This Piece of Me
In the back room of the bookshop, I uncase my fingers from the glove one at a time. I pull off the thumb sleeve and release the little alligator that lives where my left thumb should be. He strains toward the animal crackers I set on the desk and eats them one by one, elephant by tiger, then licks the rough edge around his mouth. I get a lightning urge to kiss him on top of his head, like old times, but I don’t.
When the clock strikes twelve, I put my fingers back in the glove holes. The alligator rolls his eyes up at me, a silent protest against stuffing his head back in the fabric cul-de-sac. I picture walking out without my glove, handing old ladies change as his mouth cracks open revealing two rows of tiny, sharp teeth. He would reach out and snap, his teeth hooking the links of their charm bracelets.
I close my eyes and sigh.
“In you go,” I whisper.
My boss is at the front desk, one eye rolling off toward the wall, the other eye looking right at me. “Took you long enough, Lizzy. I'm starving.” He nods at my glove. “Keep that thing hidden,” he says, wincing, remembering the day, a few weeks ago, when he walked in on a feeding. He picks up his bag and walks out without saying another word. Once he’s gone, I lean forward, elbows on the counter (the boss hates that), and deepen the crack in the spine of my book.
When the bell on the shop door jingles a few minutes later, I’m off in the mountains of Scotland, picking thistles, foggily aware of a browsing customer. But it takes a few minutes for my mind to span the Atlantic, back to the bookstore desk. A tall man approaches the counter, and as I look up at him, a visceral memory hits me: the pain of being shoved against a playground fence, blood in my mouth. Jack Finnegan held me by my right arm while Donnie Schneider grasped my left and held my bare hand up to an eager audience of third graders, my ripped glove dangling.
The other kids backed away, slowly, and continued backing away through fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. They left me alone from then on, strung out across dateless summers. I spent days and nights in my room, sent there for trivial reasons, dropping a spoon or coughing too loudly. I read books like Goodnight Moon aloud while my alligator, who I call “Little Friend”, nibbled absently on the corners of the pages.
God knows why, but throughout all those summers I spent locked away I dreamt about Donnie. I wanted to bite his lip, give him kiss after hollow kiss. While kids my age sat next to each other in the front seats of cars, toppling into each other like dominoes, I lay back on my twin bed, reading with Little Friend in gathering darkness. But the more days passed, the fewer pages we turned together.
By the time tenth grade arrived, I spent most nights dreaming of taking a scythe to my little alligator, dropping the blade down on my thumb joint. I would slice off a thumb from an anonymous body and sew it on, black twine binding it to me as my dying Little Friend crawls away, growing cold and harder by the second.
As Donnie stands before me now, as an adult, his third-grade-self is still visible – the playful eyes, the boyish cowlick. My alligator rustles in the glove, and Donnie's eyes dart to it before I can tuck my hand behind my back.
“I thought I dreamed you,” he says.
I say nothing. The stereo in the back of the shop pops with static; an indistinguishable tune plays softly underneath the buzz.
Donnie's brown eyes itch; he looks like he wants to rip off the glove all over again and see how the alligator has grown. But never mind that, I’ve grown too – my dark hair much longer, my lips fuller, my angular teenage face now rounded at the edges – not good-looking but not bad-looking.
But Donnie is not looking at my face.
“Can I see it?” he asks.
I look at him for a long time, debating.
He leans in further, his hands pressed flat on the counter. A gold wedding ring gleams on his finger. He turns his gaze to my eyes, and I shift weight from foot to foot; afraid his eyes will burn if I stare at them too long, like looking into the sun.
He lifts his right hand and waves it slowly in front of my face, my eyes following, hypnotized. All I can see is the fluid beauty of his perfect hand: tanned skin, not cracked, just smooth and dark. What it must feel like when he caresses his wife's shoulders, brushes across her cheek, down her side...
He angles his pointer finger toward my lips.
“Lizzy,” he says. “Strange little Lizzy.” My lips part seamlessly as he moves his finger between them. I hold my breath, taking in the beautiful, salty taste of his skin. Without thinking, I reach my gloved hand up to hold his wrist, and he grabs on with his free hand, his eyes dancing, saying, “Ha!” He caught me; same as that time in the playground, when he asked me for a kiss while Jack Finnegan crept in from behind.
I can’t move, and he knows it. He works his hand over my wrist to the cuff of my glove and rips it off. My Little Friend gnashes his teeth.
Donnie begins to laugh, slowly pulling his finger out of my mouth. I blink once and ogle his laughing eyes. The force of 300 dark summer nights wires its way through my jaw, and I bite his finger, hard. At the same time, my alligator clamps onto his wrist.
Donnie lets out a shout and tries to pull away, but I’ve got him by two coordinates. I bite down harder, my alligator following suit. Donnie tries to swing his elbow around and jab me, but I pull my torso away, keeping my teeth clamped steady even as he thrashes about. After a minute or two, he gives a muted yell and curls his finger in a beckoning motion, freeing himself. My alligator lets go at the same time, and we both survey him, shaken and bleeding. His perfect brown hair swept to the side, his eyes narrowed.
“Bitch,” he says.
He has his calm back now - tucks his temper into a brown suede blazer and strokes a combing hand through frayed hair. I just stare, willing his retreat. My alligator snaps his jaws one last time.
With his eyes on me, Donnie walks backward to the door. Slipping his hand behind him, he fumbles for the doorknob and twists his way out, leaving nothing but a smear of blood on the knob.
I exhale at last. My jaw shudders, the shiver working its way through my body, down my arms and hands. I can’t stop shaking, those old Donnie fantasies curdled, and I am left with blood on my lips and a feeling of sour alertness.
I look down at the alligator, who is gazing up at me, waving his arms as if saying hello. For one long moment, pupil-to-pupil, we look at each other. He calls me back to the days when he was more loyal pet than hideous appendage, when we stayed up late – reading, playing; when he splashed happily in the bathtub, when we made art projects, sitting in our corner, him cutting zigzags in construction paper.
I reach down and rub my index finger between his eyes, the spot where he likes it. He closes his eyes and makes a throaty sound, his alligator purr. I lean over and kiss him on top of his head, pick him up, and place him over my heart. He snaps his teeth, purring louder.
A pile of books on the counter catches my eye, on the top sits Goodnight Moon.
“Let's read a story, Little Friend.”
– Anne Wagener lives and works in the Washington, DC area. To survive the commute, she listens to books on tape and scribbles notes for stories at stoplights (and occasionally while the car is moving). Her recent stories appear in Jersey Devil Press and Splinter Generation. She is working on a collection of short stories.
