Attic by Katherine Dunn
—
I’m glad there are no full-length mirrors here, only the small mirror bolted to the bulkhead at medium-height eye level. I weigh one hundred and eighty-five pounds today. They took the bandage for the boils off my back and weighed me and took my blood pressure. One hundred eighty-five pounds sixty-six inches tall. My legs don’t cross any more above the knee. They touch above the knee even when the feet are a foot and a half apart. I wear a size eighteen uniform now. It used to be a twelve for comfort and a ten for fit. I don’t recognize myself any more. I couldn’t fit into Dogsbody if she were here. There are no bones anywhere—not at my knee or ankle or wrist or collarbone. My skull is only there when I poke for it. The white hair is long and straight on my calves and when I put my feet up the flesh hangs away from me. When I raise my arm straight up in the bunk it all falls down away from my wrist and the freckles are far apart and pale. My hands don’t close all the way the fingers are too thick and stiff to bend in. When I lie on my back my face is heavy toward my ears. I sleep a lot and wake when I’m hungry.
—
He’s thinking maybe I’d go easy for him, he has that—and the others just think they’re dogs “gay dogs” the words mean that to them. It doesn’t touch me at all but them, working all around them. They are not hungry there, but in the space behind the eyes where the empty is frightening and they try to fill it with themselves. It would not frighten me. I want it so, to sink into empty and not even dream. They are so afraid of not wanting. I would be so glad not to want again.
There were two slugs in the path through the field, gray green and glowing with dew. I stopped in the morning. They went toward each other not moving and almost passed each other but stopped no head to no tail. They were still and the sides opened toward each other. A hole in something just opened, fell open it was so heavy, and a bubble came white and thick and they lay with the bubble between them, not moving, paying no part of them to the path or me crouched watching and the bubble did not change or move though they were alive in it and secrets were happening, passing in the bubble with its skin glowing white as the sun came up.
The next year he was on his knees watching something on the walk. I stopped. It was a slug. He poured salt from a paper box. It shriveled and moved one end and the other and the middle but always in the salt. It kept moving and every time the lumps on the head started to come he waited till they stood out and then poured more salt. The white grains sticking. The salt sticks to the slug and all around the slug on the concrete is wetness and from the slug to the grass is a shining and if a grain of salt falls into the shine it sticks. What the salt does to it is secret and invisible, like in the bubble.
—
I wanted to be away but not alone. I wanted the final touch for my new façade, my new image, the black thing, the pale and dark thing moving in darkness. I wanted something that belonged totally to me—adored me only. I wanted power over another powerful thing. So I got the dog. I had plans for a noble fantastic name. None of this Rex and Bingo jazz, but Shiva. When I got him at the training kennels he was huge and all black except for two peaches over his eyes and his name was Prince. I registered him as Black Prince Shiva the Destroyer and told that to anyone who asked but he never answered to anything but Prince. He sat and heeled and lay at the end of a steel chain and he was a poorly trained guard dog. His bark was terrifying, he attacked skillfully and would have been an adept killer but none of it was on command.
He slept in my bed when I was alone and resented it when I wasn’t. I put my hands into his drinking water and dipped out his dry food with my hands so that my smell would be a part of everything important to him. He had to love me. He was as lean as his jaws all over and weighed seven pounds less than I did at the time. We walked at night down the hill from the village where my little house was once with the others a tent for the lung sick. The windows look out through the trees from my mattress in the morning on Portland, Oregon, in mists and rain with the Pacific Power and Light signs flowing in the gray. We walk down the hill in the night, the black dog silent beside me, my black clothes thin in all the crotches of my body. We walked around looking for trouble, beneath the bridges, down Market Street to the river—up First Street to Burnside and the small dark streets behind. We terrified the winos in the Blue Mouse Theater and fascinated Reed College students with ghosty driftings through the swamp. We sat in dark cafés, he beneath the table silent, his head on my boots. Red lights in the eyes of the auto harp singer in Laundromats where the night people go, on curbs with our hands and ears and noses cold across from bars with cars in front where young women sat together and whispered. He was not house trained. We spoke to no one. He laid huge stinking turds on the green rug of my living room. We sat on the roof with sunshine and peanut butter and half gallons of milk. He pissed crouching and virgin. The hawthorn tree dropping red flowers. He killed a miniature poodle bitch in the street when she would not let him mount her but he was horrified by it and it was plainly a mistake. I left him alone in the house after the men came. I went days away never seeing the hill or the house and each time I came back the books were gnawed and shredded, the curtains were torn about the room, the rug full of tooth marks and shit and on that first night, my first night with the who upon me and the dog chained at the foot of the bed, he cried and slavered, his spine arching convulsive, rubbing himself on the bed, the chair on himself and screaming when he came. I wanted to love him—to care for him—I was proud when the people turned to look at us.
