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Mannika Mishra: 'Tailbone', an excerpt

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The surface of the table is scratched and worn, almost hairy to touch. There is a rabbit lying still on its side on it. Its earthy fur frosts into white at the tips, running sleekly over its legs long and limp, and the grey sky outside is reflected in the large black eyes almost as a hard, deep blue and I think I can see birds in there, the tiniest of specks, wheeling around endlessly in the stillness.

I suddenly find myself speaking to him in a different part of the kitchen, near the sink, while he cleans two sharp knives.

I look over his shoulder, careful not to touch him.

‘Rabbit skin is like water, my hands are made so gentle for it. I chisel at them every day so they swim through the bone. Different layers of water. It reminds me of holidays I had as a child and the rocks were soft with algae and water. My mother used to peel oranges in a single long strip and eat it whole or put it in jugs of water to drink.’

I follow his instructions in a cloud of numbed warmth, a million feverish spores suspended motionless in the air. I imagine the trembling flanks of the rabbit as it dives into a still lake. My ears are pricked for purred encouragement as my hand grows steadier.

‘Don’t leave the tail, make a slit through it.’ I slice through it.

A comma of soft fur sleekly swimming alone in the blue, ears now swept back, now floating weightless.

‘Put your hand in there and look for the tail bone.’

It was a bright pink day with myrtle leaves curling over the steel windowsill by me. The paint seemed to drip from the van in the heat as we trundled along to a picnic. There were bright gauzy organza dresses, straw hats with ribbons, and tails of fringed scarves fastened with silver pins. I was sitting on the last seat but one, holding a hamper, my shirt stuck to my back. A blur of yellow and peach was speeding past, and my eyes were drooping.

Inside the van, right at the front, a vague shape appeared, the red dress low at the back, a squat, creamy neck rising from it, with a wave of dark hair just stopping-

-everything

suddenly became much more vivid, clothes moved and rustled, I could feel the thrum of the van’s motor, voices, half formed words coming clearly from around me. She was sitting with her head crooked staring outside the window, completely still. Her hair moved gently in the breeze, lines of the movement animating her whole motionless frame into unsettling flowing lines which moved in one dimension and froze in another.

I watched her for the rest of the journey, and only once did she move or turn her head. As the girl next to her stopped fanning herself and bent in to say something to her, she moved her head amphibian-like across the other girl’s neck and rested her neck against hers. I had the oddest sensation of my nostrils dilating in response, filling with the smell of violet scented shampoo and of blood humming under hot skin.

The van was empty by the time I paused by her seat on my way out. A light scarlet coat lay in an arc like a watermark of her presence.

Outside I saw that her hair was a lighter, burnished gold which, framed against the bright green flashing past the window, had looked black to me.

We walked in a loose boisterous group to the top of a low hill where a grove of chestnut trees was scattered into a loose circle. Daisies speckled the moist grass, the drops of water like fish eggs balanced upon blades. The soft leather strap of the hamper cut into my shoulders and gave off a smell of tobacco in the heat.

We swung the blankets into the air like slips of liquid and spread them on the ground. There crept a chorus of hampers creaking and settling as things were taken out. Pale bone china plates with golden rims were strapped neatly in place next to flinty silverware, clear gin splashed into precarious glasses curving in line with the tines of the fork, and a bar of rouge crept into the blue of the sky as they tossed oranges in the air and caught them and whooped.

I watched her. She laughed with them. She did everything right, as if she had written everything down before it had happened, down to the little wave of her hand in response to a hesitant silence. She peeled oranges for people, making a trick of it, smiling at the cheers when she unfurled the whole peel in one unbroken ribbon.

‘Pass me some water to put this in!’

She dropped it neatly into a glass to more cheers. By this time everyone was giddy with the sunlight and the light filled glasses of gin.

I could smell the thin sharp smell of crushed grass, garlic in the woods, the warm crust of the pie, the tartness of the berries with their fine hair and bristly over-ripe strawberries which had collapsed in a sticky sweetness. I picked the bowl with the berries and turned to her. ‘Thank you, I love these berries.’

‘I know, you make jam from them.’

‘Yes, it’s –’

‘- calming.’

‘Yes. Just that.’

She pulled the berries apart with her hands and squeezed the pieces into her mouth, the tips of her fingers stained as if with ink.

‘You’re staring.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Why do people like to watch other people eat?’

‘Do they?’

‘Exclusively. But it’s a bit rattling. For you.’

‘What?’

‘You look ill.’

‘Did you learn that from your mother? The thing with the oranges?’

She smiles, not really a smile but more a hypnotic line of contraction and expansion that she had detached from any cosmetic purpose.

‘Yes. You look very ill. I assumed it was because of all this food, all the smells on a hot day.’

‘I-’

I looked down at my hand. The green sap of the grass had crept through the blanket.

And when I looked up she was gone, and someone had put a record on which played the same skidding silt notes of piano over and over again. It was as if I had looked around without meaning to, the pictures had slid forward a square and had moved on and had missed her. I got up to look for her and stumbled against a tree which came out of nowhere. The others were dancing, holding arms, sitting close to each other.


Mannika Mishra lives in New Delhi, India. She is a sociologist who works as a UX researcher for a tech company. Her culture writing and short fiction have been published in Hazlitt, Gargoyle Magazine, Contemporary Lynx, and Your Impossible Voice. She is currently writing a novel. You can find her on Twitter @mannikaw.