Penumbra

She was seventeen. the period that often gets repressed into the recesses of a matured mind - a sinkhole of mediocrity and mildly scratched knees that heal in a day (because your skin had stopped stretching by then). what did She think about anyway? a smudge in a corner, waiting to pour over into her older sister’s world. a world of hair clips and sheer stockings. but She would write. words appeared to her in sequence: fecundity, apogee, and oubliette. paucity. and She would scribe them carefully into her blue-lined notebook, entrails on a cream page like the ones that could divine futures in ancient times. it was mostly about how it looked.

mother’s fancy china and my clipped fingernails

shake it and read the fortune - under an olive moon

my room and the keratin almonds shaped in an arrow 

it was summer and time was spent avoiding the harsh white light that bounced off clouds and peeling the edges of her wallpaper; like skin or like scabs. She would be kneeling in front of her bedroom mirror, attempting to paint her face. 

helen, when searing winds had dragged her back to the east coast, was supposedly teaching her how to look like a woman before She moved to college. She didn’t really think her sister had ultimate authority on such a process, but She surrendered to the swatching of foundation shades and the setting powder drifting into the cracks in her floorboards. helen’s cold fingers pried her eyes open, and they stung so fiercely that patches in the plaster began to blur into sloppy brushstrokes of grey. but She never allowed herself to blink before the etching was done, the perfecting. finally helen would pull back and the world would swing into violent clarity. eyes fluttering. pools under her lashes. 

the last step always involved the brightest products: a swatch of red on the lips and cheeks. 

as the mirror’s surface was distorting, bubbling silver mercury, it spat out a face she had never seen before. the sight of it, spidery eyed and porcelain, was fragile and altogether motionless. barely breathing. 

“i look like a clown.”

“nonsense. you’re glowing.” 

after a week helen declared that the lessons would conclude, and she drove off to meet her friends in an abandoned parking lot. womanhood.

that evening She took her sister’s pot of rouge and slathered it on her cheeks. outside the world thrummed impatiently, hot air leaking over the window ledge (a fissure). her father was playing big band hits in the adjacent room. the wailing trumpet line seemed to cry out for silence, or perhaps reaching sideways and forwards for the certainty of a regular drumbeat while the hi-hats shuffled and tumbled. everything was far too loud, her body melting too fast. the rouge had begun sliding over her skin, the red separating from her pale sweat and clotting. She sucked in her stomach and applied the lipstick —- the illusion was complete. 

ground plastic the colour of poppies and internal organs

a caustic film draped over one’s face they stare and stare

you smile slow, white slices the red: eyes and sharp teeth. 

cartilage and eyelash. head and shoulders. knees and toes. knees and toes.

then a hand sticks out, skeletal and trembling. features grossly amorphous. 

(you say hello now. a non-voice. something warbly and intolerable)

who are you? and have we met before? 

(you don’t answer. a non-face. embalmed and frozen

closer)

the count basie record interrupted with its trombone slide, shaking off her stupor in the space between a blink and a breath. her reflection was barely an inch away, the edges of the room too far. perhaps She was the one shrinking — body unfurling, skin peeled back to show the bloody muscle. and then She was closing the distance (between faces), the rouge smearing this border of selves, marrying the mirror. the red took quick and when she stepped backward, the strange reflection was muddied up. no hard stare or sullen mouth. just a cloud of red. an angry haze. 

like the first time She bled, there swelled a horror deep in her belly. unsure where her fingertips started and where the sparse atoms in the air knocked around. what was solid? She remembered being stuck to the bathroom tiles at thirteen, standing over an unflushed toilet, and shame shame shame

stacking in my stomach

as the surface of me, the shell began to dissolve.

like oil paint blended out by a firm brush

the edges streaky and vanishing

She hadn’t realised She was still backing up until her calves hit her bedframe. a slamming door. “i’m home.” helen’s shuffling around the kitchen. sharp exhale. legs moving, darting across the hall, into the bathroom. 

the water hit her slathered skin in slaps. She resorted to clawing, her nails mercilessly scraping her cheeks, as the sink water bled and the drain swallowed until there was no trace of it. sucked and diluted into the shapeless sea. 

She looked up at the oval mirror that hung above their sink, expecting the relief of familiarity or the easing balm of normalcy. but all She saw was an

absence of red

moon pale and raw scrubbed pores

stark and unbearable - far too

childish.

***

Frances slammed the boot of her new Ford Pinto. It was a cool day, a meandering autumn breeze down the street. Her parents hung by the front door. 

“Honey, do you have all your things?”

She nodded and knocked absently on the car’s shiny metal. 

“Think so.”

Late afternoon, the sun had sunk behind the angular frame of the house, light stretching out of the roof’s sharp point. Fractures of orange cast the house in a bleary, fuzzy shade. She glanced at the window to the far left of the front wall, its simple white frame and slightly blurred glass. She pretended not to notice the darkness unfurling within, like how she ignored the permanent red blotches at the top of her mirror when she got ready that morning. 

Her mother raced forward. Kissed her forehead and grasped her shoulders. “You look beautiful, darling.” 

And Frances, curled in her mother’s embrace, saw her reflection in the Pinto’s shadowed window. Bow lipped, rosy cheeked, and smooth.

A woman.