Jennifer Hudak

The Body Monstrous

The Rumpus

I was seven years old the first time Mama told me about the monster living inside me. She flipped over a card on her little round table, looked at me through a haze of cigarette smoke, and said, “I don’t want to scare you, Rosie. But it’s better you know. Better we all know what’s coming.”

I wrapped my arms around myself and squeezed. I felt the same as always: skin covered in bug bites, stomach full of breakfast cereal, breath moving in and out, in and out. “There’s no monster in there.”

She tapped some ash into the little pinch pot Stella’d made in kindergarten and gestured at the spread in front of her. The purple scarf she’d draped over the table was edged in beaded tassels and clotted with candle wax, half-hidden by the sprawling pattern of cards on top. “It’s just a seed now. It’s sleeping, like a seed sleeps in winter.” While I watched, she turned over another card, and nodded as if the picture on it meant something. “You got a while yet, but it’s gonna come out of you eventually.” She sighed and swept the deck into a neat stack, evening the edges with her fingers and sliding them into a silk pouch. “The cards are never wrong, Rosie. I wish to hell they were sometimes, but they’re not.”