The Body Myth by Rheea Mukherjee

Author:Rheea Mukherjee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Unnamed Press
Published: 2019-03-25T04:00:00+00:00

I took off my jeans and rubbed the red welts right below my belly button. I tried to remember if this pair had always been tight or if I had gained weight. I couldn’t remember. For whole minutes I was just Mira again. I didn’t think about Sara and Rahil, my nighttime ablutions insulating me from them. I picked up my red toothbrush, measured out a dollop of Ayurvedic toothpaste on the bristles, and started to brush. I had taken to nighttime brushing only because I was having sex. The last time I had been so particular about my oral hygiene was when Ketan was around. He would make sure I brushed before we went to sleep.

I sat in bed with a wad of cotton and nail polish remover. Studiously, I wiped out all traces of dark nude from each finger. It hadn’t even chipped or anything, but it didn’t matter. I admired my naked nails for a minute and took a sniff of the bottle; the acidic twang reminded me of being thirteen. My mother wiped off my nails every Sunday because they checked at school. She did so robotically, but I enjoyed the vigorous rubbing: it was contact; my mother had to hold my hand to do it. Now that I thought about it, I was sure I’d put on nail polish every Friday afternoon just so my mother could rub it off on Sunday evenings.

I ran the fan on the highest speed and settled in. Only then did I allow Sara to pop back in my head. Rahil filtered through every few seconds but I pushed him away. Sara gave me the quiet thrill that I needed.

That night I dreamed of Rahil. I was in the kitchen again, but it wasn’t in their house or mine. It was that magic trick the mind plays after dreaming, when you just know where you were but you can’t remember what it looked like. Rahil was offering me a bowl of oatmeal. It had ripe, bursting red strawberries on top. I held out my hands for the bowl. “Wait,” he said with an almost mischievous grin. From his left hand he sprinkled something on top. I thought it was sugar.

He came closer to me—I could feel his breath. “Do you want some?” he asked seductively.

“Yes,” I said. I wanted it. I could taste the sweet tang of the strawberries.

He put the bowl in my hands. I looked down at it. A hundred dying moths wallowed inside, their wings caught in lumps of oatmeal.

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