Dogsbody was born that year and we took lovers in the catacombs beneath the hill with the toilet running and a gas range behind the furnace. The wall was black and pieces of steel hung on threads against it. A midget in a yellow derby told stories for the forty-two-cent macaroni dinner. We told everyone we were brother and sister but he didn’t believe until morning and blood was there though that only proved his innocence. He was silly and would never say he cared but he fed me and I slept there every night and made the bed in the morning. He always said I made a good bed. I took his friends in with me while he was at work and cried to him when they left me but he would not say he cared. I begged him to lock me in a closet. Finally he told me his friend the painter had gone to a concert in a tuxedo. I said I think I’ll go to Seattle. He wouldn’t walk me to the train. I had ninety-five cents after the fare. I took a bus saying How do I find Melrose Street, my brother, I’ve come from Minneapolis to find him. He was really an insurance salesman and had lived above the catacombs. We had sat on the steps of demolished houses so I knocked at his door and sat on the arm of his chair in my long pink nightie. There were two beds. I got into the other one. He was so cold. “Do you feel like sex tonight?” The next morning I answered the ad and joined the magazine crew.
I am just sitting smoking though I do not smoke—I am taking care of cats. There isn’t much to it—you feed them—they ignore you—you watch a while and then ignore them—so I’m just sitting smoking—a cat brushes past my cigarette and starts to burn in a line down his belly from the throat—I pick him up and throw him into a bucket of water—plastic pale yellow bucket just happens to be sitting there—cat curls up on the bottom of the bucket and won’t come up—lies there smooth—nose in tail and drowns—what to do—nobody will ever believe this—such an accident—can’t even take care of cats…
Strolling past the gas station on the corner—their tires in foil wrapped blue and gold and red from under a car on the hoist—grab a gold tire and roll it down the sidewalk giggling crazy with excitement—wheel it on down looking for cops—waiting to be chased—getting good at rolling it like a hoop with just a kick on either side now and then to steer—turn into his yard where they are all sitting around—all very cool—nonchalant—they oohing and you wild thing you—don’t know anybody with a car so peel off the foil to save for something—Byzantine reliefs maybe—and ditch the tire in an alley—Dunlop 12 ply Blue Ribbon Blah!…
In the five-and-dime can’t see over the counters with her—see
Drugstore book racks—need a book a day at least—three thin ones—too far to the library—heavy—always overdue—little ladies in pale green uniforms inventory hair spray—perfume—Kotex while I’m putting books in my purse—in my armpits—Agatha Christie—Nero Wolfe—James Bond—candy bars in pockets—have to lay off M & Ms—they rattle too much—an extra eyebrow pencil up my sweater sleeve and buy a deodorant—go out to the car and drop the stuff—back into the supermarket for cookies and cigarettes and chocolate-covered cherries—buy milk and then tool back home to turn the heat up and sit with the rain outside—with my feet up reading trash—eating trash—drinking milk straight from the carton only pouring it into a glass when I want to dunk cookies in it…
Girls League Cake Sale—high school cakes by girls in coordinated sweaters and skirts—ribbons holding their hair—dozens of pairs of shoes—their proud bras and girdles mocking my brother’s cast-off tee shirts in the locker room—they study typing with old Birdsing and wear ribbons in their hair—bake cakes for the cake sale from scratch with boiled frosting that slump in the middle and cave on the side—patch it up with frosting and candy drops—hide them on mother’s best cake plates behind screens in the cafeteria—I ducking class as usual—hiding stink bombs behind the encyclopedias in the library—sneaking through the halls with my five-button Levi’s swishing between my legs a cake under each arm—stacking them carefully in my locker on top of stolen books behind the Life Magazine picture of Bertrand Russell like a baby eagle his fierce fuzzy face on the scrawny neck—hide for the rest of the afternoon in the conference rooms in the library listening to Jake in his chemistry room gas mask searching for the stink bombs and cursing—thinking of him fumbling with the pear-assed librarian from the grade school—all the time rehearsing my lines for if I’m caught—when the final bell rings parading down to the boys’ locker room with a dozen cakes on a book cart to wait for the wrestling team to finish weighing in and come out famished after a month of making weight…
Putting jars all over school with slits in the lids and a little sign—Contribute to the Save Dunn Fund—and they all snickering as a joke or an insult dropping in pennies and nickels and I emptying the jars uncaring why…
Then a voice calls my name over the intercom and I leave the class sick and scared and go to the office to sit waiting for someone who wants to see me and spend enormous minutes rehearsing cool lines I know I’ll never use because always when they catch me whether I’m guilty or innocent I cannot speak and feel so very tired and they are always angry and they are always so personally offended and you sink back into something so tired but you rehearse the lines anyway for the waiting and the school nurse comes and invites me into her little office with eye charts and says she has had several reports that I suffer from body odor and she knows I wouldn’t want to offend anyone and it’s a particularly difficult problem in the winter what with wool clothing and I sinking in shame nodding yes I see go cringing back to class not looking at anyone and wondering hating whoever it was that did this to me.
