Belly Up Read online

  In the morning they met at the library where they picked up their books on cannibalism. Backpacks loaded, they exited the library, walked down the front steps and turned left. The road they walked along was a thoroughfare. There were many cars that passed them on the right. As they walked, a car slowed next to them and rolled down its window. The car was filled with four or five men, who looked like they were all about twenty years old. One of the young men stuck his head out the window and yelled something at Mary and Ainsley. Music bumped from the whole car like a pulse. It was a grotesque comment that remarked on both their bodies and implied the young man’s desire to rape them. Ainsley and Mary did not look at the man and they did not look at each other. They gripped their backpack straps very tightly and looked straight ahead. The stopped car was clogging traffic and a truck behind it began to beep in impatience. The young men rolled up their window and sped away, and Ainsley and Mary continued their walk to their reading area, only Ainsley suggested that they cut away from the road, in between the trees. When they arrived at the town square park they sat down in exhaustion. Mary was tightlipped and distracted while she read aloud. The noise from the distant traffic seemed particularly vehement. Ainsley, who was usually irritable if the reading conditions were not perfect, made no complaints or protestations. As Mary read from several psychology journals that posited theories about why one might have the desire to eat oneself Ainsley put her head in Mary’s lap and listened. Almost all the books agreed that it was a sexual desire, an extension of the want to copulate with oneself, to put one’s own flesh within one’s body and have the power, through penetration, to bring oneself to orgasm.

  “What if you have the desire to eat human flesh that isn’t your own?” said Ainsley. “What if you want to eat someone else?”

  Mary put the journal in her hand down on the bench. “Well, that seems like something else entirely,” Mary said. “That seems more about possession, the desire to possess someone else so fully that you want to destroy them.”

  “But what if it’s not about destruction,” said Ainsley. “What if it’s just about wanting to have sex?”

  “Hold on,” Mary said as she brought the book back to her face and started flipping the pages. “Maybe there is overlap? Between people who want to eat other people and people who want to eat themselves?”

  “That would be very sad, to be that person,” Ainsley said. “At least you can really eat someone else. At least that is a fantasy you could actually achieve. But eating yourself? You’ll never really get that far.”

  “Well, that’s the whole point of the ouroboros, isn’t it? He did it,” said Mary.

  “We don’t know he did it,” said Ainsley.

  “Well, the book implied it,” said Mary. “The page following the illustrations was blank.”

  In one of the books Mary found an article on a man in Japan who wanted to eat both himself and other people. The Japanese man, she read, had, in fact, eaten someone else: a young French woman whom he had shot in the back of the head and put in his refrigerator. In the book there were several transcripts of him being interviewed by the psychiatrist who had written the article. Ainsley read the part of the transcripts that appeared to be the most interesting aloud:

  Q: Is who you want to eat determined by their gender?

  A: Yes. I have only ever wanted to eat women.

  Q: When was the first time you knew you wanted to eat a woman?

  A: When I knew I wanted to eat a little girl. I was a boy. I was in the first grade. Her name was Yui. She had straight long hair that her mother always put a purple bow in. When I forgot my pencil case one day, she let me borrow one of her pens. When she passed the pen to me, our hands touched, and I knew then that I wanted to eat her.

  Q: Did you want to have sex with Yui?

  A: I don’t think I knew what sex was. I was in the first grade.

  Q: But now, when you have the desire to eat a woman, do you want to have sex with her?

  A: Yes.

  Q: The French woman who you shot, did you want to have sex with her?

  A: Yes.

  Q: Before you shot her did you rape her?

  A: No.

  Q: After you shot her, did you rape her corpse?

  A: No.

  Q: Why not?

  A: Because I was too excited about the prospect of eating her. I was too busy and too excited about carving off a part of her buttocks and putting it in my mouth.

  “I don’t think this man really wants to eat himself,” said Ainsley.

  “Neither do I,” said Mary. “He seems perfectly content to eat someone else.” Ainsley and Mary continued to discuss the psychology books they had read that morning as the afternoon sun began to lower and hint at the coming evening. Other town residents, mostly young mothers, or paid caregivers and the elderly, walked by their bench throughout the day.

  “They’re looking at us,” said Mary.

  “Who?” said Ainsley. “The little old ladies?”

  “Yes,” said Mary. “Everybody is always looking at us.”

  “And we are always looking at other people,” said Ainsley. “Most people are viewed at most points during the day.”

  “But not everybody’s viewing is the same,” said Mary. “These old park ladies aren’t looking at us like the boys in the car were looking at us. And I’m not looking at you like they looked at me.”

  “Well, the car-boy way of looking at someone is violent, or at least implies violence,” said Ainsley. “They could have just looked at us that way, without even saying anything, and their intent would have been the same.”

  “How do I look at you?” said Mary. “What does my gaze contain?”

  “Questions,” said Ainsley. “Which is the essential thing. When the car-boys looked at us, they didn’t have any questions for us because they assumed we had nothing to offer them except our bodies, which required no questions because our bodies could already be seen.”

