Issue 2: embodied

Mom always said her bones creak before a storm. I could never hear them, but she was right about the weather. I wish I had the notice this time.

“How are you feeling?” Mary asks, her hand finding my bony shoulder.

I don’t pull away from her, but… “It doesn’t feel right today.”

She pulls back, turns away, and looks out the main window of our small apartment.

“I know I said I’d be okay today, but I need time.”

“And what am I supposed to do?” Mary demands, turning frustrated to face me. “Isolate myself for months when all I want to do is touch my partner?”

“I’m struggling here.” I can feel the weight of the words as they come out of my chest. “I didn’t ask you to take care of me, I asked you to give me some space. I,” I stutter, “I don’t feel like I’m welcome here—I don’t even feel welcome in my own body. I haven’t my whole life.”

I look back to her, expecting anger. And maybe it’s there, sure, but I can see her shoulders stiff with concern, her breathing shallow with anxiety, and her eyes wet with confusion. She’s never known how to react to me.

In the moment of silence, I try to lift my hand up to hers, but it just… never bends properly. Hasn’t since I got it at my fifth birthday. I’m not sure what to do at this point. I can’t look at her when I speak. But I won’t disappoint the floor.

“And you’re making it worse,” I say.

Her feet don’t move straight away. As anticipated, eventually, they turn to our bedroom. But they stop in the doorframe.

“I guess I’m the piece of shit that’s ruining your life.”

My eyes dash to her.

“No, you’re—”

She slams the door.

Anger sets in my chest. I hate this body. The pale fleshy piece of shit hand-me-down body that I can’t even use properly. I can’t handle it. And now it’s someone else’s problem too.

“Fine,” I yell back. “If this is what you want so bad, you can take it! It’s yours.”

I stick my hands down my pants, rip off my flaccid dick, and chuck it; I can feel the loose flesh tear like paper and the old stitches caked in dry blood snap like elastic. The dick bounces off the door with a soft squish, lands with a rigid thunk, and then twitches under my foot when I stomp on it passing to the bathroom.

I need to cool off.

I strip my clothes for a shower. I can’t look at my body. I just let the hair sit entirely over my face and block my view, sucking up icy water when I breathe. Drying off, I see myself in the mirror. It’s unavoidable and unfortunate. Large, broad shoulders and chest—one that makes it impossible to find good bras. My tits are two different sizes. The larger one sags to infinity and the other one is flat and depressing. I have to stuff my bras to balance them, or people stare on the street. I have off-center stitching down the middle of my torso that curves off around my left hip, permanently identifying a body that is at least two parts of a whole; the skin on the left is pale, loose, and yielding to the touch, while the right is tanned, almost burned, rough like sandpaper, and hairy in patches. My legs are two fucking different lengths. I can’t even walk properly. I have to find kids in the apartment complex to trade shoes with because one leg is thick and muscular, and the other is narrow and waifish.

And between all that is the occasional drop of blood, dripping from my crotch. I shove a bunch of toilet paper down there until I can find something else that works.

I towel off and apply some body lotion, which I don’t really care for, but old habits are hard to kick. It might be someone else’s one day, just like Mom said. They could have it for all I care.

Mary’s there on the couch when I step out, looking pensive at the ground, hands folded together.

She looks forward, stands, and puts a hand on her neck. “Hey, I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

“I ordered some food. Thought maybe we could just cuddle for a bit.”

I nod, and we sit on the couch—just a bit uncomfortable with the wad of toilet paper.

She wraps an arm around me and we listen to some music. We Lost the Sea is what she wants to play. I never really understood the genre, but she calls it calm metal music. Which I didn’t know was a thing before her. But it feels kind of melancholic.

“Hey. I know your mother’s funeral is this weekend,” Mary says softly after we settle in. “And I said I wouldn’t have time, but—"

“No, it’s okay. I think I’d rather go alone.”

“Sure.”

Another quiet. It’s nice to be held, to feel like I’m not…

“Oh, um. I cleaned off your dick. It’s just on the shelf when you want it.”

I smile weakly. “You can keep it. Gift from my aunts. My dad was supposed to give me something when I was old enough, but he didn’t. So when they passed away, I was given the one they shared. But it’s never felt right.”

