She wanted her body to react in a way that she wanted it to, but no dice. There were too many things others diagnosed as “abnormal”, while she resigned herself to simply be “abnormal” herself, not just a product of these various specifics.
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That summer when she pulled up her dress and showed me a spot that look an awful lot like a trampoline that had been mostly severed from its foundation, I’ll always remember her explanation:
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“There are so many things about me that are burnt rubber.”
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I held her face and said something about caring or not caring or how her face was pretty and what else mattered when looking someone in the eyes? I don’t remember.
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We didn’t fuck that night, and she had a dream where she screamed out about tonsils or toenails but calmed down after I put my hand on her left breast and squeezed gently.
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In the morning, she woke up long before me and I found her sitting at the kitchen table, staring at her hands in a yellow summer dress.
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“I am a person who cannot hold anything, who has to be held, who has so many fingers, none of which I know what to do with. I can point at things. I can point at things and say ‘look, there, at that thing’ and people know what I’m talking about. But if I try to pick it up, to feel it, I cramp up and things just drop.”
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I made her a cup of tea that smelled like jasmine, but tasted like ginger, and she sat there not noticing it for a long time.
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By the time I had finished mine, I noticed her pawing at the cup, as if wishing it would do something by itself. Finally, she picked it up awkwardly and poured it, pointedly, into her lap. Her summer dress bled out like she was over-abundant in lubrication, or had just had a blank period of some sort.
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“It’s okay, I understand,” I said. “It just tastes like you. I wanted you to know what that was.”
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I found a roll of paper towels under the sink, handing them to her, hugging her quietly while she wept or whistled or something to that effect.
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