Bodily Harm by Margaret Atwood Read Free Book Online Page B

skin of her breast, the good one, the one she hopes is good, as she does every night. From the surface you can feel nothing, but she no longer trusts surfaces. She brushed her teeth and cleaned them with dental floss, prevention of decay, and rinsed out her mouth with water from the thermos, which smells like melted ice cubes, like the inside of a refrigerator, like clothin a trunk. Nevertheless she can still taste the airplane sandwich, slightly rancid butter and roast beef, rotting meat.
    She sleeps and wakes fitfully, listening to the music and, occasionally, a car going past in what always sounds like the wrong gear. She feels clogged and furry; she’s convinced she’s been snoring, though it hardly matters. At last she sinks into a heavy damp sleep.
    She wakes up suddenly. She can feel something like moist cloth, webbing, pressing down over her eyes and mouth. Her face is against the net. Through it she can see the figures on her digital clock, the dot pulsing like a tiny heart. It’s six in the morning. She was dreaming that someone was climbing in through the window.
    She remembers where she is and hopes she hasn’t bothered anyone in the hotel by screaming. She’s too warm, she’s sweating, and despite the mosquito net she has several bites, from where she’s rolled against the net. The muscles of her left shoulder are aching again.
    There’s a rooster crowing nearby and beyond that a dog, dogs. The room is growing light. Close to her ear, on the other side of the wall, there are sounds it takes her a moment to recognize, unfamiliar, archaic, the rhythmic creak of a bed and a woman’s voice, wordless and mindless. Before she places it she hears it as agony. Once this intrusion would merely have irritated her, or, if she was with someone, amused or even excited her. Now it’s painful to her, mournful, something lost, a voice from the past, severed from her and going on beside her in another room. Get it over, she thinks through the wall.
    Oh please
.

II
     
    O ne of the first things I can remember, says Rennie, is standing in my grandmother’s bedroom. The light is coming in through the window, weak yellowish winter light, everything is very clean, and I’m cold. I know I’ve done something wrong, but I can’t remember what. I’m crying, I’m holding my grandmother around both legs, but I didn’t think of them as legs, I thought of her as one solid piece from the neck down to the bottom of her skirt. I feel as if I’m holding on to the edge of something, safety, if I let go I’ll fall, I want forgiveness, but she’s prying my hands away finger by finger. She’s smiling; she was proud of the fact that she never lost her temper.
    I know I will be shut in the cellar by myself. I’m afraid of that, I know what’s down there, a single light bulb which at least they leave on, a cement floor which is always cold, cobwebs, the winter coats hanging on hooks beside the wooden stairs, the furnace. It’s the only place in the house that isn’t clean. When I was shut in the cellar I always sat on the top stair. Sometimes there were things down there, I could hear them moving around, small things that might get on you and run up your legs. I’m crying because I’m afraid, I can’t stop,and even if I hadn’t done anything wrong I’d still be put down there, for making a noise, for crying.
    Laugh and the world laughs with you
, said my grandmother.
Cry and you cry alone
. For a long time I hated the smell of damp mittens.
    I grew up surrounded by old people: my grandfather and my grandmother, and my great-aunts and great-uncles, who came to visit after church. I thought of my mother as old too. She wasn’t, but being around them all the time made her seem old. On the street she walked slowly so they could keep up with her, she raised her voice the way they did, she was anxious about details. She wore clothes like theirs too, dark dresses with high collars and small innocuous patterns, dots or sprigs of