I sleep, long and hot, the windows open despite the winter. Paul sleeps against the wall and does not stir.
The voices aren’t happening, not now, but I still perceive them. They drift over my head like milkweed. I am Samuel, I think. That’s it. I’m Samuel. God called to him in the night. They call to me. Samuel answered, Yes, Lord? I have no way of answering my voices. I have no way of telling them that I can hear.
I hear the door open and then close but I don’t turn my head. I am staring at the screen. An orgy, now. The fifth. Dozens of voices, too many to count, overlapping, tangling, making the air tight, crowding it. They worry, they lust, they laugh, they say stupid things. Sweat glitters. Badly placed tungsten lights cast shadows, slicing up a few bodies for a few moments into slick skin and canyons of darkness. Whole again. Pieces.
He sits down next to me, his weight sinking the cushion so far that I fall into him. I do not take my eyes off the screen.
Hey, he says. You okay?
Yes. I curl my fingers tightly against one another, my knuckles locking in a line. This is the church. This is the steeple.
He sits back and watches. He looks at me. He settles his fingers lightly on my shoulder blade, catching the strap of my bra and running his finger on the curve of my skin beneath the elastic. Gently, over and over.
A woman at the center of a male orbit reaches up, up over her head, so far up. She is thinking about one of them in particular, the one filling her, making her whole. She thinks about the lighting for a bit, then her thoughts drift back to him. Her leg is falling asleep.
Paul talks very close to my skin. What are you doing? he asks.
Watching, I say.
What?
Watching. Isn’t this what I should be doing? Watching this?
The way he is still, I can tell that he is thinking. Then he reaches and puts his hand over mine—covering the church.
Hey, he says. Hey, hey.
One of the men is sick. He thinks he is going to die. He wants to die.
Bodies linking, unlinking, muscles twitching, hands.
Through the woman’s mind, a ribbon of light tightens and slackens and tightens again. She laughs. She is actually coming. The first time we kissed, Paul and I, on my bed, in the dark, he was almost frantic, humming with energy, a screen door banging in the wind. Later he told me that it had just been so long, so long, that he felt like he was coming out of his skin. Skin. I can still hear them thinking, echoing around my head, slipping into the crevices of my memory. I cannot keep them away. This dam will not hold.
I do not realize that I am crying until he stands and brings me with him, pulling me from the couch. On the screen, pearly arcs of come crisscross the laughing woman’s torso. I lift easily. He holds me and touches my face and his fingers are wet for the effort.
Shhhh, he says. Shhhh. I’m so sorry, he says. We don’t have to watch it, we don’t have to.
He weaves his fingers through my hair and supports the small of my back. Shhhh, he says. I don’t want any of them. I want only you.
I stiffen.
Only you, he says again. He holds me tightly. A good man. He repeats, Only you.
You don’t want to be here, I say.
The floor rumbles; a large truck darkens the front window. He doesn’t respond.
He sits there quietly, radiating guilt. The house is dark. I kiss him on the mouth.
I’m sorry, he says. I’m so—
Now it is my time to shhhh. He stammers into silence. I kiss him, harder. I take his hand from my side and rest it on my thigh. He is hurting, and I want it to stop. I kiss him again. I trace two fingers along his erection.
Let’s go, I say.
I always wake before him. Paul sleeps on his stomach. I sit up and stretch. I trace the rips in the comforter. Sunlight streams through my curtains. I can hardly sleep through such daylight. I get up. He does not stir.
I cross the room and pull the camera from its spot. I carry it into the living room. I rewind the tape, and it whines as it whirs back over itself.
I insert the cassette into the VCR. I run my finger down the buttons on the machine like a pianist choosing her first key. As I press it down, the screen goes snowy, and then black. Then, the static diorama of my room. The wrinkled sheets with the spray of blue-china pattern, unmade. I fast-forward. I fast-forward, spinning through minutes of nothing, unsurprised by how easy it is for them to slip away.
Two people stumble in, my finger lifts, the rush-to-now slows. Two strangers fumble with each other’s clothes, each other’s bodies. His body, slender and tall and pale, leans; his pants hit the floor with a thunk, the pockets full of keys and change. Her body—my body, mine—is still striped with the yellowish stains of fading bruises. It is a body overflowing out of itself; it unwinds from too many layers. The shirt looks bulky in my hand, and I release it onto the floor. It drops like a shot bird. We are pressing into the side of the mattress.
I look down at my hands. They are dry and not shaking. I look back up at the screen, and I begin to listen.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It turns out that when you publish a debut book, you have an impossible task: not just thanking the people who directly influenced this particular title, but thanking everyone who has ever had a hand in your becoming a writer. And, as it turns out, when you sit down and think about it, that list can be dauntingly long.
Throughout my career, there have been so many people willing to take a chance on me, even when I wouldn’t have taken a chance on me. And so here is my attempt to rise to the monumental task of doing justice to their astonishing generosity and faith.
