LIT ANGELS PRESENTS: Mercury Poisoning: An Excerpt from the novel PLASTIC SOUL by James Nulick
Sylvia Plath by Jason Louie
Mercury Poisoning
by James Nulick
It is April 18. I have not yet laid eyes upon her fair tumult and already I sense her beauty, her body quieting all the doubt I have catalogued over the years. I am a smiling woman, I am only thirty, and like the cat I have nine times to die. I await her arrival sitting in a chair on the front lawn in a few fatal yards of grass. I am obscenely pinkfooted, pulling bladed chlorophyll between my bare toes, my nails a luscious orange, my sandals only a few inches away, if needed, commanded by my body, a bench warrant, if one wears an object against the body long enough, does that object become part of the body? A silk georgette dress caresses the hips, the flowers vivid as bandages, sandals a stage for the spotlight toes, the petulant whip of an exposed bra strap, a boy’s legs painted by trousers, the candied barb a suggestion of the flesh rather than a reality, because reality always fails us. The hum of expensive tires on the graveled drive, sounding as they did in what seems a lifetime ago at the Institute, lulling me towards happiness, that great awful rowing towards God, the transport pulling to a stop just a few feet from the edge of the lawn, where the gravel meets the grass, the flowers along the border bowing to some big thing, in anticipation of her arrival, of Jenny’s arrival, my sister in waiting, and how I wish it were James. The Institute’s driver opens the door and does not speak, perhaps isn’t capable of speaking, perhaps he is a clone of his brother, also Asian, and the transport door opens slowly, I am broken and healed, the first time it happened I was ten, and now I am ten again, filled with joy and wonder, broken and healed upon seeing her, my reflection, trapped in amber, she is twenty years old, a lovely twenty years old, she is more beautiful than I imagined, my memory siphoned to create her, filled with holes, what holes this papery day is already full of! When I think of myself, I dream of someone else entirely. She walks towards me in the grass in her lovely peach and pink midi dress, towards my open arms, and for once I am not ashamed. I am made whole again. I am myself. Is that not enough?
Mercury poisoning
I no longer desire to communicate with the world outside my head. I didn’t want a child, my body ruined by an unintended mistake, I didn’t want a man, someone who would hurt me, with his false promises and his armor of fakery. I didn’t want flowers, I only wanted to lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. To love someone, totally and without reservation, to give them absolute sovereignty over your being, to echo Dr. Madeira from a lifetime ago, to surrender emotionally, psychologically, and physically to another being, is madness, and it is a madness I have always wanted. How did I not know this before? Or if I knew, why did I hide it? Was I afraid Father would be disappointed that I was born Sylvia and not Warren, a girl and not a boy? If Father was disappointed, he never uttered a word, and was happy with me in the garden, at his side, attending to the bees in their hives, angry females, yellow on black. You are their queen, Father said more than once, in my moon suit and funeral veil, the girls pelting me with threats, Never eat a banana before attending to the bees, their fear pheromone smells like banana, if you have the scent of banana on you they will quickly turn into a box of stinging maniacs, and I have often wondered, laughing quietly to myself, if Father’s warning was somehow a deterrent against a colony of boys, their protuberant appendages a painful sting entering the body and filling it with acid venom.
An open flower
The woman is perfected. She arrived in an ice cream dress I had purchased for her beforehand, a vintage Jason Wu. It was a lovely peach and pink midi I’d purchased from PRELOVED FABRIC in the city. What vintage is it? What year? I asked the shopgirl. It’s from 2020, I believe—a difficult year. The dress, untagged in the shop, was $3,000. Or perhaps it wasn’t PRELOVED FABRIC…Was it already shuttered? The cute shopgirl now unemployed, the owner bankrupt? It’s difficult to keep track. The only thing I’m sure of is the dress cost $3,000. I was nine or ten during EGYPTE, in 2020, the Engineered Great Younger Population Thinning Event. It was nothing to me, really, as the only calamities children are aware of are those that occur on the playground. A black cord, doubled round her neck and attached to another cord that dipped into her panties, had a small tag attached to it.
