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I am not alone in the house. Rob has just dropped me off after I threw up in the trash can at work. I held myself together until I got out of his truck, waving back to him as I unlock the trailer door. She is here. He is here. They both look up at me when I come in, but neither of them speak. I let my eyes pass over them like oil over a pan, like vodka over ice, and make a straight line to my bedroom. I prop my chair under the doorknob and scan my room. I need something.
The word is too much. His voice hissing into my ear, “whore, whore, whore” in rhythm to his movements. I have to get it out. I have to get the word out of me. Something sharp. Something sharp. Something sharp.
My eyes light on the picture I did for my final art project last year, the three horses caught in the storm. It is hanging by four pushpins on the paneling. I pull one pin out, testing the point by scraping it along the pad of my thumb. It doesn’t bleed. I need it to bleed. I trace the line again, faster and with more downward force, two more times, and am rewarded with a small wheel of blood. It is not enough. It is not enough. My mind rings, and I throw myself across my bed. I almost cry out but hold it back. The surging tumble of knowledge is more than I can handle. The pushpin is closed in my fist, and I slide off the other side of the bed, sitting cross-legged like I did when I was in kindergarten. Criss-cross applesauce. I kick my shoes off and peel off my socks. Whore, whore, whore. Dirty.
I scratch in the space between my ankle bone and my heel the word that has followed me all of my life, blocky, bloody, sharp, and angled. Dirty. It isn’t enough. I go for my other foot and down goes the other word, the one that he gave me as a gift on Christmas. Isn’t it true? My mother has said it often enough. I’ve known it was true all my life. I am not crying. I am cutting, scratching ugly jagged lines in my flesh, and with each scratch the tension in my head diminishes, the pressure in my chest wanes. Scratch, wipe, scratch, wipe. The sock I am wiping the blood with is dotted with sharp, red smears. The release is like a small pop in my head, and suddenly everything is calm. Scratch, wipe, scratch, wipe. One letter done, two letters, three, four then five, and when the furious scratching is done, I stare down at the wad of my bloodied sock.
I don’t have to live this life. There is power in that knowledge. I sit for a very long time with the thumbtack poised over my wrist, sweat sliding in rivulets down my spine, pooling at the waist of my jeans. I hover over my wrist, watching the tip of the tack tracing the blue vein beneath, and finally fold my hand back over it, standing up and replacing the tack in the corner of my picture. My fury is spent, and for now, my two ugly words are enough. It is with the strangest sense of peace that I feel the small tugging of the shallow cuts on my feet as I walk. I would shower but don’t want to risk leaving my room, so I change my clothes and open the bottom drawer of my dresser where I have a jar of peanut butter stashed. I dig my finger in and eat it all by itself. Soon enough I am not hungry, and for the first time in days, my mind is quiet when I go to get in bed.
There are blades in the art room. There are blades at Billups. I can’t wait to go in to work tomorrow. I can’t believe I never thought of it before. I don’t have to do this. I don’t have to do any of this. Dusk is wrapping tight around the room when I close my eyes and sleep like the dead.