Six
72 CHARLOTTE MANDEL Six At six, my cheeks were apple red. Relatives pinched me like fruit on a stand, testing me. I longed to be pale, glassy and flat like the people reflected in black mirror windows staring in the howl of subway tunnels. Riding to Coney Island, the tunnels blasted into daylight. Veiny red blobs flooded my eyes. Sun melted the windows. I jumped and slid off the wicker to stand, squares imprinted on my thighs. I smelled people and corned beef. I could hear the rattle of my pail. Under my wet wool suit, sand rubbed the pale hidden chinks of my body. I dug tunnels with care, my fingers creeping like people, sandhogs meeting, their torches red fire boring through. I mixed mud to stand firm, fit in bits of shell for windows— white, like eyes of a fish. Windows couldn’t be trusted. Glass looked pale but might be backed with silver, force you to stand, rigid, planted in a screaming tunnel watching faces staring in the dim red narrow passage, the eyes of bodiless people. In the movies, behind the screen, real people ballooned like silhouettes in windows. My mother sat beside me, offering a red apple that felt cold and black in the pale gigantic flickering talking tunnel. A man was touching me—I didn’t understand why my mother looked away, letting me stand it, letting me suffer eyes and hands of people— the man’s fingers groping for tunnels under my dress. The wall in front was a window framing a strange man’s eyes magnified, pale— a scream in my throat like sand, burning red— “We’ll go home, your skin is red.” My mother made me stand, pulled off my bathing suit. Pale bodiless eyes of people stared through black mirror windows at my body screaming in tunnels. ...
OR
