two excerpts from Junior (forthcoming)
Dangerous Lakes
Air never seemed enough, the way I could run my fingers through it and hardly feel a thing. The way it whispered through my mouth and tickled my alveoli. I always felt that I was gasping for something thicker, wetter. I eyed the lakes that surrounded our home with growing desire, and I felt their pull in my lungs.
Junior, the lakes are full of danger, my Senior warned, and he refused to teach me to swim, so every time I left my bed and sleepwalked to a lake, eased my body in, and took in mouthfuls, he always fished me out and pumped my chest until a geyser erupted from my throat. Then he would seal his mouth over mine, breathe his stifling air into me.
Oared the Gray Waters
One night, Senior stole away with the sky. He went out, wrapped the black velvet cloak, bejeweled with pearls, around his shoulders, boarded his ship, oared the gray waters, chased after the moon, and disappeared in the horizon.
I was deep in my bed, gurgling in a swimming pool I’d never seen.
Swimming Pool
I swim in clean, blue water and take the clarity through my mouth and throat until I merge with gentle currents, forgetting the dust-laden inhales of my past, and eyes closed, I feel the water saturating my dry lungs, and then I open them to see the sharp fin of Senior’s shark costume nearing me.
I pull myself to safety and sit panting on the hot concrete while Senior swims around and around, threatening my toes with his trap-like jaw whenever they dangle in the cool water I long for.
“Throw me my mackerel, Junior!” he yells, and I look beside me and see his creel with the mackerels’ faces staring up at me, and I close my eyes, reach in, grab a mackerel and throw one after another in Senior’s direction, and when I open my eyes, Senior is gone and his shark-costume floats forlornly in the pool, surrounded in a chunky aura of flesh and blood.
When Imelda Came
I didn’t know where she came from, but one day she was standing in the kitchen, sudsing up dishes, dressed only in her underwear.
Where did you come from? was the first thing I wondered, and then second—Where was Senior?
Her name was Imelda, and she said that Senior found her during one of his bird sighting excursions, and I said, But you’re not a bird. And she said, Perhaps, and went back to putting her hands in the huge amounts of suds that were billowing in the sink.
Where’s Senior? I asked, but Imelda stood silent over the billowing sink.
A little while later, Imelda came to my room and sat down on the edge of my bed with its rippling turquoise sheets and schools of plush mackerel.
Imelda said, I’m going to tell you the truth, and the truth she told me was the story of her flight from toxins, her winter starvation, her many window collisions, her de-feathering, her inability to wear outer-garments, her subsequent capture by animal control, her tenure in the pound, where she was beloved by all the other creatures and staff, but still no one wanted adopt an immodest animal, and her time of living was fast coming to a close.
And then, she told me, at the zero hour, who should walk in but Senior with his heavily waxed facial hair, and his overly groomed ears, and strands of hair evenly spaced over his immaculate scalp, announcing, I’m taking whoever’s next in line for the chopping block. And the staff sighing happily because they did not want to inject Imelda into stillness.
Will you stay for long? I asked Imelda, as I began to covet her lacy bra, but also began to like the singsong that palpitated within her woe.
Imelda said, I’ll be with you for the ensuing months as Senior sights the tropical birds of paradise that he has yet to record in his bird-sighting journal.
I inched closer to Imelda and asked, Will you be my mother?
It was only then that I saw the delicate plumage fanning behind her ears. She looked at me closely and said, What beautiful scales you have shimmering beneath your skin.
Brood
I had noticed a squirming beneath Imelda’s underwear, and grew suspicious, so one night I tiptoed from bed and saw Imelda curled on the couch with hundreds of tiny animals suckling from her many nipples, and I felt my eyes well and wetten and Imelda turned her head toward me with a quivering snout, tuned to my scent in the shadows, and snarled.
The Accident
Abandoned, I shuffled from the house and went to the lake edge where the barnacles calcified into sharpness. They looked like ears waiting to hear, so I whispered my sad story into them, accidentally opening deep slits along my throat.
After the Accident
After the accident, Imelda could find nothing that would staunch my bleeding. The poultice that she made comfrey and guilt wouldn’t hold.
Imelda stood over me, and I said, Hold me, and Imelda picked me up and held me until she, herself, was permeated with red.
What I remember remembering was that Senior would, if he were there, apprise the situation and forcefully make a declaration and we would all believe it and I tried to conjure the declaration that Senior might make.
I could see clearly the whites of Imelda’s eyes rising with red faster than they drained.
I remember remembering the moments before the accident and I remember trying to backtrack but being unable as I lost my sense of forward.
Imelda was begging me to speak as if speaking alone would be the poultice that secured the wound.
Imelda said, We’ll find a way to put this back inside you, and she gestured to her bright red underwear.
