Read Online The Melancholy of Anatomy: Stories by Shelley Jackson - Free Book Online
Authors: Shelley Jackson
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frightens us. We think,
What have I done to hurt the sky?
Some people walk around with their stomach muscles clenched and invite other people to punch them there. Some people punch them unnecessarily hard, there or somewhere else. We worry
that delicate glass things, spun glass fawns and vacuum tubes, may break of their own accord, and scatter floors with a crystalline, dangerous powder. People who are prone to nosebleeds sit perfectly still while blood flows out of one nostril or both, black as plums.
Once I opened the door and a white cat whirled around my legs and disappeared into the kitchen. Later I saw it waiting under a chair, watching me. When I opened the living room door again it shot across the floor and through it.
Later I noticed the ash door was standing open. That was how the cat got in.
Then one day I opened the door and the little girl was sitting on a chair beside the cancer. She looked at me bitterly. I backed out and closed the door.
The ends began to bend against the ceiling and walls—but I don’t know why I say this. I never went in there anymore. Perhaps I opened the door once, concerned for the child.
That last part is a lie. I detested the child.
One night I opened the lid of a casserole and found a steaming length of the cancer inside. It was strange and horrible to see it, and the saliva rose in my mouth. I reached carefully between the forking tendrils, took hold of the firm trunk and lifted it, the way you lift a lobster, and transported it gingerly to the garbage. I looked away as I dropped it in. The little girl must have crept into my kitchen and planted it there. If only I could have urged her parents to restrain her.
I went for long walks alone. On one such, I stopped near a playground. The sun had come out after a rainy night. On the damp, dark concrete a group of boys were scuffling over a basketball, watched over by a gray-haired woman, a man with awhistle clamped in his teeth. Behind the court, across a bit of green, was a row of blue benches. In the rain-brightened air the sound of the basketball rang out, and the peeps of the whistle pierced my ears like quills. Real people play such games as these, I advised myself. Watch and see how it is done.
I stuck my hands into my pocket. In the depths of it something rubbery seemed to squirm. I withdrew my hands as if—what’s the phrase: stung? But nothing could have startled me more than that tentative, somehow fond snuggle. I felt again. Then plucked the tuber out and hurled it away from me. It bounced, even seemed to spring along from one limb to another, as if it were running, and shuddered to a stop next to the basketball court. A boy bent over it. The sight of the young body so close to that forked red thing was unbearable and I darted out across the playground, aware what a bizarre figure I cut in my giant pants, my flapping sleeves. I snatched the tuber. The boy fell back a step, his eyes on the thing I now held between two fingers, then he flipped his hair back and went back to his game. I carried the thing away the way you might carry a moth or a spider, making my hands a cage. I walked toward the blue benches. The woman and the man with the whistle were watching me. If I had been sure they had spotted the little red bouncing root I would have held it at arm’s length, distastefully, as one might carry a dog’s stool in a baggie, but that would draw attention to it, and perhaps they had not noticed it at all, but only my peculiar scuttle, in which case better to move my arms as naturally as possible.
When I came back, there was a turd on the center of my dining table. It glistened, and it was full of red bits like snips of rubber band.
I decided to take a walk out of the city altogether, to a fieldall itchy with grass seeds sifting down and bugs climbing up on the long stems. The sun bit into the back of my neck. Halfway across I got down as if forced to my knees. I smelled the heat in the dry grass, a blond smell.
What have I done to hurt the sky?
Some people walk around with their stomach muscles clenched and invite other people to punch them there. Some people punch them unnecessarily hard, there or somewhere else. We worry
that delicate glass things, spun glass fawns and vacuum tubes, may break of their own accord, and scatter floors with a crystalline, dangerous powder. People who are prone to nosebleeds sit perfectly still while blood flows out of one nostril or both, black as plums.
Once I opened the door and a white cat whirled around my legs and disappeared into the kitchen. Later I saw it waiting under a chair, watching me. When I opened the living room door again it shot across the floor and through it.
Later I noticed the ash door was standing open. That was how the cat got in.
Then one day I opened the door and the little girl was sitting on a chair beside the cancer. She looked at me bitterly. I backed out and closed the door.
The ends began to bend against the ceiling and walls—but I don’t know why I say this. I never went in there anymore. Perhaps I opened the door once, concerned for the child.
That last part is a lie. I detested the child.
One night I opened the lid of a casserole and found a steaming length of the cancer inside. It was strange and horrible to see it, and the saliva rose in my mouth. I reached carefully between the forking tendrils, took hold of the firm trunk and lifted it, the way you lift a lobster, and transported it gingerly to the garbage. I looked away as I dropped it in. The little girl must have crept into my kitchen and planted it there. If only I could have urged her parents to restrain her.
I went for long walks alone. On one such, I stopped near a playground. The sun had come out after a rainy night. On the damp, dark concrete a group of boys were scuffling over a basketball, watched over by a gray-haired woman, a man with awhistle clamped in his teeth. Behind the court, across a bit of green, was a row of blue benches. In the rain-brightened air the sound of the basketball rang out, and the peeps of the whistle pierced my ears like quills. Real people play such games as these, I advised myself. Watch and see how it is done.
I stuck my hands into my pocket. In the depths of it something rubbery seemed to squirm. I withdrew my hands as if—what’s the phrase: stung? But nothing could have startled me more than that tentative, somehow fond snuggle. I felt again. Then plucked the tuber out and hurled it away from me. It bounced, even seemed to spring along from one limb to another, as if it were running, and shuddered to a stop next to the basketball court. A boy bent over it. The sight of the young body so close to that forked red thing was unbearable and I darted out across the playground, aware what a bizarre figure I cut in my giant pants, my flapping sleeves. I snatched the tuber. The boy fell back a step, his eyes on the thing I now held between two fingers, then he flipped his hair back and went back to his game. I carried the thing away the way you might carry a moth or a spider, making my hands a cage. I walked toward the blue benches. The woman and the man with the whistle were watching me. If I had been sure they had spotted the little red bouncing root I would have held it at arm’s length, distastefully, as one might carry a dog’s stool in a baggie, but that would draw attention to it, and perhaps they had not noticed it at all, but only my peculiar scuttle, in which case better to move my arms as naturally as possible.
When I came back, there was a turd on the center of my dining table. It glistened, and it was full of red bits like snips of rubber band.
I decided to take a walk out of the city altogether, to a fieldall itchy with grass seeds sifting down and bugs climbing up on the long stems. The sun bit into the back of my neck. Halfway across I got down as if forced to my knees. I smelled the heat in the dry grass, a blond smell.
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