JAGGED EDGE OF HALF THE FRIENDSHIP NECKLACE
Hey bitch,
Remember how we would always call each other bitch?
We were in college and we both had that free mental health counselor who would tell us she was trying to help each of us become a woman? She didn’t know that we had already been fucked in every contorted position.
I feel like I spent most of college sulking behind long hair, and ignoring my footing around possibility. Wasn’t that the best time of our lives though? No wonder we often thought of ending it there. We were eighteen and death was our choice. Just another decision to make. It’s so naive, it’s almost funny, isn’t it?
Hey bitch,
Remember when I walked you through how to masturbate?
Hey bitch,
I never paid you back for that food, those cigarettes, the hair ties I needed, or the change for the printer in the student center. But I did teach you how not to get bad drugs, how to act crazy when followed, and how to run around the parked car and scream. And then, there was all that babysitting of you too, so maybe it’s even?
Hey bitch,
Remember telling each other the things we didn’t tell everyone else? Like, “I’m lonely”, “I’m ugly,”, and, oh, “I hate myself”? Back then, we learned one another. Learned helplessness. Side by side in the bathroom stalls with you was always a pissing contest.
Hey bitch,
Where did we learn that words between sobs were like words between drinks? The victim language came to us quick. Strange being newly old enough to be convicted and consent. Smooth pussies, slender hips, not sure how to use the tongue on the dick’s tip yet.
Hormones, pills, and free condoms in the women’s center. We got to be the deciders of life and death. It was witchcraft and depression. We bought so many packs of L&Ms from 7-Eleven.
Hey bitch,
Do you eat now?
Hey bitch,
How did those deep grooves in your wine lips always look so soft? So stupid how we used to ask ourselves why picked skin and puffy eyes weren’t attractive if damaged girls really are the best in bed like they said. Lithe bodies. Sharp clavicles. Our not-so-secret show of who was hurting the most.
Hey bitch,
Remember the first time I bought lube? You took that photo, and I know you still have it on your camera roll. Me posing with the K-Y gel like a child with a new toy at Christmas. I haven’t worn that expression since. I think you were the last person to see, and maybe the only person to know that innocence.
Hey bitch,
Were we children playing adults or adults playing children with those guys who were beside the point?
And also, just because he tied you to the bed doesn’t automatically mean you came as hard as me.
And hey,
These days, I avoid your Instagram feed, but you have a baby now? In the video I watched her chest rising and falling. How much did it hurt? Did you want her? Do you now? Did you also think we were going to —? It’s weird the things you think, but never say when there’s so much else to talk about.
Hey bitch,
Remember the morning of graduation? You were chugging-Gatorade-hungover and I was just getting my strength back after being hospitalized for a panic attack. As we ran late across the street for the ceremony in our gowns, holding our caps down, the car horns blared, and I could hardly believe we made it.
Hey bitch,
What would we say if we could see each other now? We’d need days to cover the years and, honestly, I don’t want to catch you up on me. Not because it would be exhausting, but because I don’t want to now think about the possibility of other realities.
Hey bitch,
Underneath anger is sadness. That’s something a yoga teacher told me after a class I silently cried through. I think I’m sad about all of the things I wish we knew then. All the ways we could have loved ourselves. All the ways we could have loved one another. And on the other hand, I’m so glad we didn’t, because then I wouldn’t have had the chance to love you in this way, which is our way, even though there might have been a different way.
Hey bitch,
Every secret I ever told you on those late nights had a bigger one behind it and, I don’t know, I really think everyone smells the crotch of their own underwear.
Hey bitch,
Just one last thing — if you hadn’t come that evening I called you before my French test, I would have kept walking to the bridge, you know, the one we used to joke about jumping from.
I realize now the humor was always dark, but, hey, we were laughing.
❧
A WOMAN’S TALE FROM THE GRIM
Around the same time Girl got her training wheels taken off her bicycle, her Mom put a cardboard box under her bed. The box was sealed with layers of masking tape, and Girl was told by her Mom never to open it.
