BONE WOMAN
Tria Andrews
Bone woman rests in an unfinished cabin on my parents’ property.
She’s from Mexico.
Bone woman?
Her head is very small. Like an old woman or a child.
Vulnerable. Full of holes.
Bone woman?
Holes, eye sockets. I love anything in poor taste. At my brother’s funeral, I had this urge to stand up, start swearing at the top of my lungs, rip off my clothes and then my own skin, starting with my throat where it itched the most. Instead I chewed a pack of gum and stuck it piece by piece beneath the pew.
I’m Catholic and one year when I was a kid I decided I wanted to give everyone a part of me. I had long hair, waist length, and I went around snipping it into the Xmas gift boxes. Never told my mother. She noticed the haircut of course, but not the hair. It wasn’t a joke.
Bone woman?
Bleached bone, in a black trash bag, the kind you use for gathering leaves.
My mother helped.
Together they boiled the bones.
The water bled red and ruined the pots, a gift for their wedding.
Once I dated this boy, Thomas. Well, his real name was Dylan, so I just had to call him Thomas. Sometimes I called him Bob. This poor guy can’t even shake hands without all these ghosts. Awful. How do these people perform?
In life, in bed. Like these magicians you hear about nowadays sleeping with starlets. I mean if you can levitate or pass through the Great Wall, isn’t that a whole lot of pressure? My brother always wanted to levitate. Sat there watching television for hours, painting, popping pills, fiddling with rosaries, wanting to levitate. Be enlightened. He was so desperate. One summer, home from college, neither of us could sleep so I took him to Lucky’s in the middle of the night. Watched him stand there in the bright light, desperate, reading the boxes of tea one by one. Chamomile, Sleepytime . . . so many I forget. This was before the pills.
Thomas? Oh, Bob. A wonderful Catholic. My mother loved him. Not because of the Catholic thing, but the medical school thing. He’d be a doctor like my father. Though come to think of it, it was right before my brother died so it might have been the Catholic thing. You should have seen our house. Crucifixes tacked up everywhere, rosaries, those religious candles you can buy anywhere. Couldn’t eat a sandwich without Christ there being crucified. I lost weight. Poor Thomas. Or Bob. I attracted hordes of them.
Zealots. With their Bibles and good intentions. You know, I had the most fantastic fortune once from a fortune cookie. Said hell was paved with good intentions. I had it—the fortune—a long time, kept it in the pocket of my jeans until one day I waded out too far. The ink bled into nothingness. Sad. There one moment and gone the next, but no matter. The prettiest girls are the saddest. They can only be loved from a distance. And they can’t eat and they can’t sleep so naturally men want to save them.
Like Bob. Or Thomas. What a character. He kept taking me out. All nervous and everything. Always for Thai. Come to think of it, he might have thought I was part Thai. We’d go and he’d always order the same thing. Panang curry with chicken, zero star and even so he’d be sniffling and sweating, pink as a pig. Couldn’t use chopsticks to save his life. On our eighth date or something, he finally got up the courage to compliment me. Says to me, You have such big eyes. So I said, No, I don’t, Thomas. I have small eyes. Anyone can see that. I wasn’t trying to hurt his feelings, but Jesus, eight dates and he comes up with that? He was a virgin. Never told me in those exact words, but he was. I respect that. Saving things. You know, showers, calories, fortunes. Makes things better. Like my grandparents before they died. My Mama Lou would say, Honey, you know what sounds good? And Granddad, he’d say, What baby, what sounds good? And she’d say, A chicken sandwich from that place down the road. You know, he’d say, that does sound mighty good. Okay, she’d say, on Wednesday let’s go down there and split one between us. It’d be Sunday or something when they’d say that.
Then my brother. Circumcised at fourteen. I was away at college. Nobody told me until afterward. I would have said, Don’t do it. I mean, why? You should have seen my brother as a baby. Beautiful. Yellow-green eyes and this birthmark on his side in the shape of a star. No, really. A star. It faded though. My first boyfriend was uncut and I didn’t know the difference. Why maim yourself?
Once I babysat my brother. I babysat him lots, but this one time I had him play a game with me. I was eleven. He was maybe seven. It was lunchtime. I warmed him some soup or something. Set everything perfectly, you know, spoons, napkins, glasses. Made him eat with me. You know, in rhythm with me. I picked up my spoon. He picked up his spoon. I took a bite. He took a bite. He had to do it with me. Exactly. Or else I got mad. Yelled at him like I’d heard my father yell. He cowered, shook, cried. He left the table. Wouldn’t eat. That made me feel bad.
My father crawled in bed with us at night. Sometimes with me. Other times with my brother. Where was our mother? Even with his fingers inside me, I felt sorry for him. My brother started lifting weights at eleven. He’d hit my father. Slap him around a little bit until he’d cry. They’d both cry. We all knew why, but no one said anything. Even after the bone woman, even after my brother hung himself with my father’s belt.
I Brought Dylan home with me one weekend. I’d almost begun to like him. He’d started showing me peculiar things about himself, fungus on one of his toenails, a couple of keloid scars, the birthmark on his penis. My brother was still alive then. I wanted them to meet. We went for a hike around the property to the cabin. The bone woman was there, poking out of her sack. Dylan was frightened. I told him the story. My father at medical school in Guadalajara, studying anatomy. He’d heard he could get a skeleton, a real one, because burying people was like paying rent, and if the family stopped paying, up came the body. All these discarded corpses. So they sold them to medical students, Gringos.
You wanted a woman, buried in stockings because there was a better chance all the bones of the feet would be there. My mother helped. They boiled the bones. The water bled red and ruined the pots, a gift for their wedding. They set the bones out to dry, though not on the roof, because of the dogs.
I told Dylan this. I pointed at the bone woman. He said, You know, I’d like one too. I started to cry. My brother pushed him up against the wall. Bloodied his face. I drove Dylan to the hospital. Knew it was the end. Felt so sorry. Felt nothing. Blood soaking into the towel. My brother hanged himself a week later.
I should’ve cut down my brother. Sliced through my father’s belt. Warmed his body with my own. Washed his feet with my hair. Slid behind his body. Given him breath.
I’ve thought about burying the bone woman. She’s in pieces now. No stockings to hold her together. But where do I bury her? Where is a bone woman’s home?