Read Online The Blue Notebook by James A. Levine - Free Book Online Page A

face. Uncle Nir grins and says, “Oh, you’re a strong little thing. This is more fun than I’d hoped.” I keep throwing my head, as it is the only thing I have left to defy him with. The old woman swats me again and again across the face with her bony hand until Uncle says, “That’s all right … I’ve got her. Now let’s see what she’s really made of.”
    A moment of silence lapses. Looking down at me, his eyes glistening, he penetrates. Seconds later I feel his hot black ink gush from him and pulse into Bunny Rabbit’s mouth. It sweeps through me—I can feel it; his blackness courses through me.
    I take my eyes and turn them around to look inside myself.It is like seeing a wave crash onto the riverbank. The black torrents wash within me and I watch my light darken. I have used up so much energy in the fight that I have no resistance. I can see waves of black cascading through me in streams. I can see pools of darkness forming. I look for somewhere to hide but there is nowhere. I look in my kidneys, black. I travel to my tummy black. My head too is black. I spring to my legs—useless legs that failed me—those stupid paralyzed sticks—they are black. I zip across to my hands—yes, they clawed, but that is just another embrace—black. My pounding heart pumps the blackness deeper within me, carried by every corpuscle. He has left nowhere for me to go. Everywhere I seek, every nook and avenue is awash with darkness. But then I see my salvation.
    All words are hewn from black. When you take all the words written in the world and push them together in a cup, what do you get? A cup filled with blackness from which the words ascend and descend. We may think that a word is our own as we hear it or write it, but no, the words are on loan. Words can be young and bouncing like children and they can age like people. Like dead people, words ultimately return to the black from where they came.
    And so I look within myself and assemble myself in words. I take the words that are my thoughts and dreams and hide them behind the dark shadow of my kidney. I compress my need for love into words and hide that as a drop of blackness next to my liver (it will be safe there until I need it). I transcribe the poetry of life into words, and with care slide it between sinews of muscle where he will not find it. I craft the words of merriment and sadness (they are the same) into a pyramid and place it under my skin so I can touch it wheneverI need to know where my feelings are. I compile my memories into a record full of words and slip that into a slot left open for it in my head. There is plenty of room for all the words in the world to live in me; they are welcome here. He may have taken my light and extinguished it, but now within me can hide an army of whispering syllables, rhythms, and sounds. All you may see is a black cavity that fills a tiny girl, but trust me, the words are there, alive and fine.
    The time for sweet smiles and placating words is over. He pushes off me. There is a gray tinge to his skin and not a hint of that smile. I have scratched his face and back. He has blood (mine?) on his thighs. His issue is inside me, sliding down my left thigh. Street air caresses my body and cools the sweat he has left on me. I close my eyes, still bound in white cotton restraints, and tell my power to take his soul and kill him.
    He stands and takes the towel that is offered to him by the old woman. He walks from the bedroom with the white towel wrapped around his hips. Although neither he nor the old woman can see it, he also wears a dense, heavy maroon cloak that hangs from his shoulders. When he was a little boy he bore this cloak, given to him by his parents, with ease. Now that he is a failed man, he can only just move under its weight. The brilliance of all light is blocked from him so that he will live in darkness forever.

    I lay completely motionless. I could not move and I did not think. I felt no pain or sadness, just