The Book of X Read online

  THE BOOK OF X

  “Etter brilliantly, viciously lays bare what it means to be a woman in the world, what it means to hurt, to need, to want, so much it consumes everything.” —ROXANE GAY, author of Bad Feminist

  “I loved every page of this gorgeous, grotesque, heartbreaking novel.” —CARMEN MARIA MACHADO, author of Her Body and Other Parties

  “Insightful and incisive, this book cuts deep into the failing heart of the feminine mystique. Etter is a surgeon.” —AMELIA GRAY, author of Isadora

  “A haunting meditation on loneliness, loss, and meat, The Book of X is a manual for how to survive in a world that almost offhandedly wants to destroy you. In it the echoes of reality come out deeply weird — but somehow reveal more about the real by being so. A wonderfully strange and personal novel, in which nightmares and daydreams crosscontaminate.” —BRIAN EVENSON, author of The Open Curtain

  “The Book of X traverses the mundane and the surreal—from grocery lists to blooming meat, menstrual blood to a jealousy removal shop— laying bare the absurdities of womanhood. A truly original writer, Etter continues to push the boundaries of her imagination... and ours.” —MELISSA BRODER, author of The Pisces

  “Taut, macabre, with wounds electric, The Book of X will take your head off while staring dead-on into your eyes. Move over, Angela Carter, there’s a new boss in the Meat Quarry, and she is fearless, relentless, ready to feast.” —BLAKE BUTLER, author of 300,000,000

  “Sarah Rose Etter is a visionary. Perfectly paced, structurally audacious, and endlessly inventive—The Book of X is our new Revelation. Actually it’s better than that. Etter’s prose digs with emotion and a thousand unforgettable images. They just twist themselves deeper and deeper into your guts. It’ll probably take years to cut them out.” —SCOTT MCCLANAHAN, author of Crapalachia

  The Book of X

  A NOVEL

  Sarah Rose Etter

  WHO WE ARE Two DOLLAR RADIO is a family-run outfit dedicated to reaffirming the cultural and artistic spirit of the publishing industry. We aim to do this by presenting bold works of literary merit, each book, individually and collectively, providing a sonic progression that we believe to be too loud to ignore.

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  Printed on Rolland Enviro. This paper contains 100% post-consumer fiber, is manufactured using renewable energy - Biogas and processed chlorine free.

  Printed in Canada

  All Rights Reserved

  COPYRIGHT © 2019 BY SARAH ROSE ETTER

  ISBN 9781937512811

  Library of Congress Control Number available upon request.

  Also available as an Ebook. E-ISBN 9781937512828

  Book Club & Reader Guide of questions and topics for discussion is available at twodollarradio.com

  SOME RECOMMENDED LOCATIONS FOR READING THE BOOK OF X:

  Near a river, a graveyard, in outer space, or pretty much anywhere because books are portable and the perfect technology!

  ANYTHING ELSE? Yes. Do not copy this book—with the exception of quotes used in critical essays and reviews—without the prior written permission from the copyright holder and publisher. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means.

  WE MUST ALSO POINT OUT THAT THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s lively imagination. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  * * *

  Are you living in hell?

  Well, try to make the most of it.

  —Carol Rama

  The Book of X

  CONTENTS

  PART I

  PART II

  PART III

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  PART I

  I WAS BORN A KNOT LIKE MY MOTHER and her mother before her. Picture three women with their torsos twisted like thick pieces of rope with a single hitch in the center.

  The doctors had the same reaction each birth: They lifted our slick warped bodies into the air and stared, horrified.

  All three of us wailed, strange new animals, our lineage gnarled, aching, hardened.

  Outside, beyond the bright white lights of the hospital, the machine of the world kept grinding on, a metal mouth baring its teeth, a maw waiting to clench down on us.

  “I’M NOT RELIGIOUS, BUT I DAMN WELL prayed,” my mother says, exhaling smoke over the kitchen table. “I rubbed the rosaries raw that you would take after your father.”

  My mother’s knot rests against the kitchen table. In my tender moments, I want to reach out and place a hand there.

  “But as soon as you crowned, I knew it,” my mother says. “I could feel your knot.”

  When my mother tells this story, I take long sips of my lemonade to keep quiet. I know she screamed the whole birth. I brought her the same pain she brought her mother.

  “Your father says I went possessed. My eyes rolled back into my head.”

  THERE ARE 4,500 DIFFERENT TYPES OF knots. There are 3,800 basic variations of these knots. There are an infinite number of ways to combine these knots and their variations. In this way, knots are like stars.

  We could have been complicated: Figure eights, clove hitches, sheet bends, reefs, heaving lines.

  But our knots are simple: Overhand. Our abdomens twist in and out just once, our bodies wrapping back into themselves, creating dark caverns, coiled as snakes.

  IN OLD BLACK-AND-WHITE PHOTOS, MY young mother poses next to my grandmother. Both conceal their knots beneath billowing blouses, standing stiffly on a gray lawn, their gray lips strained into gray smiles over gray teeth.

  THE ACRES WERE PASSED DOWN TO MY father from his father and his father before him. A small black sign with white paint says The Acres where our land begins.

