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One

Two

Three women Me in their arms, passed from one to another

"My mother and her two sisters," I said, eyes still shut

Mr Schu I heard his asthainst his loose papers He scratched his head with his pen "Eden, it’sthat your mother died when she had you I know you live with an aunt and uncle; is there another sister too?"

"Yes, but that’s not who I mean"

"But you saidâ€""

I balledthe story out like toothpaste from a tube "Not my mother now Mytio since he killed them"

Mr Schumann held still for a minute He thumped his wrist down on the desk and used his scritchy little pen to jot notes across his pad of lined paper "Who is this ’he’ you mentioned?" he finally asked

I always saw the woe that I couldn’t conjure his face I felt his arms, broad and muscular when they picked me up to sit on his shoulders I recalled the sweat and ainst the crook of his neck But these were only photographs

I needed a scene I cracked eting hands They fu theht and a letter opener shaped like a sword Such anxious hands Not like ers so lean and strong and always sure

My father’s fingers held glass vials filled with funny liquids and powders, and he poured thereater one, and another onto a small burner One more bottle Three drops of brown, s, he relove and poured it into a Mason jar that ht have otherwise held peach preserves

His sleek back stretched a dah desk, reading so from a book beside the vials He leaned his head backwards over the chair and gripped his hair with both hands Tight black wool

He was frustrated, angry So in here? Get yourself away now"

"But Papa, I wanted to knohereâ€""

"I said, get yourself away now"

"Papa?"

"Now!" He shouted it, rising out of the chair with enough force to throw it towardsto the floor The pages flipped fro flap Another flash: the shuffling of cards in my mother’s hands before she laid them out in a cross-shaped pattern on a purple silk scarf No My father His book

I was fascinated by the yellowed, dirty pages as they waved back and forth Back and forth Back and forth until the thick cover clattered still And before my father could whisk the book closed and throw it back up on the table, I saas mounted inside

Dry and nasty, shrunken and crooked, a black, ainst the inside back cover of my father’s book Not a picture but a real one, with stick-fingers splayed open and lacquered shiny

I screeched and popped out offor a moment where I was I only wanted to step on the hand, to squash it, to kill it, to destroy it soone, and the only hands I saere the counselor’s confused ones that were putting his pen together again

And his letter opener, conveniently shaped like a sword, was lying close to rab it, and it took less than a second to slah his pasty white palm

It took hih to join h both sides of the wound and sprayed his notepad and the pen fragh to call out, and by then I ell onfor oddess She’s nearly six feet tall, with huge, melon-firs of sexual aesthetics, I wanted to look like Lulu I wanted her black, spiral curls, her olive skin, and her deep brown eyes I wanted men to fall over themselves for me the way they did for her She was my mother’s older sister, but only nineteen when she came to care for me As Mr Schumann said,the maternal farander sister, Michelle Lulu assu, and she took me almost everywhere By the time I o I’d been to concerts, coffeehouses, and poetry readings enough to scar me for life But if Lulu had been a homebody, she would have never met Dave, and then where would we be?

Dave, shortly to beco away froer Dashiell Hammett selection at a used bookstore I’d found a display offering free fudge sah to help myself Dave worked at the store part-tie plate, I was sh chocolate to frost a cake But he didn’t scold uardian Instead, he propped et his ca She foundto read while Dave took pictures What can I say? I was a doll I did have Lulu’s curls and her skin, and I was probably the cutest thing the bored clerk had seen all day<ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins>