March 1996, New York

♤

My hand slips twice on the ornate dial before I manage to turn it on. My fingertips track blood onto the metal. But when I look again, the surface looks spotless, untouched, and I don’t see any blood, but I know it’s there. My guilt is invisible as well, and it too will follow me wherever I go.

Cold water soaks through my clothes, plasters my shirt to my skin, yet I welcome the sting, desperate for anything to ground me in reality. I stand under the gaudy, flourished showerhead for a minute, letting every freezing drop of water on my skin dull my thoughts, before I remember why I came here: 

To get clean.

I pump soap into my hands and scrub. The cut on my palm reopens from the force, newly stitched skin tearing apart once more; it stings terribly. The bloodstained strip of white gauze falls to the tile floor, and real blood flows out, a dark, pomegranate red, blending with the pristine, clean water to form a muddy pink that swirls into the drain. 

My blood stains the tiles, sticks to them like mold; what a repugnant, visceral thing. Oh, how it looks the exact same as the boy’s blood that got on my clothes and my body. It could be his blood for all I know, it looks like his blood, it is his blood. 

And that’s why I have to wash this blood off.

I don’t realize how senseless this is. When that boy’s blood stains my hands, it might as well have seeped into my bones and stained them too, engraved his DNA in the webs of my marrow forever. 

Are you stupid? Father mocks. All the water in Neptune’s oceans can’t wash that blood away. 

Be quiet, I tell it. Sometimes it listens. Sometimes it doesn’t. 

The jaded, corrosive voice in the back of my head has been a part of me since before Mama died; before Jay took me under his wings. Quite subtle, I know. To name something unwanted after the person you despise most. Am I trying to control it, put it into a cage, by giving it a name? Does naming it make it easier to acknowledge it, to talk back to the real Father? 

I tried so hard to escape him, but now Father goes wherever I go. Is it him? Or is he it?

One day, you won’t be able to tell the difference anymore.

Shut up.

My fingers grip my arms, pushing my sleeves up, nails pressing half-moons into the skin; sickly and marred. I drag my nails down the skin, slowly and forcefully, leaving pale white lines down my upper arms. Then I do it again. And again. Until the pale white eventually gives way to raw red, and the sting doesn’t fade.

I do it because the pain distracts me from Father. It’s all I can do right now, bits and bits of dead skin accumulating under my fingernails. I’d like to think of it as shedding my skin, starting anew like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, except only dead skin and scabbed-over scrapes come out of my little ritual. I tell everyone that it’s from climbing trees.

I think of it like losing the image of him, never again hearing the words you look so much like your father. But I won’t bring myself to touch my face. He would notice.

My breath heaves, jumping in erratic, irregular gasps. And in my half-stupor, I realize I didn’t kill him. Jay delivered the final shot.

I exhale. Allow myself a moment of terrible, loathsome solace. But not for long.

You know what’s funny? Father murmurs. If Jay had shot, the boy would’ve been dead right away. You, on the contrary, couldn’t even give him a quick end. 

I finally push my sopping hair away from my face and let out a short, broken laugh. 

Father will never let me be at peace.

Useless, it says, almost kindly. Couldn’t even spare him suffering.

Every time I close my eyes the boy’s face swims into my mind’s view. The harder I try to push it down the worse it gets.

Face your consequences, Father chastises. This is what happens when you keep following his orders like a pathetic little dog. Are you that scared of him?

I bring my fingernails to the skin on my arms again. This time, the motion is more violent, purposeful. Too late, I realize I’ve drawn blood, beading in small droplets down my right forearm.

Don’t forget to wash that away too, Father says.