All this was before Dogsbody when I still thought I would grow up to be a boy and wanted to—to be a man and free so it wouldn’t be dirty and I could love men—and in the big field in back of the house that went over hills and the stream came through and the blackberries were heavy and sweet purple hot on your lips in the summer and you could hide by only lying still in the long grass and no one could find you—not even she shouting Katherine when she was angry—and someone came to me there—would park his car on the far far side of the field and come on long legs his young arms waving above the grass and I would meet him in the grass and pull him down we both laughing and wrestling till the grass lay around us like deer had been there but would stand tall again in the morning and we would lie there all the long afternoon in the sun my long legs in the faded dungarees beside his long legs in faded blue and touch gently and dream together of pagodas and the Orinoco and we together in a small boat on a summer sea out of sight of land and our innocent touches and how lascivious we would be and children and how hungry I begged him to take me then—I ripped at my clothing and knelt in the grass begging him please touching his knees and his belt and coaxing and hungry and he would not and the sun was warm on me—the grass was sweet beneath me and he would not and the Queen Anne’s lace bowed over me and he would not—he made me put my clothes back on and sit quiet like a child till I was calm and then he went away through the grass. In the morning I crept out and walked the miles to his house through fields and on railroad tracks barefooted and threw pebbles at his window to apologize—they invited me in to breakfast pancakes and honey and my mother came screaming the gravel spurting under her wheels to tell them to keep their filthy boy away from me and screamed all the way home I beside her about my filth and I went away that night and never went back.
I am sitting with my head down—they are yelling at me—she is yelling—the noise and her feeling so strongly make me tired like I had cried for a long time and I sink further and the yelling goes on until I almost speak to stop it—I wave my hand to stop it not noticing the knife in it and suddenly there is blood and she is falling and the noise stops but I have made a mess—like when you’re thinking at the table and the milk spills and it’s a mess though you couldn’t say how it happened and they all act as though you meant it.
—
Nobody pinches or looks. We walk in dead paneled halls to the courtroom, I and I don’t know who. Can’t remember. Can’t see the place. Last night they wanted to put my hair into pink rollers foam with little white plastic sticks that bend if you push them but you put them in your hair and your hair bends. My hair hangs below my ribs and if I pull a lot of it tight and touch it in the way it grows it feels like the satin ribbons in the books. When I brush it over my head in the morning in front of the windows the white light goes through and the hairs fall down like a veil so thin and shining orange with gold and green lights and it’s frothy and soft and tickles and so pretty. My nose below where it broke—when I close my left eye with my left side to the window in the morning and look cross-eyed over my nose with the right eye the light is gold and rainbows are on my nose. Dorothy spent hours brushing each of her long curls around and around her fingers the curls so long around her whole soft hand and down beyond the wrist and Mac said If it weren’t for you and Jean says If I look like a beatnik the judge will give me a hard time. But I won’t. They want to bend the hair but I say No no thank you and wash it for a long time in the shower with yellow soap and the hair beneath my arms and between my legs and that is so ticklish and invisible on my legs and arms all the hair and notice how the freckles are almost not there and everything is soft about me who used to say I’m fleet of foot and high of jump! in fourth grade with five-button Levi’s and sneakers above the ankle and thick beneath my feet and made balloon trips in the cherry tree above the brindle bull and ate all the pet rabbits the year we kept moving to keep Brother out of the war and almost flew off the lumber pile any number of times.