The Savage Girl - Alex Shakar [112]
Ursula looks at the little blade in her hand, an animal fright welling up in her. She looks around at this apartment she no longer recognizes. She begins to pace. Her reflection in the bathroom mirror stops her cold. Half naked. Hair matted in some places, frizzed out in others. Eyes wide, face sallow, nose crinkling in disgust at the smell of herself, a sour stink of sweat. She doesn’t believe what she sees. She doesn’t believe it’s her. What if she herself is going crazy? What if it’s too late to stop it? What if she’s already crazy?
She takes a trembling breath, then another.
The car alarm starts up again. She didn’t register its stopping.
The tremulous wave.
The glottal stutter.
The dancing octaves.
The hopeful risers.
She raises her left arm and presses the X-acto blade hard into her skin and draws it along. Two inches. Pulls the blade quickly away.
Nothing happens for a second. Long enough for her to laugh.
Well, you’ve joined the trend, she thinks. Fashion’s little slave.
The blood beads. Trickles. A rising throb of current.
This is what they wanted? This is what Ivy and the savage girl wanted?
The pain surges, and then she understands: the real pain, the real existence of her body, grotesquely needful, bleeding, in an ugly room. The rush is reality itself.
She grits her teeth. Why do all the women she knows hate themselves so much?
She moans in agony, a moan rising almost to a scream, and then she begins to cry, pressing her balled-up sweatshirt against the cut.
A loud thumping startles her. The door. She freezes, holding her breath.
“Ursula! Are you all right?”
Javier.
She looks around the debris of her living room.
Javier.
“Ursula!”
“Fine. I’m fine!”
The blood bleeds through the fabric of the shirt.
She wonders if she cut too deep, hit an artery or something. She’s so stupid. She should have researched this more carefully.
“You don’t sound fine, Ursula.”
“I’m busy now,” she says, her voice trembling. “Come back later, OK?”
“Ursula, I’m not going away unless you open this door and tell me you’re OK face to face.”
“Javier, just go—” She rises unsteadily to her feet, tripping and upending the coffee table.
“Ursula?”
“I’m OK,” she calls out. “Just tripped, I’m fine.”
“Open the door, Ursula.” His voice is calm, certain. He’s not going away.
“Give me a minute,” she shouts.
She runs to the desk and gets a roll of masking tape from the drawer. Then she runs to the bathroom and crumples up a big wad of toilet paper. She has let the sweatshirt drop to the floor, and the blood now dribbles down her arm and her side. She presses the wad against her underarm and wraps the tape tightly around and around. She stuffs a towel in the sink, turns the water on, lets it soak, and then uses it to sponge herself off. There’s blood on the waistband of her carpenter pants.
“Ursula?”
“Just a sec.”
She runs to the bedroom, grabs a button-down shirt out of the hamper, and squirms into it as she heads to the door. Just as she’s about to open it she spots the bloody X-acto blade on the coffee table, where she dropped it to pick up the sweatshirt. She runs back and grabs it, looks around, runs to the desk and shuts it in the drawer, runs back to the door and opens it.
Javier, in a forest-green wool overcoat, a cloud-white tie, a sky-blue shirt. All neatly pressed. Hair actually brushed, pulled back into a short ponytail. Face serene, eyes