One long spiral
My grandmother has magic hands. The washing machine tears her bedsheet in the morning, and I come back from lunch to a stack of white handkerchiefs, lace around the edges, grandmother on the floor with a long white flag on her lap. She casts small spells with her needle and watches a show on TV about people’s strange hobbies. I watch with her — a stranger’s hands peel an orange into one long spiral and fold it into a butterfly, a boat, a rabbit.
Rain begins to smatter, ringing round and hollow as the roof catches water. The floor by the window grows wet. Grandmother doesn’t notice until a drop lands on her forearm, and she flinches, yanking thread and sheet off the ground. I watch her put her sewing aside. She notices the wet floor and shakes her head. Then she sees on her altar, three pearls of rain, reinventing the trinity. With one small click of her tongue, she brushes the back of her palm against the grain. Father, son, holy spirit fall off the wood, settle on her skin.
My grandmother’s altar rests on a low square coffee table. The table has rounded legs and corners cut from pale, smooth wood. On the center of the table is the object I most desire: a statue of Mary, with beautiful blue painted eyes.
I look at Mary and try to think holy thoughts. To think holy thoughts means to think Nothing, which is not the same as an empty head. I am twelve, and I know that much. I know when my grandma bows her head and prays the space between her closed eyes opens into a deep hole where only Nothing can fall inside. Not even summer sunlight can pass through. That’s what she means when she says, “It’s between me and God.”
My grandmother gets up to pee. Now it’s me and Mary, alone. She looks back at me and smiles. She stares through my soul with holy mischief in her eyes. Her face twitches. I grab her legs with both hands and she laughs like a fighting magpie, the sound shaking her wood and porcelain body.
I draw her face close to mine, sensing she has something to say. I grip her tight around the middle, and her eyes narrow. “Clitlicker!” She says, laughing like a chorus of alley cats in summer heat.
I scream.
“Shush!” Says Mary, and my voice cuts off without a trace, not one echo. I remember the kimchi stew I had for lunch and shut my mouth. Nothing’s more sacrilegious than bad breath. I set Mary down.
She’s no longer looking at me. The light behind her eyes dims as the neighbor’s haunted porch light flickers a command: Silence, Silence. I bite my lip and ask questions in my head, knowing Mary can hear, but she listens to the light instead of me. Silence. I sit and wonder what’s a clit? Could be an animal. Or a type of sacred candy. My mind wanders to other words I don’t know, long words I can’t pronounce, like Obsolescence. The clock on the dresser ticks-ticks-ticks itself into the new night, the only noise in the world. Tick-tick-tick. Clit-clit-clit.
Years pass, I no longer cross myself before I eat. When I’m drunk and walk past a church with a date, I flip off the cross, irreverent. Yet every time I’m on my knees, I pray: God bless clitlickers. Somewhere past Eden is another garden, still green and blooming. In it are two lovers, eating each other out.