Burn Our Bodies Down(60)

and i get downstairs and i can’t find her and it turns out she’s in the dining room and she had all these pictures laid out across the table pictures of us



I turn the page eagerly as the writing cuts off. On the back of that page there’s the start of a word, now crossed out, and the entry picks up again on the right-hand side, where the ink hasn’t bled through.


she stopped when i came in and she started to put everything back into these boxes she got from mom’s study that’s where all the photo albums are

and she didn’t say anything she didn’t try to explain anything but i saw it of course i saw it

she was scratching out my face in every picture

she even took the one from the wall the one of her and me and mom when we’re like fourteen the one we took to put on the wall next to the rest of our family

she even took that one down and scratched me out with an actual knife and i asked her what the hell she was doing and she wouldn’t answer me and so i

i made a mistake i guess i mean i know that now but i reached out and i just touched her i swear that’s all i did and if she ever tries to say i did anything else i will show her this because i swear i just touched her arm that’s ALL

and she lost her mind i mean she actually lost her mind i’ve never seen her like that before and i’ve seen mini like everything i mean i was born with her and i’ve lived every second after that at her side and i’ve

she screamed so loud i thought she would wake up mom and she didn’t hit me but she got so close and it’s ridiculous because she would never. she would never hurt me like that. but there was a knife on the table and i was scared and i hate that i hate that i was scared of her scared of my sister like i was scared of myself

it’s not fair

fuck you mini for making me afraid



It looks like the entry ends there, but to be sure, I turn the page, and there’s more. This time in carefully, deliberately neat writing, only in the margins of the Scripture so that it can be read easily.


today we are sixteen (lucky us) and as a gift mom gave us a lecture about responsibility and taught us to drive stick

then we sat down at the kitchen table which is where we do everything now that mom’s seen the scratches mini left in the dining room one and no i never told her what happened but i know mini thinks that i did

and anyway she made us a cake which she never does but sixteen is special or that’s what everyone says

and she told us the story she always tells us which for posterity i will record here (hello older self yes it was just as weird as you remember it)

the story is that we were born in the apricot grove. mom was pregnant but she wasn’t showing much, and our father—may he rest in Whatever the Fuck—was long gone. she was out in the grove one day, collecting the fruit, which was still growing (mostly) properly then, when her water broke. she never made it back to the house, never mind to a hospital.

ta-da

two baby girls

we’ve always thought she must have been joking (i have anyway) or that maybe her water broke in the grove, but then she got in the truck and drove to the county hospital with her usual unbreakable practicality

today i think she wasn’t joking at all and this is why

she lit four candles and she put them on the cake and she put the cake in the middle of the table and i was worried that my hair would catch fire so i let mini lean over to blow them out

(i am writing this very carefully. i want to know that this is what i remember. it is the kind of thing that very easily turns into something else. but this is what i saw.)

mom was behind mini holding her hair back because i had to get my neuroses from somewhere didn’t i but mini still burned her finger

she saw one of the candles tipping over and she burned her finger trying to prop it back up and she didn’t say anything because i bet she knew mom would fuss and fuss

but i saw later on her skin where the fire touched

like little lines or maybe scars running across her skin all coming from one spot and spiraling out to the edge of the burn

i only saw it for a moment

and then she put on a band-aid and she’s left it on since and maybe it wasn’t anything

maybe it’s just how burns are

but i don’t think that’s true



I sit back, frown down at the page. Does Mom have a burn on her finger like that? I can’t remember. I should be able to remember.

What’s fresh in my mind, though, is the girl in the morgue. The white spirals on her burned skin. Katherine’s description sounds just like it. Another link in the chain, connecting everything. I just don’t understand how.

I think of Mom leaning over the candle flame, the way Katherine wrote it. Of the scar that must be on her fingertip, locked away between memories. Mom wrapping my hand around my first lighter. Telling me “Keep a fire burning. A fire is what saves you.”

Saves me from what?

From her?

I let out a shaky breath and keep reading. Whatever composure Katherine managed to find for that entry, she’s lost it by the next, scrawled across the opposite page in the same ink.


mini’s sick she hasn’t come out of our room since after cake yesterday and mom put all my stuff in the guest room and said to pray about it and she said mini looked like death warmed over which wasn’t a very comforting thing and now i’m panicked because she can’t die mad at me she can’t