I grind my teeth together as my burning flesh cries out for mercy. There is nothing I can do. The artist keeps the buzzing gun pressed solidly against my skin and seems to have no intention of stopping.
Until he does. And, looking very pleased with himself, he soaks paper towels in green soap and wipes them across my leg. Again, I grit my teeth, and again, my skin cries out for help.
“So, you should wash your new tattoo three to five times a—”
“I know,” I say, cutting him off as I try to hand him the money I owe him. “Ain’t my first rodeo.”
“Okay, but you should really—”
“Sorry, but I don’t have time to hear the spiel again. Places to be.” I start towards the door, then turn back around to notice his stunned expression. “Thanks, by the way.”
The frigid Reno air sends bullets into my bare legs, and even though I knew my new tattoo would sting, I’m not prepared for it to send a shockwave through my leg that causes me to end up on the cement before I even register that I am falling.
Several moments pass before I even attempt to get up. My leg continues to pulsate.
I feel a heart growing in the place where I have been tattooed.
***
My mother is tapping the dining table with her fork. “Peter? Peter?”
I look down at my hand which I have subconsciously been running back and forth along my throbbing leg. I then look up to meet my mother’s wide eyes, as she bites her glossy lips. “Sorry. What?”
“You’re rubbing your leg. What’s wrong?”
“Oh. Nothing. I got a tattoo today, and it hurts. That’s all.”
“Another one? What now?”
“Yes, another one. I’d show you, but it’s hidden under my pants, and I don’t think a restaurant is the place to pull them down.”
“Oh, Peter,” she says with a laugh, as she brings a fork full of spaghetti up to her shiny lips. I try not to let her see my disgust as her wet chops wrap around the prongs. “By the by, I asked you about Julie. You haven’t mentioned her in a while.”
“Yeah, that’s probably due to the fact that I haven’t seen her in a while.”
“Define ‘a while.’”
I rub my hand along my leg again, this time consciously. “Um, about one date.”
“One date? I finally find you the perfect girl, and you never even give her a chance. Why do you always do this?”
Because I have no desire for physical intimacy with another human being and am repulsed by the natural functions of my fellow man. “I don’t know, I guess I just have difficulty connecting with people.”
My mother giggles, and I make the mistake of attempting eye contact. I bring my napkin to my mouth as I try to remove the image of her half-chewed meatballs from my mind. “No you don’t, sweetheart.”
“How can you claim that? You aren’t living my daily life.”
“Because I see you constantly sabotaging yourself. Like when you quit your job and lived five years in poverty.”
“I wasn’t in poverty just because I wasn’t as rich as you are.”
“Well, you moved into an apartment and were eating frozen meals every day.”
“So? That’s what I wanted to do. And why are you trying to tell me how I feel?”
“I’m not. But you can’t say you have trouble connecting with people when you spend so much time with me. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“We have a natural connection. It’s unavoidable.”
“So you’d avoid it if you could?”
“That’s not what I meant. Can we just drop it, please?”
“Is this about your father?”
“What?” I didn’t mean for it to come out as a shout. “What are you talking about?”
“Well, maybe if he hadn’t left when you were little, maybe if he hadn’t done all the things he did, you wouldn’t have these issues.”
“They’re not issues. I’m fine. I just don’t want to date anyone, okay? Can you please just accept that?”
“But are you happy?”
“Yes, Mother. I’m happy.”
Truth be told, I have never understood the meaning of the word. I’ve never understood sadness, either.
I am perched inches away from my body at all times, as I attempt to navigate through the fog that surrounds me.
***
The apartment is hardly any warmer than outside. As I walk through the door, I am hit by the smell of piss. I flip on the light switch and turn to my left, where Angel has once again peed on the blanket that is spread along the green couch. She is trotting away towards the bedroom already, and I see her tail just as it disappears into the hallway. I should have been mad, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.
I pick the blanket up off the couch and bring it to my bedroom to throw it in the laundry hamper. Angel is sprawled out along the bed, her tortoiseshell stomach begging to be petted. Even though I know she doesn’t deserve it, I walk over to the edge of the bed, get down to my knees, and rub her belly. The vibrations from her purrs ricochet through my body. One of the few things in the world that gives me the true feeling of peace.
“Just try to stop being a brat, okay?” I ask her, as I pet her behind her ears.
Angel tilts her head back to lick my fingers. I take it as a yes before heading to the kitchen for a beer.
