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“Sugar please,” Helena says, and Sarah passes her the sugar.
“Vegetables,” Helena says, and Sarah passes her the vegetables.
“Can I have a knife,” Helena says, and Sarah passes her the knife. It’s that easy.
It’s not that Helena thinks about it, because she doesn’t. It’s – not-thinking, what she does. Her brain is so used to doing this thing on its own that it can do it without her help – it whispers to her where the knife should go in, where the knife should go out. Casualties, it whispers, and it says what they are. All of Helena’s sestras and friend-sestras are around the table, and her brain knows just how many of them she could kill.
She is holding the knife. She has not moved.
“Hey,” Sarah says across the table. “You alright?” Helena is back at the table. Helena still hasn’t moved, and she is holding the knife in her left hand. She moves it to her right hand. Her brain tells her how much slower she’ll be when the knife is in her right hand; her left hand itches.
“Mm,” she says. “Very sleepy. Long day. Maybe I will be like mother-sestra and take nap, after the food.”
“Yeah,” Sarah says, “wouldn’t want to miss the food.” There is a smile tilting up the corner of her mouth. The knife tells Helena things. Helena’s brain tells her things. Helena dumps sugar on her broccoli until it’s drowned and then she bites into it – too sweet – she gags – she takes another bite of it. Her brain curls in on itself and dies, like a slug when you dump—
“Sestra.”
“Yeah?”
“Is it salt or sugar that kills slugs.”
“Dunno,” Sarah says, sounding baffled by the idea of the question, by the way the question is crouched on the table breathing and scratching at the tablecloth. “Wasn’t ever really the type to do that.”
“Never?”
“No,” Sarah says. “I didn’t – didn’t want to watch them die.” She turns over a potato with her fork. “Sort of morbid for dinner, yeah?”
Helena eats more broccoli. Sarah’s hand is holding Sarah’s fork. If Sarah’s hand wasn’t holding Sarah’s fork – if someone else was holding Sarah’s fork – that fork could be in Art so fast. Art might have his gun – probably not, so the fork could go in Mrs. S instead because she always has a knife—
She puts more sugar on her broccoli. Next to her Felix’s wine breath drifts in Helena’s direction and she keeps on thinking.
“Morbid,” she says, too late, too quiet. Sarah hears it anyways.
“Sorry,” she says. “If you want to talk about slugs I’m all ears.”
“I do not want to talk about slugs,” Helena says. “I want. I don’t know.” She does know. She drinks water. She eats a carrot. She holds the knife. “My head hurts,” she tells the water shivering inside of her glass.
Sarah leans across the table, puts her hand over Helena’s hand. Too close. Helena still has a hand open, she’s put down the sugar bowl, Sarah’s bones are fragile and if she’s leaning forward that puts her in range—
“You need to go outside for a second?” Sarah says. Next to Helena, Felix’s voice is loud. Cosima’s voice is loud. Everyone is talking, and the room is hot and pink on the inside of Helena’s eyelids, and everything smells like soap, and the broccoli is too sweet, and she keeps eating it, and Sarah is touching her, and Helena could make this all make sense at any second if she lifted up the knife and. Their voices are a thicket she can’t escape through. The smell of soap tap-tapping on the roof of her mouth, sweet and fake.
“No,” she says. “I don’t want to go.” She wants Sarah to hold tighter to her hand, but she can’t say that. She breathes through the hot pink sound. She looks at Sarah. Her brain knows that face so well, knows just how it breaks apart.
But also it’s Sarah, who Helena loves.
“You look like a bloody ghost, Helena,” Sarah says. “You can go outside, it’s fine.”
“I don’t want to go outside,” Helena says. Sarah’s hand on her hand is so loud, hot pink warm loud wine breath everywhere on everything, smells so fake. Knife cuts through that so easy. She climbs deep into her head where everything is silent, and she drags Sarah after her. Sarah’s hands are cold, inside of her brain, and Sarah puts her hands on Helena’s face. Shh, she says.
Helena has not moved. She watches Sarah’s face. Sarah’s eyebrows are furrowed, and in the space between them Helena can hear Sarah saying shh. She loosens her hand on the knife.
“Too much sugar,” she says. “Maybe.”
“Wanna say that one again, for the record?” Sarah says. “Didn’t think that day would ever come.” She squeezes Helena’s fingers and then lets go. The knife lies on the table, sweat-shiny. Everyone around Helena is talking in a language she does not know, and it presses against her on every side.
“It is that day,” she tells the knife. “Very surprise.” She drags her eyes away from the knife and towards Sarah. “Tell me to tell you about soap,” she says.
Sarah blinks at her. “Tell me about soap,” she says, voice confused amused. She looks like she’s about to look around her and say can you believe this? but she doesn’t.
“Soap,” Helena says, “is easy to make. You pour the lye into the water. You stir.”
“Uh huh,” Sarah says.
“Then you put the oils together,” Helena says. In her head the room is empty. Helena has the jars lined up on the counter, and the water with the lye. Sarah is leaning against the wall. For a while she’s bleeding, and then the bleeding stops. Then it comes back. Then it goes again. Conversation rises and falls and inside Helena something is banging like pipes.
“Ask me what the oils are,” she says.
“What’re the oils, Helena,” Sarah says, eyes half-narrowed from something like sleep.
“Olives oil,” Helena says. “Coconut oil. Almonds oil.”
“Wow.”
“Yes,” Helena says. “Very wow.”
“Alison teach you that?”
“Yes,” Helena says. “I wanted to help. So I helped. With the soap.” And also in the garage, with the papercutter, the world unravels, she pulls it back together again and puts it in the water and stirs.
“I’m glad to be here,” she says. “With my sestras.” On her plate the broccoli looks terrible and she eats more of it and it tastes fine, really, she’s getting used to it. She takes the hat off her head and rubs at her scalp. She can feel Sarah in front of her, like a warm light, like a jar filled with water and lye that smells like nothing at all.
She looks at Sarah. Sarah looks at her and says: “Me too.” She sighs. “Didn’t think we’d all make it, for a while.”
The knife is lying on the table, where Helena put it down. She looks at it and then away from it, back to Sarah. “I knew,” she says. “Always. That we would all make it back to home.” She tilts her head to the side. “Because of you.”
In the bottoms of Sarah’s eyes is a place where Helena can lie down and sleep. She looks at Sarah and goes there, and she picks up the knife again and it’s nothing. It’s just something you can use to cut food. She cuts food. She puts it on her mouth. Tastes sweet, tastes good.
“Not just me—” Sarah starts.
“You,” Helena says. She puts another bite of food in her mouth, and chews, and swallows it down.