When hunger gnaws at Kima, the dermoid gnaws back until she has no appetite at all. Since her last gyno exam, it has amassed germ cells, their weight warping the balance of her insides.
She plods to the pantry anyway and scans the shelves. She’s out of applesauce, down to sweet potato-banana, her least favorite of the toddler food she hides from her kids, both of whom are too old for pouches.
When Kima tries to return to the distraction of work, the dermoid’s teeth tear into oblivion. She’s swallowed into the pantry door jamb where the void is a hand clamping down on her shoulder. Kima tries to cry out but her mouth is a part of her body and her body is pushed into—
A bed of stiff white sheets. There’s the alcoholic smell of sterilization, like the morning after a labwork binge. Nurses in starched, retro uniforms stand at attention.
“I need to insert this inside of you.” The surgeon’s voice is as clinical as his surroundings. “This” is a pole with a camera attached to one end. No ultrasound machine, just a rigged up Canon.
Kima wants to scream, but the body she’s dropped into—the woman she is here—can only nod “yes” and look away from the masked faces toward a shelf crammed with jars of pink flesh, each sprouting hair or knuckles or teeth.
The tears arise from fear because she arrived in pain. And it’s that thread of pain that pulls Kima back.
Kima collapses to the kitchen floor. The sun has shifted, and not five minutes pass before her teenage son comes home from football practice. “What happened?”
“Tripped.” She picks herself up off the ground and begins prepping a dinner she can’t stomach.
The dermoid is suspiciously still the rest of the week, but its molars grind against her hip bone. She can’t bend over to tie her shoes and sticks to flip flops even as back-to-school storms bring autumn temps. She calls the surgeon she was supposed to see months ago.
“I’m sorry,” the receptionist says, “He retired. Do you want the next available with—?”
“Yes, fine.”
The next available is five weeks out. By Saturday, the dermoid is gnawing again. She drops her fourth-grade daughter off at a birthday party, and the drive alone feels like an ab workout. She grips the steering wheel as the dermoid twists, dialing into memories from Kima’s childhood, her babyhood, from before she even existed.
Kima gets out of the car and begins speed-walking into this unfamiliar neighborhood trying to escape what’s coming. The dermoid pulls down, away, apart, until it yanks her into the curb. The void closes in with the crunch of a bear trap. The wormhole whispers like screams heard at a distance.
Dark—the room’s windows have heavy curtains that allow only fishbone slits of daylight. The bed linens are damp with her sweat, stiff with her blood…the invalid her of this world.
A cluster of whispery voices move about the room. She whimpers and they all come to her, a halo of beards and coat tails around her four-poster bed.
“Something has been siphoning off her womanhood,” one man declares to the others. “And it’s not Dr. Fenêtre’s leeches.”
Dr. Fenêtre sniffs. “What would you suggest?”
“Clumps in the ovarium. I’ve extracted the like before.”
“What’s to be done?” A husband takes her hand. Her fingers are as thin and transparent as the nightgown she wears.
Eyebrows raise. “Operate of course.”
Her daughter finds Kima sitting on the curb. “Mom, the party’s over.”
Kima still smells the honey-laced laudanum. The tingle of escaped death crawls across her skin. When she stands, she feels the sucking through-line to the past lives the dermoid has chewed its way to.
By the day of the consult, she’s seen two more sick rooms—one in ancient Egypt, one in Romanov Russia.
“It’ll be another month before I can fit the procedure in,” Dr. Wauduro tells her.
“What if I can’t make it a month?”
“You will. Dermoids are mostly benign.”
“Not this one. It’s—it’s—something’s inside of it.” She’s whispering. She sounds hysterical.
“Inside? Inside is the crud your body doesn’t need. Like what clogs the drain.”
But the drain isn’t clogged. The dermoid has nibbled it open, and experiences swirl through Kima. Just a click of her laptop’s space bar cues—
Bells toll beyond a wooden pallet. A circle of robed nuns hold her down.
Kima quits yoga after the cool-down Savasana sends her into a shroud—
Stitched closed. They know she’s not dead, but leave her for the gravedigger anyway.
“There’s nothing to be done,” an auntie says. “Nothing—”
Kima bends slowly to pull joggers and training bras from the dryer. The clothes tug back, sending her to—
Clay walls. Sage steam. A stick to bite down on. The sizzle of a knife being cauterized. A song chanted. Kima stays long enough to feel the blade entering this body before she passes out.
“Mom?” Her son finds her next to a pile of unfolded gym towels.
“Call your Aunt Mehta.” She grits her teeth, the dermoid does too. She tries to stand, but can only hunch over cradling her womb. “Tell her we’re going to the ER.”
“Surgery went well,” Dr. Wauduro says, post-op. “Although your ovaries and fallopian tubes sustained internal damage and we had to remove them as well.”
Kima feels nothing now, no pull, no weight, no history of multitudes.
“Sent that teratoma bugger to pathology, but did a little dissection myself first.” Dr. Wauduro pulls out his cell phone and scrolls past images of his family. “You want me to send this to you?”
She already knows what she’ll see—a fleshy jawbone with a perfect row of teeth. How many dermoid pictures has he saved? How many ovarium clumps did they put in jars?
“Delete it,” Kima says.
