Family

by Micol Ostow

  whole.

  when i was six years old,

  i drowned.

  for the first time.

  was drowned.

  for the first time.

  when i was six years old, uncle jack sealed his mouth against my own.

  he gasped, flailed against me, struggled to resuscitate himself,

  to breathe life back into his own eternity,

  his own infinity.

  he split me open,

  pressed himself into every hollow place,

  pushed against me

  so that there wasn’t room for me

  ,

  no space, no safety

  inside of my own skin.

  i couldn’t speak,

  couldn’t scream.

  couldn’t swallow or

  breathe.

  couldn’t do anything but

  drift.

  but

  dream.

  awake,

  i dreamed.

  of:

  oceans,

  tidal waves,

  tsunamis.

  of:

  chaos.

  of:

  abandoned cargo,

  of sunken, rusted

  treasure,

  weighted down,

  soaked and

  solid,

  rotting beneath the

  surface.

  of:

  valueless artifacts,

  set to spoil

  beneath,

  in the underneath.

  when i was six years old, i thrashed against

  heaping mouthfuls of stinging salt water.

  i did my best to hold my breath,

  to stave off the looming infinite,

  the ever-after.

  i did my best to stay

  tightly bound,

  to stay

  together,

  alone.

  and when i heard my mother

  poised atop the staircase,

  heard my mother

 
  in.

  out.>

  know.

  know, but un-know.

  hear, but not-hear.

  when i heard my mother

  choose the either/or,

  heard my mother

  offer me up as a

  ,

  heard her

  decide to let me

  drown—

  that was

 

  the precise moment—

  the heartbeat,

  the hair’s breath—

  the

  ,

  when i

  shattered.

  i fractured.

  i shrank.

  that was the split second

  when i collapsed inward on myself,

  spiraled off into my own

  orbit.

  blurred the edges of my own existence.

  that was when i left my hollowed-out husk,

  set off in search of the edge of the horizon.

  embraced the chaos of infinity.

  surrendered to the

  undertow.

  when i was six years old, i drowned.

  but i have always been broken.

  now

 

  my hands are streaked with blood that is not my own.

  my hands are streaked with blood, and there is screaming.

  somewhere in the house, there is a high-pitched, constant screaming that has, by now, dissolved into the sort of ambient white noise that a person could tune out, easily enough, if she were so inclined. canned horror, like you might find on a sound-effects recording, or at a theme-park haunted house.

  voices. bodies. and panic.

  so much panic.

  i tune the shrieking, high-pitched panic, the shrill vibrato out, send it to a separate frequency, set it aside for the immediate future, as i tend to the issue of my stained, shaking hands.

  how did they get this way?

  i know the answer. i don’t want to know the answer, but these are things i can’t undo, can’t unknow.

 

  my hands shake, the blood pooling into the crevices of my gnawed-down cuticles.

  even now, amidst the chaos, i am struck by how i have my mother’s hands, though hers have never looked like this. would never look like this.

  how strange to think that i should have my mother’s hands. since i no longer have my mother, a mother,

  any mother.

  how strange to think of what has become of me, of my half-life,

  even of mirror-mel.

  how unexpected to find one’s fault lines etched deep;

  set in stone,

  permanent.

  how unexpected to discover that

  the mirror-image remains

  even after the curtain,

  the veil,

  the hazy woolen netting

  has been

  drawn.

  how strange to think of what i’ve known—

  of what i’ve come to know—

  as family.

  Henry says:

  everything belongs to everyone.

  Henry says:

  there is no i. no ego.

  no need for

  parents.

  but.

  i did, i think.

  i needed.

 

  i needed a mother.

  needed more than just an outline,

  more than the mere suggestion

  of her self.

  needed so many things

  to fill myself

  up.

  Henry saw that.

  He sees. everything.

  and with my need

  He makes Himself

  whole.

  Henry says:

  there is only family.

  our family.

  Henry is

 
  and terror>

  infinity.

  Henry says there is no

  belonging,

  no i,

  but:

  Henry has us—

  all the matchstick thin,

  flimsy

  paper-doll tracings—

  all of the delicate, drowned

  outlines—

  all the members of our

  family

  to do

  His

  bidding.

