Skins

Part Nineteen.

She settled back into her home after It All. The sunlight, the Australian air, lacked the vivacity that India had. She'd lost her glowing, sunshimmered beauty, because she fit so well. She didn't stand out against the palm and coconut. She sat in a wicker chair and remembered things that seemed distant, but lingered in her bruised flesh. To remind her of the pain and re-inflict it.

*

She had sat in her narrow bed, opposite to another. Edward, the cut-out stereotype, white, orthodox, his shirt tucked in, with his thinning red hair clinging to his scalp like doubt. She would have sworn at him, told him exactly what he was, but her bookish eloquence was still in Bangalore. Lying comatose and coffee-stained in a room boxed in by textbooks.

In any case, it was too late now. The time for that had come and gone.

She blinked back tears.

'Why did you do that, Edward?' she said sadly.

Edward twitched nervously. He stared at his shoelace and answered simply, 'it was the right thing to do.'

'I never hurt anyone.'

'You were going to hurt the Church. These affairs only stay hidden for so long. At least you don't need to hide it anymore.'

'You don't understand what happened, though, Edward. You misunderstood my writings. You've forced me to martyr myself because you interpreted love as sin, and fuck it, who would ever support an eighteen-year-old girl in the brutal Catholic Church? I was never trying to make a name for myself. I was never trying to become the patron-saint of service and virginity! I was trying to live!' she stood abruptly. Ropes binding her to placidity loosened. Edward saw in her eyes, not Mary, but the Magdalene. Long, sunshimmered hair. She threw her shoulders back and reached for the door.

'They mailed the plane ticket. It's tomorrow, from Bangalore. God forgive you,' he said, and the door slammed behind her. The crucifix nailed to the wall jumped.

*

The time to fight had come and gone. Her physical, brittle, archaic untouchedness was gone. She was sinner's meat now. The patriarchy slicked under her eyelids slid around like contact lenses as she cried. It All was cruel. The only thing left of her faith were alabaster-paged letters.

She lay on the floor of her hut, while Edward gave evening service, with her arm under her white cotton and her fingers slick with herself. She cried. A rosy-cheeked painting of Jesus watched demurely.

Her toes curled over and she became rigid. Then, with a shudder, she collapsed and heaved herself into bed. Still, Jesus watched unassumingly. She wiped her face on the coarse linen and rolled over to sleep. Her heart was in Bangalore. Her treasure too.