Burnt, Bloodied, Loved— by Mariya Kika

His mama’s red hair falls like a curtain around him, hiding him. His mama’s hair has always been long, but now? It spills across the floor, a burning fire, a warning sign, a bloodbath. And he, fully grown, can hide within it. He dares not touch. Not with bloodied hands. He does not look down, but he can feel the slick drag of blood across knuckles, dripping from empty nail beds. His hands flex with aching listlessness.  

“Baby,” she says, voice the pop of a lollipop from puckered lips, startling, sticky sweet, “will you braid my hair? Like you used to?”

It’s been years since he last braided her hair. He ignores the warning signs, slips through the fire-red veil, and falls to his knees behind her. It feels an awful lot like worship. That does not stop him, for he’s been flagellating himself in her memory for years. His hands rise; he can see the sticky rivulets of blood flowing patterns down his skin, beautifying him in his blood. Her blood.

His fingers ache, bleeding and sore where he had once had nails. He’d had no reason to be worried, to fear sullying this woman who had so destroyed him, for he can barely see where the bloodstains of his emptiness stain her bright, bloody, beautiful hair. His fingers, still so nimble after all these years, make quick work of the fire that spills down her back.

Now, it is a single column of twisted rope—no, not rope, never rope, mustn’t ever think of rope or chains or the feeling of self-flagellation. Must never think about welts spilling across thighs, a mirror of those that mama so delicately decorated his back with before. 

The column ends, and he looks around for something to it off with, to contain this warning sign that falls down his mama’s back. He finds nothing, his surroundings a fuzzy white, blurred at the edges. Something like a hospital, but there’s no smell of antiseptic.

Maybe this is what heaven looks like. 

But, then, why is mama here? Why is he?

It is just the two of them—as it had been once before—and he still needs to tie off her braid. He looks down, studies his arms, and finds them decorated with lacerated skin that hangs loosely. Just barely a part of himself still.

It is easy, then, to rip off a piece, to bind her with his tattered remains. He’d been doing it for years; this is nothing new. Blood stains his fingers, the skin still slippery with it. It is difficult to tie off his mama’s hair, but he does. He has always found a way, even without her. Because he didn’t have her. 

He finishes the knot and lets her hair fall from his hands. She speaks as if coming out of a trance, dreamy, airy, empty, “Baby, let me paint your nails.”

He replies, reverent, “Anything for you.” He does not call her mama. Knows he is not allowed. Knows she does not deserve it. Wonders what he deserves. 

When he’d been little, his mama would save up for those tiny bottles of nail polish, bottles of poison. She would paint their nails, and his daddy—this is when he’d had a daddy, he remembers him distantly—would shake his head in dismay. 

His nails are gone. They haven’t been painted in years. But he curls up in her lap, just like before. Lets her take his hands in hers. Numbly watches as she tears up and down his arms, collecting his blood, her blood, in that tiny bottle with the brush and corkscrew lid. 

She paints the blood into the places his nails once were, a new kind of loss.

“Mama,” he starts, stutters, stops. Winces, worries, waits. She hums and continues her work, hunched over his hands. He cannot see her face. He does not want to see her face. He wants to see her face. He is dizzy and afraid and so, so small in her lap. She does not punish him. She does not revoke the name.

He sighs, swallows, and speaks, “Did you ever love me?”

She does not stop, focused as she is on her work. He cannot see her face, but she is beautiful, ethereal, and unearthly. Her hair is a premonition, her skin pale. He knows that if she looks up, he will find bloody lips and eyes so blue they glowed. 

He knows that there is nothing of her in him, but for the blood they share. His blood, the blood now being painted onto their nails. He has always given all of himself to her unflinchingly. It does feel an awful lot like worship, doesn’t it? 

Her voice is sweet, sharp, slick, “I tried, baby. I tried.”

She looks up. Before him, she is his mama, then she isn’t. Lips stained red bare themselves into a grin—is it blood or sugar-tinged saliva? He doesn’t know. He needs to know. He will not know. She is bones, gripping his wrists so tightly he thinks he screams. He does, the shriek hurtling past the stars into the void. Her hair falls, a bloodbath. She disintegrates, dust in his hands, ashes all around.

Amen, amen, amen. 

The wind—where, how, why—sweeps her away, leaves his fists curled around nothing. He cannot feel the sting of nails against his palm. He needs the pain. Where is the pain?

He hears her then, a whisper upon the wind, a brush combing through his hair, “There is a darkness in you, baby, that no one can love.”

He bolts up, gasping, clawing, crying. He tastes copper on his tongue. It tastes red. It tastes like poison. Hands claw at his chest, nails bite at skin, he screams, or maybe he doesn’t. 

Get it out, get it out, get it out.

He wants this darkness gone. 

He wants, he wants, he wants.

He wants to hurt the people that hurt him, set them ablaze, and warm himself in the flames of their bones. He wants to hate his mother, he wants to love himself, he wants to be loved. He can’t. It won’t happen.

He thinks, I have a darkness inside me that no one can love.

He laughs, high, shrill, empty. Chokes on his tears and tastes that copper tang on his tongue. He knows what he deserves; he deserves darkness, dust, and blood. He deserves what his mama gave him, maybe less. He doesn’t deserve a second chance; he doesn’t deserve love. 

His hands swipe at his face and come away bloody. 

I should bottle this up, he thinks, hysterical, When I die, they will need it to paint my grave.

Another laugh warbles up his throat, and he chokes against it. Who will be there to bury me? I have no one to love me.

He falls, ash pillows catching him. And, as he drifts off to sleep again, the taste of red in his mouth, poison tipping his fingers, he hears that slick, sticky, empty voice, I tried, baby, I tried.

AUTHOR BIO:

Mariya is a young creative and student. She writes poetry and short stories centred around healing, race, and family. She has been a writer at The Message, a magazine run by her university for racialized voices, since her second year.