An Autobiography of Skin by Lakiesha Carr

Author:Lakiesha Carr [Carr, Lakiesha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2023-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

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I followed the rise and fall of voices downstairs and around corners, down a long hallway. There was little light save for the sliver of yellow that shone from the crack of the door. More screams. I flinched. Felt goose bumps spread down my arms, tickling the back of my neck. I kept walking till I found the door’s handle and twisted slow then pushed slow until I made a view for myself.

There on the floor, in the corner of the room, was Aunt Bee. Hair like a white mushroom, wild upon her head. Brown body like a small package discarded and unopened. She had her legs pulled to her chest, nightgown around her knees. She was bare between her legs, delicate flesh smooth as a baby’s skin. She lashed her arms about, hitting Lena hard against the side of her face, causing blood to gather beneath the skin turning her cheek a rosy pink.

“Get away! Get the fuck away from me!” Aunt Bee yelled, and my eyes moved from Lena’s blood-flushed face to Bee’s red gums. No teeth. Lips puckered, face swallowing itself. Words an ugly lisp, tongue thick, and still she yelled.

“Sonny, I told you thas the last time you lay a hand on me!” Tears streamed down her face.

“Aunt Bee,” Lena said, struggling to contain her. “It’s OK, baby.”

She grabbed one arm then another, each time Aunt Bee’s swings stopping her from reaching in and maintaining a hold.

I ran to her side and without a word, reached for Aunt Bee’s right arm, suggesting with eyes and a nod of my head that Lena grab her left.

If Lena was surprised to see me there was no time to show it. Aunt Bee’s eyes, as round and buck and wild as her hair, took me in, frantically searching my face for answers and recognition.

“Get him off me!” she cried.

“I will!” I said, grasping her hand, then shoulder. “I will!”

Lena secured her other side and we sat there on the floor acting as a human straitjacket.

Bee began to rock, crying, legs lowered and bent. Her flannel gown idled at the top of her slim thighs and I reached and pulled it down with one quick jerk.

“Look what he done to me?” She raised her leg again, revealing a purple bruise, deformed but large in a shape that wove its way around her thigh.

“He won’t stop,” she cried softly, whimpering, her chest heaving, body still rocking. “He ain’t ever gon stop is he?”

She looked at me with the saddest eyes I’d ever seen. So sad. So deep. An endless brown pool of hurt and anger. Goose bumps returned. And it was as if she were genuinely awaiting my answer, some resolution, comfort, and I found my words gone down into my feet which felt deathly cold. I found my breath gone and eyes burning till her little brown toothless face became a blur. A haze. A blue. A red. A fragment of light.

“Shhh…he gone, Aunt Bee. He gone now, baby.

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