by Amy Barnes
I held her in my hand, a childhood Stuckey’s souvenir that began life nestled next to tooth-destroying sweet divinity and pecan logs and shot glasses with state names on them. Each thing chosen to be found during a spontaneous safari hunt through sweets and cheap trinkets. She was sculpted to attract kids stopping for a clean cross country bathroom. She attracted me.
She felt pink marble cold in my hand. My two dollars of travel souvenir money would just barely cover my trophy. But I knew it was the right place for the money. Solid. Better than candy that would disappear before the next interstate exit. My Garanimals pocket would just hold her. I knew better than to do more than guess if she would actually fit. Shoplifters went to jail.
My brother was the first to chip away at me. We sat together but apart on the hot summer vinyl seat, open windows as air conditioning. Bathroom breaks infrequent. Sibling tempers flaring.
“What did you buy?”
He asked while gripping and rubbing my head in some high school wrestling move that he said he invented. We both knew he wasn’t even good at wrestling, let alone smart enough to invent a move.
“Nothing.”
I knew he would steal her if I admitted she was the third passenger in the long back bench seat. Instead, he pinched my leg until it turned winter white marble with pink streaking. It wasn’t a pound of flesh but felt like it. I began counting what was taken from me for the first time on that car ride from midwest to coast.
I gripped her cold skin in my pocket as my leg throbbed for sixty miles, past the next roadside rest stop.
We went home eventually to suburbia and school and factory work. Pink brick house. Pink skinned guinea pig. Pink elephant in my pocket. Pink summer pool skin peeled away. I knew I got new skin every day even without the sun but I felt those pieces of me fall away anyway. I weighed the skin fragments in my hand without knowing the measurement but feeling lighter somehow.
“That pink eye shadow looks good on you.”
I knew April was only saying that to be nice but I smiled and let her “pretty me up” anyway. I watched my pale eyelids lose their paleness and become neon pink under her hands. When I closed my eyes, it felt as if she had scraped away part of my face.
Chunky
Frizzy
Liar
Cheat
Ugly
Fat
Bad
Wrong
Whore
Each word hit me like a pink brick thrown from our split-level cul-de-sac house. Like bites from a distance. Each letter of each word a tooth nibbling at me. Each sing-song nickname chant took another chunk of flesh. Once I got home, I looked closely under my double knit top and flammable bell bottom pants. I caught the words in one hand and measured words against missing flesh in the other like a judge holding scales. She stayed in my pocket the entire time, too heavy and strong and pink to break with just words.
“I’m not going to school tomorrow.”
I knew refusing school wouldn’t help but I tried. My mother drug me to the bus anyway.
And then came the rocks. When words weren’t enough, they circled me tossing pebbles and boulders and river rocks and skipping stones. Their glass houses shattered around them and they began tossing glass shards. I held her tightly but considered tossing her but I was outnumbered.
The first to chip away with my permission was a sculptor. A love. Or so I thought. An amateur at worst. An inept artist at best. A butcher at most. A chisel in hand, he took away bits of my face. A tap here. A hammer blow followed by hammer blow. An arm slimmed. An ear. An eye. Tap. New folds in my skirt that he chose for me because it was prettier than the one I picked. Teeth turned perfect dentil molding in my mouth. When he was done, he stepped away to admire his work. God complex on display in his beady little eyes. Life dust on his hands and apron and shoes.
Then, I took my own turn eating or not eating away at myself. If I didn’t eat that burger or that fry or that piece of ice, more fell away. It was a balance. People tried to fill in all the holes. Doctor. Parent. Even brother. I hid everything they gave me in my other pocket. And sometimes with her as I stood on scales with her weight adding to mine. Just enough to push me over what they demanded.
Next up was my request for a scalpel. I knew I needed him. I asked. I arrived at the specified time, bits of my stomach already missing from acid nerves.
“Take your hand out of your pocket.”
I refused. He continued anyway. Because I had asked. Because I had paid. By then, there wasn’t much left and he had to search for places to hone. A slice. And then another. Blood flowed on his hands. My nose. Narrowed. Slimmed. Waist. Narrowed. Slimmed. He stood back and admired his work. The scalpel was easier to manage. The hammer was the wrecking ball, demolition. The scalpel butchered skin and muscle and fat into something new. There was nothing left to put on my mental scale.
“Here you are.”
He spun me around in front of a mirror.
My scars were still pink, marbling into what was left of the rest of me. But I saw progress. The right parts were there. The right parts were missing. I reached into my Jordache pocket and sat her on the shelf next to his row of souvenirs. All lucky trunks up. Marching without motion to the end of the shelf forever. Trophies. Gifts. Safari prizes. My Stuckey’s pink elephant.
Amy Barnes lives near Nashville, Tennessee. Her writing has been published by a range of sites and in anthologies including Drabblez, The New Southern Fugitives, McSweeney’s, Parabola, A Woman’s Right to Bare Arms and Women on a Wire. She is also a reader for CRAFT and Narratively, and contributing editor for Barren Magazine. She is working on a short story collection based in the southern United States. You can find Amy on Instagram or Twitter @amygcb.