When he raped her she thought of sand, her face in the sand, the particles flying down her nostrils into her lungs; she thought of the quarry with sand so thick it caked off like brick. She felt her lungs fill up and stiffen with sand. She felt her breath thicken, dense to sand.
[...]
Her tongue felt thick and she could not hear. She saw the dust under the couch, the velveteen fabric hanging towards the floor, a raised pattern gold and beige. She saw shoes ox-blood and shine, the door knob far away as if it were not a door but another wall in the room, a button on a wall. If she lifted her head she knew that it would fall off grain by grain and so she lifted it and it fell and crumbled. If she’s losing every part of herself then what part feels this, which limb and which sense; whose breath is she breathing with, whose eyes is she using now. Who is in her body making sand, grinding glass. Why does she get up leaving herself on the floor, walk to the sink, recognize her face, turn to it again on the floor, against the wall. She sees paint, yellow paint, the water and blood from her mouth, her mouth stretched from screaming with no sound. When she closes it again it feels wider. She walks out of the house and down the street sure that her sand is spilling spilling all along the way.
She knows that in the house she’s just left the man has not moved. He is sitting on the velveteen sofa or perhaps looking at sand out his window. He does not fear her, he knows that she will not tell anyone. He knows that the fingers of her left hand will be numb for some time to come. They are swollen. Her eyes are bloody, almost closed. There is a bruise near her waist, under a rib. He knows she will not go to a hospital. He knows that she will not go to a police station. She knows that she cannot go back to the sewing factory. She won’t tell anyone. Not even Jocelyn. Perhaps she’ll move.
