Effigy

Effigy

My little brother has the bones for ballet but instead he runs track. Three of his trophies are on display, golden twelve-year-olds mid-sprint atop them. When we light the fire below them their muscles glint orange, they melt.

He is sick in bed today, from running too long in the cold. I am watching him from a crack in the door. I am watching him breathe from a crack in the door. He is wheezing.

He has a blue carpet and a blue backpack and a bowl of red candy. He has a shelf full of plastic cars and helicopters and soldiers and he has a desk with a silver computer and he has a bowl of red candy sitting next to the computer. He eats it whenever he wants. It isn’t fair.

She never ate any candy either, but we’re different.

He has a dresser that reaches the ceiling. The doors to it are closed, but I know what is behind them. Four red t-shirts and three blue t-shirts and a soccer jersey with someone else’s name on it and a black button up for Sundays and blue jeans and ten pairs of white boxer-briefs. Nothing fits me.

He makes a muttering noise and turns to face me, I can see his cheekbones through his skin. The line that his blanket makes over his body is straight and underneath is the faint outline of his ribs, his firm and fatless calves. His eyes flutter and almost catch me. I close the door.

The trophies are still racing on the mantle. I walk past them. My eyes linger. The carpet is thick and soft, my feet are buried in it, they are warm and I have stopped moving. I want to get out of the living room; I blink my way to my bedroom.

I have a window. I sit on the gray comforter and stare out at the snow. After a moment, it is dyed with sunset. Another, and it is black. I am sitting on this bed and killing the time in my lap.

It is starry out when my mother’s voice rings out– bells and glass. It is the voice of the mothers in the movies. I like that she calls me from my room to go and do things, I like that she gives me my role. I don’t like her face; she wears too much powder on it, and when she doesn’t, there are creases. She is calling me from the kitchen, she is calling me so she doesn’t have to leave the cooking. I like that too.

I am shivering in the hallway. I hadn’t noticed that draft before, when I was looking at my brother. It is all around me. The hallway smells like chicken because of the oven in the kitchen. I am supposed to be doing something. I cannot remember what it is. There was a question. She wanted to know. I will walk to my mother in the kitchen.

The window on the door to my father’s study is frosted. He is inside keeping our house big. He has a briefcase and a mahogany bookshelf and a photo of his family framed on his desk. He is the best father to have. One day I will own what he owns.

The bathroom doesn’t smell like acid during the day. It used to, but she was doing it wrong.

The fire is crackling in the living room and I linger in front of the flames this time; I want them to chase the cold out of me. They don’t.

My mother is sprinkling green over a tray of potatoes. The window above the sink is fogged over, there are bubbles in the pot. Everything smells like cooking meat and lemon juice. It isn’t fair. She looks up from the pot and smiles: there are lines on her face. Where is that powder?

“Honey, are you eating with us tonight?” Cooking meat and lemon juice.

“No.” And never will. “I’m not hungry.”

“Still? When your sister– well, it’s different for girls.”

Paper skin and bird bones. I’d wanted to forget such an ugly bird.

“I’m going on my walk now.”

“Take a coat.”

The fireplace is licking at those golden boys again. I am watching. My face is warming itself before we go out. Those boys are still at it. Those boys on fire are doing it because they are pure, they are pure because they are doing it. Their chins and thighs are soft from the glow below them, they drip. My face turns away and my eyes don’t. I have two pockets of heat in my head.

I am numb. I am wearing some neon green anorak with pockets for syrup and tissues. Behind me, behind the door, on the white coat rack, is my little brother’s small blue jacket. It is beautiful, it is inside and away and much too small on me. This thing that I am wearing hugs me too tightly, it squeezes sick from my stomach. It was hers, mine is in a snowdrift somewhere. She shrank underneath this sour cloak until it swallowed her up, then she had a little blue coat to match my brother’s. She didn’t stop being swallowed, it never fit her right. She looked like a dead tree. This jacket smells like a car air-freshener.

I leave it on the dirt by the patch of pine and the scattered needles. It makes a bigger forest. I let my shirt flap free like a wraith or an angel; I hope you can see some ribs. My brother wears a shirt like this. He gets up for water and drapes it over his shoulders, over his stomach, over his thighs that drip from the fire. He looks carved from soft cloth. It isn’t fair. Nobody carved me.

The town power lines have strung themselves up in lights and shoes and the American flagpoles are pale with frost and the moon is gone. Every night I walk to lose and every night I lose feeling in my fingers and every night all I’ve got to remind myself that I have hands is the pink glow lapping at them like February wind. Everyone puts the same fat electric Santa on their front yards; his red belly turns rose once you’re ten yards away.