  Henry is the one who found the

 

  singer

  and the blank, important

 

  man.

  the singer struggles.

  shelly has corralled her, wrestled her into the center of the living room, where she, leila, and junior have trussed the broken, battered china doll in twine.

  bound, the singer surveys the scene, the carnage, the chaos. she passes flickering, fluttering pupils over the ruined man on the couch.

  eyes wide with disbelief, round with dawning realization, she struggles.

  she strains, breaks, thrashes against the current, digs her heels into the now. she heaves, hiccups, twists with pain, bright and swift.

  she bleeds.

  i listen for sounds.

  crouched in the corner,

  flattened against the sturdy stucco wall, i

 

  focus.

  i listen for sounds.

  they come to me, unbidden.

  choked, thick, drenched with helplessness,

  they come to me.

  unbidden.

  the singer pleads, cries, begs.

  she knows nothing of her husband’s broken promise,

  nothing of our fractured family’s gravitational pull.

  our orbit.

  she wants.

  wants

  life.

  she moans. the sound is soft, but still unmistakable amidst the deafening mayhem.

  it rises above the screaming, gapi
ng, oozing chaos.

  i hear her. shelly hears her.

  there is no way to not-hear her.

  she seeps.

  from somewhere deep, someplace inescapable, she spills across the floorboards of her violated compound. she dissolves.

  she is ephemeral. diaphanous.

  she is, suddenly, everything.

  i shudder, stagger, heave.

  i shut my eyes, open them again.

  i take in shelly.

  she hovers, poised above the singer, this

  suggestion of a fantasy

  who is little more

  than a

  husk of herself, really.

  little more

  than the remains of her own

  half-life.

  the singer is emptying out. hollowing.

  maybe shelly is, too.

  maybe. i think.

  maybe we all are.

  maybe this is our now, the now that we have finally come to,

  collectively, pedaling furiously, foolishly.

  paddling directly into the eye of the

  storm.

  shelly pauses, wipes the back of her palm against her forehead, leaves behind a streak of rust-colored blood, stark against the blank expanse of her pale skin.

  she is marked.

  she is endless.

  she is forever.

  she is now.

  and she is not my sister

  anymore.

  my hands are streaked with blood that is not my own.

  my hands are streaked with blood that is not my own, and the horror-movie sound effects persist.

  <…>

  interference

  white noise.

  torrents of skin and bone.

  skin and bone, and blood.

  so much blood.

  rushes, tidal waves, well-deep reflecting pools of blood, raging everywhere,

  catching in every corner, flickering and taking hold like a thick, coppery fever.

  leila does as Henry commanded: she scrawls symbols, secrets,

  horror-story hieroglyphics all along the wall:

  RISE

  PIG

  DEATH

  HELTER-SKELTER.

  she writes in blood

  and laughs to see

  the words form at her

  hands.

  part IV

  end

  junior holds the singer down.

  shelly’s arm rises, the glint of her knife’s blade throwing a spark that arcs,

  that glimmers, that gleams like a supernova

  burning through the atmosphere.

  sounds come to me, unbidden.

  it takes a long time for a person to let go.

  sometimes.

  i shudder.

  i swoon.

  i stagger.

  this,

  i realize—

  it is my either/or,

  my half-life,

  my underneath.

  this moment is my witching hour,

  my midnight tide.

  i burn.

  i melt.

  i sink.

  i drown.

  bodies. there are bodies everywhere.

  and the bodies are broken.

  we are all broken.

  we are all supernovas.

  black holes, disintegrating.

  we are all:

  crushing, pulling, recoiling,

  unraveling.

  we are all:

  collapsing in on ourselves, like dying stars.

  shelly calls to me.

  i look up from where i cower, crouched,

  to see her holding out her knife.

  it is a suggestion, the knife.

  it is:

  an urging.

  an invitation to join

  my family.

  the knife is a call to

  awaken,

  to embrace

  —to embody—

  the chaos.

  it is a sound to spread the

  message.

  to be the message.

  to be the love

  .

  the knife is a suggestion to step forward and out of my hollow husk,

  to emerge beyond the outline of my own shadow tracing.

  to be solid.

  to be self.

  to become.

  i reel.

  i realize:

  i have been left behind.

  i have been broken.

  i have.

  always.

  but.

