VISION

I go straight for my father’s tools. I find a screwdriver and a pair of pliers. The tools are heavy and cold in my hand. I trust metal.

In my bedroom, I strip off my clothes. The pliers in my right hand, the screwdriver in my left. I wrap the mouth of the pliers around the first twist of the knot. Ijam the screwdriver into the knot’s crevice.

I pull with all of my might, my teeth grinding against each other. I want the pliers and the screwdriver to splinter me, I want to undo myself. Blood rushes from my knot in thick red streams.

My bedroom door opens, and my mother fills the doorway.

“What are—” she starts. Then she is on me, ripping the tools from my hands.

“What is wrong with you?” she demands.

“I want it gone!” I scream. “I want to be like Sophia!”

My mother puts me into the bath, both of us silent, only the pink water making sound. Soon I’m surrounded by the warm water, eyes closed. Then my mother’s hand is on my cheek.

SOPHIA LIVES CLOSER TO THE SCHOOL. She takes me home one afternoon. At her house, everything is proper.

Her mother is in the den. Her mother is a thin, sharp woman. She is precise as a knife. She says, “No sugar, remember,” and hands us carrots to eat.

At Sophia’s house, there are rules about sugar, screaming, laughing too loud. We go to Sophia’s room, which is pristine and pastel pink. We sit on her bedroom floor. I confess again.

“I feel so sad some days,” I whisper.

Pain has been welling up inside of me: My knot makes me other.

“What do you mean?” she asks.

I run a hand over my stomach. I feel as if I am from another planet.

“I just want someone to take it away,” I say.

Sophia nods. In her eyes, I see a big warmth which expands. She reaches out and touches my hand. My pain becomes a bit smaller. We don’t play rocking horse at Sophia’s house, but there is this.

I WALK WITH MY BROTHER INTO THE Acres. The land stretches all around us. My brother carries his mallet and shovel. He’s meant to test my instinct.

“How do you know where the meat will be?” I ask my brother. “Teach me how to sense.”

“Dunno,” he says. “It’s like I have a magnet in my gut and it pulls me there.”

“Find one then,” I say.

We keep walking until a small hum comes from my brother’s mouth. It sounds like the thrum of metal.

“Here,” he murmurs.

The ground is nothing but sparse dirt. I stomp a foot to be sure. It feels no different than any other land under foot.

“No, no. Don’t do that.”

His breath quickens. He stands strong on a certain spot. His fingers move to the buttons on his shirt and he undoes them one by one. Bare chested, he lifts his mallet into the air above his head and brings it down to the ground.