“Are you even listening to yourself right now?”
“People count on us to be passive. They deserve to be punished.”
“The haters outnumber us by a large margin. Are you going to smash them all?”
This wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I’d been enjoying my high, but Sana had extinguished it with her incessant scolding. I missed feeling high. In its place was agitation.
I excused myself to go to my room before our exchange could escalate. I’d save my anger for those who deserved it. I still wanted a fight, but not with her.
In my room, I took off my heavy boots and tossed them into the corner. My tights were dirty from touching the bike, so I brushed them off, moving my hands along the curves of my calves, feeling their bulk. It felt good to touch my body. It centered and calmed me.
I peeled off my tights and unbuttoned my dress, which was sweaty under the arms and down the back. I took off everything else and climbed into bed naked, enjoying the chill of the sheets. I breathed slowly through my mouth, placing my hands on my stomach to experience the movement of air through my body, keeping a rhythm. My thoughts were zipping around in my brain. Unable to corral them, I kept focused on my breath.
Sana didn’t know what it was like to be numb for so many years and then to feel again. Before quitting Y——, I’d been like a lamp that was broken, but now I was switched on, emanating heat and light. There was pleasure in feeling strongly. Even an emotion like rage could feel good—it was almost cleansing, the way it made me feel alive.
I ran my hands over my body, playing with my nipples, placing my hands between my legs, exploring. I wasn’t like those women on the screens in the underground apartment, who had sanitized slits between their legs. Between my legs was a handful of flesh and hair. While on Y——, I had masturbated a couple times a year, but it was never worth the effort—all that stroking for a tiny pop at the end. Now merely rubbing my fingertips together aroused me. Without the drugs, my body was alert to touch.
Since I didn’t want to be fuckable anymore, I focused on how I felt inside, not how I might have looked to an imaginary someone. I was anchored in the sensations of my body rather than living outside of it, judging it. Sometimes I thought about sex with a partner. Rubí went out all the time and offered to fix me up, but I wasn’t ready. That step would come in time. I was content to be alone for now, to become acquainted with the body I had never liked to touch. I rubbed myself, the whole messy handful between my legs, my hand bringing me closer to what I wanted: pleasure and release.
I slept for a little while, then went downstairs to make dinner, feeling mellow and balanced for the first time that day. Rubí was sitting at the kitchen table with a glass and a bottle of tequila.
“Bad day?” I said.
“The worst.” She told me that Dabsitaf had been approved by the FDA despite how hard she and Verena had worked to stop it. “They said the dangers of obesity outweigh the potential dangers of the drug.”
I placed my cutting board on the table across from her so I could chop vegetables and we could talk. “This isn’t over. You’ll raise awareness. I’ll help you,” I said, but she remained quiet. I sliced an eggplant as she finished her drink and poured another. After she set the bottle back on the table, she pointed to the television behind me, the sound muted. “Look at that,” she said.
A breaking news banner appeared at the bottom of the screen, announcing JENNIFER REVEALED.
I dropped my knife on the cutting board and reached to turn up the volume.
“Thank the Lord on high,” said Cheryl Crane-Murphy. “Yes, it’s true. We finally know who Jennifer is.”
? ? ?
Soledad
United States Army specialist Soledad Ayala was traveling in the Khost province of southeastern Afghanistan, riding in a convoy of Humvees to FOB Salerno, which they called Rocket City. She and another medic were the only two women in the unit, riding in the back of the last Humvee, dressed in dust-colored clothes and armed with M4 carbines.