The Destroyer by Tara Isabella Burton Read Free Book Online Page A

ministry gates. We sat together in silence, staring at our unfilled plates, and watched the servants scurry as they ferried platters into the back room.
    â€œCaesar’s in there, I suppose,” my mother said. “They’re always so nervy when he’s around.” She fingered the rose the waiters had left on the table for us, divesting it of thorns.
    â€œThey want to impress me,” she said to me. “They must know who I am.” She considered it. “They think they can impress me with this?” Her laugh was hollow and cruel. “It doesn’t interest me. Just think if each petal were a different color—how much better it would be, then. One lime colored, one magenta, one orange, one black.” She tore them off and pressed them into my hands, and my fingers grew sticky and sickly with the smell. “Get these out of my sight.”
    That night I crept out of my bedroom and made my way to the garden of our courtyard, and there I uprooted every stem and set them all on fire before the statues of the household gods. My mother found me in the morning, smeared in ash; she said nothing but made us breakfast and spooned extra honey onto my plate.
    On Sundays we went to the Forum. We sat together on the pillars; she spread cheese on bread and commanded me to play. I clambered over the columns, tripping in the enormity of the spaces between them. We played hide-and-seek around the arches of the Colosseum; she always found me, and there gathered me in her arms.
    The tourists did not disturb us; Caesar’s guards did not disturb us. Nobody existed there but the two of us, who were really one. In our happiness everything outside us, everything alien to our secrets, was blotted out—or else I do not remember it.
    When I was thirteen my mother developed an artificial arm. It was opal-pale and gleamed; it could bend without breaking. It could lift four or five hundred kilograms without effort; knives slashed forth from a slit in the palms on command.
    â€œFor protection,” my mother said. She took my hand in hers and pressed the palm to her lips. “I was never so strong, you know,” she said. “My arms were never beautiful. They were freckled.” She turned my hand over, feeling her way through my knuckles. “Yours will be too, in this heat. You’ll have to wear sleeves like mine.” I let her run her fingers through my hair. “You’re so lovely,” she said. “When I was fourteen, maybe I was so lovely too. I don’t remember. It was a long time ago, and I try not to think about it much. But there’s so much I want to give you. If you wanted. Only if you wanted.”
    I could see no fault in her, nor any ugliness, though I stood naked all night in front of the mirror, looking at my arm from every angle, pressing it up against my ribs to spread the fat like soft cheese across my side. I kneaded the flesh and picked at the skin and in the morning I asked her to give me the arm she had made.
    She kissed me. “I knew you would understand,” she said.
    The operation went quickly. I felt nothing, but through the haze I remember that I heard her singing, a song in the vulgar tongue that was spoken only in the provinces, which she must have known as a girl.
    Fa la ninna, fa la nanna
    nella braccia della mamma
    Fa la ninna bel bambin
    nella braccia della mamma
    When I woke, she was holding a hand that now belonged to me—though I did not feel it—and stroking my forehead with the back of her hand.
    â€œYou’re so lovely,” she said, and took me in her arms.
    She taught me how to use it: how to hoist myself up single-handed on bars of steel, how to throw javelins made of osmium and catch discs weighted down with lead. She watched as I grew coltish and strong, as I shook out my hair and my cheeks flushed pink with intoxicating strength; she watched me and took photographs, measurements, and hung these on her laboratory