Page 6 of Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter

I peel off my shirt and study the mosaic of scars on my arms. They spangle my skin from the base of my wrists to just beneath my shoulders. Counting them is like counting stars, an endeavor equal parts infinite and foolish. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. I lost track years ago. Some are perfect crescent moons, each individual tooth distinguishable from the next, and othersare ragged and violent, more animal than human. A thousand tiny screams carved forever into my flesh.

The tattoos, just like the fake breasts and the Botox and the lip plumper, give me the power to direct people’s eyes away from my scars. I’ve peppered my arms with dozens of girlish, sticker-sized tattoos—things like my Taurus zodiac sign, a set of vampire fangs, a fig sliced open at the center to reveal its sensually shaped innards, an evil eye, a set of angel numbers—and adorned the rest of my body with larger, more intricate pieces of artwork. There is the snake slithering up between my breasts, the moth on my thigh, the mandala on my neck, the sun on my left hand and the moon on my right. If I tuck my hair behind my ear, there is even one on my face, a delicate orchid flowering along my hairline.

I trace the length of my forearm until I find the bitemark I’m looking for. The gruesomeness of a fresh wound is gone, replaced by an arête of white scar tissue. Except where my incisors cut too deeply, it’s perfectly round and smooth.

It’s the first scar. It’s the one from the day I ran over my mother.

From the moment I considered it to the moment I stopped the car, the act lasted ten seconds. Sunday morning, early March, unseasonably warm without a trace of snow on the ground. I was seventeen and finally had my license. My mother agreed to let me drive our family to church that morning, a whole quarter mile down the road, probably because she and my father were already several beers deep. I was the first one in the car. It was the only time I had ever been eager to attend church.

My mother came out of the house next. She fetched the newspaper from the end of the driveway and stood there to read the front page. I still remember it.BUCKSKIN DINER, LONGTIME STAPLE IN CAREY GAP, BURNT TO THE GROUND.(This would be blasécompared to the following day’s headline:ANNESVILLE TEEN ATTEMPTS MATRICIDE.)

My father lurched down the driveway with a bottle in his hand. He always drank beer from bottles, never cans, because canned beer was for trailer trash and the Byrds were a good, respectable family, and anything said about us to the contrary was a vicious lie. When he lifted the bottle, I thought it was to take one last swig before church. But he raised it high, swung his shoulder back, and cracked the bottle over my mother’s head. She drove an elbow into his chest without missing a beat. It was hardly the first time I’d seen them hit each other.

An agonizing heat permeated my body, like someone had poured boiling water into the space between my bones and my skin. A series of ugly images clicked through my brain: my mother’s dark hair tangled with blood and glass, my father’s yellowing teeth fuzzy from beer, my sisters’ gaunt, tear-streaked faces pressed against the living room window. But the thought I snagged on was that of my father dead beneath the wheel of his car, his viscera unspooling from his belly in bloody knots.

I was no stranger to violent thoughts. I had fantasized about repaying my parents’ neglect and cruelty untold times before, but never acted on it beyond kicking their shins beneath the dining room table or leaving a steak knife wrong side up in the dishwasher to cut their hands. But this was different. This feeling could not live inside of me. If I didn’t discharge this evil, I would explode.

And so I threw the car in reverse.

It was my father in the rearview mirror. It was my father I wanted to kill. But it was my mother who pushed him out of the way at the last moment, my mother who howled when the car struck her, and it was that otherworldly sound which first make me seek comfort in the taste of my own blood.

I was arrested within the hour. No one corroborated my story. Not even my mother. She chose him over me. She swore there was no beer bottle, no altercation, no violence from which I was trying to protect her. Her oldest daughter had always been a troubled girl, she told the police, and, really, she couldn’t sayshe was surprised that I’d made her the target of my wrath. The initial charge was attempted murder.

