Read Online The First True Lie: A Novel by Marina Mander - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Marina Mander
Ads: Link
are talking about you behind your back. Who will you send, friend, the cat?”
“
Fucking shit.
Blue, let’s get to work. Let’s show those assfaces who we are.”
“Careful, friend, if you use dirty words they’ll fuck you up.”
“Okay, okay,” I say, and put on my tough-guy face. “We’ll be the ones doing the fucking-up around here, friend.”
No problem.
4
S omething is different today.
Mama has gone hard and is swollen all over. Yesterday she was colder; today she’s puffier. I touch the radiator to see if it’s working—it’s not. Mama’s not working anymore either.
There’s a layer of dust on the radiator. She hasn’t noticed. Now it’s all the same for her if things are dirty or clean, ugly or pretty, lukewarm, freezing, or just terrible. She’s finished fighting with opposites.
My heart starts beating loudly. I can feel it in my belly and in my head, like a pinball racing wildly, smacking randomly into the walls of my body, elbowing me in the stomach, battering me with punches to the sides of my head, pounding my back, filling me with bruises and shivers. I can’t stop it from doing whatever it wants, shooting all over the place.
Today I stopped hoping.
I look around and nothing seems like before.
I don’t even know if there was a before.
I don’t know if there will be an after.
I don’t know anything about anything.
The blank notebook still covers my whole brain. This has to be how crazy people feel in their padded white cells, rocking from side to side, staring into the sum of all colors.
I’m rocking too, without even feeling like crying. I just feel like rocking back and forth on the edge of the bed.
“Mama’s lost her spark, her mouth is oh so dark, no playing in the park…”
I don’t know where the song comes from, I’m not the one who’s thinking it. It’s the song that’s thinking me.
“Forget. Forgot. Forgotten.”
“Forgive. Forgave. Forgiven.”
We listen to the verbs being recited aloud and parrot them back. Then we have to complete sentences using the correct tense. My deskmate tries to copy me, but I’m in a daze, my pen in the air. I hear the sound of the words without understanding what they mean, like Ulysses with the Sirens, but to me they seem like police sirens.
“What’s up with you? Are you daydreaming? What goes here?”
“Where?”
“Here! Third line,
forget
or
forgotten
?”
“It’s the same thing.”
No, it’s not the same thing.
I don’t want to end up in a home.
Forget,
I write, and elbow my deskmate. The torture is over. I stand up.
I hope I did well. I think I did.
I walk toward the front to hand in my notebook and it seems like I weigh a million tons. It’s as if I’m made of concrete, with a stone heart inside. I feel as if I can only move like King Tut’s mummy, completely stiff. I feel the floor give way, as if it can’t support me, or maybe it’s my knees that have suddenly gone mushy. I feel everything and nothing. But somehow I reach the finish line and force myself to smile. It’s exactly like when you leave the dentist after having held your mouth wide open for two hours—it stays stuck like that and forgets how to move. My cheeks are sore.
“Very good.”
It seems everything is going well.
The bell rings and we’re free once more.
Davide wants to come to my apartment after lunch.
“Great,” I say.
He says he’ll bring
Snowboard
.
“Even better,” I say.
I go back home. I plan my journey—carefully choosing the opposite side of the street from where the smelly flower woman sets up, so she won’t get a chance to talk my ear off. I watch her across the street as she uses her poultry scissors to cut the stems of some lilies. She’s got mean eyes and big, wrinkly hands. Until not too long ago she always used to give me a little pat when Mama and I stopped to buy flowers, little bunches of irises that smelled like bubble bath.
“Is this a gift, ma’am?”
“No, they’re for
“
Fucking shit.
Blue, let’s get to work. Let’s show those assfaces who we are.”
“Careful, friend, if you use dirty words they’ll fuck you up.”
“Okay, okay,” I say, and put on my tough-guy face. “We’ll be the ones doing the fucking-up around here, friend.”
No problem.
4
S omething is different today.
Mama has gone hard and is swollen all over. Yesterday she was colder; today she’s puffier. I touch the radiator to see if it’s working—it’s not. Mama’s not working anymore either.
There’s a layer of dust on the radiator. She hasn’t noticed. Now it’s all the same for her if things are dirty or clean, ugly or pretty, lukewarm, freezing, or just terrible. She’s finished fighting with opposites.
My heart starts beating loudly. I can feel it in my belly and in my head, like a pinball racing wildly, smacking randomly into the walls of my body, elbowing me in the stomach, battering me with punches to the sides of my head, pounding my back, filling me with bruises and shivers. I can’t stop it from doing whatever it wants, shooting all over the place.
Today I stopped hoping.
I look around and nothing seems like before.
I don’t even know if there was a before.
I don’t know if there will be an after.
I don’t know anything about anything.
The blank notebook still covers my whole brain. This has to be how crazy people feel in their padded white cells, rocking from side to side, staring into the sum of all colors.
I’m rocking too, without even feeling like crying. I just feel like rocking back and forth on the edge of the bed.
“Mama’s lost her spark, her mouth is oh so dark, no playing in the park…”
I don’t know where the song comes from, I’m not the one who’s thinking it. It’s the song that’s thinking me.
“Forget. Forgot. Forgotten.”
“Forgive. Forgave. Forgiven.”
We listen to the verbs being recited aloud and parrot them back. Then we have to complete sentences using the correct tense. My deskmate tries to copy me, but I’m in a daze, my pen in the air. I hear the sound of the words without understanding what they mean, like Ulysses with the Sirens, but to me they seem like police sirens.
“What’s up with you? Are you daydreaming? What goes here?”
“Where?”
“Here! Third line,
forget
or
forgotten
?”
“It’s the same thing.”
No, it’s not the same thing.
I don’t want to end up in a home.
Forget,
I write, and elbow my deskmate. The torture is over. I stand up.
I hope I did well. I think I did.
I walk toward the front to hand in my notebook and it seems like I weigh a million tons. It’s as if I’m made of concrete, with a stone heart inside. I feel as if I can only move like King Tut’s mummy, completely stiff. I feel the floor give way, as if it can’t support me, or maybe it’s my knees that have suddenly gone mushy. I feel everything and nothing. But somehow I reach the finish line and force myself to smile. It’s exactly like when you leave the dentist after having held your mouth wide open for two hours—it stays stuck like that and forgets how to move. My cheeks are sore.
“Very good.”
It seems everything is going well.
The bell rings and we’re free once more.
Davide wants to come to my apartment after lunch.
“Great,” I say.
He says he’ll bring
Snowboard
.
“Even better,” I say.
I go back home. I plan my journey—carefully choosing the opposite side of the street from where the smelly flower woman sets up, so she won’t get a chance to talk my ear off. I watch her across the street as she uses her poultry scissors to cut the stems of some lilies. She’s got mean eyes and big, wrinkly hands. Until not too long ago she always used to give me a little pat when Mama and I stopped to buy flowers, little bunches of irises that smelled like bubble bath.
“Is this a gift, ma’am?”
“No, they’re for
Similar Books
