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My fault? My lie? Sure. I’d take that on. Just add it to the luggage. I had
plenty of room inside the hole in my heart.
Round and round, my thoughts found new ways to hurt me. When I
stopped crying, my father’s voice would say, Non. Again, and the loop
would start until I found just the right length blade to stab myself with.
With a straight razor, I sliced the stiff, primed canvas of the Big Blank
into a shape I didn’t need a pattern to reproduce. I knew the curve of the
armhole and the length of the shoulder without checking. The Papillion
sloper was a part of me, crafted into my myelin, burned into my cells with
the blowtorch of Daddy’s approval.
I sewed the shoulders and the sides together. The bodice stood up on its
own, a legless, headless form in the middle of my floor with a red splotch
over the heart.
Ah! Oui, little peanut.
It was too corny to be compelling, but it married my craft to my
creativity, and despite what the artist class would think of it as a piece, it
was the statement I needed to make to myself.
My past was my own.
My skills had value.
I was enough. Good enough. Talented enough. Free enough.
Loved enough? I was too hurt to know.
Early in the morning, in the middle of this litany of self-recrimination
made worse by lack of sleep, my phone buzzed.
In socks and pajamas, I went to the kitchen counter. The phone was
glass side down.
Who else could it be at this hour?
Was he in his kitchen, making coffee?
Did he want to know how I wanted mine?
Non. Again.
I wasn’t charmingly unpredictable any more. I was useless, or worse, a
liability.
My eyes ached as if they’d been punched, but they were dry. Tapped.
Outta juice.
It buzzed again, rattling against the linoleum surface so hard it tugged at
the cord. I caught it before it fell off.
—Ella. We should talk—
—I’m sorry I didn’t text sooner. Dad had a heart attack. He’s fine—