Chapters (55)
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Cast of Characters
- Part One
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Part Two
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Forty-one
- Forty-two
- Forty-three
- Forty-four
- Forty-five
- Forty-six
- A note on the Author
I know in my head where the tears start and stop. Liev would know, by instinct. Sebastian learned to figure it out, after I promised not to talk about Liev or my childhood, my father and my mother, not to talk about Brooklyn anymore. Sebastian tried so hard, so fucking hard. If he didn’t want to hear about Liev, then I would just talk about Liev to myself. Sebastian tried to help, as best someone who was there to work for me could help. He did well. You have to really understand me to decode the flood of tears that supplanted recognizable emotion a long, long, American Pie time ago. He didn’t understand. But he tried. Happy tears? Sad tears? Pain tears? Sebastian would tilt his head, tilt my head, touch the tears, lick them and respond accordingly.
“Baby’s got nothing to be frightened of” or “Baby shouldn’t keep getting tattoos if they’re going to itch her all night.”
He was right. I can take the pain. Easily. I just can’t take the itching. I have no pain volume control. “A mosquito stung me! Dear God, put me out of my misery!” I can put needles and knives in myself, but I am horrified by an itch on my foot, or by my period, which brings wild terror to my eyes because I never invited it and it’s not just in my house, it’s in my body. My period never feels like a visitor from nature. It feels like sexual harassment.
I like the cuts—they comfort me—I can’t lie. My thoughts are messy, my emotions are messy, my body goes in and out at will. The raised white scars on my arms and legs are the only aspect of my being that come close to minimalism. They came from chaos, but it is hard to carve frustration and unease into the flesh. Only straight lines. Every fear, every night terror, every hour I cried for Liev, every fight with Sebastian is registered as a neat white scar. The tattoos came because, as angry as I was, I was also tired.
Every now and then I’ll be so sad and so lazy that I’ll pay someone to interpret it all in needle and ink. “Do what you like,” I say, because the eventual pattern is irrelevant. I just want to feel the needle and see, next day, next week, forever, the reminder that it really happened, that I really was that sad. Because when I’m on the upswing, manic as anything, I can’t imagine that I will ever come down.
The samurai must always think of death. I will die of sadness, on a bicycle cycling through Tuscan hills, or in the checkout line at Kmart. But I will not be afraid.