Joanna Koch - The Wingspan of Severed Hands

The Couvade

F lowers in her hair, flowers in her eyes, flowers in her mouth, each step down the aisle tripped wires on a spiral-spring trap. Forced to fit into her mothers dress, her mothers mothers dress, the heirloom lace snared Adiras struggling flesh like a hunters net. The dress, the dress, nothing like the girl, cleaned and made right for this special day. Adiras unruly body refused discipline, an animal intent on its desires, offending the ceremony, defiling the dress. No choice after her mother caught them, not their fearful fleeing bodies, not the boy in the act of wheedling, but their stripped and scattered clothes abandoned in the den. Hateful alarm, the doorknob clicked.

Animal panic. Adiras mother came home early.

Split apart naked, two bodies on opposite axes severed the single-wide home. The den, kitchenette, and living room condensed in one clean cage. The boy flew out the window, more bulk than bird, crushing crickets and twisting an ankle with his tumble. It was spring, a hot night, no screen, no darkness to blanket the bawdy scene. Adira went off to her room like a gunshot; door slammed and locked, wedding bells ringing in her ears like the aftermath of a rifle blast. No escape. Shed said no twenty-three times (she counted) until the boy turned broody and she gave in.

Now shaking, naked, pressed against the door of her room as if her wrong body reinforced its battlements with incorrect strength, blood smeared on wood, blood from her thigh, not as much as shed expected, not much at all considering the stab. Between her legs and in the void masked by bone, her pelvic crown circled an empty universe where pain hatched. Listening: footsteps, path to the window, path to the door; an exhausted sigh. Moments of silence, aching with fear. Her mothers heavy tread down the folding metal stairs. Footsteps crunching in gravel out back. Voices without words, first low and conspiratorial, then appeasing and polite.

Adiras impolite body incapable of right form, right movement. The right action was to grab the tell-tale garments from the den. Frozen in fear of exposure, prey snared: Adira braced against a contractual laugh. Footsteps at her door, the only barrier against threats, slaps.

Her mothers phlegmatic voice broke through. Do you want your clothes back or should I put them in the wash?

Question like a cage, like a cancer, every answer a transfer of guilt.

Adira whispered, Wash.

I cant hear you, honey. You need to learn to speak up.

Couldnt speak with the web of fear spinning from her gut. Adiras inertia bound her, a wounded spider, a sacrificial cocoon cannibalized by mothers and mates. Her full flesh too unctuous not to taste, as if her succulent meat ripened only for others, bred to be devoured, stock fed and farmed for slaughter.

Adiras mother offered an incantation of obedience. Dysfunctional deception, so simple to don, a thick wet cloak inviting Adira to pull it shuddering over her eyes. Its for your own good, honey. You know how much I love you.

Rising expectations as her mother waited for Adiras reply. Rites of acceptance, domestic mergers of identity under the title of love, love so strong it looked like hate. I love you, the canonical phrase, enforced daily, hourly, as often as needed to mask her mothers hungry, fleshless face. Intoned ad nauseam, an emetic repetition, a bulimic response, a slick tentacle gagging Adiras throat to bring up her mothers semi-digested feast. The answer voided agency from Adiras mouth, voided meaning from the words.

The phrase once spoken must be spoken back.

Defying the law of call and response, Adira left a vacancy hanging in the air. Through the closed door, the thin membrane of her penetrable fortress, a tentacle untethered as Adira gloated over the hesitation of shock. Silence followed the march of her mothers wounded retreat.

By morning, Adiras mother vomited in bed with a migraine, curtains closed against daylight. Adira cloistered and cursed her bladders betrayal, desperate to reach the small mobile homes one bathroom through the sick dragons lair. Her mother feigned weakness beneath blanketed dunes. Adira knew the dragon had the power to strike with the poison tentacles of its forked tongue. Fueled by fury, gorgon of the hungry eyes, the snake-haired dragon aimed at Adira, ever ready to bite.

Snuffing out the sound of her steps, Adira made the delicate journey as the dragon slept. Relief was an echoing waterfall, cascading too loud in the humid cube. Trapped and frozen anew in pink-tiled quandary, Adira listened for the groan of bedsprings, the slippery shuffle of covers, or the sigh of the fire-breathing beast.

Captive in the dragons cave, sweat sent Adira into shivers. The walls tightened against her shoulders. She counted by fives to settle her mind. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty. The shower stall was damp, always damp. Sickening snails of moisture snaked down the tempered glass. Scummy spirals and sinister lesions hung sticky with wiggling beads. Adira trembled with a droplet that bulged like a great bulbous eye and popped from its socket. It stared with salacious horror and an aliens incomprehensible lust while the walls of the small room sweated and shook. Naked, the eye leaned forward and dangled on a wet optic nerve rooted to the glass. It swelled in obscene colors like swirling oil as it ogled Adira on the toilet.

What peered from the void beyond the Hyades dwelled in the ancient memory of the corporeal atoms of water: in her mothers angry tears, in Adiras uncontrollable sweat, in the pink dampness of the dragons cave. Awash in endless shame, her mothers house a maze of endless traps and endless eyes, Adira sensed something distant hunted between her legs.