stephanie dickinson

Lava

The girl twists the hot water faucet on and climbs in the deep white tub that sits on claws and balls like chicken talons grasping glass apples. It is the kind of tub she grew up washing in. Grit from the ceiling is sifting down like cake flour and up from the drain albino cockroaches run, silver and dun. She takes the half-melted loaf of Lava and rubs it like steelwool across her breasts. Her mother used to boil Lava soap to make a greasy shampoo that tied her hair into knots. What makes you so special? her mother always said when the girl complained. She rubs the soap into her cheeks, wishing she could rip them and make her face over so it looked like pumice. The tub has big eyes and watches to see that the girl works the soap under her arms, into her belly button, and between her legs again. She gets out of the tub and dries on a blue towel she can see her hand through. Her eyes in the mirror look like puddles of oil. She dresses again. She doesn't forget to apply lipstick--a thick liverwurst pink that tastes like raw paste. She shuts the bathroom door behind her and walks out into the living room. This isn't Old Town, the street he promised he'd take her when he flirted with her in the bus depot. This is a tenement flat, not shiny boutiques and oozy saxophones. You hur, hur and don't think, her mother always said, but the girl thought all along she'd end up alone with him like this. His boots stand with their silver tips and socks folded over them. He sits naked on the worn red velveteen couch with his elbows on his knees looking down at the plate of bones between his feet. He slowly scrapes the bones with his long nails until the bones are bare. When he touches her his fingers will smell of those bones. There's a dog somewhere. She can hear the moist red tongue panting. On the floor, a pallet is neatly made up with a purple sheet. Get on it, he says. No knife, no gun, he doesn't even close her neck between his fingers like she wishes. Will he gives her a ride back to the bus depot after, she wonders? No matter. When her mother was a girl she had to milk 7 cows before going to school, lifting and dragging milkcans so heavy she fell on the ice again and again, seeing stars.