“Mom, why do I have a box under my bed?” Girl asked.
“That’s just not the kind of thing we talk about,” Mom admonished.
As long as she didn’t open it, everyone would be happy. Girl quickly learned never to ask about the box.
Life went on, but for Girl the box was like a monster under her bed. In order to sleep at night and play with other kids during the day, Girl told herself the box wasn’t real and it couldn’t hurt her. This she learned from watching TV shows where kids were happy even with monsters under their beds.
This worked for a while, but sometimes when cleaning her room or finding a missing shoe, Girl would see the box and be reminded of It. But because she couldn’t remember what It was, she just felt sad. A sadness that felt different from all the other sads she had felt before.
Girl’s mom put a bin of paraphernalia from Girl’s catechism and first sacraments in front of the box under her bed, along with an envelope of Girl’s school report cards and athletic awards. For a while these things helped distract Girl from the box under her bed.
But when Girl turned thirteen and began taping pictures of Brad Pitt on her bedroom walls, she began to become bothered that there was something in her own room that made her uncomfortable.
She started thinking about the box in bed, but because she didn’t know what It was inside the box, her thoughts remained mostly abstract, allowing the difficult sad feeling to grow. Grow into an icky feeling.
One day a boy came over. When climbing onto her bed, she stubbed her toe on the box and it made her first kiss awkward and painful for her and for him. He never came over again.
She decided maybe her closet was a better place for the box, but she soon found out it was not. Knowing the box was in her closet brought the icky feeling back every time she opened the door. She stopped wearing clothes she used to like because when she wore them she felt icky.
It was around this time that Girl became very fixated on the box. She spent hours in her closet picking at the masking tape. Sometimes, she would take scissors or a knife and make little slits in the cardboard. No matter how careful she was, Girl sometimes cut herself.
Girl was losing weight. Girl stopped getting her period. Girl was asked about her box during truth or dare at a sleepover. Mom overheard this, and saw these things, but felt confident they would blow over. As long as the real crisis remained over — or never started?
Girl went to college and took the box with her. She was too obsessed to leave it at home and it oddly felt like a part of her. In the dorms, she soon found a guy to fool around with in bed. One night, he teased her about her box during foreplay, but he was the only one of the two of them to get off as a result. Girl was ashamed.
She asked herself how he could’ve known about her box when she never told him about it. Could he sense It while on her bed?
When Girl came home for winter break, she knew she had to talk to her mom. At the kitchen table, at midnight, having their first nightcap together seemed like a good time, so she asked her Mom again about the box under her bed. Girl hadn’t mentioned it since she was actually a little girl.
But all Girl found out was that her Mom has had a box of her own under her bed for almost as long as she can remember, but that she might have been a little older when she got hers.
“What’s in your box?” Girl asked.
“Things we don’t talk about if we want to keep ourselves safe,” Mom said and inhaled her cigarette.
Girl was confused. She couldn’t ever once remember feeling safe in her home — in her room. “Let me make sure my bedroom door is locked before I go to sleep,” Girl remembers herself thinking at night.
She used to feel bad for locking her door. Maybe her thoughts were irrational. What was she even scared of? Her mom? Her stepfather? He’d never really hurt her before. He just wasn’t the nicest. And was kind of scary. Girl went cold. She was so glad he left a few years ago.
Mom finished her nightcap, and offered Girl words of wisdom that seemed passed down from generations.
“Opening that box will kill you,” Mom said with an exhale of smoke.
Girl thought it best to listen to her Mom’s advice, but she also knew she could not live with the box any longer, so when she returned to college, she tried to throw it in the river, but the sheer weight of it took her under.
Brooke Segarra is a fiction writer in Brooklyn, NY. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School and her writing has received support from Hedgebrook and AWP. She self-published her novella Can’t Afford Sex in 2017, and is currently working on a larger body of fictional work. brookesegarra.com