Edge
by Melia McClure
You nearly kicked in the door and I slept right
through it. One of those peach pills on my tongue,
tastes like cream gone off in the heat. I lick my
front teeth after I swallow it.
Your sheets are dirty, always dirty, but I like that.
Pillowcase smells like lamb. There are coins by my
feet, shiny quarters from your pockets that empty
themselves when you toss your pants on the bed. I
tuck them between my toes and wave my arms and legs
across the cold sheets, like I’m making a snow angel.
I tried to stay awake for you.
Contact lenses out, my eyes sting in the dark room.
I should have left the light on, stupid me. I must’ve
been falling asleep by the time I saw the green
flashing. My heart paused, and then bloomed large in
my chest. I thought someone was in the room. (You
know I’m sure I’ll die that way.) I can’t see him,
but I know he’s coming for me. Faceless, with hands
like shovels that smash my face in, skin peeling back
and the sap wells like tears.
You’re paranoid, you say.
It was only the light from the VCR.
*
I cut out articles from the paper and show them to
you.
I say: Look. A girl was raped in an underground
parking lot. It happens.
You say: You have a better chance of being hit by
lightening.
Statistics. My feelings are mathematics to
you.
I save those articles. I have a filing
system. Abbott, Carol. Raped and stabbed four times.
Bled out on her kitchen floor. Blair, Bonnie. Shot
in the face. A lot of them don’t have names, so I use
the dates. November Eighth Woman, walking her dog in
the park, attacked from behind. True, they are not
all local, not all die here. But still, it happens.
I search them out. I am thinking of modifying my
system, maybe sorting by city.
Lately it’s been the Asian girls on my mind,
the exchange students. You know my grandmother was
Chinese. Smooth as pearl face, eyes beetle-black and
tilting. She stares out at me from dusty photographs,
an innocent.
So these girls come here, alone or sometimes in twos.
Fragile English quivering like the plucks of a lute.
Walking home from the grocery store to a rented
basement suite, dingy curtains and scummy shower,
dragged into the bush, cans scatter on the sidewalk.
Or the worst, a Japanese girl tortured for two days in
a bathtub.
I lie awake some nights (forgot to take the pills
again) and think of these girls. Every muscle in my
neck kinks like a garden hose, shoulders nurse my
ears. Shadows uncoil on my walls, grow teeth. I
invent histories for them, dream up relatives. I want
to know their middle names. I wonder what they were
doing the hour before.
The bloody details obsess me. I need to know how.
I can’t stop.
I watch forensic science shows on TV. I like the
entomology parts best. Seasons of rotting flesh
attract different bugs. Maggots are guileless, they
don’t keep secrets.
You’re a ghoul, you say. And then you turn away.
*
I remember on our first date I didn’t like you. You
didn’t hold the door open, and bobbed ahead of me on
your endless legs; I had to stride long and hard to
keep up. Your hard round eyes the colour of marsh
blinked less than the average person’s, lizard-like.
I was stranded on the other side of the table,
listening to you say You think? every time I made an
observation. I watched a curtain of rain over your
shoulder, dark and shiny. I felt like a refugee, the
border patrolled by impossibly hard white dinner rolls
and butter with a Dairy Queen swirl in it. No asylum
there.
And later, at the end of the night, after I had
maddeningly discovered that I loved the smell of your
skin, you said goodbye and shut the door and I stood
alone in the cold night air touching my fingertips to
the wood. I walked to my car with my fists clenched
tight, eyes darting up and down the deserted
rain-slicked street looking out for a man with shovel
hands. A fog started to roll in, and I knew no one
would hear me scream.
*
I see the Scottish doctor once a month. She
has a straw-coloured shag and pancake make-up. I tell
her about the dead girls, the murdered girls, the
raped girls. I tell her I know my turn is coming.
She tries hard not to yawn, prescribes the miracle
salt. She suggests I try hiking.
The night you almost kicked in the door I was
dreaming. And when the fat man from downstairs
threatened to call the police, and you went back to
your car, swearing, to sleep on the back seat, I was
dreaming still. You should have remembered your key.
I dreamt I had no skin, the way I imagine my face
will look if the man with shovel hands gets a hold of
me, except I had no skin at all, anywhere. Fat and
muscle (more fat than muscle, I was dismayed to
notice) were layered like trifle. My eyes were the
cherries. I looked like a bit player from some horror
movie, one of the no-budget ones with the boom
dangling in every shot. I looked like a butchered
fox. I walked down the street at lunchtime, oozing
innards. The smell of sushi was in the air. Across
the street, half a pig hung in the window of a Chinese
market. I sympathized. All around me, people rushed
past, the sharp corners of smooth leather briefcases
and shopping bags with curling letters pushed into me,
taking bits of my ooze with them. No one saw me.
***
I stay in the bathroom at lunchtime, eating my
cheese sandwich. I am thirteen. I have a favourite
stall, the one furthest from the door, against the
wall. I put the toilet lid down with my foot (I am
aware of germs) and climb on top of it. I crouch
there, listening. I like to guess who is beside me
based on her shoes. A girl with brown oxfords and
skinny ankles comes often. Once she dropped her
tampons on the floor. I think she must be a cat
person. I rearrange the graffiti to make stories. I
have learned that fuck is a versatile word. I listen
to the sound of myself chewing, the auditory
equivalent of eddying water. After school, in the
kitchen, I measure milk, crack eggs. I am making a
chocolate cake, from a mix. I decorate it with
scrolls of whipped cream from a can, foamy flowers. I
am trying to impress my father.