  We have an old white house and a rust-red barn. Our white house is all wooden floors, arched windows, linens to wash. Our barn is where the sleeping machines are kept.

  The rest of the town stands a few miles back from us and our land. We are isolated in this way. Some days, only my family can see me, which is my freedom — no new stares, no new disgust.

  The Acres are worth money is what my parents say. Here is why: At the edge of our land is the Meat Quarry. There, meat is harvested from the tall walls of a red, fleshy canyon.

  MY MOTHER AND I KEEP THE HOME ON weekends. My mother is like weather in that she changes daily. Each day, I make a report of her.

  Today, my mother is focused and sharp, training me to clean. Everything must be white, pristine, diamond. Specks of dirt taunt her.

  A bucket of lemons rests at my feet. To keep a home, one must have hands and skin of citrus.

  “Now, do it how I do it,” she says. “You’re old enough for a knife now.”

  I have seen it: Her back hunched over the sink, the brown of her hair glinting in the sunlight, the fat of her upper arms warbling, the sawing, then the halves between her fingers, yellow half-moons in her palms, rubbing lemon over white wall.

  I hunch over the silver gut of the sink. I cut the lemons down the center, one by one, arms shivering against the knife, separating the small citrine hearts.

  I run the yellow halves over the white walls until they glisten, until the house tangs with the flesh of the fruit, until the juice of the citrus runs into the gutters of my gnawed nail beds then stings.

  EACH DAY, MY FATHER AND BROTHER PULL meat fro
m the quarry to sell in town like my father’s father and his father before him. Their bodies disappear over the green grass of The Acres, their figures swallowed by the thin mouth of the long horizon.

  I have never seen the Meat Quarry, so I must invent it over and over again in my mind: Giant red walls of flesh marbled with the electric white of fat.

  “You’re not meant to be there,” my father says. “Some things, a woman should not see.”

  Has my mother seen it? I do not know.

  “Does the meat glisten and glitter?”

  “Enough. You keep far from there,” my father says. “It’s not safe.”

  He drinks his liquor after dinner, eyes going red. My mother’s fury hangs at the edge of the table, growing with each sip he takes.

  “Haven’t you had enough?” she asks.

  “What does the quarry smell like?” I ask.

  “Enough again,” he says sharply. “Both of you, drop it.”

  MY MOTHER SITS NEXT TO ME ON WICKER porch furniture. We have finished our cleaning for the day. Now, it is magazine time.

  My mother’s magazines are bright portals to new worlds. Women wear fantastic clothing, their faces dazzling up from the pages.

  My mother reads me the new tips.

  “This season, women need whiter teeth.”

  I look at her teeth, their yellowing from years of smoke.

  “Another trend is plastic fingernails. Now would you look at these?”

  On the page in her lap, a pair of slender hands holds a glass of soda with a straw. The hands have long, bright red nails, shining, luscious, more perfect than anything I have seen before.

  I look at her hands, their nails, which are short, unpainted, best for working lemon against wall.

  The sun begins its fat drop into the horizon. A thin sadness leaks from my heart for her.

  “One day, we’ll have white teeth and red nails, too,” I say.

  Then I invent us like that in my mind: Our teeth gleaming, our nails red. I picture us beautiful, unknotted.

  LATER, IN MY BEDROOM, I SHED MY clothes and take inventory of my body in the long mirror.

  I am thin at the arms and legs, wiry brown hair down to my shoulders. My eyes are brown, flat. My jaw is large, my ears too big.

  My breasts are small, and there is a bit of flatness before it begins. Just below my ribs, the skin changes. My knot is strained and stretch-marked, shining and hard.

  I used to gasp when I saw it, but now it is my familiar. I have seen my mother’s, too, when she is changing, through the crack in the door. Her breasts sag over her knot. We are different in that way.

  The cool air pushes in through the window and runs over that secret skin, a relief in that touch.

  AT TIMES, I IMAGINE IT ALL DIFFERENT. Bright visions rush over me, scenes from a golden life in another world.

  VISION

  Alone, I shed my clothes and take inventory of my body in the long mirror.

  I am thin at the arms and legs, brown hair down to my shoulders, bright eyes. I have small breasts, and just below my ribs, my stomach is flat.

  I run my hands over my belly, skin smooth as a stone from a river.

  The cool air pushes in through the window and runs over my skin, a pleasure in that touch.

  I DIG THROUGH MY MOTHER’S OLD MAGazines in the attic. I flip through the old trends, admire the smooth women.

  Tips are written in bold fonts:

  YELLOW IS THE COLOR OF THE SEASON

  EAT LESS NOW WITH THE ROCK DIET

  NEW NAILS, NEW TEETH, NEW LIFE

  In the stack, I find an old science magazine. My eyes stutter over the cover.

  My mother is younger, holding me in her arms. The title says THIRD GIRL BORN KNOTTED.

  Inside, there are pictures of my small body slick with blood and then clean, swaddled in white cloth. My knot is at the center of each photo.

  Third Girl Born Knotted; Doctors Halt Research

  A third infant has been born knotted to a family in the South. This rare genetic abnormality has flummoxed the medical community.