“Yeah that thing can take a beating. It’s gotta be into weird shit.”

 ***

I am the big spoon tonight. The more I thought, the more I couldn’t handle being held. We put LED stick stars all through the room so on the nights I couldn’t sleep I’d have something nice to look at. I roll back under the sheets and see the rainbow glow cycle along her skin. I run a finger gingerly over her silky spine as green shifts to blue, following the change in the hues, until I feel the little bump where her parts connect on her lower back. But I can’t see where her scars end and she begins. Her stitching is too good. It’s like she grew her own body, and wasn’t given old scrap parts from corpses. I get why she can’t understand.

 ***

The funeral is quiet, just a small space out in my mother’s garden where her body is laid out under an ash tree. Dad died when I was a teen, aunties, too, and I was the only kid. So it’s just me, Uncle, and a few of my mom’s friends. They are all like her too—strange misfit hand-me-down people that feel freakish. I’ve seen those shoulders before; those are the ones grandma broke fighting a grizzly. And those feet, Jess traded them to me in middle school—they’re covered in so many calluses you could walk over Lego and not feel a thing. Mom must have handed out our scrap bin to them.

I guess I’m not any better.

Uncle is handling the funeral. He’s a strange man whose right eye looks a little deflated in its socket and has a keyhole shaped iris. His other one looks like the pupil is being sucked away under its iris to the corner of his eye by a fishhook. He could have gotten rid of them, but he said he liked the way people looked at him. He’s the same one I got the “family hands” from. I never really understood what that meant. The knuckles crack, but only when they haven’t moved in hours, like the sockets just move themselves. Considering who he is, I probably wasn’t meant to understand.

“Now, as per her wishes, the pick-and-pull. She wanted her only child to go first.”

The pick-and-pull. I don’t know anyone else that does it.

Uncle steps in for a hug as I get close to the body. He’s squishy. I guess that makes sense. Grandpa drowned and bloated, and Uncle’s still using his body. I don’t linger in the hug.

I almost don’t want to get close to her. It doesn’t feel real. But out of respect, I guess, I step forward. I have to clench my hands to stop the shaking.

Her face is calm, almost dignified. A far cry from the neurotic hoarder I knew her to be. I feel my shoulders drop when I see her face. At least she is smiling.

I look her naked body up and down. She was maybe fifty, not that old, and all her parts looked younger than that. Sure, there are some burn scars on her arms and stomach from when Great-uncle Steve burned himself on chilli, and her feet are still green from some mould she couldn’t get rid of, but she otherwise looked okay. I guess she appreciated that she’d live on in someone else’s body.

The landing strip though… I wonder if it came like that.

I don’t want to be like her. Everything was hers, except for her problems. I was pinned for hours under a stack of boxes full of trash that she hoarded, and she was angry I made a mess. She made me eat lasagne for days because she didn’t like the recipe she made me cook, and it would be a waste of money to toss it. I organized the room I slept in to make space for my books, the only thing that was mine, and she yelled at me for two hours because I had no right to touch her things. I was surprised her voice kept strong that long. I was a child.

I don’t want to be like her, but I can’t afford new parts. To survive, I need to take something.

Her left leg is roughly the same length as my right. I’ll get a little shorter, but at least I won’t need a cane anymore. And… her female reproductive parts. I want those too. It feels a little weird getting them from my mother. Maybe that feeling will go away.

Uncle borrows her hands. Says he knows how to make the pair work like the family’s for the next child. I guess her friends take what they can, and the rest we donate. They all reminisce about family and her life, but I don’t say much of anything really. Not sure I could if I wanted to. I don’t have great memories.

***

When I’m home, Mary helps me sew on the parts. She’s a lot better at it than I am. Once she’s done, I give it a walk around the room. There’s no pain. No wobble. No stress. It just fits.

Mary sees me crying and pulls me in for a cuddle on the couch.

For the first time, it feels right. I kiss her and we fuck there. I let myself be the small spoon in her arms. And I break down.

At least the neighbours are nice enough not to complain about the noise today.

When I wake up in the morning, I smell food: hashbrowns, eggs, ham, and toasted bagels. My leg aches. Mom always said her bones creaked before a storm, and now I can hear the echo up my bones when I make my way to the kitchen.