The Stone Virgins by Yvonne Vera

Author:Yvonne Vera
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780374528942
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2004-02-14T05:00:00+00:00

9

Independence is the compromise to which I could not belong. I am a man who is set free, Sibaso, one who remembers harm. They remember nothing. They never speak of it now; at least I do not hear of it. They do not state that we gathered handfuls of honey, each of us. We placed our arms among bees. These scarred hands, the flesh missing, are scented hands. An inch burned from every finger. The smallest of my fingers no longer bends. Something went quiet inside my head. I heard it stop like a small wind. First, my entire left arm stopped moving, or moved but I did not feel it—it dangled. I moved my right hand. I held my left arm in my right hand like something I had picked from the ground, a discarded object. The numbness spread. I moved the arm up and down not knowing what to feel, wondering how I would survive the hills of Gulati, wishing the arm would just drop off, rather than hang loosely like that. It may even begin to rot, I had no idea. If it did, I would be eaten alive by vultures. I bit my thumb and felt nothing. I bit hard and reached the bone. This is how I lost the flesh there. I wanted to reach something, to restore feeling. A nerve had vanished.

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