The pulsating coming from my new tattoo begins to feel less like a heartbeat and more like the tearing of my flesh. I cry out and fall to the floor, leaning my back against the wall as I rub my hand against my leg. Despite the feeling of my flesh tearing itself from my body, my skin doesn’t feel any different than normal against my hand.
I put my other hand up against the wall in order to push myself forward. My knees find their way into the carpet, and I begin to unbuckle my belt and drop my pants. I then fall back against the wall and pull my pants off the rest of the way.
The tattoo I am looking at is not the same one I got this morning. Despite it still being in the general shape of an hourglass, it has twisted and warped and looks far larger, spreading across a wider section of my leg. A heart is at the bottom of the tattoo, jutting out from a section of broken glass that I am sure I had not asked for. As I look closer, and gaze at the sand in the bottom of the hour glass, I notice a face—a shadowy face, with two black eyes, a dark nose, and a wide grin. The heart below it begins to pulsate.
I pull my cell phone from my pants and dial the number of the tattoo artist. At the very least, I can find out if he took some liberties on the design. I saw the stencil, but I was in such a hurry to get out of the shop, I hadn’t taken a good look at it. Maybe he changed it as he tattooed. Maybe it was supposed to be like this.
“Viking Ink. This is Michael. How can I help you?”
“Hi, Michael,” I say, still running my hand up and down my leg. “It’s Peter. I just got home and took a look at the tattoo. I was wondering if you changed anything after the initial stencil.”
“Uh, changed anything? Like how do you mean?”
“You know. Added anything, warped the design somehow, anything like that.”
“No, man. The stencil was how I tattooed it. Why? Is something wrong?”
I consider telling him everything. Then I consider only telling him about the face. It’s the least shocking and could have unintentionally been put in the design. Like how some people see Jesus in their toast. But eventually, I say, “No” and let him go.
Angel is rubbing her head against my leg. I quickly pick her up and carry her back to the room. She mews at me as I place her back on the bed and pet her head until she lies back down.
“I’m sorry, Angel,” I say, as I run my fingers through her soft fur. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
I consider lying down myself. It’s only 6 P.M., but I am one rough day away from needing a full 24 hours of sleep. But will I even fall asleep if I try?
I decide I won’t, and go to the spare bedroom where my paintings are. After I told my mother I’d quit my job at the tax agency, I lied and told her a few months later that I picked up a job as an accountant for a big company. I never specified a company in particular, except to say “they deal in electronics.” Her response was, “How painfully boring,” and she never asked too many questions about it after that.
The truth is, I finally began to pursue my dream of becoming a painter. I sell my pieces online while I work a part-time job as a waiter. It’s rough reliving my twenties, and at first, I was worried the lack of real job security would wind me up back in the hell that was the suit-and-tie. As it turns out, I’m fine living in an apartment and serving people who give me 5% tips as long as I get to do what I really love.
I begin to paint a baby’s skull detached from its body, trapped inside of an hour glass. The rest of the child’s skeleton is in an unmarked grave. The skeleton’s heart lies on top of it, weeping. Its tears flow down into the ground to be reunited with its body, while the skull smiles.
***
My mother had blood dripping down her legs. She held my confused, four-year-old body in her arms. All I could think about was my soaked t-shirt, and how it felt the way her legs looked. She whispered in my ear that my sister was gone, but I didn’t know what she meant by that.
My grandmother picked me up that night and told me my mother needed to be rushed to the hospital. I asked her where my father was, and she said she hoped he was in Hell.
After my mother returned from the hospital, my grandmother stayed with us for a while. I heard them talking when they thought I was asleep. That is how I found out he raped my mother and caused her to miscarriage. That is how I found out they thought he was a murderer.
I waited by the window at 5:30 P.M. every day. I always thought he would come back if I just prayed for it hard enough.
***
I am woken up by my burning leg. The skin stretches and pulls. The muscle beneath feels like a mass of bruises. It’s still dark in my room, and when I force my head to the side to look at my alarm clock, it reads 4:35 A.M.
I sit up and turn on my bedside lamp before pulling away the blanket. The hourglass no longer looks like an hourglass, but has warped and stretched so far across my leg that it now looks like nothing more than uneven circles with more uneven circles inside of it. Still, the face inside looks exactly the same, but has grown larger and now covers nearly my entire calf. The heart protruding from the hourglass is no longer contained within my calf, but has now grown so large that it reaches all the way down to my foot. The pulse is now rapid.
