Christina Rosso: Our Shared Grave
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
The Wives’ Grave
The first was easiest.
Or so he tells me, his eyes cast to the floor.
Threads of rope scratch against my bound wrists. I rub the butt of my palms against it.
“The second put up more of a fight. She was messier,” he says.
“The third, I’d learned to be discreet. She never suspected. She begged for her life; that twinge in my chest was a surprise.”
“Guilt,” I say.
He rubs the space between his eyebrows with the back of his thumb. Sweat glistens at his temple.
My skin is raw against the rope. My restraints won’t budge.
“Now the fourth,” he starts.
“Me,” I say. I sound petulant, like a child. “How can you do this to me?”
“I gave you the test and curiosity got the best of you.” Finally, he looks at me. “I wanted you to be different.”
I swallow acidic saliva, feeling it travel down my throat. I know my husband means it. My palms are clammy and pebbled with perspiration. He takes a step towards me, his eyes locked on mine. The knife gleams silver-white in the fluorescent lighting. I imagine the blood of the wives before me, thick and dark like the air before a storm. He kneels until we’re eye-to-eye. My husband presses the blade to my throat. My breath halts against its coolness.
I know I’m going to die.
I wonder if blood magic is real and if it will bond us. I wonder if together we’ll rise, his four wives, against him from our shared grave.
Lake Paramour
We met at the lake’s edge, where the loosestrife bloomed magenta. On my knees, I studied the water lilies floating just out of arm’s reach. He knelt beside me and said, “Look. The flowers are about to open.” My skin blistered in goose-pimples. I nodded. There was no reason to fear a stranger here. I didn’t own this land. I didn’t own anything.
“They only open in the morning or at night. Do you know why?” I shook my head. “To attract pollinators,” he said.
I felt his breath on my neck as we watched the flowers open, revealing pink insides.
Each morning, we found one another there, our breaths halted in anticipation of the water lilies’ blooms. Sometimes we had a picnic afterward, where we would take turns pointing out deer and rabbits and chipmunks. It seemed he had endless knowledge about wildlife and beasts.
One morning, after the water lilies opened, he pressed his lips to mine, peeling them back with his tongue. Two weeks later, he asked me to be his bride. I said yes, my cheeks flushed with love and the blazing sun. He grinned, revealing all of his teeth. On the patchwork quilt we used for picnics, he climbed onto me. My body turned to ice. “We can’t,” I said. “Not until we’re married.”
“You are mine,” he said before his teeth met my thigh. I cried out, certain he’d stop. My paramour who loved wildlife and beasts wouldn’t hurt me. Oh, but how wrong I was. His lips didn’t brush mine as he peeled back my petals. I bloomed under him, blood staining the quilt, as the birds chirped in the trees and the loosestrife whistled in the summer breeze.
When he looked into my eyes, I could see it. I was just something to climb. My paramour had built a bridge out of me.
Flower Box
On a Monday, my husband comes home with supplies. From the bed of his truck, he unloads a plethora of wood--redwood, cedar, douglas fir. He chatters their names and properties to me. It is as though new life has been breathed into him. It is the first time he’s seemed happy since B.
On a Wednesday, I wake to the percussion of hammering. I lean in the back doorway of the house, my hand a visor to shield my eyes from the early morning sun. He had told me what he planned to build. But it had seemed so imaginary, like everything since B.
On a Friday, he plants a completed flower box in front of my scrambled eggs and coffee. I nod at it, try and fail at a closed-mouth grin. I’m not sure the muscles in my face remember how to do that. Can you forget how to smile? My husband beams at me, all teeth, and I want to return his joy, but there is no warmth in my chest. Only caverns and echoes.
On a Sunday, he calls me outside. Voila, he says, his arms waving in a great flourish. He thinks he’s a great showman. Nothing seems great or even good to me anymore, so I simply nod. He has filled his first planter--made from cedar--with an array of colorful flowers. Geraniums that remind me of red lollipops, cotton candy pink petunias, grape-colored zinnias. He is the Willy Wonka of flowers, it seems, a caricature of himself. With my tongue, I form the words, It looks nice, honey. I shape the syllables two, three times before venturing to speak. My husband needs a win and I want to give him that.
But then I see the white chrysanthemums slipped in among the candy flowers. For Bethany, he says, seeing I’ve noticed. They were her favorite, he continues.
Her syrupy voice calls me, saying, Look, Mommy. Look at me! Her head thrown back in laughter as she swings on the monkey bars, in defiance of gravity, in the unwavering belief that she, at age seven, was invincible. The cavities in my chest throb, the stalactites tremble in their plots.
I work to form the words, my tongue folding and bobbing in my mouth. I know my husband built this flower box in honor of B, in what he thought to be a nice gesture. I try to tell him, It looks nice, honey, or Thank you, but when I look at the cedar box with the candy flowers all I can see is a coffin, another coffin for B.
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Christina Rosso lives and writes in South Philadelphia with her rescue pup, Atticus Finch, and bearded husband, Alex. Together they run an independent bookstore and event space called A Novel Idea on Passyunk. Her debut collection SHE IS A BEAST (APEP Publications) was released in May 2020. Her writing has been featured in FIVE:2:ONE Magazine, Digging Through the Fat, Ellipsis Zine, and more. Visit http://christina-rosso.com or find her on Twitter @Rosso_Christina.