Senior was far away, but he knew as he slashed his way through tropical underbrush that I was lessening, that he was lessening because his mighty arms could no longer lift the scythe.
Imelda held me by the lake and we waited for the sail of a ship to emerge.
Senior disembarked and took me from Imelda and Imelda said, Where are you taking Junior? and Senior said, I’m going to teach Junior to swim, and he carried me into the lake all the way to the middle.
Sink
Senior dropped me in the middle of the lake, and said, Swim, but I sank. It was slow motion with the water holding me loosely in its sieve arms. With the lake weeds dancing. I watched the light leave like an opening umbrella of dark. On the bottom of the lake, the slits along my throat took in water. The first breath rushed through me, revived all I had forgotten.
Lure
I swam for years in the deep of the lake until one day I saw an appetizing color shimmering at the surface. I swam up to it. I was hungry for something shiny.
The hook lodged in my mouth and Senior pulled me into his boat. He held me in his hands, assessing my size and weight. Not big enough to eat, he said, and threw me back. The gash in my mouth bled a ribbon through the lake.
Gash
The gash did not heal. Every day since Senior had dropped me in the lake, Imelda waded in and threw fish food to me. She would call, Junior, Junior, in her singsong voice and I would swim figure eights around her knees, my scales shimmering refracted light. When I did not swim to her one day, she began to worry.
Rehabilitation
The lake dredgers came and when all was said and done, I was on the shore, overcome with weightless air. Senior said, Your domestic rehabilitation starts now, and he took out his knife and began to de-scale me.
And I saw all those pretty, iridescent scales at my feet and I started to cry, and Senior said, Oh no you don’t—we have enough saltwater, and I said, Taste my tears, and Senior did and was in awe because they were freshwater tears.
Imelda said, I knew there was a reason, and both Senior and I said, A reason for what? And Imelda said, My melancholy, and Imelda took her neglected brood out from her underwear and we could see that they were stiff with spots of decay in the corners of their eyes, and Senior reached gently into Imelda’s underwear and pulled out the brood one by one.
Senior put his arm around Imelda and then he tucked her into his pocket, and I said, Imelda won’t be staying will she, and he said, She’s already gone, and I could see that where there was once a bulge in Seniors pocket it was now just ironed pleats.
Senior declared, Now we’ll go to the house, and you will relearn to sleep in a bed, and you will relearn to take a normal bath.
But I could not sleep with the sheets against my skin and the plush fish chaffing me, and every night I went to the lake edge, whispered to the barnacles, opened my old wounds, came back to the house, climbed in the tub and swam all the way to the bottom, the gashes at my throat breathing water.
Me and Me and Me
I paddled my boat out to the middle of the lake, and I dropped my lure in and waited, and when the line grew taut, I pulled, and when the line grew tauter, I pulled harder until I pulled out what was at the end of the line.
At the end of the line was one of the Ladies of the Wood and I asked, Dear lady, why are you in the lake? and she said, I’m visiting you down there, and I said, Well, if I’m down there, who is speaking to you now? and she said, I’m not sure, but you look like the surface Junior as opposed to the underwater Junior, and I said, What does the underwater Junior look like? and she said, The underwater Junior’s face is free of wrinkles because it is fully hydrated and has been easing through water for all these years.
I helped the Lady of the Woods off the lure, and she thanked me even though I had torn her mouth, and it would leave a scar that zigzagged from her lip, and she went back down into the lake, and I rowed back to my house that was sinking into a tuft of mold.
I walked into the house and went straight to my vanity table and pushed aside my mud pot, and my jar of sleeping pills, and the tweezers and the comb, and I spit a few times on the grimy mirror and rubbed it clean with the end of my tail and then looked into it.
But there was someone else looking back at me and I asked, Who are you? and it said, I’m the you that lives in the mirror, and I said, How did you get in there? and the me that lived in the mirror said, I forced my way in, and I said, So you have broken and entered? And the me that was in the mirror said, That’s one way to describe my trespass.
Me in the Mirror
I looked at the me in the mirror for a long time, and I liked the way it smiled at me, and I liked the way we combed our hair in unison. I liked that it told me I was beautiful.
But after days of this, it began to subtly scrutinize me, and I began to wonder what its intentions were.
Complex Decision
I was beginning to wish that I had never found out about the others that were me. It was hard for me to be me when I now knew that me was not singular, and I found my surface-self wondering, What would underwater-me do in this situation? And what would the me-that-lived-in-the-mirror do in this situation? And therefore, I couldn’t make a simple decision, let alone a complex one.
Come Together
I had to make a complex decision and I was trying to consult my underwater-me and the me-that lived-in-the-mirror, and it was hard to get them to come together, so I took charge and pulled the me-that-lived-in-the-mirror from my vanity table, and I took it on the boat to the middle of the lake, and I put scuba gear on us both, and we dove down to find the underwater-me, and when we found the underwater-me, we took hold of its arms and pulled it to the surface.
