n a room behind the chapel, Melissa gazed at herself in a long glass. Her mother, in attendance, tucked, pinned and did last-minute adjustments. Three giggling girls were present as bridesmaids, and they gossiped among themselves.
A knock came on the door, and Magdalene called for the visitor to enter. It was a boy sent by the minister. “We are ready,” he said.
“Oh, it is time,” said Magdalene. “You look beautiful.”
Melissa pulled herself away from the mirror with an attitude of grace.
“I am ready,” she said.
In the church, an organist played. The ceremony was small but tasteful. The pews were filled with neighbors and family. The church was decorated with ribbons and flowers.
Melissa walked to the rhythm of the organist, slowly down the church aisle. She was an ethereal figure, hidden behind the swaths of lace of her veil. She seemed to float under the smooth movement of the dress and train. No piece of skin, no hint of body appeared, only whites of varying textures moving together, flowing draperies that generated the form of a woman. Hidden from view, Melissa was the presence that commanded the attention of the congregation.
She reached the front of the church and stood in front of the minister.
From the pews, all that was visible was the back of her veil and the length of her train, her mother’s careful embroidery lending richness and strength.
John Peacock stood beside her. His head ached and his mouth felt sour because his friends had all come to his house the night before and brought liquor of every description. He shifted from one foot to another with nervous anticipation and guilt for being in church with the remnants of liquor still in his head.
He resolved before God to never touch a drop again, so that he could be a good and sober husband. He looked at the vision in white next to him. He looked at the preacher reciting words to him. He shifted from foot to foot.
He placed the ring on his betrothed’s gloved finger. He consented to his vows. She added her whisper of consent. Through this ceremony, she was now his for a lifetime. His path was set, his destiny charged, and he could see clearly through time to the rest of his life. Perhaps it was the effects of the liquor, but his head was swimming. The preacher gave his final words, his final blessings. John Peacock turned to the white veil, and the impossible figure turned to him.
He pulled back the veil, and the ethereal became earthly.
He kissed his bride.
About ten months later, Melissa woke up in the night with severe pains in her stomach. The newborn child was silent, and her husband lay sleeping. She crawled out of her bed and made her way to the bathroom, and lying on the floor she discovered the curse that had been gone from her for nine months.
She gathered towels and cleaned herself the best she could. Then, she lay on the floor wracked with pain. The red of blood was on the towels, bright and undeniable. Pain and anger mixed in her heart. She drifted in and out of sleep, kept awake by the pain, nauseated with pain, but half dreaming.
Look there, the blood. Dirty, dirty. Ugly, slimy. Bottle it up inside of you. Flush it out, clean it away, wash it away. The pain comes from inside. Bottled up inside. Throttled to death, dirty, always dirty. They look inside you and they want to puke, with their cold, hard hands, icy, metal, cold. Blood is hot. They are cold. They hate the heat, the heat will melt them, the heat will kill them. Vomit, go on, vomit. They will never vomit because vomit is warm and disgusting and weak and human, like blood. Blood is the mark of Eve, blood is the mark of the woman. The ring around the bath is a stain on mankind. God there is so much blood. It will back up, it will drown me. The bath is filled with blood. Bloody Mary. Say the name three times in the mirror and she will come. Don’t use up all of the towels, don’t dirty them, but wipe it all away, wipe away the ocean. Revolting. Revolt. Revolution. Revolve. Come back around. It will come back around to you. Does it really come from inside of you? All of it is inside of you. That small, crying, red, wrinkled thing, grew inside of you, hidden away in folds of skin, in dead meat. Punishment for making Adam eat the apple. Red, rosy red, to remind you of the shiny apple skin. The apple is knowledge. Knowledge is red. Knowledge is blood. The gleaming eyes and flitting tongue of the serpent. Are you sorry? I am not sorry. I ate the apple, I ate the apple. Just repent and the pain will go away. God, at least I can feel something. Double over. You’re beautiful. You’re beautiful. Just think that you’re beautiful. A small stain. Don’t look at it. You have to wash it away. Why? It’s dirty. Why? Okay, God, I’ll repent. Too late. Look, stop, just a moment. It’s red, beautiful, bright, glowing, shining red. Next to the whitewashed wood. Whitewash. Wash it away. Wash it white. Clean out the dirt. Smut. Slut. Beautiful red, never looked at it, the shiny red. I am crazy, I am insane. Red power, red pain, red passion. Red, red, red. Wipe it away. It’s dirty. Want to vomit. Father’s vomit, coming up, spilling onto the bed. What a mess. Salt water, salt blood. White-wash prissy clean water washes the red primary dirty painful real beautiful blood. There’s a stain. I don’t think I can wash it away.
I came to my senses. I lay on the floor in front of the mirror, and my mind was still streaming with these thoughts, dead thoughts, thoughts like streams of automatic writing. My voice was saying them inside of my head, echoing the fever of red blood. More, my stomach was cramped and wracked with pain. I looked down and saw that my nightdress was stained red with blood. There was so much of it, as if I were murdered.
I screamed, but I don’t remember screaming.
My mother and father came rushing into the room. When she saw me, though, she ushered him out hurriedly.
“It’s woman trouble,” she said. “Don’t worry. No, go. Go back to bed.”
She came to me and told me that everything was all right.
Everything was not all right. My mind was spewing words of pain, words of anger, words of horror. They were red words, spurred by the sight of a bloodstain growing, expanding on the white of my nightdress.
She raised me from the floor, cleaned me and gave me rags to absorb the blood.
There was nothing to absorb the words from my mind.
My temple was pounding. The truth was in my heart. Blood, bloody murder.
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