  The first woman, Eleanor X, was born a knot in 1947. She gave birth to two sons (unknotted), and a daughter who carried the knot. Her births were not compromised by the knot. In fact, in all three women, the womb is located at the base of the deformity, providing a clear path for birthing.

  Her daughter, Deborah X, also delivered one daughter and one son. The daughter, Cassandra X, was born a knot. The son, again, was born unknotted.

  This very rare gene resides on the X chromosome. Doctors have determined the knots are largely a cosmetic issue, potentially rendering the women outsiders in society. The impact is largely emotional, rather than physical. Doctors have decided to halt their inquiry into its cause after years of inconclusive research.

  I don’t hear the footsteps of my mother.

  “You should be cleaning. What are you doing?”

  “Just looking at your old magazines.”

  But she catches a glimpse. Today, she is vicious. Her brown eyes flash then froth, rabid. She slaps the journal to the ground. Then her palm stings across my cheek in a quick flash of red.

  “Some things are private!”

  Her body disappears into the blackness of the doorway. The attic goes silent.

  Face red, I look at the ground where a single photo has fallen from between the pages of the journal.

  It is a picture of us together.

  I am swathed in more fabric than usual. My brother clenches an arm around me. My mother wears a flowered dress, her own knot hidden. My father stands off to the side as if he has been sold a bad car. We are all squinting beneath a bright sun that is just out of frame.

  WEEKDAYS, I GO TO SCHOOL. I WALK THE mile. The school is green with a pitched roof.

  Most days, no one minds me. I stay quiet to keep it that way.

  I keep track of the facts, though.

  In my classes, I learn about the human body and history and the human brain, deep seas, jungles, islands, and the distant cities beyond our town and the distant planets beyond our world.

  ◆An octopus has three hearts, nine brains, and blue blood

  ◆Female lions do 90% of the hunting for their pride

  ◆The heart of the blue whale is so large that a human could swim through its arteries

  ◆One square centimeter of skin contains roughly 100 pain sensors

  ◆The sun will only get brighter before it collapses

  WHILE I’M IN SCHOOL, MY FATHER AND my brother work the meat from the quarry with their hands and their shovels. That’s what my brother says.

  On Saturdays, my mother and I clean the meat in the big silver sink. On meat cleaning days, watery pink rivers rush off the flesh. The fresh piles of meat rise like bloody castles on the counter.

  On Saturdays, we must act very proper because we must take the meat into town. This is a ritual that requires preparation: I clean myself and put on my best dress. I am like the meat in this way.

  In the evening, we drive into town, the clean flesh piled in the truck bed.

  “Ten gold coins! Twenty gold coins! Thirty gold coins!” bid the men in the town. Their stomachs and guts are large but knotless. They avert their eyes from us or else they stare too long and too hard at our shapes.

  I often imagine a man with a body like mine, a man I might marry.

  “Do men ever get knots?” I ask.

  “Lower your voice. And no. A man has never had a knot. That is a woman’s burden.”

  “SOLD!” my father bellows.

  The men scoop the clean meat into their own buckets, red and raw, the smell of wet coin in the air.

  SOMETIMES, MY FATHER BRINGS UP THE old days.

  “My father bought this land for a song. Back then, it was harder to tell which lands would have meat.”

  “Nobody thought this land did?” I ask.

  “Sure didn’t. Dad knew better though. He could hardly keep the grin off of his face when they were signing
the papers. He always told me his gut knew we’d hit it big.”

  “How did he find the Meat Quarry?”

  “Well, everyone in town thought he was a fool,” my father says. “In the early days, he crawled the land himself, waiting for the feeling in his gut to grow stronger, belly against the soil.”

  I move closer to my father. His eyes are not too red yet, the scent of the liquor faint. This is the nicest time to be close.

  “It took him two weeks of that. He was on the 13th day when he started to lose faith. But he kept crawling. On the last day, it was raining, and he was out there in the mud, searching.”

  “How did he know when he’d found it?”

  “He said his gut lit up bright, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Said he’d never felt anything like that before.”

  “Like instinct?”

  “Like instinct. Your brother has it too, even stronger than I do. But boy, did it save my father’s ass. Everyone in this goddamn town thought he was a joke. Now, we’ve got the best meat on this side of the river.”

  LATER, ALONE, I LIE ON MY BELLY IN THE center of my bedroom. My knot presses against the carpet.

  I practice my sensing: eyes closed, reaching out with my gut to see where new meat might be on our land.

  I wait for the hairs to stand up on the back of my neck. I sense as hard as I can. I feel nothing.

  AT SCHOOL, THE OTHER STUDENTS SURround me. Their round faces bobble like bad balloons, screaming.

  “LOOK AT HER! LOOK AT THE FREAK!”

  Their bodies are lanky, pimpled, letting off new odors. Their voices echo off the metal lockers. Their eyes are all on me: blue, brown, green, gray, each eye making my flesh shiver, everyone an enemy.

  “YEAH, LOOK AT ME!” I yell back.

  I pull up my dress, bare my weak fangs, my knot bright in the sunlight streaming through the windows, a single eye of flesh daring them all to move, to come closer, to try me.