I Pray With My Legs Open

I walked into the church to pray for myself because there was no one else to do it, enfin. My mother is dead and my father might as well be and the men I have loved are all in other countries doing fine, merci pour rien. The font was boiling. I put my fingers in. The skin came off in a sheet. I crossed myself because my mother taught me to and because she is dead. The saints in the stained glass were all turned toward the same corner of the nave. I have learned, in this country, not to look where the saints are looking.

There was a girl in the front pew praying with her whole spine. She was beautiful and I sat down. Long clean brunette hair. Hands folded properly. Un beau cadavre. I sat behind her and milk filled my lungs.

Her lips were moving. She was saying names. With every name a maggot came out of her mouth and landed on the wood. They were big, fat, the size of a thumb. They moved. They crawled over each other. They went over the edge of the pew and onto the floor and some of them found my shoe. I did not move my foot. I recognized the gesture. I had done it in bed, saying his name, something white coming out of me.

Ah, mon Dieu, the comedy. A girl on her knees in a foreign country praying to a man who has never once asked her if she likes her steak À point or rare. A girl who has built a small religion in her chest, with candles, with hours, with the kind of devotion her grandmother saved for actual saints. A girl who has whispered the name of a man into her own hand at three in the morning like a novice. Quelle tragédie. Quelle bêtise. I should be canonized. I should be on a prayer card. Sainte Petite Conne, patroness of girls who confuse love with hemorrhage.

The pile became a mass, alive and shifting. I did not feel disgust. I felt the opposite.

I tapped her shoulder. She turned. She had wet eyes and a small mouth and she would not give me her name. Très sage. I asked her what was happening and she said she was praying for everyone she bleeds for. She said it bored, certain. I took the switchblade from my coat. I began to carry it ever since my body started attracting the wrong kind of attention. I held my hand above her head and let the blood fall into her hair. It threaded through her scalp. She made a small sound.

I turned around. The pews were full. Évidemment. Everyone do the same, I said. Quickly. The odd girl is bleeding out. They lined up. A child went first. She did it without crying. Girls learn.

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The doctor came in eating a peach. He was in a seersucker suit the color of a bruise and his cuffs were already brown with previous peaches. Ma’am, he said, I’m Dr. Beauregard and I’ll be tendin’ to ya this evenin’. He took my hand and turned it over. Well shoot, sugar, your hand’s just fine, lil’ nick like that ain’t gonna take ya to the Lord. He winked. He did not let go. Now I do have some news of a less pleasant nature, mademoiselle, if you can stomach it. I told him to go on. It’s the lovesick, my dear. I’m afraid it’s terminal. Putain. I knew it.

He clapped his hands together very loudly and my hand was back in my lap. He set an X-ray on a wooden easel and pointed with the wet end of the peach. Now lookee here, darlin’. You got somethin’ nestin’ behind your kneecap — looks to me like a wasp’s nest, ma’am, full grown, the queen’s been in residence quite some time. Your heart valves is all crystallized, see that? Pretty in its way, like the rim of a margarita glass, but it ain’t doin’ ya no favors. The marrow’s gone to syrup. Sugar in the bones. And that wet dark place by the liver — that’s the worst of it, sweet pea. The germs got a real sweet tooth, see, and they been chewin’ on you since you was a little bitty thing, which is a shame, sweet little thing like you, they just couldn’t help themselves. Lord have mercy. Look at the size of ‘em. I asked if there was nothing to be done. He laughed. Sugar, the only cure for the lovesick is to stop bein’ such a tender little thing, and bless your sweet baby heart, you ain’t never gonna manage that. He took another bite of peach. He looked at me a long time. Y’all really oughta come in for more checkups, he said, softer now. He patted my thigh. His fingers were cold and damp. He tipped an imaginary hat and walked out.

I left the doctor’s office. I lit a cigarette. I walked past his favourite restaurant on my way home. Quelle santé mentale.

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