cain heart

Originally published in Stolen Diaries zine, which you can read here. Republished with permission.

---

My sibling lays me down, cleans the paring knife with isopropyl alcohol, presses my shoulder into the floor, and lifts up my shirt. It’s obviously going to hurt— I know knives, I’m old enough to recognize them as an object of pain by now— but I still ask anyway.

Yeah, they say. But it’s pretty small. It’ll be over quick.

These are the things we do to be safe.

---

We don’t need preachers, we don’t need reverends, we don’t need fathers. We have one father already and we don’t need another. Don’t ask us where he is or why he’s letting his kids run around screaming half-naked in the street. He’s busy, okay? He’s just busy. Thinking of him brings to mind the word lonely. His lonely is sticky; he leaves a trail of it in his wake, pouring syrupy misery everywhere he goes. He never says he’s sad but it’s obvious. And our mother is there, too, but she’s irrelevant. Everything we know has taught us about her irrelevance. And we don’t like being taught, defiant to the last, but we learned it anyway.

On the road, weaving through state lines, we are surrounded by Bibles and pictures of Jesus dying on the cross— billboards, motel room nightstands, sermons playing on the television— but nobody tells us what to do with it or how to interpret it. Nobody talks to us. We learn Jesus is necessary from context. We are two unattended children with scabby knees and homespun haircuts, and nobody likes us enough to tell us things. Our peers don’t like us because we’re too weird. Adults don’t like us because we’re children and therefore automatically beneath them. Our parents probably don’t like us that much, either. I think they wanted two Good Ol’ Sweet Girls; they got us instead. But that’s fine. We have each other. It’s enough.

My sibling and I build our little bubble with care. It’s something just for us. At any given point, people can take away everything we love, but they can’t take this. We read the Bible and cherry pick the good parts. Disease, plagues, tithing. We invent rituals. We create lore. Jesus is a bug is a dog is the man running the front desk of this Motel 6. Angels are everywhere. You have to watch out because angels are everywhere, and not all of them are good angels. The Devil cut off his wings so sinners can fly. If you wake up with wings, that’s the Devil, not God— you have to get the Devil out of you or he’ll make you do bad things, like drink alcohol or be lazy or kill people. The churches we sometimes attend on holidays are Catholic churches, so the Virgin Mary becomes more important than God in our bubble. We like her sad face and her solitude and her blue dress. We know something about sad, lonely adults; in this way, we know Mary, too. And we don’t tell anyone about our religion. They never told us anything, so why should we tell them? We’ll just laugh in their faces as they go to Hell.

---

Alone on the floor of the van, wrapped together in a sleeping bag, my sibling runs a hand over my face. They press their fingers against the two moles on my forehead.

That’s where your horns are going to grow out of, they say. When you turn into the Devil.

Nuh-uh. I’m not going to turn into the Devil.

Yes you are. You have to be extra careful because you already have the start of horns, so you’re closer than most people are to turning into the Devil. You have to be really good and try to get as much evil out of you as you can.

I’m good, though, I say. And because I’m a big girl— all of seven or eight years old— I don’t cry, even though being told I’m bad makes me feel strung out and desperate. I promise I’m good.

They run their hand down my face to my neck, tapping my pulse point twice before carding their fingers through my hair and pulling my head down to their shoulder. I let myself be directed. They’re the only one who can get away with making me do anything.

Yeah, you are, they say. But I just don’t know if you’re good enough.

---

My sibling is three years older than me, dark-haired, and perpetually four inches taller. They got our father’s black hole eyes and his black hole heart. I don’t know why I didn’t. I wish it hadn’t skipped me over. I look like our mother, blonde and blue-eyed, and I hate it because everyone else likes it— I don’t want to be liked, though, I want to be like them. Their bravery. Their acidity. Their wealth of knowledge on arctic foxes.

This, I learn, is just how it is when you have an older sibling. They’re cooler than I am. They can run faster and jump higher and talk better than I can. They know more than I do. They are the authority on everything under the sun; it’s not real or true unless they think it is. The only thing I can do better than them is read and write, and they might hate me for it, but it’s okay. I follow them everywhere because I want to and because I have no choice. They bring me to heel with perfect devotion. They tell stories from the Bible (inaccurately, I later realize; they invented and twisted things to suit our little religion better). They talk about Abel and Cain. Between the two of us, it’s easy to realize who is who— they’re sensitive, the firstborn, and have a hard time hurting anything that isn’t me. I am small and brutal and I have the beginning of Devil horns growing out of my forehead. We don’t talk about it. We both know, though. It’s obvious.

All that and still I would do anything I could to get them into Heaven. I love them more than Heaven. I love them more than Jesus or God or Mary or the good angels, more than I hate the Devil, although I would never tell them any of that. They would make me stand in water for ages to purify me if I said it out loud and I would deserve it. I would deserve it.

---

Almost a decade later, a boy and I sit alone in a room. He runs his hand through my hair, up my neck, and then over my face, brushing his fingers over the two moles on my forehead.

Come on, I say. Quit it.

Let me look at you, he says. Let me see you. He’s insistent. I don’t mind. I don’t feel anything anymore; haven’t for years. This is what I get for spending my childhood being good for Mine Own God, for being my brother’s keeper.

I let him take off my shirt. He explores my breasts, my waist, my hipbones, the freckles scattered over my back and shoulders. I laugh when he sticks a finger in my navel and he takes it in stride, spending the next few minutes trying to find more ticklish spots. He moves feather-light above the waistband of my shorts and watches my stomach muscles twitch. I watch him watch me. I think about sin. I think about all the time I spent standing in the ocean and praying for salvation. I think about my sibling and immediately try to push the thought away.

He places the pad of his index finger just below my left breast. What’s this from? he asks.

It’s a symbol for protection and life. It’s an oath. It’s a threat. It’s something we found in a book about mummification. It’s something that I thought faded back into my skin a long time ago, scar tissue slivering out into nothingness. It wasn’t my idea. It was my fault. It was my pain to bear. It was my cross. It wouldn’t scab over and it bled for three days straight, but that was a good sign, because Jesus spent three days dead. It was never found out. We were never found out. We were never pure enough.

Oh, that? I say. Don’t know where I got that from. Must have been a cat scratch or something.

Bedroom floor. Paring knife. Isopropyl alcohol.

Liar.