China Knowles—Thursday—It’s True
I am China and I have swallowed myself and your brother, too. Last week I swallowed a little girl who didn’t know where her mother was. Tomorrow I will swallow a teacher who forgets how to teach. I don’t just swallow myself. I swallow anyone who’s willing. It keeps me from being lonely in here.
There is a girl who sobs every day in the girls’ bathroom next to the gym. I don’t know why she sobs and I don’t know who she is, but I hear her every day, sobbing. I go to that bathroom to sit down and think for a minute, and she goes there to sob. I’ve asked her if she would like me to swallow her, but she hasn’t answered me yet. I believe she’s thinking about it.
It’s a big decision, to be swallowed.
Once you’re swallowed, you can only be found by people who understand guts. Once you’re swallowed, the only way out is to push yourself back out.
I won’t be crude about it, but you know what I mean.
Lansdale would say something like, “You need to take a colossal shit and find your head in there somewhere.”
Stanzi would say something like, “It’s actually impossible to swallow yourself, you know.”
Stanzi has guts I wish I had. She always tells the truth. She can dissect any animal without fainting. She can walk by the man in the bush when the rest of us take the parallel road. She sends me postcards from where her parents take her on vacation and always signs them Love, Stanzi. I can’t even write the word love. I can’t even think about the word love. Not since Irenic Brown.
I’d bet all my father’s money that Stanzi will fly out of here with Gustav when he finishes the helicopter. She says he’ll take Lansdale, but I know it’s her. He looks at her all the time when we’re outside for the drills. Then, when she feels his stare and looks over at him, he looks somewhere else.
Irenic Brown was like that with me, too, before we started to go out. I used to think it was because we were meant to be, like Stanzi and Gustav. Turns out it was just a trick. It was all just a trick.
Some Boys Have Tricks
We believe them like
we believe the weatherman
and when he’s wrong, we shrug
and blame ourselves for
ever believing him.
The night I ran, I ran all the way back to my house. Two miles. Two miles is a long way. Two miles is a long way to think. And yet, I only thought one thing for those two miles. I thought: Run, run, run, run, run, run, run.
When I got home and into the shower, I thought about other things. Pregnancy. Diseases. Lies. Tricks. What he’d said.
Why No One Will Believe You
You are a dumb weathergirl
who cries Storm! Storm!
Every time you speak
we take you less seriously.
When we whisper in your ear
we say
Even if it snows, you’re full of shit.
Ask anyone.
You’re untrustworthy.
AP English is the one class a day where I pay some sort of attention. I like the truth. I like expression. I like the feeling of yelling like Sylvia Plath or Walt Whitman. They yelled louder than any dumb voice, and they used paper, too.
They said more than I can ever say about the truth.
The truth is upside down.
Everything is upside down.
That’s all that comes out when I try to explain why I swallowed myself.
I think I’m becoming good friends with Lansdale Cruise. Before, I thought she was just like one of my old slutty friends. Oxymoron. I can’t really call them my friends if I’m simultaneously calling them slutty, can I?
Lansdale Cruise isn’t slutty at all. She lies to protect herself. She’s a nerd, but the nerds don’t like her. She’s a popular girl, but the popular girls don’t like her. She has a secret and she won’t let me tell Stanzi. I find it hard to lie to Stanzi. We’re best friends and Lansdale is new, but still, I have to keep a promise when I make it, and it’s easy for a swallowed girl to keep secrets.
There Is Nothing Stupid About Home Economics
It’s learning how
to be independent
to do your own wash
to cook your own food.
It’s learning how to
budget so you don’t end up
a dick with ten maxed
credit cards and a mortgage
If the world explodes
as predicted
I’d want to be near
Lansdale Cruise.
She can balance
a checkbook.
A three-course meal.
She makes the best
red velvet cupcakes.
I am China—and today I can see Gustav’s helicopter. It’s a shade of red rivaled only by the color of my stomach, which is all anyone can see now. Gustav won’t look at me, and I think it’s because he knows.
It was on the Internet.
It was passed around like my parents pass around joints during their basement parties.
It wasn’t just some rumor. It was viral.
I ask Gustav how soon he thinks the helicopter will fly. He says a week or two. I tell him we still have fifty-six days of school left. He sneers and says, “What school? You mean the drills? The dogs? Test week? That’s not school.”
When I try to apologize for pissing him off, he adds, “I’ve learned more in this garage in the last nine months. Haven’t you, China? Haven’t you learned more outside school than in it?”
This is how they act—all of them—the people who know. And everyone knows. Why would anyone respect that girl? I remember when it happened to Tamaqua de la Cortez. I called her a slut myself. When they all called her a stupid spic who deserved everything she got, I nodded my head.
You know what I wanted?
Silence.
And look what I got.
Silence.
I walk out of Gustav’s garage and head home. I take the road with the dangerous bush. When the man steps out, I punch him right in the teeth and he falls backward into his green dungeon. I don’t run. I walk and I shake the pain out of my fist. He doesn’t follow me.
Did you know they don’t like girls who fight back? That they usually give up on us? They’ve done studies. It’s true.
Except sometimes it’s not.