UNDER PENALTY OF LAW THIS SUTRATMA NOT TO
BE REMOVED EXCEPT BY THE CONSUMER
Jenny lifted her hands skyward, an open flower, and allowed me to remove her dress. She shyly worked her panties down her ice cream legs. The sutratma cord disappeared into her vaginal opening, braided black nylon sharing space with a white tampon string. Strange, mysterious, an encoded string carrying bits of information nobody ever thinks about, internet cables on the ocean floor. Dr. Madeira told me about the sutratma, but I had no idea what to expect. Does it hurt? Not at all, Jenny said. I walked to the water closet in our bedroom, removed a pair of scissors from the top drawer of the vanity, returned to Jenny, who stood waiting for me, and carefully cut the sutratma from her neck, then gently pulled the cord away from her body until a small pearlized ball exited her vagina. The blood that runs is a dark fruit—an effect, a cosmetic. Did the surgeons at the Institute tell you what the meaning of the sutratma is? Of course, Jenny said, it’s a covenant. Between our flesh and the Institute. May I? she asked, motioning towards the water closet. Of course.
Bunched strands of dull gold
Jenny and I share a bedroom. We each have our own bed. Our room, a taffeta palace, pink floor runners, and plushes, pandas and kittens, bright yellow daisies and black-eyed puppies. Jenny sits at her vanity. I slowly comb her hair, pulling bunched strands of dull gold from her hairbrush, slowly caressing her scalp with its alert, attentive bristles. Does she remember this? Does she remember Mother doing this, when we were girls, I was perhaps nine, waiting for the school bus, waiting to grow up, waiting to be normal. I observe Jenny as she glances in the mercury, marveling at her own reflection, and a jolt of rapid heat travels up my xylophone spine. She watches the Blip from the corner of her eye as I continue traversing the cascade of her hair. When I was a child, I was open-mouthed, but when I became a woman, my lips closed tightly, because it’s improper to exclaim to the world how much I loathed humanity, and still do, my anger unbecoming of a woman of my stature, which is why I keep my mouth shut and my doors closed. I observe Jenny and quietly push my sexuality back into myself, bleeding from every orifice Mother bequeathed to me. I am a nun now, I have never been so pure. But perhaps I am only lying to myself…
These cobbled scraps of womanhood
Two girls there are, within the house. One sits, the other, without. I continue combing her hair. That’s enough, Jenny says, her hand stopping mine. I can do it. What is it you want? she asks. I don’t want anything. Maybe warmth. Warmth? Yes, that’s all I have ever wanted. It’s been difficult for both of us, the hatred I have for Mother… I feel I could murder her over and over again and it would never be enough. Yes, but she is long gone, she has a new life, and we’re not part of it. And Father is an old man, he’s fine, his life is nearly over. If all you truly wanted is warmth, couldn’t you put on a sweater? Do you not have enough blankets? That’s not what I mean, and you know it. I think you aren’t being truthful with yourself. Homosexuality is wrong, and two people who are related to each other shouldn’t be together. Aren’t there rules about this? Who said anything about homosexuality? I know you, Sylvie, you are part of me, remember? We share memories, thoughts, intuitions, but I don’t share your dream, that’s something you are projecting onto me. I’m not projecting anything—You are. I don’t want to argue. I’m not arguing, I’m just saying I don’t want to be part of whatever you imagine this is. When you created all this, without asking, of course, did you ever consider what I might want? Did you consider maybe I’d never want to be part of this hermetic world? Or were you thinking only of yourself? You’re speaking as if you don’t want to be here—is that what you want? I don’t know what I want, I just know I don’t want this. Maybe I do want to leave, leave you, anyway. Please stop all this talk about leaving, Jenny, you’re making me sad. You’re not making any sense, you’re just trying to grab hold of some scrap of anything to keep me here, trapped with you. Jenny scans her vanity, then looks beyond me, through me, irritated that I’m standing behind her, towards the cobbled scraps of womanhood on the surface of my vanity, spying the Nail Bird® among the untouched perfume bottles, bottles intended as decoration, to suggest to a stranger that I am more woman than I am, though no one ever walks through my door, pheromones to keep the workers close to the queen. Jenny whistles and the Nail Bird® flits across the room to her as she holds out her left hand, the ring I gifted her three weeks prior noticeably absent. Three thousand years of civilization and the best we can come up with is flying nail clippers. Can you please sit down, or go somewhere else? You’re making me nervous, standing behind me like that.