At dinner, he hangs low over his plate, staring
at his food. His tie is pulled too tight: the hanging
man. The frozen dinners are bad, vegetable detritus.
He doesn’t complain, says nothing.
Lying in bed, I see my mother’s face. Her lips
were full, satiny red. Cheekbones high, calcium
jutting like Dover. Warm hands.
You can’t trust the beautiful.
***
She rolls her cigarettes at the kitchen counter late,
and I am warm in the hot salt. My father comes
through the back door, hangs up his coat. My mother
lights a cigarette, smoke winds to the window where a
streetlight funnels back its glow. There is a
silence, a wooly face-muffling quiet. They stare at
each other from across the room, measuring.
Unsmiling. They have just married. Shoulder
cramping, I turn over.
Baby’s moving, says my mother.
Won’t be long now.
*
My father is an accountant. He always wears a
striped tie. Sometimes in his briefcase there are
orange lollipops for me. I wait at the back door for
him, watch him come up the walk on his long legs.
He always looks at the ground when he walks. Bobs up
on his toes ballerina-like, always in danger of
falling on his face. Comes through the door, pats me
on the head, says nothing. He looks around the
kitchen bewildered, as though he’s never seen it
before. Eyes goggle behind thick glasses, doesn’t
know where to sit. Bobs to the sink, leans over it,
groaning. Faucet runs full blast, stream sliced by
his hand scooping water to his face. He tilts toward
the window, counter cutting his waist.
Where’s your mother, he says.
My mother comes up the front walk, high heels
tapping a syncopated rhythm. Her arms are long like
branches, twig fingers clutch the shopping bags. She
always wears dark colours. Comes through the door,
slim body flutes to a face.
Where have you been?
Out.
You left her alone again.
She’s not a baby.
My mother stands in the entryway, fingers
clamped tight on the drawstrings, knuckles white. My
father is across the room, eyes narrowed.
What’s for dinner?
Sausages.
At dinner my father’s jaw cracks when he
chews.
Stop it, my mother says. That’s annoying.
My father doesn’t look up. He is busy arranging his
food into neat patterns, mixing colours, contrasting
shapes. My mother hates that, too. She eats very
little, slicing deliberately, spine fused to the
chair. In between bites, she drums her fingers on the
table. I kick my chair leg, hoping someone will
notice.
I hate sausages, push them around on my plate. The
table’s so shiny it hurts. I listen to the pattern we
make, the only sounds in the room.
Crack, drum, kick, crack, drum, kick, crack, drum,
kick.
*
My mother and Mr. Macgregor sit in the sunroom many
afternoons, sipping clear drinks. Mr. Macgregor has
wrinkly knees and a sagging neck. He always wears a
white golf shirt that brings out his dark tan. He
calls me cutie.
Dance for me, he says dramatically, and my mother
laughs.
My hair is pulled back into a small round bun, pulled
so tight I look full Chinese. I have just returned
from ballet class, feet soaked and leotard riding up.
My shoulders hunch when I dance. I think if I lean
forward far enough no one will be able to see what my
feet are doing. The lessons are wasted on me, I know
so and the teacher has said. But my mother insists.
No heifer daughters.
She is happy when Mr. Macgregor comes around, smiling
big well-capped teeth and touching his shoulder when
she makes a point. She throws her head back when she
laughs, like a snapped dandelion, long thin neck
arcing. Apparently he is a very funny man. He hasn’t
met my father.
*
After awhile he doesn’t come back. My mother tells
me he moved. She is at the sink peeling potatoes with
a far-off look. Water pours from the faucet and the
sink is blocked with peelings, it’s starting to fill.
Want to see me dance?
No.
*
She takes off like a spooked horse. Or that
is what I imagine: suddenly and without warning, black
mane flying. Someone left the gate open, and my
mother escaped.
My father comes home from work with a frozen dinner.
Your mother’s gone, he says.
Then he microwaves it and sits down to eat,
patterning the vegetables.
I quit ballet.
*
Eventually, I stop making cakes. I eat
crackers for dinner. Deep in the night, my father
will appear at the edge of my bed, breath full of gin,
a sweet varnish. He’ll heave and cry, and I can see
his heart through his pajamas, a fat red burst.
I just want to talk to you, he says. Talk to your old
Dad.
Watch where he puts his hands.
So I experiment. I push my big heavy dresser
in front of the door and listen to his fingernails
running up and down the wall outside, scratching like
a stray dog at the back of a diner, nosing for scraps.
I can see his tongue wet and sloppy, a limp hurdle in
his mouth. He slurs.
LemmeinIjuswannatalktoyou.
***
We lie in the wide bed. A strangled snore
vibrates in your throat. I look over where you are,
thin and white, mouth open to swallow the night,
twitching in your travels.
I think: He can’t protect me.
Somewhere now, flesh is peeling back and bleeding
out. As I stare at the spot on the wall where the
paint is flaking, I know some woman is in a parking
lot someplace, and some man with shovel hands says
she’s done for. The wall has cracks in it, like
hairs. I stopped the pills. I can’t sleep.
I move to the kitchen, where the streetlight seeps
through the window. I stand still, breathing slowly.
I am skinless. Overexposed.
See me.
Melia McClure is a Vancouver-born writer and actress.
She is a graduate of Simon Fraser University's
Writer's Studio Creative Writing Program and has
completed her first novel, entitled The Delphi Room.
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