Sharp Objects

by Gillian Flynn

She was like a girl’s very best doll, the kind you don’t play with.

“I knew those children, Camille. I’m having a very hard time, as you can imagine. Dead little girls. Who would do that?”

I dreamt my mother was slicing an apple onto thick cuts of meat and feeding it to me, slowly and sweetly, because I was dying.

I know the wisdom, that no parents should see their child die, that such an event is like nature spun backward. But it’s the only way to truly keep your child. Kids grow up, they forge more potent allegiances. They find a spouse or a lover. They will not be buried with you.

They always call depression the blues, but I would have been happy to waken to a periwinkle outlook. Depression to me is urine yellow. Washed out, exhausted miles of weak piss.

“I just think some women aren’t made to be mothers. And some women aren’t made to be daughters.”

Amma—who lapped the pill up, and, tongue soft and little and hot, passed the X into my mouth, wrapping her arms around me and pushing the pill down hard on my tongue until I could feel it crumble in my mouth. It dissolved like cotton candy.

“Sometimes if you let people do things to you, you’re really doing it to them,” Amma said, pulling another Blow Pop from her pocket. Cherry. “Know what I mean? If someone wants to do fucked-up things to you, and you let them, you’re making them more fucked up. Then you have the control. As long as you don’t go crazy.”

“Safer to be feared than loved,” I said. “Machiavelli,” she crowed, and skipped ahead laughing—whether in a mocking gesture of her age or genuine youthful energy, I couldn’t tell.

A smart, fucked-up little girl. Sounded familiar.

“I hurt,” she squealed, and twirled out onto the street, spinning flamboyantly, her head back, her arms outstretched like a swan. “I love it!” she screamed. The echo ran down the street, where my mother’s house stood watch on the corner.

“I’m so happy with you,” Amma laughed, her breath hot and sweetly boozy in my face. “You’re like my soul mate.” “You’re like my sister,” I said. Blasphemy? Didn’t care. “I love you,” Amma screamed.

She’s not sick, Momma. It’s what I planned on yelling if we were ever caught. It’s okay she’s out of bed because she’s not really sick. I’d forgotten how desperately, positively I believed it.

She was going to give it to Ann but … well, Ann’s gone now, so it was just sitting there. It’s ugly, right? I used to pretend that she gave it to me. Which is unlikely since she hates me.”

“Did she like you more or less after Marian was dead?” she asked, looping her arm into mine. “Less.” “So it didn’t help.” “What?” “Her dying didn’t help things.” “No. Now keep quiet till we get to my room, okay?”

I never mind throwing up. When I’d get sick as a child, I remember my mother holding my hair back, her voice soothing: Get all that bad stuff out, sweetheart. Don’t stop till it’s all out. Turns out I like that retching and weakness and spit. Predictable, I know, but true.

Camille. Open up. The image of my mother sitting on the edge of my bed, a spoonful of sour-smelling syrup hovering over me. Her medicine always made me feel sicker than before. Weak stomach. Not as bad as Marian’s, but still weak.

There’s no way my mother bought that story. She was an expert in illness and injury, and she would not be taken in by that unless she wanted to be. Now she was going to tend to me, and I was too weak and desperate to ward her off. I began crying again, unable to stop. “I feel sick, Momma.” “I know, baby.”

She put a hand between my legs, quickly, professionally. It was the best way to feel a temperature, she always said.

To refuse has so many more consequences than submitting.

I put my head in my hands. Amma and I were sick just like Marian. It had to be made that obvious to me before I finally understood—nearly twenty years too late. I wanted to scream in shame.

It’s not safe for you here.”

Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. I have known so many sick women all my life. Women with chronic pain, with ever-gestating diseases. Women with conditions. Men, sure, they have bone snaps, they have backaches, they have a surgery or two, yank out a tonsil, insert a shiny plastic hip. Women get consumed.

I didn’t need to hide from someone courting oblivion as ardently as I was.

“They’re barely thirteen,” I said. I thought of what I’d done at that age. For the first time I realized how offensively young it was.

Dealing with an MBP mom—it doesn’t pay to be the favorite. You were lucky your mother didn’t take more of an interest in you.”

“Get your sister out of that home, Camille. She’s not safe.”

“When a child knows that young that her mother doesn’t care for her, bad things happen.”

I pulled her nightgown over her head. Her nakedness was stunning: sticky little girl’s legs, a jagged round scar on her hip like half a bottle cap, the slightest down in a wilted thatch between her legs. Full, voluptuous breasts. Thirteen.

“You need to rub alcohol on me,” she whimpered. “No Amma, just relax.” Amma’s face turned pink and she began crying. “That’s how she does it,” she whispered. The tears turned into sobs, then a mournful howl. “We’re not going to do it like she does it anymore,” I said.

Once I’d flung out my mother’s big brass canopy and destroyed her vanity table, either Amma or I screamed. Maybe both of us did. The floor of my mother’s room. The beautiful ivory tiles. Made of human teeth. Fifty-six tiny teeth, cleaned and bleached and shining from the floor.

A child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort.

I’ve returned to my childhood, the scene of the crime.