s w i f t s  &  s l o w s: a quarterly of crisscrossings

Cut: An Exquisite Corpse Story
Pinky-Z Wu

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She tried to sell me her teeth. At the beach, she shrugged off the sea and walked up to me wet, her hands hauling light. I thought her palms were full of pearls, the kind I used to farm in another country, where the mussels were dung-fed so that their pearls formed fat as fangs, though my pearls were always holed or lumpen or dull as onion. In front of me, the woman from the sea rattled her teeth like dice, scattering them on the sand and toeing them toward me. Buy three and you get my jaw for free, she said, and tugged at her black kelp-beard. As she pulled on it, the skin of her chin unzipped, exposing the crumble of bone. It’s just a sugar jaw, don’t worry, she said. You can lick it forever and it’ll always last. I remembered old TV ads about a jawbreaker the size of your fist that could be suckled on for years straight without ever breaching the lacquered center. I used to think that could be love, to lick something gone, to tow your tongue across a stranger’s terrain, to flay. I told the woman I didn’t have anything to pay with. I’d come in my car, I told her, and she could have that, but it was old and the seats were skinless and it should be donated. The woman sighed and crouched and picked at her teeth, though it seemed like she was jarring them deeper into the sand instead of prying them out. I’m trying to sell you my teeth because I don’t have anything else, and you have nothing to offer either, the woman said. We might as well rewind our lives into water. She followed me to the car, and I thought she’d want to dissect it for parts, but instead she laid down on the backseat with her legs lapped open. At least pay me for the time it took me to make my teeth, she said, so I held my breath and kneeled. My fingers slipped inside her, easy as eel. I remembered the mussels, my fingers fumbling its meat, feeling for the slick knob of a pearl, something to claw out and swallow. When she came, pearls poured into my mouth, assembling into a second row of molars behind my first, teething me into a guillotine.

She sat up slowly and, as if for the first time, looked at me, at my face. Her impenetrable eyes met mine, she slid her rough, musky palms under my chin. She moved closer, staring intently until her exposed nose was almost touching mine, suddenly she veered, rubbed what was left of her black kelp over my cheek. I could feel the roughness of her calcified chin, scratching an itch that had suddenly surfaced. Her breath algae and rot—unhealthy, natural. Are you ready, she began, looking at me again, pushing two fingers into my mouth and pulling like a fish hook, in response my bottom lip crested open easily, she studied closely my newly pearled mouth, to join me in the sea?

I tried to imagine it, her and me at the bottom of a warm shallow sea, entwined in a house of corals, our roof the ribcage of some ancient fish, filtered sunlight leaking through. All our briny kisses, our rotted laughter. A new beauty we invent in each other, alone from everything except the mutterings and nibbles of marine animals. She gazed into my eyes expectantly, but I felt like I was already in the ocean, inhaling water, incapable of forming the word she wanted from me. Instead, I clutched at the ground around me as part of me said, Why do we need the world? and part of me said, What about my mother? and still part of me said, Wait. Wait.

“Cut!” said a voice, as if through an underwater tunnel.

My eyes refocused, as the lights flickered on and applause broke in rolling waves all around us. Already she was standing up, dusting a few grains of sand gently from her jeans, beaming at the shadowy figure striding towards us.

“It’s a wrap!” said the director with a little clap of her hands, her round face emerging now in a column of light. The rims of her eyes shone. “I want you both to get plenty of rest tonight because we have one hour to shoot at the aquarium tomorrow before it opens to the public.” The director hugged us briefly, then jogged over to the foley artist, who was crouched in the corner coiling a thick black cord with both hands.

I turned back, expecting to find her standing still in place, hoping to feel her gaze on me again, but she was walking briskly off the set, her hair rippling and catching the light, and as I shuffled to catch up to her, every word dried in my throat.

I had practiced this, I thought. I had looked in the mirror this morning and watched my mouth form the words. How could it be so hard to say them, looking at someone else? She walked ahead, toward her trailer. I walked as if I were headed toward mine. It was a dance I was used to, the pas de deux of avoidance. I knew she knew I was walking behind her, losing my nerve once again. Tomorrow at the aquarium was my biggest scene in the whole film–– in my whole career. A three-page monologue, the truth of how my character’s mom had died. I needed to prepare, to do that ritual I had thought I’d do each night once I became a real actress–– an epsom salt bath, warm tea with lemon, a face mask, an Ambien at ten PM. All I had to do was walk toward my trailer. But she left the door to her trailer open and I walked right in. She was already sitting down, wiping makeup from her face, kicking off her clothes.

I followed her lead, took a dampened piece of cloth to my forehead, my eyes, my cheeks, my chin. I watched the brown and black and pink melt away, my real face emerge–– shiny, pale, unspecial. I unhooked my bra and shimmied it out my sleeve. I thought of the words I’d practiced. No, thank you, I’d said over and over. I’m pretty tired. I’m gonna call it a night. The lines I’d seen others say as they departed before anything good happened, the ones who showed up in the morning rosy and punctual. I’d even practiced one for an emergency–– the truth. I am all out of money. The longer I waited the less safe I was. I had to say one of them quick.

“I think tonight’s the night you win it back,” she said. She poured me vodka in a Dixie cup. She had a record player, a retro-style mini fridge full of sheet masks and probiotics, and a full-size sofa in here. Couldn’t she have a cup made out of glass? The rim of the cup was waxy on my lips. I thought of the two-pound bag of epsom salts sitting on my bathroom floor. If I never opened them, maybe I could return them for $14.99. My throat was still dry, and the vodka only scorched it further. How did people learn how to leave when they should? It was something you had to be born with, maybe. She had been born with more than just that. I had clawed my way here, trying to keep up. Maybe I still could.

“Just one game,” I said. “Then we’ll call it a night.”

She smiled at me, that smile, the one that pulled out my pockets and unzipped my purse. I told myself I didn’t know any better. I couldn’t be blamed, I thought, for what I didn’t know.

Pinky-Z Wu: K-Ming Chang, Annina Zheng-Hardy, Amy Haejung, Pik-Shuen Fung, and Kyle Lucia Wu.

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K-Ming Chang / 張欣明 is a Kundiman fellow, a Lambda Literary Award finalist, and a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree. She is the author of the debut novel Bestiary.

Annina Zheng-Hardy is a writer living in London.

Amy Haejung lives in New York and works in publishing. Her writing has appeared in Waxwing.

Pik-Shuen Fung is a Canadian writer and artist living in New York City. Her debut novel GHOST FOREST is forthcoming on June 1st, 2021 from One World in the US and Strange Light in Canada.

Kyle Lucia Wu‘s debut novel, WIN ME SOMETHING, is forthcoming from Tin House Books in 2021. She lives in Los Angeles.