I climb out of bed, and when my foot meets the carpet, the heart’s pulse speeds up even more. I go to the bathroom and get in the shower, but as the water begins to hit my tattooed leg, it feels like my lungs are filling up with hot water. I push open the shower door and fall to my knees in front of the toilet. As I dry heave for what feels like ten solid minutes, the tattoo’s heartbeat slows down to a crawl.
Despite still feeling water in my lungs, I can’t cough anymore, and I fall down to the floor. The longer I stare at the ceiling, the more vividly I see the face from my tattoo. As it comes clearer into focus, it begins to laugh. Then the laughing turns to screaming. Then the screaming turns to crying. I’m about to crawl back to my bedroom to get away from it when its mocking is interrupted by Angel crawling on top of me and peering down at me.
“Thank you,” I say with a groan, as the world around us warps and blurs. I force my eyes shut and keep my hand firmly on her back, as I attempt to keep myself grounded in reality.
What if she isn’t real, either? What if the only intruder in this world is me?
***
Michael looks at the tattoo and back at me multiple times. I am close to yelling at him to tell me what he’s doing when he finally says, “So, what am I supposed to be seeing here?”
“Is that a joke?”
“Uh, no, man. I have no idea what’s wrong with it.”
“How can you not see what’s wrong when everything is wrong?” I walk over to the full-length mirror hanging on the wall. The tattoo is even more warped than when woke up this morning. The top of the hourglass has shrunk to the point that it is impossible to tell what it used to be. The bottom of the hourglass has ballooned out so much that it appears to be nothing but a black oval. It’s impossible to read any part of the tattoo—besides the face and the heart. “Are you really going to stand there and tell me you don’t see how much of a mess this is?”
He walks up next to me and looks in the mirror. “I really have no idea what’s wrong. What are you seeing that I’m not?”
I look him dead in the eyes. He is not smiling or holding back a laugh. He doesn’t see it. I pull out my wallet and hand him a twenty. He starts to ask me what it’s for, but I am already halfway to the door and have no intention of stopping. The world is blurring around me. I am watching myself walk to my car. I am screaming with my head against the steering wheel, but I can’t hear anything. I start driving, but I don’t know where I’m going.
It isn’t until I’ve walked halfway across the cemetery parking lot that the pulse in my leg forces me back into my body. The force is so great that it pushes me into the cement. My hands are against it, and I am able to push myself back up and keep walking.
The pulsing in my leg is going faster than it ever has as I stand in front of the unmarked grave. I sit down in the grass, which is still wet from the morning rain, and lift up my pant leg. Below the heart, new tattoos have formed—tears which cover my foot.
My pants feel more and more wet. Images of my mother’s bloody legs flash through my mind. But all I can really think about is my father.
I know I should be crying for my sister who never had a chance to live. I know this grave has the remains of her fetus beneath it, not his. But I might as well have asked them to carve “David” into the stone, because that’s who I cry for each time I fall upon this spot. I beg God to forgive him when no one else will.
***
I hand the painting to my mom, and she stares at it for a long time. The overwhelming amount of lit candles in her living room is making me gradually more nauseous, but I need to hear her say it. She hasn’t said it since the day it happened.
“When did you have time to paint this?”
My nails are digging into my arm before I realize it. That’s all she can say? “After work. But what do you think of it?”
“You always tell me how busy you are. I’m amazed you managed to find the time to paint something so grand.”
“Mother,” I say, as I scoot next to her on the couch and place my hand over hers, “do you like it?”
When she finally looks at me, she’s crying. “Is it . . . ?” She trails off, but she sets the painting down on her lap and places her hand over her stomach.
“Yes, it is. I’ve been thinking about it so much lately. I’m not sure why.” I eye the unmarked grave in the painting, then look back at her. “What were you going to name her?”
My mother looks back at the painting, and slides her fingers along the headstone. “I wanted to name her Delilah, but your father hated it. He wanted to name her Mary. That’s why your name is Peter, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I wanted to name you Mars. Maybe it’s a little out there, but—”
“No, Mother. I love it.” I take the painting from her hands and place it on the coffee table. I sit down next to her and pull her into my arms. “And I love you. I’m sorry I have such a hard time showing it, but I do.”
“I know you do, Peter. I love you, too.”
