Opossum
When I was six years old, the tire of Jenna’s car rolled over the spine of an opossum.
Not exactly—her dad’s car. The cigarette-leather peeled, and I had picked it away, down to dense, misshapen foam, in a little nook within reach of my fingertips. My prize: flakes of brown stuck under my fingernails and a heavy weight of guilt in my gut, at the damage I couldn’t stop wreaking. Every half hour, I’d keep voicing the agitated sin in my limbs—“I’m sorry, I peeled it again.” An exasperated sigh would hiss into the air, and I shouldered their distaste readily, because then, I was clean—honest—until my fingers found the edge of the hole again.
And, again, not exactly—maybe it wasn’t the spine, maybe it was only the opossum’s hind leg, so it didn’t die on impact. Maybe its mangled intestines caught on the rough tread of Jenna’s tire and it barrel-rolled three times, unwinding its organs against the hot summer asphalt. Maybe it was blinking blearily at the license plate, as Jenna blinked wearily at me, as I cried snot into my hands all the way past the sign that read, “Welcome to Wyoming.”
“Stupid fucking possum,” Jenna’s dad swore in Jenna’s car.
No, I thought. No, I don’t think so.
“Stop crying,” Jenna pleaded with me, so I snuffed out my breath, on her command. Jenna’s mother flicked her lashes at me in the rearview mirror, gorgeously angry, so I snuffed out my eyes before my stomach could drop further. There’s not much else I remember of that trip to Yellowstone—only the shape of Jenna’s shaky breath against the window.
*
I am staring into the mirror. The putrid sink leaks slowly down a metal pipe that connects from the ceramic bowl to the hole in the wall. The air stinks of vomit that isn’t my own.
The bathroom is timeless. There are no windows, so I do not acknowledge that the sun set eight hours prior. I do not acknowledge that once my head indents the pillow, the dorm room at the end of the hall will become something other than somewhere I sleep. My suitcases are untouched. I suspect that, the moment my fingertips brush the cold metal of the zipper, its organs will spill, and everything I have ever known will demand that I acknowledge it.
I sit on the damp, disgusting floor, bare legs sliding against cold tile, rotten water, and stray hairs. I try to pretend I deserve to be clean.
*
When I was six years old, the tire of Jenna’s car rolled over the spine of an opossum.
“Stupid fucking possum,” Jenna’s dad swore in Jenna’s car.
No, I thought. No, I don’t think so.
There is an “O” in opossum, I clarify, whenever I tell this story. Opossums, with their long snouts, scaly tails, and sneering teeth, are prevalent in the Western Hemisphere. They are marsupials, and carry their babies on their backs for about a month. The average lifespan of an opossum is one to two years, due to the strain of living among humans.
Possums live in Australia, have furry tails, and are hated much less.
*
I am staring into the mirror. I peel back the edges of my mouth, watching as my cheek gives way to ragged, yellow teeth. I press the pad of my thumb against the pointed enamel edges. The singular lightbulb of the bathroom puts a hard-edged light in my beady black eyes. My skin is sickly, like the skin of a white worm with speckled moles. My reflection raises a finger to my face, presses deep into the pale meat, until I can feel my molars. I count. There are too many.
I am turning into an opossum.
*
When I was six years old, the tire of Jenna’s car rolled over the spine of an opossum.
I told this story at a sleepover, once. There were seven thirteen-year-old girls in a circle, pillows pressed against our chests, childish stuffed animals heavier in their absence than their presence. I fidgeted madly, burning to bits over the effort of nonchalance. The strap of my camisole fell off my shoulder, and I valiantly froze into stone, to capture the spectacle, and my gleeful eyes fled around the corners of the room, searching for any reflective surface. This indecent venture soared, then dropped like a shot bird when I caught up to my own image in a sliding glass door—a fat pound of lard, sagging at the neck and stupid at the straps of the camisole I dug out from the bottom of my mother’s closet to prove I could be beautiful, unintentionally.
Jenna was beautiful, unintentionally. She slouched lazily on the deep green corduroy sofa, caramel ringlets cascading down her swan-like neck. Her slow, gentle blinking made the light in her eyes flutter, glitters of forest and sunlight between leaves. I scrabbled for proof of my ties with this angel—as if my proximity to her angelic-ism, my hot breath on the window of her car seven years prior, was proof to the five girls that I was “other,” that I was somewhere between Jenna and worldly creation, nowhere near them. Whenever Jenna shifted, stretched, or yawned, their flickers of uncertainty were loud, grating. Their withering made me proud, as I withered, myself.
“When we were six, Jenna’s dad ran over an opossum,” I announced, as if my honesty erased the sin of envy. “It was me and her family, while we were on a trip to Yellowstone.”
Horrified gasps.
“And,” I pressed, “I cried ‘cause it was so gross, and she told me to shut up.”
The playful lilt in my voice was formulaic. My eyes picked her apart, feasted upon the remains. Jaws dropped in shock, but with the corners of their mouths raised. Starving, wolfish bitches, desperate to make a meal out of anything. Their reverence decayed, rapidly.
In retrospect, it was a near-meaningless confession. Who cares, about who told who to shut up when. But this was Jenna’s Pompeii. Her eyes became slick and shiny with frustration.
“I didn’t,” she choked out. She buried her face in her hands, slender fingers brushing past her silk curtain of hair as she leaned forward. Jenna cried like a princess, and I adored her, so hatefully.
