Charlie Fiset<\/p>\n
Julie was shucking eggs. How many eggs did it take before one could use the word \u201cshuck\u201d with impunity? One dozen? Two dozen? Julie was shucking three dozen eggs. They had been waiting for her, wrapped up in a blanket-like towel, on the kitchen counter when she arrived home from the hospital.<\/p>\n
Normally she didn\u2019t work in the kitchen, but she continued to shuck when she discovered how enjoyable it was — cracking, peeling. Sometimes a liminal layer of overcooked egg would stick to the wall of the shell; it made a noise like scotch tape pulling off drywall when she separated them. She enjoyed the thought that her fingers were touching spherical flesh. She could picture the hidden golden yolk suspended in ether like a miniature sun, halted in deadened animation, now so much latent, useless being. The egg flesh was more similar than dissimilar to the flesh wrapped around her own bones.<\/p>\n
The back door slammed and suddenly Julie\u2019s mother appeared in the kitchen. She looked at Julie and screamed, dropping the bags she\u2019d been carrying. They landed on the floor with a muffled crunching sound.<\/p>\n
\u201cJulie –\u201d her mother began.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat was in the bags?\u201d Julie asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cMore eggs,\u201d said her mother. \u201cI thought I needed more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead of fetching the tea towel that hung from the stove, Julie pulled out her phone and began to photograph the scrambled mess as it expanded over the tiles. \u201cYou always think you need more,\u201d she said. \u201cWhy would anybody need so many eggs? One egg is too many eggs.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy did you do it?\u201d her mother asked, a hand trembling over her heart, fluttering like the ruffled pink silk scarf wrapped tightly around her neck. She pushed past Julie and rummaged under the sink, retuning with paper towels and disinfectant spray.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo what?\u201d Julie asked, without looking up.<\/p>\n
As if trying to escape the savagery, a single intact yolk slid down the sloping floor towards the backdoor, dragging itself through the gory path of its own amniotic food. Julie videoed its progress. She got down on her hands and knees, transfixed. A long, ropy white cord slid after the yolk like a streamer — like it was wearing a raccoon-tail hat. She wondered if it would have been the spinal cord.<\/p>\n
Her mother stooped down and started wiping up the mess, wincing at the pain of her chronically inflamed disc. \u201cYou can\u2019t go looking like that<\/i>,\u201d she said. \u201cYou just can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going,\u201d said Julie. \u201cI said I would.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ll think you\u2019re making a statement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her mother was still upset about the prosthetic penis Julie was currently sculpting. She\u2019d found it in Julie\u2019s room and had thought it was a sex toy.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet them think whatever they want.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy did you do it?\u201d her mother asked her again. \u201cDo you hate me, Jules? Do you want them to stare?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t need it to keep warm,\u201d said Julie, running her hands over her freshly-shaven head. \u201cIt didn\u2019t make me any prettier — not that I care, anyway. And it was dirty.\u201d<\/p>\n
That afternoon she\u2019d been looking in on the operating theater, sketching a woman who was having a hysterectomy. She was a special case: pear-shaped vagina, one for the books. The woman had been strapped down on the table like a wriggling worm, pinned beneath the clean pure lights. Everything in the theater was rendered so perfectly white and sterile by the lights — even Julie\u2019s own skin. It had been so easy to follow the blue veins in the fluorescent glow; they were not stagnant, like the pictures she drew. They moved and pulsed, were always changing. Then surgeon nicked an artery and the blood shot in a long, thick stream upwards, spattering the plate glass right in front of Julie\u2019s face.<\/p>\n
\u201cDirty?\u201d Julie\u2019s mother asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know the smell of peoples’ hair? It smells like \u2018them.\u2019 But that\u2019s just a nice way of saying it smells like their sweat, their oils and salts, squeezed out through their pores from their glands, produced from the dead plants and animals they consume. It takes seven years to cycle through every cell in the body. Every seven years you are a new person made from the things you eat. Shampooing your hair is like spraying perfume on a pile of compost and calling it clean.\u201d<\/p>\n
Julie\u2019s mother stared at Julie, and then went back to wiping up the eggs. \u201cThis doesn\u2019t have anything to do with Parker, does it?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWho\u2019s Parker?\u201d Julie asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t be like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLike what?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease don\u2019t say anything rude or strange to Mary,\u201d her mother burst out suddenly, her face blotchy and red with distress. Her thyroidal eyes looked enormous in her plump, sagging face — wide and frightened, like the eyes of a child. \u201cOr the other ladies. They\u2019re all so happy, Jules, and sometimes . . . sometimes people don\u2019t need to be reminded of unhappy things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Julie knew her mother was thinking of the prosthetic penis when she said \u201cunhappy things.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Julie and her mother arrived at the baby shower, the other women were already organized in a ring, sipping steaming mugs of coffee, their plates sprinkled with pastry crumbs. Julie\u2019s mother flitted off and became absorbed in a conversation with one of the Aunts, and Julie was left — as usual — to fend for herself.<\/p>\n