As I hold her in my arms, my legs begin to burn more than they ever have before. It feels like I am dropping my leg into a fire as someone pulls the skin away from my body.
But as I cry, it’s not from the pain of my leg. The pain my father has caused my mother has finally hit me, and for the first time it is Delilah I miss, not him.
***
I call in sick to the restaurant, as I can’t even get out of my bed. Every time Angel tries to rub up against my burning leg, I grab her and make her sit on my chest. Each time, she attempts to crawl back down towards my leg, and each time, I pull her back up.
By the time noon rolls around, no amount of television is able to distract me from the pain. I shut it off and set the remote down on the pillow next to me, which Angel immediately tackles. With her purring body away from me and no television noise canceling out the buzzing in my ears, I turn my attention to my leg.
I can’t keep living like this.
I have to do something.
I have to get away.
Why am I forced to live in the Hell my father deserved? If I hadn’t sat there waiting for him every day, if I hadn’t cried for him so often, if I hadn’t tried to ignore all the pain he caused the people around me, would things be different now? Would I be serving coffee with a new tattoo, instead of lying in bed and trying to distract myself from the pain?
Why can’t I let him go? Why can’t I stop avoiding my pain? Why can’t I face everything he’s done head on and allow myself to heal like a normal person? Like a person who doesn’t fly out of their body every opportunity they get, like a person who isn’t afraid to let people into their lives?
I attempt to sit up, but it’s useless. The pain from my leg has now spread and every time I try to lift myself up, I feel like I am being stabbed in every square inch of my body. So instead, I fall. Fall right onto the floor, face first. It feels like my nose is bleeding, and my head begins to pound, but I start to crawl to the kitchen.
It takes me half an hour and I have to take several breaks, but I reach the cabinet under the sink. I open the door and looking back at me are my cleaning supplies and tools. I reach for the hand saw, set it down beside me, and then grab my pocket knife.
I pull my cell phone from my pocket and dial my mother’s number. When she picks up, she tries to start asking me why I’m not at work.
“Mother, please. Can you please do something for me?”
“You don’t sound good, Peter. Are you sick?”
“Yes, I am, which is why I need your help, and why I’m not at work.”
“Well, what do you need help with?”
“Can you come by tonight and feed Angel? I haven’t gotten out of bed all day, and I need to sleep some more. Can you please do this for me?”
“All right, dear. I’ll see you later then?”
“Yes, I’ll see you later. I love you, Mom.”
“I love you, too, Peter.”
I set the phone down and then force myself to sit up. I set my back against the flat part of the counter wall. I undo my belt and place it into my mouth.
I then pick up the pocket knife.
Delilah has long black hair. She rides her bike down the street behind me. She falls off and scrapes her knee. I carry her back to the house and place a Band-Aid over it. I kiss it and tell her how strong she is.
Delilah has short hair. The night after her first day of high school, she comes to my apartment and tells me about the bullies who follow her home. They throw rocks at her and call her names. I wait half-way between the high school and my mother’s house and beat them up as they follow her home the next day.
Delilah dyes her hair blonde. She dates a boy named Kyle and changes her major to be able to spend more time with him. He gets her pregnant and runs away. I hold her hand in the car outside of the abortion clinic and promise her I won’t tell Mom.
Delilah has long black hair. She marries a man named Rainn. They have two boys and a girl.
David is a shadow. Delilah never even asks what his name is. She doesn’t have room in her life to care about the man who never loved our mother. She only has room for love.
I remove the skin from my leg and am now looking at my bone. I have the saw in my hand as I picture Delilah’s death. Delilah has gray hair. She dies of a stroke. She is sixty, and she is loved.
She is loved.
I hack through the bone and am overwhelmed by pain. I focus on the grinding as my teeth clamp down on the belt. I am here. I am real.
I make my way through my bone and though I would love to embrace my body’s desire to black out, I have to finish. I have to let it go.
The saw finds its way to the other side of my leg. I think of Julie. I think of how much I would love to hold her only once, just to see if I can.
I look at my detached leg. The tattoo is an hourglass—now impossibly small—with black sand inside of it. I laugh, and fall down to the floor. I hear Angel meowing. I hear myself laughing.
I feel Angel’s fur against my face. I hear her purrs.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I love you, Angel.”
As I close my eyes, I see the face from my tattoo. It fades into focus and becomes Delilah, whose long black hair cascades around me as she leans down to kiss my forehead.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.