EXCERPTS

Hooves

     I wear it beautifully. The dress, I mean, the one I chose the day after the rape. It is green, with pink ribbon at the breast and waist, forcing you to draw a parallel between the two: soft. The skirt pushes out full like a carousel and brushes the tips of my raw shins. It scratches at them a little thorny but it looks good, that makes up for it. I put it on and the zipper slid right up, not a hitch. It hugged me warmly. I looked "very pretty" according to the salesgirl, and though I knew it was her job to say so I took it to heart and smiled. Thank you. I like being complimented, like to feel as though I've brought someone pleasure. Their pleasure beats likes hooves at my door, catching me underneath and making a gorgeous pulp of me.

***

     His impatient hooves knocked at my door, pound pound pound. He whinnied Open up, so I did. My hands were very small and I asked him if, compared to the hooves attached to his arms, I was soft. He stroked me with the point of one hoof. You're the softest, but you have a little hard knife below your belt. He thought this was funny and laughed. I slid one of his hooves between my legs and ripped. There? He still thought he was being so funny with his metaphors. Not a knife, he scoffed. I bled a little bit. I kept asking him questions to keep him entertained; I was beginning to feel inadequate. I stretched my body like a bridge and felt my insides aligning to him as my insides enveloped his hoof, nestled his hardness in a safe, warm place. He had a hard face and asked, What will you do for me now? I twisted my body around and began dripping down the length of his arm, saying in not so many words that I was doing my best. Grunting, he twisted his hoof and I breathed hard, feeling him right up next to my lungs. So this is it? I let my head roll, a nod, yes. I wasn't speaking anymore. I felt tired and gave up.

     I started to move differently the day after. I first noticed this change when I woke up the next morning. I was hovering over my bed, not quite laying on it. I was floating a little bit. When I got up and approached the windows, my legs didn't touch each other. They held each other at a distance, each daintily wary of the other. My thighs didn't rub together as I moved and I stood on the balls of my feet. I had to navigate the space between my legs like a memory. I was sticky. I opened one of the curtains and was surprised to see that the weather was dull and gray outside; even though it was winter this still surprised me. I felt there was a layer of heat guarding me. I was pardoned from feeling cold. I walked in circles around my room until I started to bleed again, acquainting myself with thighs that were now strangers. And then I lay back down, still hovering, and went back to sleep. The blood gathered and met in a river on my bed; it congealed and grew sticky, until finally my blood dried into a deep crackle like autumn leaves, ready to flake away. I dreamed that I was grown-up, like my mother, and had a daughter of my own. I kept her by my side at all times, but whenever I tried to touch her she cocked her head towards me and said, Why?

     When I woke up for the second time I remembered that I needed a dress. The green and pink dress. I washed my body and walked carefully to the store. After I bought it the first thing I thought was that I wanted him to see me in it, aching for all the body beneath the green tulle. He hadn't seen me as I was meant to be seen, as a compliment, as a pleasure. The night he came I was swathed like a little girl in my nightgown, gauzy and loose. This new dress tucked me in, curled me around my own curves. I needed him to see me in the dress and think to himself that he was lucky to have had something that was so pretty and grown up.

     The last thing I remember about being small is collecting snails. I was five and crept around the garden, putting them in a cardboard box until I had a small army of slugs in paper thin shells. Then I would sit on a garden chair, moldy from years of morning dew, and carefully stick them all over my body. They liked it, they slowly moved all over me and left gossamer stories on my skin. I walked slowly into the kitchen to show my mother and she gagged, horrified.

     I felt a little bit like that in my new dress. I was pretty, and I was a girl, but I was sick because I was still bleeding. I had to be careful not to get it on my dress. I had to learn how to take small steps that would not open me up. But no matter how hard I tried, I could not remember how I moved before. It seemed as though I had spent my whole life gliding and floating-- the gnawing tips of his hooves had erased everything that came before them.

     I thought he would come back to me later, maybe during the night, but I knew that if I left my window open he wouldn't come through it. He would knock on the front door, and my mother would let him inside the house, leading him up to my second story room. It wouldn't be secret, and I would look very, very pretty. When he appeared before- pound pound pound- I didn't know who it was but I was still glad. I barely remember his face. Sometimes I try to imagine it: is he handsome? I fantasize about wanting him, a faceless thing with those jagged hooves. I fall in love, I show him my body wrapped in the dress. It is easy to feel desire for him when I remember the dress.

***

     I know I can't go back in time, but now I can study my rape and see the ways in which I was wrong. Like trying to talk to him in the first place, trying to please him. My mouth, too big and fleshy fat, didn't please him, and I was being silly and naive thinking I could make our meeting like that: a love story. He did hold me afterwards, trying to stroke at my shoulders but cutting instead because his hooves were sharp and sticky. I thought, Don't rub me all over myself. I didn't want my own mess on my shoulders. My legs are one thing, but leave my upper half clean. I didn't stop him though, because he was blissful. He kept grunting Sssshhh even though I was already quiet. My arms were at my sides, though I wasn't stiff: I felt relaxed, my body dull and heavy.

     What nobody will tell you, not even your mother, is that afterwards you might feel a little bit proud. I told girlfriends the story triumphantly. They made tinny applauding sounds over the phone. I was smiling but my chest was thumping. I was nervous to tell them his name though I knew I had to. I said it in my head, readying myself: R_______. One of them was going to ask who he was, I was sure of it, but when no one did I became sullen and withdrawn. I wanted to tell them so they could know if they met him, but they didn't care. I hovered over my bed and pouted, sleeping for two days. I felt unfinished. He never complimented me, so I pushed at him. This is why I can't forgive myself.

     Now I compare everyone I'm with to him. I ask them to do things that will make me twist myself up into them and hold my breath because I want it so, so badly. No one ever gets it right. I get frustrated and end up desperate, begging them, but it's as though they can't hear me and instead they say, Please. I can't bear the pitiful pinging of the word, and I crumple, feeling inside me the empty space that his sharp and sure hooves once inhabited. It is infuriating to be left so lonely. So I have to leave them, those who say please, must slide my green dress up over my worn hips and, out of pity, give them a last glimpse of what real, violently perfect sex looks like. I float out the door and can feel them watching me so hard, with such depraved cruelty, it nearly severs me. It nearly sends me back to them with desire hanging from my teeth like flesh, saying, There. Like that.