Upstairs in your aunt Maris’ house is . . . .
Stuff. Nothing much. Nothing to get excited about.
. . . belonging to a dead woman. With your name.
Still, it’s not like there’s anything you can do about it.
So here you sit, ensconced in her private bath—a huge porcelain monstrosity on squat, grey gargoyle’s feet, filled rim-high with water so hot it seems practically sterile—as you drink her Drambuie and use her handmade soap, each cake individually wrapped in wax paper, with whole chamomile flowers buried in its fragrant white flesh.
You pop another pain pill and chase it with more liqueur, feeling it take hold all at once, its normal force already alcohol-bolstered.
Pulling the plug with your toe, you dip your head underwater, riding a luxuriant swell of fatigue—knowing you shouldn’t, and doing it anyway.
Aunt Maris’ house seems to have that effect on you, generally. But you’re already beginning not to mind, so much.
Especially now that the remains of your latest small miscarriage (hardly worthy of the name, given the sheer traumatic impact of your earlier adventures in haemorrhaging; more of an after-carriage, if anything) have been carefully washed away, and are rapidly disappearing—in a fine, red swirl—down the bathtub drain.
You close your eyes, feeling the pill begin to take hold. You think of Diehl. Of the last time you saw him—the time before the actual last time, in the car. At the hospital, you were always kept carefully separated; the doctors agreed it would be bad for you to have to see him, and he—surprisingly enough—agreed with the doctors. Poor, persecuted Diehl, coming home unexpectedly early from some badly scheduled appointment, only to walk in on you with your skirt hiked up and one hand down your pants, surrounded by a selection from his “secret” stash of emergency pornography.
Gaping at the sight of his supposedly orgasmically challenged wife, head thrown back and face contorted, in the throes of full-fledged, autoerotic ecstasy. His look an amazing mixture of prurient interest and utter betrayal, as though he’d just caught the Virgin Mary scribbling her name and number on some bathroom wall, only to realize his pen was out of ink.
“You bitch,” was all he’d finally had to say, once he got his mouth working again. “Bitch. Fucking, lying, frigid bitch.”
And: “Only with you,” you replied, weirdly cheerful, as you raised the nearest copy of Mayfair.
The water is almost gone now, though the heat remains; you suppose you might as well lie here until it seeps away entirely, before getting out and into one of Maris’ old flannel robes. Then a hair drier, if you can find one; a towel, if not. Bed, either way.
A slumberous flush seeps through your extremities, making all your still-sore private parts hum with sudden tension. You feel stretched, strafed, empty of everything but your own emptiness. Barely fit to haul yourself up by the tub’s sides and stumble into Maris’ room, where you collapse face down onto her unmade bed.
On the table at your elbow, a blue-glazed bottle—precariously placed—captures the last of the light from the hall, shining like some ill-shaped star.
* * *
Sufiya watches Maris’ straight, pale back fade away down the dark street. Already, she feels a bereft wave of desire knotting inside her, pulling all her pain centres taut with longing. Her teeth ache. The many lines of her face, imperceptible in the hut’s dim light, all spring out fresh and sharp. Her eyes have gone dry as stones.
Well, she says, aloud, in her own, her private language. One is glad enough to be rid of you, my foulest sweetness, my awful mirror. One may even wish the foreign lady joy of you, and to die with a light heart.
There can be, after all, too much of a good thing.
* * *
Much later in the early morning, you think you feel yourself begin to bleed again and turn over, your hand accidentally brushing the bottle from its unstable perch. It wobbles, falls. Shatters.
Scatters, in a frail blue litter of glass.
Something pale blinks, unseen, among the pieces.
You grope for the belt of Maris’ robe, only to find it already open, twisted asunder by the hard, round mass of your—stomach?
You open your eyes, expecting darkness. But the air is full of a soft, bright kind of visual diffusion—a pointillism too lightless to see by, exactly, yet lit all the same and pulsing with things barely seen. Fragrance, ether, carbon, a mere outline, a full-body mist, a bubble of blue-tinged steam. A person-shaped smoke ring, surrounding and penetrating you, stroking you from inside and outside at the same delirious time.
Contractions beat up through your gut and pelvis, painless, rhythmic. Forcing your legs apart. Forcing something up, and out, between them.
You open your mouth and gasp, air-starved—the whole world gone drunken and concave with a transparent film of warp—as something long and pale pulls itself from your packed-full womb, with a wrenching heave, squirming up and over you, pinning you down.
You deflate on contact, with an internal sigh, far too fast to even wonder over. A dream, a nightmare, a life-long fantasy finally come true. The want made flesh.
Pale hair hanging down, its braid unravelling like a spider’s skein. Dark eyes, staring down into yours. Those soft white lips. That knived tongue. Sharp blue teeth, parting.