  this—

  this is my orbit,

  my spiral.

  my own infinity.

  my own

  now.

  and now

  i can

  awaken.

  arise.

  i can.

  i have—

  always—

  contracted, recoiled,

  refracted.

  have always,

  always,

  wanted to patch the fault lines of my

  cracked, jagged surfaces.

  i have always wanted to staunch the waves of fever,

  the rushes of heat.

  infinity has always felt impossible to me.

  there is nothing, after all, that doesn’t

  end.

  i have always been alone,

  have always felt empty.

  always.

  still.

  but.

  still,

  i have now.

  i am now.

  and

  now:

  i rise.

  breathe:

  in.

  and out.

  now:

  i am solid.

  i am sturdy.

  i am heavy as a smooth slate tombstone.

  i am the opposite of antimatter.

  i am.

  now.

  shelly calls to me.

  leila cackles.

  junior drips with want.

  the undertow beckons.

  sounds come to me,

  unbidden.

 

  and now:

  i know.

  finally.

  finally,

  i know:

  i am not:

  sister,

  wife,

  daughter.

  not ephemeral.

  not a paper doll.

  i have no mother.

  never had a father.

 

  i am:

  empty,

  bottomless,

  rudderless.

  still.

  yet.

  yes.

  i breathe:

  in.

  and out.

  in.

  and out.

  and then:

  i rise.

 

  finally,

  endlessly

  —always—

  at last:

  my half-life rushes over me, fevered and thick.

  i inhale, swallow deeply.

  take in the washed colors of the

  afterlife.

  i see them:

  the edges of the horizon, the mouth of the chasm.

  the seams of my fractured body’s fault lines.

  i see them so clearly

  ,

  see the outline of each

  as though each is a looming midnight

  tidal wave.

  there has never been a time that i was not drowning.

 

 

  .

  there has never been a time that i was not

  adrift,

  afloat,

  pulled by an

  invisible membrane.

  an undertow.

  there has never been a time that i was not haunted,

  shadowed by a mirror-self,

  cement-set

  deep within my own

  rotting half-life.


  there has never been a time that i was not

  set to spoil.

  but.

  still.

  now:

  my fault lines,

  my fissures, my rivulets—

  the scar tissue tracings that

  seal up my fractured spaces—

  they can entwine.

  can bind.

  can choke me,

  cut me off,

  tie me down.

  they can.

  or.

  they could—

  they can—

  be a lifeline.

  now.

  there has never been a time that wasn’t now.

  i know this, now.

  now, i know.

  there has never been a part of me

  that existed only as a

  photo negative.

  only as a reflection.

  only as an either/or.

  there is no such thing as mirror-mel.

  no half-life version of my being.

  there is only

  my self,

  here.

  now.

  alone.

  damaged.

  bruised.

  fault lines, fissures,

  scar-tissue tracings.

  fractured, yes

  ,

  but solid, sturdy, smooth as a slate tombstone.

  lit from the inside

  like a sliver of moonstone.

  adrift,

  but still

  afloat.

  still.

  here.

  now.

  this is my self.

  this is my now.

  and so:

  i blink.

  i breathe:

  in.

  and out.

  i reel.

  i rise.

  i glance at the rimless reflecting pools of

  shelly’s dead-eyed gaze,

  another not-mother, not-sister,

  not-self, swirling in her own

  whirlpool;

  drowned, delirious.

  she is not my shadow-self,

  but rather,

  a darkened cloud of potent, poisoned

  chaos.

  she is.

  and

  i

  can be

  the

  light.

  i can.

  there is

 

  a

  lifeline.

  a way to fight the tide.

  a sliver of moonstone, lit from the

  inside.

  even here.

  even now.

  there is a foothold,

  a path carved

  deep within the cracks and crags

 

  of the desert canyons.

  and it is—

  it can be—

  mine.

  Henry says:

  there is no before.

  just now.

  an always, ever-spinning,

  infinite

  now.

  but.

  now:

  alone,

  without the premise,

  the promise of

  a family,

  i am: adrift.

  but still: afloat.

  i know that,

  now.

  now,

  i know.

  so:

  in the now—

  from deep within the tide pools of

  my own,

  my only

  now—

  i lunge forward, swift and sure.