Megan Ayers
I’ve picked a hole through my skin. Picked it deep and bloody. The wound is on my chest, next to my left breast, near my heart. I’ve picked at my skin before: cuticles ragged, mosquito bites oozing tacky-hard plasma, zits popped and re-popped until they crusted over. I’ve picked little craters in my shins, pulled flaps of skin from between my toes, ripped nubs from the backs of my arms until I looked like I had a pox.
…..I picked a hole in my neck once, where my larynx was, and since I picked and picked, flicking away the gummy scab as soon as it formed, the hole never healed and one day my voice box fell out and I accidentally stepped on it. It quacked like a wet toad when my foot mashed it, and there it was, smeared bloody on the sidewalk next to a deflated cigarette butt and a candy wrapper for a brand I’d never heard of. There were black pieces of old gum puttied to the sidewalk, crabgrass sprouting out cracks in the cement. The larynx was dirty and wet, like a gift from some embarrassed dog’s filmy butthole, lying unmolested on the gray concrete.
…..When I bent over to get a closer look at my voice box, it seemed to gasp for breath on its side and quiver in the afternoon sun, glistening. It was gross. I kicked it under a bush because I didn’t want the mailman to slip on it, didn’t want a dog to get a hold of it, trot it into the lap of some unsuspecting old lady who’d have to grope for her glasses from the table next to her puffy green chair in order to see just what her Scout had presented, then perplexed at the wet, warm mass the size of a baby’s clenched fist, she’d call her grown son who lived in the basement to come and look at what the dog had found.
…..No, I didn’t want a large man, unemployed and T-shirted year-round to emerge from the depths of the house where he would have been watching a movie or tinkering on the Speak-and-Spell he’d converted to try and listen in on his neighbor’s conversations. He might be tired from staying up all night watching television/chatting online/masturbating, and when he saw his mother with the lumpy pinkwet sog in her soft lap, he’d roll up her thumbed, large-print edition of TV Guide and beat the dog in the backyard, out of his mother’s ear-reach, maybe for the fear and disgust rising in his throat, all mushroomy bile and gut twist. He’d bury it in the back yard next to the tin box coffin of his pet rat Buster, or in his mother’s tomato garden where it was sure to decompose and inter beneath the cool wet loam. Before he disposed of my voice box, I’m sure he would snap a picture of it, maybe show it to his friend Otto over coffee and cigarettes where they’d speculate on the origin of species and possible uses for my larynx while hypothesizing on various wacko theories involving Hunter S. Thompson, beef tongue sandwiches, and a longed-for trip to Burning Man.
…..But after I kicked my oozy voice box off the sidewalk and under a bush, I imagined a cat batting it out from its hiding spot, tail twitching in violent glee. He’d probably roll the old thing right back onto the sidewalk where some toddler would bend to pick it up, gum on it for a second or two before his exhausted mother absently plucked it from his smeary mouth while talking on her cell phone to the father of the child whom she’d called during his lunch break to say hello. She wanted to make sure he was actually at work and not down the street on his ass, shooting dollar bill airplanes at Benny the Bartender. She’d take my voice box and stick it in her purse, still chatting, thinking it was some rubbery-plastic toy thing of the kid’s and there it’d go unnoticed until later that night when she was sifting through the receipts, gum wrappers, lighters, wadded-up tissues, and various cosmetic accoutrements to find a couple dollars for cigarettes at the neon-clad corner store. Among the hot rod magazines, lottery tickets, and licorice whips her hand would reach in for cash but instead graze the cold, pliant wetness. Her first thought would be: Why is there a smashed plum in my purse? Her face would turn ugly then, and she’d use the tissues to sop at my larynx, tossing it into the countertop waste bin near the rotisserie hot dogs and lids for ninety-nine cent jumbo sodas.
…..Despite my absentee larynx, I am amazed I can still speak. What comes out, though, doesn’t make sense. Sometimes, people don’t seem to notice what I say. Other times, what they hear doesn’t always match up. When I’m at the grocery store looking for something specific and I trek from aisle to florescent aisle, trying to find some hunched-over stock boy to ask where the hearts of palm are and finally locate him in the cereal section, hair greasy across his forehead, his cold silver lip ring protruding from his teenaged pout, he’ll look Heavenward and hitch up his tight jeans, thoughts coalescing somewhere upstairs. Then he’ll chew on his lip and direct me to the baby section.