I thought it was going to be a happy reunion, but me-that-lived-in-the-mirror was angry for being torn from the vanity table, and underwater-me was angry because we had stopped it from easing its face through water and the dry air was puckering it, and I could see, even in the few minutes we spoke, the lines deepening into underwater-me's face.
I felt defensive and said, I’m sorry to inconvenience my selves, but we really need to come together! and they said, How come? And this threw me off because I had assumed they felt the same urgency as I did, and then I remembered, I was no longer the only I.
One-Self
I asked my Senior, Why didn’t you tell me that I am the surface Junior and that there are others of me? and he said, Because I didn’t want to discombobulate you, and I said, Well I certainly am no longer combobulated, and I can no longer make a decision without consulting my selves, and it is beginning to affect me in my multiple realms of being.
We Suffered
Sure enough, we suffered; the surface me didn’t like to eat plankton and the mirror me only wanted a handful of almonds and a poached egg on toast and the underwater me gagged at the sight of bread, so none of us ate. And drinking was impossible, as I wanted berry juice and the other two turned their heads as I brought the cup to my mouth, so that it dribbled from my puckered lips, wasted a stain on my shirt.
The Aurora Borealis
My Senior looked at my undernourished form and my dark berry-stained shirt, and he said, The only solution is to merge your multiple selves, and I said, How do we go about that? and he said, It involves a cellular exchange that can only be achieved by multifuge, and I asked, What is multifuge? and he said, Come with me to my laboratory.
Inside Senior’s laboratory was an antiquated amusement park ride called The Aurora Borealis and he said, Get in, and once it starts, whatever you do, don’t barf.
I got in and he pulled a lever down and The Aurora Borealis started to spin very fast and then faster, and I wanted to barf, but I held it in and minutes later I saw my self break apart into molecules and as The Aurora Borealis started to slow, I saw my molecules reconfigure into my self.
I got out and told my Senior that it was pretty cool, but that I felt nauseous, and Senior said, Now it’s okay to barf.
Collect Your Selves
My Senior said, The plan is for you to collect all your selves and bring them to my laboratory which will be disguised as an amusement park, and once here, you’ll dare all your selves to get on The Aurora Borealis, and once all your selves are on The Aurora Borealis, I will pull down this lever, and you will all spin until your molecules detach, and then when The Aurora Borealis slows, all your molecules will start to come together, and when it stops, you will be one-self.
Corrupted
It was the one thing all of my selves could agree on—we liked amusement parks, so it wasn’t hard to persuade them to come with me and they all wanted to ride The Aurora Borealis, so it was easy to go through with Senior’s plan.
All my selves got inside, and Senior pulled down the lever, and it dawned on me as The Aurora Borealis started to speed up, that I had forgotten to tell my selves not to barf, and my selves began to barf, and it was a chaos of barf and molecules and the horrifying notion that set in as The Aurora Borealis began to slow and stop was that my one-self would be corrupted with barf.
Emerged
When I emerged from The Aurora Borealis, Senior looked appalled at my newly converged self with barf-bits interspersed and said, Junior, what have you done? and I said, I forgot to tell my selves not to barf, and Senior said, We’re going to have to undo you and then do you over.
Certain
The barf-bits flecking the fiber of my being didn’t bother me too much, but I didn’t like the feeling of so many selves packed into my one-self, and I was thinking, maybe it would be better for us to just go our separate ways.
Are you certain about this? You’ll be perpetually indecisive after you split again, said Senior, and with all my selves momentarily in one, I was able to say, I’m certain.
Different Directions
I got back on The Aurora Borealis, and this time Senior pulled the lever up, and The Aurora Borealis spun the opposite way, and I saw my molecules detaching, and when the ride slowed down, I saw the molecules forming into my others selves, and I saw the barf slowly go back into their mouths, and when the ride stopped it was me and all my selves disembarking, and my selves thanked me for taking them to an amusement park, and they thanked me for taking them on The Aurora Borealis, and they thanked me for freeing them from myself, and I watched them leaving me and going out into different directions, and I noticed the me-that-lived-in-the-mirror headed back to my house where the vanity table was, and I noticed the underwater-me running toward the lake and diving in, and I noticed the surface-me standing there by the entrance of The Aurora Borealis waving goodbye.
Kim Parko is a mother who gathers among the hedges: hedgepath.substack.com. She is the author of The Grotesque Child (Co-winner 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Press Book Prize) and Cure All (Caketrain Press, 2010). Recent work has appeared in Boston Review (2018 Poetry Prize), Black Warrior Review, The Brooklyn Review, Diagram, Salt Hill, Poetry, Sleepingfish XX, Best Small Fictions 2023, and Hayden's Ferry Review. She is a professor at the Institute of American Indian Arts. kimparko.com.