China Knowles—Thursday Night—Fire Pit
I am China, the girl who swallowed herself, and I’d like to turn myself right side out again before I see Shane. I want him to see my skin. My eyes. My hair. I don’t think I have particularly nice skin, eyes, or hair, but he might think so.
Maybe if he thinks so, I will, too.
Like a mirror.
People can be mirrors for other people. It happens all the time. Probably more than it should.
Burning my journal was fun, and I look around my room for anything else I should burn before I leave. I look through my desk drawers and my closet. I only find a stuffed monkey that Dad bought me when I was seven and he’d been on a business trip to San Diego. He showed me a lot of pictures from the zoo there.
It wasn’t the same as going there with him.
I decide to burn the monkey, even though I have no particular animosity toward it.
Before I leave my room to go downstairs to light the monkey on fire, I see the one last reminder of the night that changed everything. The sweater. The sweater that he unbuttoned slowly at first, until I asked him to stop. The sweater missing its bottom three buttons. The sweater that has a tear in the last buttonhole. The sweater that acted like my mother’s handcuffs.
It was my favorite sweater.
Mom found it in my trash can on trash day—a Friday—three days later—and told me that it cost her and Dad too much to just throw it away.
“You always loved it,” she said.
“I don’t want it anymore,” I’d answered.
“Well… you don’t just—I mean—I…”
Before she could see the missing buttons, I pulled it from the trash can and balled it up in my arms. “Forget it,” I said. “I guess I do want it.”
As I take it down the steps, I wonder what silk smells like when it’s on fire. I look at the monkey’s head, peering out from under my right arm, and I wonder what crazy chemicals will come out of it. For a minute I think about dressing the monkey in the sweater and then decide that the monkey should burn without shame. If nothing else, it’s a good cover for my burning the perfect sweater in case Mom catches me. When I get to the living room, I decide that the fireplace is too small.
It’s a cloudless night. I can see at least forty stars—even with our development’s streetlight system. I can hear the music from Chick’s Bar a block away. I can imagine adults there, bitching about their jobs and saying things like Thursday is the new Friday.
As I place the sweater and the monkey in the copper patio fire pit, there is a scream. It’s a scream like someone has discovered a dead body. It’s a scream like someone won the lottery. It’s both kinds of scream.
It’s coming from my basement.
I ignore it and I take a lighter to the monkey’s tail and watch it burn.
Within seconds, I’m regretful about the monkey. Dad never meant to hurt me with those pictures and his stories about the zoo. I feel like a spoiled brat.
But as the sweater burns, I remember what a spoiled brat looks like.
What a Spoiled Brat Looks Like
The weatherman
makes weather, kneads
weather like a baker
kneads bread.
Once it’s baked
it’s no surprise
when he says
“Look! Bread!”
is not good weather
for a picnic
or a ball game.
The weather he makes
is best for
staying indoors
and
staying quiet.
On his map it says
you were too ugly anyway.
On his map it says
you don’t even have
a nice body.
On his map it says
I never liked you
and you smell weird.
Why are you crying?
I don’t cry when I watch the sweater burn. Or I do cry, but they are tears of relief. Shane knows these tears. We have cried them together. When we meet, we clutch each other like fledglings and we tweet out soft sobs about our spoiled brats.
Shane’s spoiled brat is a man old enough to be his father.
Shane’s spoiled brat is in jail.
Mine is not.
Irenic Brown asked me, when I was a rectum maybe four weeks ago as we passed in the hallway at school, why I hadn’t killed myself yet. I didn’t have an answer for him, and I don’t have one now.
There’s another scream. This time it’s from behind me on the deck.
“What are you doing?” Mom screeches.
“I’m burning something,” I say.
She squints into the fire pit. “Is that the monkey?”
“Yes.”
She looks perplexed. She is wearing her latex bodysuit with chains and hooks. If I was normal I’d look perplexed, too.
“Do you need to talk about anything?” she asks.
“No.”
“Your hair looks pretty,” she says.
“Thanks.”
“Okay,” she says, as if she suddenly realizes that she’s standing in plain sight on her development deck wearing nothing but a latex bodysuit. “I guess I’d better get back.”
“I’m going to bed,” I say.
“Good night.”
“Good night.”
When I get back to my room, I unpack the curling iron from my backpack and I pull out my phone. I set it so my ID is blocked.
And I dial Irenic Brown’s number.