In exchange for a guilty plea, the prosecution reduced the charge to assault with a deadly weapon. The judge took pity on me, white, baby-faced, and seventeen years old, and handed down a seven-year sentence, possibility for parole after five. My mother came to my first parole hearing and voiced no objection to my release. Considering that, a satisfactory display of contrition, and my relatively clean inmate record, the board granted my release. My parole officer agreed to let me move to a halfway house in Grand Island, a town five hours south where I wasn’t a local villain. I lucked into a job cleaning offices at night until my parole ended, and then I was free to get the hell out of Nebraska.

Most days I can forget it happened. Sometimes weeks, even months pass without sparing a thought for my crime, until the tiniest trigger brings it to the forefront of my mind. A mother holding her daughter’s hand. A car reversing in a crowded parking lot. No matter how many years separate me from that day, there is no new beginning. Nothing changes. Absolution is a myth. Some sins you must pay for again and again and again, as long as you live.

I don’t nap. I stare at the ceiling and map the constellations of water stains. It distracts me from the ticking clock in my chest.

One more minute that my mother is missing.

Another. Another.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

CHAPTER

3

August 10th

5:44PM

SARA STEERS HERcar down the dirt path to Sungila Lake. The path is long and helical like a vine, nauseating by the fourth curve. The dreamcatcher hanging from her rearview mirror, a craft made by her niece, tangles around itself hopelessly. We come to a clearing where the other searchers have parked. The number of cars surprises me. I expected a dozen or so do-gooders to show, but judging by the makeshift parking lot and the crowd congregating at the shoreline, there must be over a hundred searchers. A hundred people who think my mother is worth looking for. For the first time since arriving in Annesville, I have a reason to be hopeful, even if all I expect to find is a pile of sun-bleached bones.

The familiar faces overwhelm me. Eileen Capito, a miserable old crone nearing eighty, petting a search dog whose orange vest clearly warns against touching them. Connor lingering at the back of the crowd with Coach Romanoff, both wearingCornhusker baseball caps. The four Nelson boys, rifles slung over their backs, eyeing everyone from a distance, ready to spring into vigilante action at the first sign of distress. Mitesh Jadhav, owner of another Annesville liquor store, limping along the path to the shoreline on the arm of his teenage daughter, Karishma. Scar tissue mottles his neck. Tallying the attendees in my head, I note four conspicuous absences: my father, my sisters, and the Tillman County sheriff.

I start to ask Sara if the sheriff is expected to show, but she is no longer at my side. She embraces a tall, sinewy tribal police officer manning a table of search equipment. I surmise it’s her brother, Daniel. I offer a wave but keep my distance. I’m not keen on standing too close to the water anyway. I can’t swim. Anything deeper than a bathtub makes me nervous.

People stare and whisper. They recognize me. I’ve always been trouble, and now, spangled with dozens of tattoos, one of which reaches all the way up my throat like a turtleneck, I look like it too. My smiles are met with uncomfortable nods and averted eyes.

As I turn back toward the car, deciding to wait there until the search commences to save myself further discomfort, I see her. Zoe Markham.

To me, she is not the promising young congresswoman the politicos fawn about, profiling her in digital think pieces with headlines likeIs This Nebraska Congresswoman the Future of the GOP?andMeet Zoe Markham, Republican Rising Star. As she descends the slope down to the waterfront, her arms outstretched like a gymnast crossing a balance beam, I see us, seventeen years old, entangled in a passionate embrace in the back seat of her car. I remember everything about her in breathtaking detail: her peach blonde hair and how she always smelled of vanilla, and the mole beneath her breast, and, loveliest of all, her one green eye and one blue eye, two separate pools to drown in. She is painfully vivacious, like staring straight into the sun.My pulse thrums in my ears as she draws closer, her name caught in my throat.

She recognizes me and graciously rescues me from the embarrassment of calling her name. She casts a glance over her shoulder as she approaches, her glossed lips curling into a cautious smile. “Providence.”

“Zoe.”

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