What Mess
SAM WILLIAMS
The bruise on your knee, the soft part, where the mini mallet makes you kick, scoops out like rotten apple once you press hard on it. You, who were only hoping for the brief, Starburst-sweet brightspot of pain, don’t know what to do with the pulp. You try scooping it back in, but it falls in globules down your leg, thick in the hair.
“Oh,” you say. You mean, Great. Fuck. Shit. Again?
You cup your hand over it, palm growing wet warm red around the edges.
“Mom?” you call. “Duct tape?”
The box TV spills a sick Ghostbusters green across the room. You want to take a photo. Want the doctor to see you in this light, in your childhood home, holding yourself together, the pallor of putrid. Maybe it would convince. Compel compassion. Or curiosity, in the least. Maybe then it would matter.
“What is it?” Mom asks.
“Kneecap,” you say; it’s shifting, support compromised.
“I’ll grab it,” Mom says.
You give up on saving flesh and try to keep bone. Last week’s loss was three fingernails, leaving four. You’ve got five for the toes. Two months ago, the click-click-click of your right elbow led to a firework flare behind the eyelids—nerves hot as the bone slotted out. Yesterday’s bubblegum under the armpit, keeping the skin together, has hardened and needs replacing.
The doctor’s solution is glue, too. Industrial, medical-grade glue. Painkillers. Blood coagulators and thickeners, slowers of process, easers of symptoms. More expensive than duct tape and Doublemint. Same thing, though. Temporary. Till next time. Pay on the way. There’s lollipops at checkout.
“You want me to call, or you?” Mom asks.
She’s blocking the TV’s light, haloed, shadow-shaped but solid in sound. Soft, Starburst-sweet brightspot of bruise, pressed down on. Right in the chest.
You have the doctor’s digits on proverbial speed dial, cluttering recent calls. You have all the doctors summited there. You can’t put the sequence of the numbers in order yourself but can recognize the collection and shape of them on your screen. Might as well burn them into the backs of your eyelids. While you have eyelids.
Maybe they’ll consider a rewards program—every ten appointments, we’ll sit and listen like we mean it. You’re so bored tired sick of To speak to the Doctor’s medical assistant or leave a message, leave a message, press four, for questions about prescriptions, leave a message, listen to all options, menu might’ve changed, for appointments, press three, for appointments for appointments, press three press we’re sorry, we cannot take your call, we care about all our customers—we mean patients, we care about our patients, just not you, just press three, this line is busy—
“I’ll call,” Mom says, laying the duct tape on the TV tray.
Your throat bobs. She does not lay a hand on you. It hovers over your head, warm, worried that pressure will bring cartilage and tissue caving in. Hair sliding from follicle. Skin parting like paper worn weary. You cannot tell her you wouldn’t mind, anymore. You cannot tell her that, at times, it’s almost relief.
Too grateful, too guilty, you take the duct tape with one awkward hand and tug of teeth to try to maneuver a strip without letting your kneecap slip loose. You lay it across debris and stretch, pull, wrap, over and under until there’s semblance of order. Frankenstein’s monster.
It bodes poorly that there’s no pain. Nerves defunct means unsalvageable means big bill. Insurance denied. Lots of glue means lack of solution. Temporary, temporary. No digging, no root cause.
Down the hall, Mom has finally gotten through from Hold Music Hell. That’s what you both call it, when you’re in a joking mood. You have to have them, joking moods, or you’ll go ahead and dig fingers into your temples, take grey matter into your own hands and put you both out of your misery.
Her voice is pitched high and pleasant, stranger-sweet, Splenda false. You lean back, your duct-taped knee bent stiffly in place, should have taped it straight so you could stand, and let your head rest on the couch. Let the cadence of the conversation wash like waves.
They have an appointment for six weeks from today, a cancellation, you’re lucky—oh, and there’ll be a balance, it seems insurance didn’t approve your last visit, okay? Okay. See you then. Yep, no problem. Never a problem. We won’t acknowledge what happens if you dismantle before we get you in. Never a problem.
Your knee’s congealing all over your leg and fingers. What mess. Mom has deposited a washcloth and bucket near your feet. You set about cleaning yourself. There’s something traitorous in it; washing yourself away, surrendering your parts. You didn’t ask to be made into pieces, rendered dysfunctional.
As you mop up, you’re mesmerized. You’re disgusted. Runny bruise. Oxidized, color of strawberry apple sauce, blotches of blood vessel in the purple and purple in the green. You’re pulled by the toddler tendency, the booger picker, the innate desire, to know what you taste like.
Maybe reingestion, redigestion, will allow regeneration, like a starfish. You’ve tried meditation, anxiety pill after anxiety pill after anxiety pill, because it’s stress, it’s stress, it’s only stress, you have to manage it better, it’s in your head. You’ve massaged your jaw, massaged your legs, massaged until it was too dangerous and vessels burst beneath the skin.
You exercised to get blood flowing, and it did, right into your socks; the soles of your feet stay tender. You stopped eating salt. You ate more salt. You drank more water. Drank less. You take prescriptions, prescriptions, antibiotics, probiotics, your gut biome hates you.
Anyway, you’ll try anything, have tried everything, and you feel a deep, nuclear urge at all hours of all days to do something drastic—like join a fight club and let someone vent their frustrations, just to have an excuse to be as wrecked as you are. But you don’t, you don’t, because that would be your fault, and it’s not your fault, it’s no one’s fault, it’s just collateral damage, with no rhyme, no reason, no answers. You just want answers.
So, you swipe your finger through the what-was of your knee and slurp.
It’s potent. Like wound. Like the heat and confusion and buzzing of cells that comes immediately after a blow to the nose. But then, something jarring, cloying. Terrible and metallic. The backs of your jaw tingle, fierce and quick, and you lurch forward, get your unhindered leg beneath you, the other bent and staggering, foot dragging along the carpet.
You barely make it to the kitchen sink to spit. More comes up than went down. Saliva runs free from your lips. You let it. Standing there, bent over the edge, you run the water hot to rinse out the smell. Your eyes sting; so does your throat. You lift your head to open your airway, the way your old coach told you to, back when your body was sturdy, dependable. You blink against the blearing, the sun seeping in through the window ahead.
Outside, light dapples through the leaves. Birdsong muffles its way through the glass. The playset your mom built in the dead of winter so you could wake to it on Christmas morning sits long abandoned and mildewed, wood rotting at the joints. Along the length of its rafter, a squirrel skitters in search of something, a nut, a mate, a home, its movements quick and determined.
You look away.
And, then, there, you see it. Undignified flight at the edge of the window, inside. Some nondescript bug, attempting escape, seeking sky. Seeking, remembering, it walks the window, circles and circles centimeters. Circles and circles, and, then, stops, sees the sky and thinks, with deep, boneless relief, Oh—there you are, and it rears back, lurches bodily, only to be barred by glass, over and over, over and over, over and over—
Your hand darts with deft and frightening speed, meeting the window with a distinct smack. Against the glass, you smear. The pressure too great. You withdraw, and it’s only a little mess. Manageable. The bug, however—ceaseless, sky-robbed, made nuisance—lies prone and pulped, obscure in the vastness of the palm, caught in what’s left of the crease.
SAM WILLIAMS (she/her) is a fiction writer out of Memphis, TN. In her fiction, she likes to explore queerness, community, and alienation. She is a third-year MFA candidate at the University of Memphis, where she also currently works as the senior prose editor for Pinch literary journal. This is her first publication.
