The Melancholy of Anatomy: Stories by Shelley Jackson Read Free Book Online Page B

to shop, and after a short bewilderment we provided all the kiosks, booths, and lemonade stands they required.) Our fœtus made the covers of the major newsmagazines, and meanwhile, the copycat fœtuses were turning up everywhere, and the rich were installing them in their homes.
    The fœtus is made of something like our flesh, but not the same, it is a sort of
über
flesh, rife with potentialities (for the fœtus is, of course, incomplete—always; unfinished—perpetually), it is malleable beyond our understanding, hence unutterably tender, yet also resilient. A touch will bruise the fœtus, the nap of flannel leaves a print on its skin. The fœtus learns from what it neighbors, and may become what it too closely neighbors. Then your fœtus may cease to be; you may find yourself short one member of the household, yet in possession of a superfluous chair, a second stove, a matching dresser. The fœtus sees merit in everything; this is why it brings joy to houses, with its innocence, and is loved by children, but this quality is also its defect. A fœtus will adore a book of matches, and seek to become it; if you do not arrive in time your expensive companion will proudly shape itself into the cheapest disposable. It is one thing to duplicate the crown jewels, quite another to become the owner of two identically stained copies of yesterday’s paper, two half-full boxes of Kleenex, two phone bills.
    We all know the fœtus’s helpfulness and amiability, which became more and more apparent as it grew accustomed to ourways, and admire the dignity of the fœtus, which never fails it even when it is performing the most ignominious of tasks. No one was surprised when it came to be known as, variously, “Servus Servorum,” “Husband of the Church,” “Key of the Whole Universe,” “Viceregent of the Most High,” and, most colloquially, “Vice-God”; other nations may find it odd that our religious leader is of the same species as those creatures that well-off trendsetters purchase for their homes, but those who know better see no contradiction: the fœtus is born to serve.
    The fœtus floats outside your window while you are having sex. It wants to know how many beads of sweat collect between your breasts and at what point, exactly, they begin their journey south, it wants to know if your eyes open wide or close at orgasm, if at that time your partner is holding your hand with his hand or your gaze with her gaze. It wants to know if your sheets are flannel or satin, if you lie on wool blankets or down comforters. And when fluids issue from the struggling bodies, with what do you wipe them up: Towels? Paper products? A T-shirt pulled out of the laundry? It wants to know if the bedside alarm is set before or after the lovemaking; it wants to stay informed, your love is its business.
    The fœtus is here to serve us. If we capture it, it will do our bidding; we can bind its great head with leather straps, cinch its little hips tight. Then the fœtus willingly pulls a plow, trots lovers through a park, serves salad at a cookout. It does not scorn menial tasks, for to it all endeavors are equally strange, equally marvelous.
    …
     
    Only when it is time to make love must you bind the fœtus tight, lock it in its traces, close all the doors and windows. For at that moment the fœtus will rise in its bonds, larger and more majestic, and its great eyes will open and inside them you could see all of space rushing away from us—as it is! It is! The fœtus is sublime at that moment: set guards, and they will respectfully retreat; dogs, and they will lie down with their heads between their paws, blinking. And even if the fœtus is in tight restraint, you will feel it risen in your pleasure bed, the air will turn blue and burn like peppermint on your wet skin, and the shadows under the bed and the corners of the room will take on the black vastness and the finality of space. You will continue loving because that is our human agenda,