Читать книгу Undressing The Moon - T. Greenwood - Страница 15

My body mimics that girl’s now. It has lost its softness, without the necessity of curves. There will be no babies, so there is no need for hips, and I am returning to the body I remember. In this way, nothing can hide underneath the skin’s surface anymore; I have made certain of that. What was buried is now laid bare, each new malignancy revealing itself as soon as it is born. I am prepubescent in this remembered body. And I wonder if this is how he saw me then. As possibility. As before and someday. He would be sad to see me now, though. He would be sad to know that I am dying.

I remember his fingers more than I remember his face. I suppose that’s because touching was always so much more important to me than anything a face could disclose. His fingers had a way of skipping over my skin like stones skipping across the lake. I remember lying facedown on his bed, the pills of a chenille spread beneath me, feeling like water.

The discovery of the first lump was accidental. I wasn’t looking, having given up searching a long time ago. I found it the way you stumble across a dollar bill on the sidewalk. You know you should stop to pick it up, but it also means pausing, breaking your momentum. It was like this the first time.

In my terra-cotta-colored room, I was naked and alone, my hair wet and tangled from a shower. I was swollen, aware of my breasts and hips and the softness of down. Under covers, I pretended exploration, but it was too familiar. All of this. There were no surprises in my body to be found anymore. Nothing startled me the way it used to. But there was comfort in the predictable rhythms of blood and heart and breath. It was like sleepwalking, this touching. Smoothness of skin, interruption of navel, the edge where skin seemed to stop and then start again, warmth and wetness. My seamstress fingers always working, pushing and pulling at the fabric of my body, the needle moving up and down, precise tension and speed. But when I reached for myself, held onto myself, pretending my fingers were not my own, they stumbled. Remarkably, it wasn’t fear the small knot evoked, but relief: My body could still surprise me. There were still secrets to be found. And I let my fingers linger there, the certainty of what it was no different from the certainty of a new gray hair, wiry and strong amid softness. But later, when the inevitable connections between the lump and the meaning of the lump engaged, I knew my mother had been wrong. Some things are best undiscovered.

It is for this reason that I made myself forget about what I’d found. I left it there. I dismissed it. But, like the ignored weeds in my rooftop garden, it grew. It grew and grew, until finally I couldn’t ignore it anymore. Because of my neglect, it made itself prominent. It demanded attention. It became angry.

Now, in this child’s body, nothing can hide anymore. But somehow, this remembered innocence (of bones and blood and breath) makes what is happening seem almost cruel.

Once, as we lay looking at the lake through his bedroom window, he told me that there was nothing more beautiful than dying. That violence and peace are companions, peace always preceding and following violence. I knew he was talking about his wife. About her skin and bones fractured by the windshield and dash. About the way the air was so quiet around them inside the car as she lay dying. About the absolute silence of glass after it’s broken.