Her mother was right. There had been a pause in the conversational flow of the circle when they entered. Mary, who sat at the \u201chead\u201d of the ring, surrounded by stacks of frilly-wrapped presents, had gaped and then looked away quickly, smiling. But after a few stares and stifled giggles the ladies turned inwards upon themselves, folding the circle tightly closed, as if wishing to exclude the sight of Julie altogether. The Aunts, slumping heavily, looked like a panorama of the Appalachians, softly rolling but impassable. They oooed and cooed when Mary described her back pains with a vividness that would make contemporary poets jealous.<\/p>\n
Mary\u2019s hair was curled up in ringlets. She wore a maternity dress that was nearly a hoop skirt, looked both virginal and utterly knocked-up, like the bride in The Arnolfini Wedding<\/i>.<\/p>\n
\u201cJulie, your hair,\u201d said one of the cousins, sniggering behind her palm. \u201cTime for a change? Or was it politically motivated?\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead of explaining about the dirt, Julie shrugged. She could feel Mary\u2019s eyes on her.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh!\u201d Mary gasped suddenly. \u201cHe\u2019s kicking!\u201d<\/p>\n
The Aunts crowded inwards and Julie was trapped.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t you want to feel?\u201d one asked, her pink face stretched wide into a smile. She grabbed Julie\u2019s arm at the wrist before Julie could jerk away, and Julie\u2019s hand was buried beneath a pile of plump, round fingers. She felt a subcutaneous rippling beneath her palm. Like how the surface of the water stirs before the shark\u2019s dorsal fin emerges.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re having the birth right here in the house.\u201d Mary\u2019s voice emitted from the nexus of the crisscrossed web of hands. \u201cWe purchased a birthing pool. Of course you\u2019re all invited. The atmosphere is very important in natural births. The energy has to be sublime.\u201d<\/p>\n
Julie jerked her hand out from the bottom of the pile. \u201cAren\u2019t you worried about hygiene?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n
But before Mary could say anything, one of the Aunts cried: \u201cI\u2019d just love to see the baby\u2019s room!\u201d<\/p>\n
The baby\u2019s room had recently been renovated. It was painted blue with large decals of sailboats and pirate ships. The mobile hanging over the crib was pirate gold and pistols. There was a small, plush rapier tucked in among the teddies.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sonogram said it was a boy,\u201d said Mary. \u201cI want to be able to acclimatize him to his room as soon as he\u2019s born, so he doesn\u2019t suffer any sudden shocks that might cripple his development. Every moment is crucial at the stage between in utero and the transition to the external environment.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAren\u2019t you worried about forcing the child into a normative gender role?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d Mary asked, her smile stiff.<\/p>\n
\u201cJulie\u2019s just joking,\u201d said Julie\u2019s mother, appearing suddenly from amidst the aunts.<\/p>\n
\u201cIsn\u2019t it a bit . . . much?\u201d Julie asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou mean the toys<\/i>?\u201d Mary asked, with a little laugh.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean inherently violent toys. You might say that you\u2019re encouraging violent tendencies with all this pirate stuff. They\u2019re rapists and murderers, after all.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t ever remember hearing about anybody being killed by a baby<\/i>,\u201d said Mary.<\/p>\n
\u201cWomen die in childbirth all the time,\u201d said Julie.<\/p>\n
Silence fell over the group. Julie took a step backwards. She\u2019d forgotten that she\u2019d been holding her phone, filming the room. Now she looked at the women through the tiny, glowing screen; their eyes glinted in the fluorescent lights — the way animal eyes refract in photos. She\u2019d read before that pregnant women had been banned from the theater in ancient Athens because when the drums and claxons sounded, heralding the appearance of the Bacchae<\/i>, sometimes the women got so scared that they spontaneously aborted.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, shut up, Jules,\u201d said one of the Aunts. \u201cNobody wants to hear your nonsense. Mary, try to think what it must be like for her. You\u2019ve got Paul and she hasn\u2019t got anybody. You\u2019ve got a new house and the baby coming and she\u2019s holed up in her parents’ basement . . . You\u2019re the prettiest girl in town and Julie doesn\u2019t even have hair.\u201d<\/p>\n