“Well,” I laughed, lightly. The tightrope under my foot was burning a line into my sole. I fought for balance. “Yeah, not exactly. You did tell me to stop crying, though.”
“Wha—at, that’s so mean,” someone else commented, lightly—so lightly. All of this, feathers landing in a pool, rippling in rings, light, light, light. I felt the hot coil of metal in my chest cool, and loosen. I shrugged, as an afterthought. Performing.
“It doesn’t matter, Jenna, I just thought it was funny looking back on it.” Half-truth, so only a half-sin.
Mt. Vesuvius erupted, and Jenna was never the same.
“My dad hits me when I cry,” Jenna sobbed, and ugly noises were twisting out from her lungs, slobber and all. “I was scared he would hit you too.”
Shards of ceramic on carpet. A clambering race to the only angel on Earth. The girls rushed towards Jenna, nymphs of compassion, patting her on her delicate shoulders, whispering sweet words into her hair, pulling at her, from others, to embrace her the deepest. I hugged myself defensively against the rising storm. Foolish, ignorant, and the furthest from heaven.
The girl who spoke before glared at me the hardest, but I knew she was fighting down the guilt and bile, lest she vomit it all over the carpeted floors. The wings from Jenna’s shoulder blades were splintered in my fists, and everyone could see the blood all over my hands, my chin, my chest. All over my stupid fucking white-laced camisole, that no one wears to sleep.
*
Myth: Opossums hang from their tails to sleep.
I step out of the bathroom when I believe the sun has risen. The suitcases spiral aimlessly away from the door when I shove it open, and I collapse on the wooden floorboards. Dust, from other footsteps and other lifetimes, coats my arms.
There is not an inch of me that is clean.
Fact: One of the leading causes of deaths for an opossum are vehicular.
The apartment is a thirty-six minute walk from the campus’s main courtyard, where I am required to be present in fifteen minutes, where I will crawl among humans and hope I inspire the type of disgust that forces people away, rather than inspiring a spectacular collision that results in strewn intestines against asphalt. There is a bristling of fur along my spine, but I cannot bring myself to turn my head. If sour gray fur has already started to take hold of my skin, I may hang myself.
The pressure of the shower stream is barely enough to dribble across the overnight grease and grime. I am motionless, captivated by tiles with moldy edges, and the lightbulb in the bathroom flickers off. I wave my wrist loosely in the air, fingers slumping over each other. The darkness does not budge.
No human presence is detected in this space.
Fact: If an opossum becomes roadkill, there is a chance that its babies are still alive in the pouch.
“That’s… interesting. How about a fun fact about yourself?”
The weather is bright, and the sky is an even shade of blue, so cloudless that I nearly feel claustrophobic. The grass pinches at my calves, and I am the only student sitting halfway off the orientation picnic blanket. The six other students are pursing their lips or glancing at another student in quiet bewilderment. A sharp burst of irritation stings the inside of my ribcage with its force.
“My name is . It’s my first year. When I was six…”
Fact: Opossums do not mate for life.
In high school, by some stunt of volatile male teenagers searching for an expulsion of hormonal energy and a victim of ridicule, I had a boyfriend. Obviously, I was in love with him, and he was not. Obviously, everyone knew this.
I marveled at first love, at the secrecy of catching glimpses of him through swinging classroom doors. There was a warmth in the passenger seat of his car. I obsessed over the mole over his left brow, the sharp corners of his dark eyes, the weight of his hand catching mine.
He obsessed over pregnancy.
“I’m gonna get you pregnant,” if I did something that pleased him.
“Oh, you’ve gonna have my kid,” if I flaunted some flesh of my body at his command.
The threat nearly made the lining of my stomach tear, acid leaking to every corner of my body. If there was traceable horror in the bridge of my wrinkled nose, he chose not to notice.
Myth: Opossums are blind.
There were malnourished, scavenging eyes in every corner of every moldy wall in the hallway. Still, the news circled around to me six weeks too late.
He fucked Jenna over the hood of her car.
In the parking lot? Over the ghost of the opossum, groaning under the weight of their sweat-slicked bodies in the dark? Over the strip of bloody fur still stuck in the worn grooves of the tire? Witnessed by the hole in the back seat, on the side of the steering wheel.
Ah, ah, ah. Respective thuds against thick glass, streetlights refracting into the cigarette-leather seats. Phantom six-year-old fingertips at the corners of the gaping cavity in the peeling leather, infused with pungent smoke and crushed cigarette butts. Underneath, a pale, unseeing eye made of yellow foam, bearing witness through the windshield.
Ah, ah, ah. Thin, delicate shoulders beaten into a flushed glow. Angel neck—bitten, sucked, and torn.
*
When I was six years old, the tire of Jenna’s car rolled over the spine of an opossum.
The opossum’s belly was swollen with children, but when they were flattened, they all, very swiftly, stopped struggling, keeled over, and died.
Jenna was flattened with a pair of hands swollen with lust, and I—very swiftly—stopped struggling, keeled over, and died.
*
It is a nasty sight.
I stand in the poisonous bathroom, glare fixated on the curve of my navel, the jutting of my abnormal hip, the great expanse in the middle of my chest. Sunken and swollen in the wrong places. My clothes lie littered on the tile—white cotton soaking into the yellow crust and spittle, garnished with black mold. Denim infesting itself with traces of urine and toothpaste.
I strip every inch of my skin naked. My heels are grounded in manmade swine, and my fingernails scrabble for porcelain so I can lean closer to myself, nose to glass, nose to nose.
In the mirror, an opossum looks back.