In the Armoire - Mairead Abbenda

When I told my mother I was gay she shut the door to the bathroom and locked it. I heard the drawer with her razors in it clatter open and I knew she was in there butchering her already shredded arms. My mother always did shit like that. She told me eating pussy was dirty. I told her not if the pussy was clean. All the girls I fucked were clean. They smelled like vanilla and a little bit of sweat but their sweat was sweet. I could taste the fruit from the smoothies they drank before I went down on them.

My mother hated that I was depressed, she was very competitive about these things. The first time I tried to kill myself she tried harder. She ended up dead in the ditch outside our house in front of all our neighbors in this suburb she insisted we live in. She stuffed herself with downers and two bottles of vodka. I don’t know how she kept it all down. That bitch had a major eating disorder and could hardly drink milk. When I was eight my father told me how my mother’s mother shot herself with my grandfather's gun the night before they got married.

“It runs in her family,” he said, nearly bored. He spoke as though the words coming out of his mouth were a hassle, as if he’d said it before, time and time again. As if he always had to explain this to people, that it’s not his fault we are so fucked up.

I knew it was coming for me. That shadowy figure that lingered in every room ever since it hung over my crib as a baby. Even when I was younger than four there was some weight on my chest, the air always felt thick as it bubbled in my tiny nostrils. My little fat toddler fists were pink and warm but they were always clenched. When I held people I held them tight. As my fingernails started to grow I gripped so hard I drew blood. My father screamed at my mother to come trim them. She was having one of her moments. She looked out the window, not hearing him. He did it himself. He nicked a bit of the skin off my pinky. I didn’t cry. I looked in my father’s eyes, taking in those green flecks that corroded the otherwise dull brown, and I laughed.

My teachers didn’t know what to do with me. In elementary school I made the older boys cry. They would have some weird shit to say to my friend that I didn’t really understand. One of them knelt down next to me with an ugly fucked up look on his face, so I grabbed him by the hair. I pulled so hard that he made some nasty shrieking sound I didn’t know a boy could make. I twisted my fingers around the hair and turned his head so that his neck was facing me. I was missing my front tooth but the rest found themselves inserted deep into his neck. His scream was sodden with the moisture from his throat, I saw a sad sputtering dribble of spit leave his mouth when he did this. I thought he looked pathetic. I could tell he was embarrassed that it hurt. His cheeks all flushed and his eyes grew damp with the beginning of tears. He got up and looked at me, his face warped and nearly boiling over with rage.

“God, you're retarded. My mom told me about your family. She said you guys shouldn’t be let outside,” he was trying to sound tough, but his little whimper as he walked away took away any hurt his words may have held for me.

I looked over at my friend and burst out laughing. I threw my head back and squeezed my eyes shut, so I didn’t notice for a moment that she wasn’t laughing with me. She looked at me with some expression I would see time and time again until the end of my life. The biting breeze on the playground picked up a strand of her mousey hair and pulled it over her cheek. They were translucent, I could see the veins beneath. Her mouth hung open a little. Her eyes weren’t wavering, and yet they looked almost shaken. As if someone had taken her head and rattled her around and her eyes were still trying to settle down.

I never got in trouble. It was some unspoken rule that the town we had lived in shared. I got some warnings from teachers on occasion. None of my violence was ever reported to the cops. Maybe it was partially my youth that saved me. And that people thought I was disturbed. My family had tainted the town, and no one wanted it in the news. I think they figured as long as I didn’t kill anyone people were safe. My mother would never kill anyone other than herself, and I think they were just waiting for me to do the same.

Years later, in high school, I tried fucking my boyfriend. Well, he tried fucking me, anyway. I didn’t mind kissing him much. I got to keep my eyes closed for that part and his dick wasn’t near me. Usually I would push him off when he got too excited. He would call me a bitch and I couldn’t tell if he was joking. I was sick of hearing him complain about his balls hurting or whatever it was that he would say. So when he shimmied awkwardly out of his boxers I tried my best not to shove him. He flipped me over as best as he could and tugged at my skirt. He ended up leaving it on.

“It’s hotter like this,” he insisted, pulling off my underwear marked with a cursive “Saturday” over the crotch, despite it being a Wednesday afternoon.