At this there was a smattering of laughter.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously,\u201d said Mary, \u201cit\u2019s just a desperate cry for attention. Pathetic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Julie could still hear them talking while she fled down the hall, threw on her coat and boots. \u201cHer mother says she\u2019s got the depression. You know they had to bring her back from the city –\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s right,\u201d Julie yelled, as she opened the door. \u201cThey found me in the bathtub, nearly bled out! Doesn\u2019t that make you feel sorry for me, Mary?\u201d<\/p>\n
Julie\u2019s basement room was filled with flowering plants. Her mother had an arboretum in the summer and liked to get a head start before the spring planting. The plants were strewn with Mary\u2019s prosthetics, making it appear as though the stalks were sprouting ears or noses instead of carrot greens or onion shoots.<\/p>\n
Julie was watching a children\u2019s television show while she put the finishing touches on the prosthetic penis. She carefully shaved another centimeter from the glans. She\u2019d created a three-dimensional mold from the exact specifications of the transsexual man who was to receive the prosthetic. A button could be pressed just beneath the scrotum and the hydraulic rods would stiffen; an internal mechanism was connected to the testes, so that the prosthetic could offer the complete range of sexual experience.<\/p>\n
Once upon a time, she\u2019d wanted to be a real artist. But during her stint in the city it became clear that she was too technically minded for abstraction; her drawings were too close to life. She could draft effortlessly, having a natural grasp of proportions. And she could measure millimeters with her eyes. But the nonconcrete escaped her.<\/p>\n
The television program was repeating a familiar musical motif associated with the rising action of the plot. The trilling, over-excited sounds built up in Julie\u2019s ears like underwater pressure, like the force that pushed a bullet from a gun. Just when the music was rushing with her boiling blood the program paused for commercials.<\/p>\n
An advertisement for a popular brand of vitamins flashed onto the screen. First it showed pictures of wheat fields and sunflowers and salmons leaping vigorously up a fast-flowing river. Then it showed a man\u2019s back. He was running from the camera, the perfect symbol of vitality and health. His shoulders slumped forward suddenly and the image became layered upon the brand\u2019s logo. A palimpsest of superimposed color tricked the eye, but Julie could see that the man was now leaning over the figure of a woman; they reclined into the horizontal, hips thrusting to the beat of the jingle. They humped away until they were reduced to a single streak of sunshine emanating from the cartoon sun that was the brand\u2019s logo.<\/p>\n
Julie rose from the couch and approached her canvas; it was blank, though dozens of sketches littered the floor around it. Her hand dropped to her stomach. She thought she could feel a tiny, hardening lump in her core like a pearl accumulating layers of sand. The vitamin from the commercial had beamed directly into her core. She was suddenly very aware of the plants. It was as if she could hear them respiring. She looked at the beaded fog upon the window and could picture the molecules of water at the subatomic level; she could see the carbon monoxide floating in the room — she could feel the oxygen. She could feel herself, little by little, exchanging her precious molecules with the gasping, strangling vegetation as she breathed in and out.<\/p>\n
Julie fled the basement, knocking the prosthetic penis to the floor on her way out. Upstairs, the house was empty.<\/p>\n
She wanted desperately to speak with her mother. She walked down the street blindly, looking into the houses through the windows, all of which were clouded with condensation. Finally, she arrived — as if on purpose — at a house she recognized. Her mother\u2019s car was parked outside. It was Mary\u2019s house.<\/p>\n
Inside, all was silent save for the hint of murmuring voices. They rippled down the hall. Julie followed the sound until she reached the door of the downstairs bathroom. The eerie noise raised the hair on her arms and neck. She pulled out her phone.<\/p>\n
\u201cHello?\u201d Julie called. \u201cHello? Mom? Are you here? I need to talk to you . . . \u201d<\/p>\n
She pushed the door open.<\/p>\n
A ring of women was standing around what appeared to be a portable wading pool. The pool and the women only just fit into the cramped bathroom. Mary was squatting in the water. Her breasts were covered by a black bikini top; her enormous belly seemed to bob upon the surface. Her hair was unbound, hanging around her face in sweaty sheaves. She was making mewling noises, and so were the other women. It took Julie a moment to realize that they were all chanting in time to some sort of a Lamaze meditation recording that was playing from a stereo on the sink. They breathed in with Mary, and then expelled the breath in a low, sustained moan . . .<\/p>\n
Julie began to laugh.<\/p>\n
She pressed her knuckles to her face, but she could not stop the sound from escaping into the room. Soon it was echoing off the walls.<\/p>\n
The ladies peered round at her.<\/p>\n
Mary\u2019s eyes focused on Julie. \u201cGET OUT!\u201d she screamed. \u201cGET OUT!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMary, calm down –\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh GOD!\u201d wailed the Aunts.<\/p>\n
\u201cGEEEEET OUUUUUUUUUUUT!\u201d<\/p>\n
There was a sudden burst of motion. Mary looked as if she were trying to rise from the water, perhaps to expel Julie from the room herself. But she only succeeded in upsetting the balance of one of the Aunts, who had been leaning against the wading pool. With a shriek the Aunt tumbled into the water; the pool buckled and then water began to gush forth. Losing her balance, Mary tipped over backwards, her legs sticking up into the air like a squashed cockroach.<\/p>\n
