More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
I remember thinking that once there had been a time when women died of brain fevers caught from the prick of their hat pins, and that still, after all this time, it was hard being a girl, lugging around these bodies that were never right—wounds that needed fixing, heads that needed hats, corrections, corrections. —LORRIE MOORE, WHO WILL RUN THE FROG HOSPITAL?
something that snips and snarls but to its core deeply fears you.
By now Sadie has heard so many cautionary tales about the Pali that the warnings coat her tongue like paste. Because of this she thinks little of them, and maybe this is her first mistake.
as for her mother, she is too blissed out on temporary love to regard anything or anyone besides her new husband.
The separation between men and women was enforced by a strict kapu—however long the menstruation lasted, the bleeding wāhine and their kāne were to exist in separate physical spaces. Anything less was shameful, pīlau, not because the women were indecent creatures, but rather because the women were gods.
Sitting in the swamp of her own menstrual blood, Sadie doesn’t feel so much like a god as she does a bloodied fetus, some feral creature being unborn again and again.
Two weeks later, and Jason has taught her how to hold his penis firmly in her hands and rub out his most sensitive spots. From Jason she’s learned to clench the muscles in her pelvis as if bracing for some terrible impact, and she’s also learned men can be things other than cruel and tired.
terribly true the force with which she cries after he calls her beautiful and maybe she even believes him.
He asks her to be his wife. It is an occupation voided of a frame, of hard edges and shadings, but what thrums low in her gut are vibrations of safety, and so how can she say no?
Never again must I impress another man, Sadie thinks, rubbing the stones.
She lets her summer school studies slide and passes the season planning an intimate wedding to please no one but herself.
Mediocrity leaks through his sweat, and when he brandishes a shovel he is reminded
that, to his core, he is a feeble boy, not built for the work of his ancestors.
So, no more pork. No more marbled slabs of beef or chicken thighs lathered in oil and fried with the skin on. No more sweets, and no more food that tastes good, because that goodness is only a drop on her tongue while the photos of Sadie in her dress will withstand time.
She will look so goddamn good in her dress.
But Sadie doesn’t know how for enjoy, not when men have passed judgments on the folds in her body and the revolting way her fat arms jostle when she walks. How can anyone expect a bride to know how for enjoy unless she resembles a skeleton of herself?
Later that night, they retire to Jason’s apartment and Sadie lets him take her in any manner he pleases because she’s sure his pleasure will be her own—what else is marriage than the infinity of a braided orgasm?
She, too, knows what it is as sure as she knows her own name and that she’s in love with a man who’s mostly useless.
She and Lopaka have stayed married for over a decade, a feat that’s worn on her skeleton and nearly flattened her.
He enjoys pinching snippets of facts from his undergrad classes, weaving them into tales to impress people.
She knew so little about what it meant to be pregnant before all this; never did she think it could be this much of a burden. Already she’s stitched an elastic band around the waistline of her jeans, and the pissing, the dizzy spells, the gripping cramps, the sexual longing. She chases orgasms like a feral creature in the wild. For now she has reconciled herself to this feral something, and tonight she smiles,
I hope we have a girl, he says and kisses her forehead in a way that makes her feel safe. Safe, with a monster growing inside her. A girl as sweet and playful as her, as beautiful as you.
Give it a minute, ten minutes, give it half an hour, give it a day, maybe. Who knows how long an agony such as this might last.
Let the women rest. Sadie sleeps for days, for weeks, and this is not a dream—no more blood.
It takes less than five minutes from the moment they return to the apartment and shut their bedroom door for Jason to squander any progress her body has made to heal itself for the benefit of his own lonely orgasm.
No other part of her bleeds, at least not in ways that’re visible to others.
It’s a loss, then. She runs her fingers along the cotton lining of her underwear and feels only fabric and thinks, Yes, a loss. A loss she is far too young to understand, won’t understand for years and years.
