‘I forgive you,’ I whispered.
For the first time in years I felt full of relief.
§
She’d said, ‘Bruh, tape my mouth.’
She’d said, ‘Bruh, light a match.’
Barbra kept egging me on. The last week of August. The dead, over-air-conditioned middle of the night. I didn’t know why her lips had to be taped, why her hands had to be tied. It was like this invitation for me to do what I wanted, to think what I wanted, for me to feel power, for her to trust me with that.
But if I pictured her in Israel like this, she looked beaten, all curled up on some filthy street corner. I saw her bleeding and shaking, being taken away. This five-year-old girl all alone in a crowd. Baby girl held down and cut. Was her childhood an endless succession of traumas?
I thought Barbra invented the game of abduction to heal abduction.
And my mother had the nerve to say to me right before she left: ‘You really need to take a break. I’m worried about your health.’
One night, Barbra said, ‘I want something sharp.’
‘Take a break,’ intoned my mother. ‘You and her should take a break.’
My mother didn’t know what she was talking about. I thought my mother was getting in the way of her healing.
Barbra suggested scissors or a nail file. From my pencil case, I retrieved an X-acto blade.
Each night of August, toward the end, escalated.
‘I’m not going to do anything crazy with this,’ I said.
‘Crazy is just one word out of many,’ Barbra said.
I pretended to wield the thing like a weapon. I hammed it up for her, acting evil. I even licked the itty-bitty triangular blade.
‘Stay away from her for a few days,’ my mother pleaded with me from Portland. ‘Doesn’t Joel have a cottage? Can’t you hang out with your friends?’
Shut up, I wanted to say to my mom. You left. You just left. Now leave us both be.
Barbra held her tits up, nipples right at her chin. I was an inextricable part of her performance of healing. Knives feel good, it was as if she was saying. Or maybe this was the title of the messianic healing performance: Knives Are Essential for the Jewish Sacrifice to Greet.
‘Don’t be scared,’ Barbra said, looking up, her eyes drunk. ‘Come on, hold it right over me.’
Why? Fuck. I didn’t want to hurt her. I wanted to cut my own arm with her name.
But I walked up to her with this weapon she chose. Barbra looked up at me and stuck out her tongue. I shuffled in closer. Barbra knew what she was doing. I wanted to yell: Are you sure? Are you sure? Barbra pulled down my pants. I got weak. She inhaled. With the knife upraised in my right hand, Barbra opened her mouth wide, pulled me in and started sucking. I heard her saliva. I felt her lips clutch. Barbra slit her eyes, staring upward, engorged with me.
I wobbled. She kept telling me what to do.
‘Cut. God.’
My knife came down and grazed the top of her tit.
Abuse, that’s abuse, my mother said.
Barbra went all the way. She gagged like a porn clip.
Sacrifice, I thought I heard myself say.
I smelled Windex perfume. I felt my pubic hairs itch.