The Chronology of Water Read Online Free PDF Page B

before I saw him, and when I turned to face him he was standing just underneath the lonely garage dangle of a bulb, his head weirdly illuminated. Then he began to yell, a slow nonsensical roll at first, but humming quickly into a roar. Like engines on Camaro Berlinettas do. He called me a slut, he named my sins, he listed all my mistakes and shortcomings and shameful behaviors - all the acting out that lived up and through me to bring me to this daughter moment.
    Maybe they were all true. Maybe he was right. Maybe I would become the slut fuckup he said. But I was also a very good swimmer. And he was not.
    He grabbed my arm at one point, and though I could feel the bruise forming, I never let go of the handle of the suitcase. I felt I could swing it into his head any time I wanted. Somehow that night my girl shame and fear were nowhere in the room. I thought the thought of somebody’s son. You don’t know how far I’ll go, motherfucker.
    I looked him in the eyes. Blue on blue.
    I felt the width of my shoulders and the square of my own jaw. My adrenaline rushed up like before a race. Nothing he was saying was beating me down. I think maybe he saw that, because he shifted gears and began to rage about what I was doing to my mother - did it make me happy that it would kill her? My leaving? Just like my selfish shit of a sister? Is that the kind of person I was? A selfish bitch who wanted to kill my mother? You and your sister - such high and mighty assholes - you think you are so much better than anyone else?
    My sister and I, we were selfish. We wanted selves. There was no rage or love that could stop us. That’s what opened my mouth.
    Fuck.

    You.
    Motherfucker.
    I said it again, louder, and again, until I was screaming it, screaming with the lungs of a swimmer. Then I said get the fuck out of my way you fucking sadist, and I swung my suitcase back, and he drew up his full height of father and pulled his arm back and fisted up his hand until it white knuckled and his face went red and he clenched his teeth and those eyes, those rage filled father eyes … so I did what I was born to do. I leaned in as close to his face as I could and said do it. Suitcase ready.
    It was his voice I used.
    It seemed we’d die in that moment. But all it took to leave that room was this body I had. Though I did hear him breathing - out of breath - at my mighty back. And I did consider what being punched in the back of the skull might feel like. I believed I could take it.
    I carried the suitcase to my bedroom. I went in. I closed the door behind me. I took off my clothes. My skin smelled like chlorine and sweat. Summer heat snuck through the screen of my window. I put my head down on my pillow. I waited. I heard a car go by. I heard a dog bark. I could hear a shiver of wind in the shrubs outside my window. And Cicadas. And frogs. I waited and waited. And then I didn’t. I put my hand between my legs. I parted my lips. The wet slid my fingers around and around and fast and hard. I closed my eyes. I thought about Sienna Torres shoving her fingers up my wide open cunt, as open as a mouth screaming motherfucker. I came so hard it shot out of me. I didn’t know until that night a girl body could do that. Shoot cum.
    The first things I put in the black suitcase were a flask and a box with what used to be my mother’s hair.

Deliverance
    TO BE BORN HAS MANY MEANINGS. HOW MANY TIMES WE leave a life, enter a new one. How it felt to fly out of the airport away from my family’s home at 18: watch the airport grow tiny and then the land go smaller and then the strip of shitty sand that is Florida recede and disappear. Girl in the sky weightless as water.
    Where I was going was Lubbock, Texas. When I got to Lubbock, whatever Lubbock was, I felt positively delivered. My own room my own friends my own food my own alcohol my own music my own sex my own money my own thoughts my own body my my my freedom to be whoever wherever however rose like a volcano in