This book—and this life—would have been impossible without:
My parents, Reinaldo and Martha, who read to me long before I could read, siblings Mario and Stefanie, who listened to all my stories, and my grandfather, who taught me how to tell them.
Laurie and Rick Machado, who have always been a stable and loving presence.
The women who gifted me books and stoked my nascent imagination: Eleanor Jacobs, Sue Thompson, Stefanie “Omama” Hoffman, Karen Maurer, Winnifred Younkin.
Marilyn Stinebaugh, who let me rail against Hemingway in her classroom and handed me texts from her personal library and showed me what literature could be.
Adam Malantonio, who made me a soundtrack.
Mindy McKonly, who took me seriously.
Marnanel Thurman, who has given me fifteen years of friendship and brilliance.
Amanda Myre, Amy Weishampel, Anne Paschke, Sam Aguirre, Jon Lipe, Katie Molski, Kelli Dunlap, Sam Hicks, Neal Fersko, and Rebekah Moan, who grew with me and helped me become myself.
Jim, James, and Josh, who listened and helped me arrive at my answers.
Harvey Grossinger, who provided the gift of his time and his wisdom.
Allan Gurganus, who encouraged me to make the right choice.
John Witte and Laura Hampton, whose love and friendship kept me together when nothing else could.
The Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and the magnificent people who keep it running: Connie Brothers, Deb West, Jan Zenisek, and, of course, Lan Samantha Chang.
My Iowa classmates and dear friends, who made me a smarter person and a better writer: Amy Parker, Ben Mauk, Bennett Sims, Daniel Castro, E. J. Fischer, Evan James, Mark Mayer, Rebecca Rukeyser, Tony Tulathimutte, and Zac Gall.
My many writing teachers—Alexander Chee, Cassandra Clare, Delia Sherman, Harvey Grossinger, Holly Black, Jeffery Ford, Kevin Brockmeier, Lan Samantha Chang, Michelle Huneven, Randon Noble, Ted Chiang, and Wells Tower—who were hard on me when they needed to be, encouraging when they needed to be, and always kind.
The Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop class of 2012: Chris Kammerud, Dan McMinn, Deborah Bailey, E. G. Cosh, Eliza Blair, Eric Esser, Jonathan Fortin, Lara Donnelly, Lisa Bolekaja, Luke R. Pebler, Pierre Liebenberg, Ruby Katigbak, Sadie Bruce, Sam J. Miller, and Sarah Mack. (You will always be my Awkward Robots.)
The tho
ughtful and inspired writers of Sycamore Hill 2014 and 2015: Andy Duncan, Anil Menon, Chris Brown, Christopher Rowe, Dale Bailey, Gavin Grant, Jen Volant, Karen Joy Fowler, Kelly Link, Kiini Ibura Salaam, L. Timmel Duchamp, Matt Kressel, Maureen McHugh, Meghan McCarron, Michael Blumlein, Molly Gloss, Nathan Ballingrud, Rachel Swirsky, Richard Butner, Sarah Pinsker, and Ted Chiang.
The gift of time and financial support of Beth’s Cabin, the CINTAS Foundation, the Clarion Foundation, the Copernicus Society of America, the Elizabeth George Foundation, Hedgebrook, the Millay Colony for the Arts, my Patreon patrons, Playa, the Speculative Literature Foundation, the Spruceton Inn, the Susan C. Petrey Scholarship Fund, the University of Iowa, the Wallace Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, and Yaddo.
Yuka Igarashi, who gets me.
Kent Wolf, who believed in me from the beginning and is a patient and tireless advocate.
The dedication and hard work of Caroline Nitz, Fiona McCrae, Katie Dublinski, Marisa Atkinson, Steve Woodward, Yana Makuwa, Casey O’Neil, Karen Gu, and the entire Graywolf team.
Ethan Nosowsky, whose guidance and trust made this book better than I thought possible.
Every woman artist who has come before me. I am speechless in the face of their courage.
And my wife, Val Howlett, who is my first and best reader and my favorite writer. I wouldn’t be able to do any of this without her.
Stories in this collection have previously appeared in Granta, Strange Horizons, Interfictions, the American Reader, FiveChapters, Gulf Coast, and Unstuck.
CARMEN MARIA MACHADO’S fiction and nonfiction has appeared in the New Yorker, Granta, NPR, Guernica, Electric Literature, Gulf Coast, Tin House, Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, The Best Horror of the Year, Year’s Best Weird Fiction, and Best Women’s Erotica. Her short story “The Husband Stitch” was nominated for the Shirley Jackson and Nebula Awards, awarded a Pushcart Prize Special Mention, and longlisted for the James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Copernicus Society of America, the Elizabeth George Foundation, the CINTAS Foundation, the Speculative Literature Foundation, the University of Iowa, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. She is the artist in residence at the University of Pennsylvania, and lives in Philadelphia with her wife.
The text of Her Body and Other Parties is set in Adobe Caslon Pro. Book design by Connie Kuhnz. Composition by Bookmobile Design and Digital Publisher Services, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Manufactured by Versa Press on acid-free, 30 percent post-consumer wastepaper.
Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties
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