  At 1:00 p.m. Mary and Ainsley walked to a deli and ordered sandwiches. When they heard their numbers at the deli counter they thanked the man behind the counter, retrieved their white-butcher-paper-clad sandwiches, and walked back to the park. After they finished eating, Mary and Ainsley discussed the birds that flew above them, and decided that, in their next glut of books, they would see if they could get a book that would help them identify the birds that flew in the woods near their homes.

  The rest of the summer, the last few weeks of it, went quickly. Mary and Ainsley had many things they wanted to do before they had to begin school. Mary had overheard a conversation about a swimming hole in the middle of the forest that they wanted to find and go to. Ainsley had several compulsory hikes that they must do. They both wanted to try and find a printing press that they could buy and use for art projects. By the time Labor Day approached they had found the swimming hole, but not the printing press. They entered high school that Tuesday, September 3, after everyone in the town had gotten that Labor Day Monday off. Mary and Ainsley’s academic schedules were exactly the same, save Physical Education:

  Mary Ainsley

  1° World History

  1° World History

  2° Honors Science

  2° Honors Science

  3° Spanish III

  3° Spanish III

  4° Algebra I

  4° Algebra I

  5° Study Hall

  5° Physical Education

  6° Honors English

  6° Honors English

  Mary would have soccer practice Monday through Thursday after school for an hour. She feared Ainsley would be angry that they wouldn’t be able to walk home from school together. But, then again, Ainsley had wallowed and chosen PE.

  “Why do you like playing soccer?” Ainsley asked Mary.

  “Because it gives you a hint of the power your body possesses,” said Mary. “I like feeling my calves tense and the smack of the ball against the inlay of my laces. There is a violence in it. It gives you a hint of the violenc
e your body could do.”

  “Do you ever think about hurting anyone?” said Ainsley.

  “All the time,” said Mary. “Don’t you?”

  On the first day of class nothing much happened. They saw people they knew and people they didn’t know. The school was big and ugly, a giant block of concrete that, Mary discovered, had been designed by an architect that was most famous for building prisons. There were grates on all the widows. Ainsley joked that somewhere on campus there must be a room that only contained padded walls.

  In World History, Mary and Ainsley’s teacher, Mr. Reignhart, made clear that his class would be a class about dead people, most often dead people from far-flung lands.

  “What does he mean by ‘far flung’?” Ainsley asked on their break between classes.

  “I think he means civilizations that are dead enough that they couldn’t possibly be a threat to us,” said Mary.

  “Oh, I see.”

  In Honors English, later that week, Mrs. Tulli gave the class a novel to read that was about a young woman whose father wanted her to find a suitor, but the young woman did not want a suitor, until the young woman realizes that one of the suitors pursuing her isn’t that bad. Mary and Ainsley disliked the novel because they thought the young female protagonist was apathetic, and also, that she had a very flawed logic.

  “The conversations in this book never make sense,” said Ainsley. “The characters talk at each other like they’re playing tennis.”

  “I’ve never played tennis,” said Mary.

  “Neither have I. But I know what it looks like, and I have certainly seen people talk like tennis looks,” said Ainsley.

  “But if a conversation was like tennis that implies that it would be continuous, that two people would push the same idea back and forth. And that’s not what’s happening in this book,” said Mary. “In this book people are just chucking balls in the general direction of other characters, but nobody ever returns the same throw.”

  “You’re right,” said Ainsley. “I guess the conversations in this book are failed games of tennis.”

  “Would you ever play tennis with me?” asked Mary. “We could learn together. There are courts down by the community pool.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Ainsley. “The thought of having an additional appendage, such as a racket, seems highly difficult and unpleasant.”

  “I can understand that,” said Mary. “There is so much one can athletically accomplish with the limbs that are already at our disposal. I think that is part of the reason why I like soccer.”

  “I don’t like soccer,” said Ainsley.

  “I know.”

  That evening, when Mary went home, she was instructed to watch her little brother while her mother was in the kitchen. Mary’s brother was very easy to watch because he was strapped into an apparatus, a kind of infant baby walker that had a built-in diaper strap that suspended him, standing. There was a tray that surrounded the reach of his arms and structural legs that possessed wheels so he could scoot himself across the hardwood floor of the living room by simply flailing his feet. The apparatus also had a structure above his head that looked like a cartoon rainbow. Toys hung from the rainbow by scrunchy fabric strings that Mary’s little brother occasionally batted like a cat. He looked up at the toy sun that hung from the rainbow and swatted it, leaning forward as he did so and slightly pushing his apparatus in the direction of his swat. He was too small to really reach the toy sun, and ran his fun station on wheels into the edge of a carpet. He bunched his eyebrows and opened his toothless mouth as if he were going to scream. He sat there for a moment, silent, open-mouthed in his pre-tantrum. Mary looked at him in this state and thought it was one of the scariest things she had ever seen. The scream came forward and the brother dribbled spit. Mary’s mother came out from the kitchen.

  “Mary,” she said. “What’s wrong with your little brother?”

  “He can’t reach his toys,” said Mary. “He’s too small.”

  “Well then, can’t you help him?” said Mary’s mother, incensed, as she leaned into the brother’s apparatus, pulled the hanging sun down to his outstretched hands, whereupon the brother promptly grabbed the toy and put it in his mouth.

