Read Open Me for Free Online Page A

Mem’s grandmother. In the picture she looks very small and tired, unlike the raging giantess Aunt Ayin and her mother are always describing. She seems surprised to be having her photograph taken, even though it is a studio shot with a smoky background, her astonished face a waterfall of shirred skin with two almond-shaped eyes peeking through. She has a puff of wig-like hair dyed shoe-polish black. The edges of the photograph are watercolor brown, as if they have been dipped in very weak tea.
    Mem doesn’t like this picture. She never knew her grandmother, a nationally renowned apprentice-trainer who died in a mysterious fire when Mem’s mother was only seventeen years old. Sometimes, when it is dark after suppertime and Mem is walking alone through the hallway, she thinks the woman in the picture is watching, beady eyes shifting as Mem walks by.
    You wouldn’t have lasted two weeks with my mother
.
    Mem doesn’t doubt for a second that this is true.
    Mem’s new shoes tap the linoleum floor in the kitchen with a delicious water-dripping, finger-snapping sound. The oatmeal in Mem’s bowl is full of raisins that have bloated from the hot milk into fat ticks. Mem pokes at them with her spoon. She remembers the story of Aunt Ayin’s First Funeral, how Ayin giggled from nerves as soon as the mourners arrived, the giggling getting louder and harder to control, even when she smothered her mouth with her handkerchief. When they had all come home from the funeral that day, Mem’s grandmother had dragged Aunt Ayin into the bathroom by the neck of her doole, pushed her head into the toilet, and flushed three times.
    Mem swirls a lump of bright yellow margarine into her oatmeal as her mother comes in to join her. Mem’s mother is wearing her best blacks, her most expensive doole, a raw silk shift with carved black buttons all the way down the front. It is one of several dozen dooles Mem’s mother keeps hung neat and straight in her closet, with the hooks of the hangers all going inthe same direction. She usually decides in advance which she will wear depending on who has died, what religion they were, and how much money the survivors are willing to pay. Today, like most days, is a high-fee doole day.
    “I’m talking to you, baby,” says Mem’s mother.
    Mem is listening while she picks the ticks out of her oatmeal with her fingers and puts them on a napkin. Their little feet wriggle.
    “You know how much I love you,” says Mem’s mother. “You know how proud I am of you. You are beautiful and strong.” But when Mem looks up she sees the someone-else’s meticulously painted mouth open and shriek, “
You lazy fucking pig!”
    A bruise-colored monster mouth.
    “Little lazy whore! I wish I never had you!”
    Bigger than Mem’s whole face.
    “I’m so ashamed of you I could vomit!”
    Opening and closing, spitting, retching.
    “You’ve been nothing but a goddamned waste!”
    The ugliest thing Mem has ever seen.
    Her mother’s small teeth and pink tongue work the air like a machine, rouged jowls squeezing the mouth, fleshy lips flapping, shape-making. Coming at her, getting bigger and bigger until she is a blur, pressing her own forehead against Mem’s forehead. Pushing.
“Look at yourself! No wonder your father left! You’re a fucking disgrace!”
    Mem feels the oatmeal lumping up on the roof of her mouth. The skin tightening around her face. The sudden stickiness of all her creases. There is the smoky smell of her mother’s hair and there are all of her pores. Mem can’t tell where her skin ends and her mother’s begins because Mem’s mother is the size of the house. Bigger than the house. There is no end to her.
    But then it stops. Mem’s mother pulls back, smiling. She smoothes a curl of hair with her fingers and takes a sip of coffee from a mug decorated with small, grinning cats. She looks at Mem, carefully. Her fingernails are the color of blood.
    She asks, “How do you feel, honey?”
    Mem can’t