He was on my back now, I could feel it pressed against me. I tried not to gag. I could smell the perspiration on his temple. I wouldn’t miss it. Boy smell. My pussy was bone fucking dry. He tried to force it inside of me, a bit harshly I might add, and I screamed.

“Don’t you cut yourself bitch? I can’t imagine this could be any worse.”

His hand was lightly draped around my neck. I tilted my head down and made it look like I was going to suck his finger. I felt his dick twitch right before I bit down. Hard. I heard some wicked snap as my teeth met each other and his loose finger lay on the tongue in my now closed mouth.

He ended up in the hospital. Despite my protests they made me spit out his finger so they could sew it back onto his nub. His mother bitched me out in the all white corridor with its flickering fluorescents and all I could do was smile. I told her he was lucky all he lost was a finger. She didn’t like the way I wore my hair or the loose clothing I shrouded myself with. If it wasn’t obvious enough, the relationship ended. We had nothing in common anyways. My aversion to his penis had me rethinking some key elements in my life. It was just so gross. I couldn’t imagine why my other friends were so hellbent on putting that fleshy rod anywhere near their pretty lips.

When I got home that night from the hospital I told my mother I was gay. Her abhorrance towards my presence in her life was amplified at this news. After her freakout in the bathroom she never looked at me the same and told my father to get rid of me. He didn’t care if I lived or died and so he told me to get the hell out. He couldn’t deal with my mother, he couldn’t deal with me. I was glad to leave, I found myself at some boys house who I knew a little. I told him I would fuck him if I could use his computer for the week. I had applied to an out of state school. I labeled myself independent.

When I left my town and moved I noticed people looking at me. Not in the way they used to, at home people gave me some knowing look. They knew me by what they had heard, about me, my mother. Here they saw a girl. I hadn’t thought about it before but I guess I had been considered decent looking. Underneath my crummy flannels and saggy old jeans I had a waifish, slightly bony frame— it was 2003, people didn’t like it when you looked like you ate. My skin was dark and warm, and my hair was thick and black with bangs cut bluntly just above my eyebrows. Time and time again people would mention my eyes to me upon meeting. They were a brown shade so dark they mimicked black in some lighting, and they were wide and open and people told me I looked like a deer. If there is anything to have thanked my mother for, it was my towering height. It was what Alice said she noticed first.

It was two weeks after I was hospitalized for my suicide attempt and one week after my mother’s funeral. I was nineteen at some house party, enduring the usual shit music and smokey dense air. I was drinking what tasted like rancid lettuce straight from the bottle. Whoever created cucumber vodka needed a swift kick in the dome. Thankfully, the more I drank it the less my taste buds noted the undertones of mildewy wet washcloth. I started to feel that familiar pleasantry of heat radiating from my fingertips to my closed eyelids. I swayed a little, breathing in something fresh, it cut right through the smoke and landed in my nostrils, I let it, gladly, opening my mouth to get a better read.

I turned quickly, making myself a little queasy and looked around, and then down. Meeting my gaze was a pair of sharp green eyes. They tilted up at the outer corners like a fox, and were painted with purple glitter and a thick line of black emphasizing their shape. They were accompanied by bright pink cheeks flushed down to the jaw, along with a nose that curved down in a sleek line from the forehead like some roman sculpture. The lips were the perfect match to the rest of the face, painted black and pouty without any cupid's bow, round and filled out, contrasting the eyes. Cucumber liquid nearly made a return to my tongue from excitement, but I swallowed with haste before it could spray through my clenched teeth.

“Hi. I’m Alice.” Her hair was blonde with streaks of black scattered throughout, and long enough that it touched her hips. She smiled up at me revealing a snaggle tooth among a row of otherwise perfect teeth. The scent of sandalwood and vanilla that I had smelled before came to me stronger now that she took a small hand and brushed her hair behind her back. She moved fluidly, as if she was not contained in her physical form. If I had put my hand out I was sure it would pass through her and come out wet. She let out an airy giggle, and it was then I realized my mouth was open, and I had not made any move to reply.

“Hi, sorry. Have you ever drank this shit? It tastes like drinking a fucking caesar salad.” I held it down for her to smell. She leaned in and then recoiled once the red cup touched the tip of her nose.