A dark shadow emerged from between Mary\u2019s legs; the water clouded with blood and then the shadow rushed forth, sliding along with the water, a ropy cord streaming out behind it. It came to a sudden halt when it bounced against Julie\u2019s toes.<\/p>\n
Julie had been following its progress with her camera. She zoomed.<\/p>\n
Julie\u2019s mother hadn\u2019t been able to stop attrition baking since the birth of Mary\u2019s son. Cartons of eggs were sitting on the counter, waiting to be cracked and baked into pies, cakes, flakey pastries or quiches. She had decided to make Mary a month\u2019s worth of suppers as an apology. \u201cI know how hard it is to cook when you\u2019ve got a new baby to look after. And it\u2019s so important to get the proper nutrition. You don\u2019t eat the right food, Jules,\u201d her mother concluded, with a nervous titter. \u201cI tell you that all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow\u2019s Mary, anyway?\u201d Julie asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cApparently Mary\u2019s been a bit batty since it happened. Hasn\u2019t been able to stop crying — she\u2019s blaming the whole thing on you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course,\u201d said Julie.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe says you ruined her baby\/mother bonding, because you were the first person the baby saw. She says all anyone will be able to remember about the beautiful event is the baby bouncing off your shoes. She says she\u2019s humiliated. I told Mary that she has a beautiful baby, and nothing to complain about. And that footage you took of the birth is lovely stuff. You can see him open his eyes for the very first time. Such a little angel. He didn\u2019t make a peep. I think Mary needs to go on a post-natal vitamin regimen or something. Poor dear.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Julie descended into the basement to start working on her prosthetics again, she noticed that the door to her studio had been left ajar.<\/p>\n
When she pushed inside the room she saw a woman standing in front of the easel that sat in the corner. A plethora of papers were tacked up onto the wall behind the easel; the floor below it was littered with sketches and paint-smeared canvases, torn or with broken frames. Upon the easel there sat a canvas covered in dark smudges that looked like glossy red tar, weaving in and out of themselves in crisscrossing patterns, circling inwards towards two points of light. You could only tell that the smudges congealed to form the shape of a face if you looked very closely, and then all became clear. It was the inside <\/i>of a face, as it would have appeared if someone had peeled back the skin in a hanging flap and painted the mess of nerves and veins and muscle that lay beneath. It was impossible to tell to whom the face belonged by looking at the painting alone. But the sketches on the floor showed a photographic replica of the same face over and over.<\/p>\n
The woman standing in front of the easel turned around. It was Mary. She was holding a bag of groceries, her winter boots and coat still on, as if she had just come from the grocery store.<\/p>\n
Julie could feel her head swimming; the overhead fluorescents were beginning to flash ominously in the corners of her eyes. \u201cMary,\u201d she said. \u201cWhere\u2019s your baby?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy baby?\u201d said Mary. \u201cThis is a drawing of my<\/i> baby! These are all drawings of him! You psychopathic bitch<\/i>!\u201d<\/p>\n
Mary reached into the plastic bag and started hurling things at Julie: a box of crackers, a head of lettuce. One egg. Two eggs. Three eggs.<\/p>\n
An egg smashed into Julie\u2019s forehead and trickled down her face. Before she could move away Mary cornered her against the wall and smashed more eggs into her hair and cheeks. Taking the only egg that was left in the carton, Mary mashed it against Julie\u2019s lips. The shell fractured and then broke. It dug into Julie\u2019s flesh and she gasped in pain — and then Mary forced both egg and shell into Julie\u2019s mouth.<\/p>\n
Julie tried to spit it out, but Mary rammed her palm against Julie\u2019s jaw, holding her mouth closed. Julie\u2019s eyes were wide with fear as she struggled to swallow. Mary\u2019s eyes followed the progress of the egg as it bulged down Julie\u2019s throat.<\/p>\n
Then, Mary leapt backwards with a gasp.<\/p>\n
Julie looked down to see that the front of her shirt and pants were stained with blood. The stain was expanding frighteningly, dying the cloth red. She could feel the blood drain from her head, from her face.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you,\u201d said Julie, a bit of shell falling from her lip. \u201cThank you, Mary . . . it\u2019s all right. Everything\u2019s all right. I\u2019ll just hop in the car and drive myself to the hospital. Really,\u201d she said, looking up into Mary\u2019s eyes, \u201cThanks.\u201d<\/p>\n
CHARLIE FISET<\/b> is currently completing her MA thesis in Creative Writing at the University of New Brunswick. She looks forward to starting her PhD in English at UNB next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Charlie Fiset Julie was shucking eggs. How many eggs did it take before one could use the word \u201cshuck\u201d with impunity? One dozen? Two dozen? Julie was shucking three dozen eggs. They had been waiting for her, wrapped up in … Continue reading