  “He thinks it’s food,” said Mary.

  “No, he doesn’t,” said Mary’s mother. “It’s just his way of playing with it.”

  “By trying to eat it?” said Mary.

  “Yes.”

  Mary and Ainsley met before school the next day to read together and discuss Mary’s little brother. They sat on a picnic bench in the center quad and Ainsley read aloud from a psychology book that claimed, among other things, that opposites attract.

  “I don’t think opposites attract,” said Mary. “I’m the opposite of my brother but I’m not attracted to him. I am repulsed by him. I can talk, he can’t. He needs my parents, while my parents need me. What could be more opposite and repulsive than that?”

  “It does seem like a false claim,” said Ainsley. “Or at least a conditional one. And you’re right, true opposites don’t attract, not even in the scientific sense. For instance, diamonds are not magnetically drawn to coal. But what I think this book is getting at is that if two people have a baseline in common, like with two people who are both able to speak and are both reasonably smart, then there is a likelihood that, within that baseline, you would be drawn to someone that is different from you.”

  “Everyone is different from you,” said Mary. “If they weren’t different from you then they’d be you and you can’t be anyone else but yourself.”

  “But look,” said Ainsley. “That is how Rose Red and Snow White work. Because they are opposites, their complementary nature is supposed to somehow be narratively more appealing. Their opposite nature is one of things that make them compelling.”

  “But they’re not that different,” said Mary. “The biggest difference between them is their hair color. They’re both sisters, and they both turn into roses. And they both basically say the same thing the whole story, which is essentially just, ‘O! Mister bear you’re so scary and fun to play with! Why can you talk? Watch out for the goblin!’ And then Red is dumb enough to marry the bear after he resumes his human prince form, but you kind of get the sense that White wants in on him, too. It is basically just like that book we read for Mrs. Tulli’s class! Only more interesting, because in the end the girls turn into plants.”

  “Is it more interesting?” said Ainsley. “Snow White kind of sells out Rose Red in the end, by taking the more powerful suitor, the prince, for herself and, yes, they do turn into plants, but only roses, which is kind of a boring plant to choose to turn into.”

  “You’re right,” Mary said. “What if they turned into squash or heads of lettuce? I love squash. I think I would like to be a squash.”

  “Let’s not call each other Red and White anymore,” said Ainsley. “After reading that book for Mrs. Tulli’s class, I don’t find Rose Red and Snow White all that interesting, or imitation worthy. I am sure we can find something better to pretend we might be.”

  Later that day, Mary and Ainsley walked into Spanish III class together. Their teacher, Señora MacDonald, asked Ainsley to sit down and for Mary to come to the front of the class. Señora MacDonald wore a knee length leather skirt and a gray, sleeveless turtleneck. Her hair was a frizzy, carrot-colored mass and her lips were painted bright red. Señora MacDonald usually talked in Spanish at all times in the classroom, but now she spoke in English.

  “Mary, please face your classmates,” said Señora MacDonald. Mary stood in front of the classroom and faced her classmates. Mary took off her backpack and laid it on the floor. The whole class looked at Mary.

  “Raise your hands above your head, Mary,” said Señora MacDonald. Mary raised her hands above her head. Mary looked at Señora MacDonald and Señora MacDonald looked at Mary. Then, Señora MacDonald took her pointer finger and pointed it at the three inches of Mary’s bare stomach, right above Mary’s pant l
ine.

  “Midriff,” said Señora MacDonald. “A clear violation of the dress code. These low-slung jeans and tight small shirts are not appropriate for a productive learning environment. Your job is to learn with your classmates, Mary, not distract them. You can put your hands down now. Please gather your things and go to the principal’s office. Your absence during this class will show as unexcused.”

  Mary picked up her backpack and walked out the door to make her way to the principal’s office. Ainsley sat red-faced and baffled, and thought for a moment she would stand up and go with Mary, make a march of it and walk out the door with her, but then Mary was gone and Señora MacDonald was talking again, this time in Spanish, and the moment seemed to have passed without anyone really taking note of it, so Ainsley resolved to stay in her seat and think, so that when she saw Mary again they could come up with a plan of action.

  Inside the principal’s office, Mary sat alone and waited for Mr. Flavin, the principal, with her palms clasped in her lap. While she waited, Mary went over the events in her head. She saw herself sitting in the chair across from Mr. Flavin’s desk as if she were the principal. She saw herself standing in front of the Spanish class, arms overhead, the flesh of her belly exposed. She could feel Señora MacDonald’s finger, her pointy painted nail touching the skin right above her hip bone, and the whole class’ stare toward that finger, as if Señora MacDonald might actually push her finger right into Mary and skewer her, and then raise her up into the air impaled for all to see. Principal Flavin came in.

  “Hello, Mary,” said Mr. Flavin. “How are you today?”

  “I am not well,” said Mary.

  “And why is that?” said Mr. Flavin.

  “I believe you know why I am here, so I think you should be able to tell me,” said Mary.

  “Attitude!” said Mr. Flavin. “Just like your outfit! I can see this won’t be the last time you’ll be in trouble at this school.”