS AND THE BABY HAS COME. The baby is named Tara. I can hear her gurgling in the background.

  “Congratulations,” I force my mouth to say. “She sounds beautiful.”

  ON WEEKENDS, I SIT IN THE SILENCE OF the apartment, staring into the open mouth of each hour, into the ticking clock: No one to touch, no movement of the body, an emptiness opening its inside of me.

  I reach over to the gold coins on the bedside table. I stack them next to me in bed like a lover, like armor, I run my hands over them, a safe, warm con.

  I slide one into my mouth and suck. The metal makes my teeth ache. I want to swallow it. I want the coins to wind through the knot, filling my belly, my body bursting with wealth.