…..When I drive to my mechanic on a Saturday morning to drop my car off for the weekend, he’ll come out of the windowed garage already wiping his greasy hands on a rag that he stuffs into his back pocket while smiling at me. He’ll ask me what he can do for me and I’ll explain to him in what I believe to be plain speech that I’m hearing a pinging under the hood. He’ll take my keys with a grin, hoist the car up into the sky of the garage, and begin tinkering with the tires or banging on the exhaust system.
…..At work, when I arrive in the quiet, still dark mornings and enter the atrium, my heels clicking against the shiny white marble floors that are so clean I worry my associates look up my skirt, I nod hello to John, the front security guard, and ask him how he is today. He’ll look up from the consoles of black and white security screens that surround him like face-up children, smile, and tell me, “The Lord is kind and merciful.”
…..I dip to slide the ID lanyard around my neck through the barcode reader to enter the office. I pass my boss and ask him about the status of the case I’m working on. In response I get, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
…..The hole I’ve picked near my heart isn’t as problematic as the hole in my neck. For instance, though I can touch my heart’s striated fibers with the fingers of either hand, and my hair sometimes catches in the dark, moist hollow when I’m changing my shirt, my heart is protected behind the cage of my ribs, and bumpered on either side by my lungs. My heart is held fast and I entertain no fear of losing it.
…..When I take a shower, the hole stings a little at first when the warm water hits its tender opening. Taking care not to scrub too hard, I keep the soap clear of it because I don’t really know what would happen if I were to allow lather to build in my chest cavity, suds spilling from the wound like some Wonder of the World, erupting in foaming glory every other hour, on the hour. Would I clean away essential enzymes from the pulsing surface? Could I do damage? The back of the shampoo bottle says it’s tearless, but my heart can’t cry, so I wonder if I should switch brands before something permanent happens, maybe opt for an organic brand promising full body and manageability.
…..The open hole is in an awkward area. I push my soft left breast just to the side in order to get my hand in to stroke the bulging muscle. My bra doesn’t chafe it though, and my business attire conceals the hole easily, but I wonder if my co-workers can hear its diligent work, my heart’s tireless commitment to its job. Can they see its athletic pulse beneath the sheer fabric of my blouse? Can they hear its wet rhythm keeping hot time to the speed of my life? Can they smell the blood, like warm pennies in my mouth? Do they imagine I go home at night, undress slowly before the mirror in the dim half-light of autumn, taking my breast in hand to move it just to peer into myself, to touch that which makes me alive, to penetrate my own mysterious void, making compromised love?
…..I wasn’t born with the hole in my chest. I picked it when I married a man who didn’t like himself. At first, the location of the wound was merely an annoying itch I snuck a finger into in order to pick at the skin. My hand seeking the same tender spot while watching television or reading a book. In bed, the covers pulled over my legs and the bedside lamp on low so as not to wake him, I’d pull the neck of my shirt down and worry the spot, kneading and preening quietly while my husband slept open-mouthed beside me. My one hand cupping, the other caressing the hole, tracing its moist outline with a finger, dipping in every so often to rewet and stroke the throbbing organ, admiring the hot life within.
…..If I stopped picking the hole, the wound would eventually close, the scab will scar, and the only memory of almost having lost my heart will be the round, off-pink concave scar on my chest about the size of a sweet pea flower.
…..My husband was emphatically anti-pick. If my hand went unconsciously to the little pucker between buttons during dinner, he’d swat it away and glare at me as though I were a small child reaching for a burning pan.
…..Early on in the marriage, when the physical intimacy was rampant and unquenched, I’d play little games of disclosure, where I’d only reveal certain parts of my body: the right leg and torso, my ass and bush, my shoulders and back, smooth and moonlit. So the hiding of certain parts of my body was of no real surprise to him when I adopted it again several years into the comfortable routine of our relationship. He was excited by the reminder that before we were “we,” there was a very separate and distinct he and I—he could choose to indulge in me, I could choose to abstain. He never saw my heart and couldn’t acknowledge its beating, even if I let him see all of me. The gaping hole in my chest would have either gone unobserved or dismissed had I not finally taken his finger and guided it into the warm little room.
…..What I remember: his hands on my skin, the scent of his hair, how he never met my eye in those close moments of breath and skin and in that closest moment, he said no and withdrew.
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Megan recently graduated with an MFA from Bowling Green State University where she was an assistant fiction editor at Mid-American Review.