“I can’t say I have,” she was still laughing. “I can’t imagine why someone would choose that over something more… better?” Her pupils were wide like a cat honing in on its prey, she was ready to pounce and I was more than willing to let her.

“I’ve never seen you at any parties before.” She cocked her head as she said this, grabbing my hand. She faced my palm up towards her face and began to trace the creases there. “I’ve never seen you around campus either, but I’m always there.”

“I don’t show up to many classes.” I thought about how pathetic I always was, lying in my room, avoiding my professors' emails with a few xanax washed down with chocolate milk. “I’m in a bit of a slump, I guess.”

Her pointer and middle finger were now making soft motions up and down my exposed forearm. She was going in the opposite direction to the scars, paying no attention to them, or deliberately ignoring them to keep from making me feel bad. “Can I show you something?” She fluttered her sparkly lids at me and shifted her fingers to clasp my wrist. She pulled and I became liquid with her, swishing through people with no effort. We made it to a carpeted staircase in the back corner of the house. There was faux pine garland wrapped around the railing adorned with big red bows and multi-colored Christmas lights. The semester was almost over. I was waiting for its demise to try killing myself again. I couldn’t deal with another failed attempt. Having to talk to my professors about it really put a damper on things and now they all looked at me with that same look. Mouth open, weird eyes and wavering glances. I fucking hated my mother for making me this way.

“Hey,” Alice breathed, “in here.”

She brought me to a room at the far end of the hallway. The bedspread was blue flannel with space themed sheets. There were posters of some corny bands along with sports cars and semi-naked women. There were superhero boxers on the floor along with empty cans of energy drinks and condom wrappers.

“Jesus Christ, whose fucking room is this?”

She scanned the room with her eyes and smiled again. “It’s Toby’s brother’s room. I knew he was a slob but I didn’t think it would be this, mmm.. smelly?” I joined her laughter this time, and briefly I felt that mass of pressure that had been with me since birth lift. I could breathe again, and all I could taste and smell and feel was her.

She sat down on bed in one swift motion. I felt lanky and odd near her. Slinking towards the bed made me feel gross. Prior to this I always felt weird around women. I felt like they could tell what I had taken so long to figure out. I sat down at the far corner of the unmade bed. At first she looked like she wanted to laugh. I felt my stomach turn, some fear that she knew, she fucking knew I was odd, that there was something wrong with me. Then, she started asking me things, where I came from, what I did. She was fresh and bright with her questions. She didn’t wear that expectant look of someone who knew the answers, someone who knew what I was supposed to be. Her eye contact never wavered, she was hanging on to my every word. Hours passed.

Eventually, she sighed and rolled her vixen eyes.

“Come the fuck on,” she said, her sharp misplaced tooth glaring at me, “I promise I don’t bite.”

I propped myself up with my hands and shifted my weight towards her. Before I could even settle back down she jumped on me. She knocked me over on my back and made for my neck. Instead of the teeth I half expected to feel, her lips were there. She made a pathway from there to my earlobe, and eventually to my face. She kissed my bare eyelids, my nose, my temple and my mouth. With the momentum of excitement I flipped her around onto her back. Kissing her now, everything felt actualized. I didn’t feel that suffocating disgust I had felt with the men. I felt vivid. She was there and real and tasted like persimmons and cinnamon. I tasted her spit and her stomach and moved her zebra striped underwear out of the way so I could taste her. She came on my tongue and for once in my life I felt like I had a use. Someone knocked at the door so I picked a shoe up off the ground and launched it at the noise, my face still between her legs. My hair is stuck to my cheeks and I smear it off. Still in the solar system, I look over to see the mass of blonde and black hair wrapping around her face. I hear her raspy breathing pushing through the strands. I reach my hand sprinkled with purple glitter and black lipstick over and gently shift it out of her eyes. The moment she is free, her eyes pop open. I don’t have to see her mouth to know she is smiling. She tumbles over to get on top of me. Falling asleep was easy next to her. I didn’t dream. I am new now, and it is remarkable to have someone this excited for me to be awake. For me to be alive.

Mairead Abbenda is a senior at UAlbany with a major in English and a minor in creative writing. She had previously been published in Arch in 2021 and won the Leah Lovenheim award for her short story the following spring.