I walk while they eat. There is chicken in my little brother’s mouth, between his white teeth. It isn’t fair. His arms are thin and he reaches across the table for the salt. My mother passes it to him. My father is at the head with his shoulders and tie. My chair is empty and there is a chicken bone in my little brother’s mouth.

I walk while she wastes. She is in a room or at a table or in the snow. She is miles away and she is all cartilage and skeleton, she is too far. I don’t think about her face and I don’t think about her body. I don’t want to. I don’t know how.

In the little corners where the pavement meets the lip of the sidewalk there is black ice. There are no birds out this late, all I can see is a face in the glaze.

There are tire tracks on the road from the kids. I used to see them, I used to see the light-up shoes and the ballerina tutus and the helmets with dinosaur spikes. Now I just hear their bells on the next block over. I don’t know why they don’t come around anymore. I miss smiling at them through the curtains.

I have red shoes with white laces. My little brother has the ballet bones and the candies and the trophies but I have red shoes with white laces. They are mine and they fit me. I am looking at them, my eyes are shining those reds back at themselves, the top bone on my spine is jutting out and making a lump. I stop looking down. There is a big white sign with blurry letters on it. The light makes the pavement sparkle. I stop looking down. There is glass and through that there are rows of plastic-wrapped items. It is unimportant what they are. I do not want to know what they are. There is a machine with blue and red goo. It is unimportant what it does. I do not want to know what it does. There is no one at the counter who should be there.

A girl is singing. The speakers crackle every time she deepens her voice. She wants a turkey, she wants a whole chocolate cake, she wants a bowl of red candy. It is funny.

The counter man isn’t watching me, he is watching my hands. He has a black curly beard. His fingernails are clean. He must’ve cleaned them when he saw me outside. He must’ve known to clean them. There are crinkling bags and a cup the size of my head and a candy bar. He takes them from my arms and beeping starts. He has an accent.

“Someone’s hungry!”

I call him something nasty.

I don’t wait to pay before I start. Something is shaking. I let my mind go white, all there is is chocolate and salt and other tasteless things that matter only because they can drop down into a child’s stomach. Something is shaking. He puts the other hand on my other shoulder,

“You gonna choke, slow down.”

I shove another packet into my mouth and tell him what he is through the crumbs.

The wind is starting up. There was glass on this curb before I sat down, and I didn’t think to move it. The glow of the gas station and its man is lighting up the little pricks of red on my fingertips. I am sick. Little brother is at home, chewing on a bone. There are headlights. They pass; they are not for me. I am not supposed to be swallowing garbage. Another packet is opened. Somewhere big sister is pouring herself down a drain. This rotten stuff is cursing me in front of the golden boys; how will I visit with the flesh hanging off of my arms and stomach? How will they recognize me, those clean faces and heat-thin bodies, how will they know to finally say, “We know who you are, and it is who you say you are,” how will I ever be adored as I adore?

There is bile and fingers in my throat. These bathroom tiles break your knees slowly, that’s why she left on a stretcher. This is the angle she knelt at when she thought I wasn’t watching. Someone is behind me, the little boy in the white shirt. His mouth is half open and cherry colored. His cheeks and stomach are distended from dinner, he doesn’t look at all like the boys in the living room anymore. If I open my mouth, I’ll stain him. His white shirt. After a moment, he pours from the faucet and leaves. His footsteps stop halfway down the hall and I can feel his eyes on my neck. He isn’t so far gone yet.

His watching is licking at my back like the flames on those runners. There is a whole chicken in his stomach and he is licking at my back and he wants to know how to tie down all the stomach that grows in him, how to stop all the flesh from becoming cancerous, he wants to know should he burn that candy and the answer is yes, because his perfect ballet body wants to keep itself that way, wants to keep like the golden trophies he’s melting, there is only so long he gets to be so little and beautiful before the rot overtakes. I thought he didn’t know, but here he is watching, so he does know. I can help him. I will show him. All I do is open my mouth and it’s out, the whole thing. Spilling over.

I turn to him with it down my face, I turn to him smiling. He has seen. He has recognized. He will learn and be better now. He says,

“That’s disgusting.”

He turns on me and runs to his room, he is horrified by me. I wish I could tell him that soon I will be better to look at, I wish I could tell him to listen and mimic, to be like me so we can both be like him. My mouth is shut from the sick inside it, from the residue. I cannot say a word.

I hear him gag before he slams his door– there may be hope yet.