by L. M. Pino
The Woman Without Skin
1.
She finds you at a party. The grad student bar is hot and cramped, a pulsing mass of bare arms, thighs, collarbones. She turns among them, green eyes almost glowing, skin reflecting the gold of the lights.
You spend the night pretending not to watch her dance, transfixed in spite of yourself. This woman is not like other women. You are not sure how you know this, but you know it. Maybe it’s the way she moves—slowly, almost methodically, like she’s holding something back.
When she catches you looking, her smile is sharp and white.
2.
You do not remember how you started dating. All you know is that at the beginning of summer, you were jolted awake by the sound of your roommate’s alarm, and by fall you were waking up in her bed, covered in wool and down and silk.
The woman lives in a proper house, unlike your own apartment, with its hand-me-down couch and mismatched plates. Here, your feet sink into softly worn rugs, slide noiselessly over hardwood.
One rare morning alone, you go exploring. Run your finger down the spines of her books, rummage around the backs of cabinets. You should ask her how long she’s lived here, you think, noting the faded paint behind the art on the walls.
In the bedroom, you try on everything in her jewelry box, like a little girl playing dress up. And there it is, at the very back of the very bottom drawer: a single, slightly yellowed tooth. You hold it up to the light—can it be real? It feels real.
It’s a canine, Google tells you. An adult, human canine. And it’s not hers, you can tell. Her teeth are blinding white, and anyway, they’re all there.
You mean to ask her about it, you really do. But she comes home bearing flowers and takeout, and as you watch her eat, smile flashing in the candlelight, the very question feels absurd. Who cares why she has a tooth? She probably bought it somewhere, if it’s even real, which suddenly seems unlikely.
You can hardly wait until she puts her glass down to kiss her wine-dark mouth.
3.
That winter, you allow the snow to pile up outside, happily trapped in the jewel box that is her apartment. Pass the time by letting her photograph you.
You are the perfect subject, she murmurs, arranging your arms and legs just so. Good girl—can you hold that for me? Just a little longer, honey. Tilt your head. Yes, just like that.
You spend hours by the fire listening to the woman’s stories, which are all about her youth, places she’s been. And if she does not ask too many questions about you, that is simply because she doesn’t need to. There are things about you that she just knows, no explanation required. Some of these things she knows before you know them, and you realize you cannot remember whether they were true before she said them.
One night, long after you think she’s fallen asleep, she turns to you and asks, Do you love me?
You do. She knows you do. She inches closer.
I want to tell you something I’ve never told anyone before, she says after a long silence, voice husky and low.
You trace a finger down the side of her face. Look into her eyes—that green so light it’s almost yellow. Tell the truth: there is nothing she could say that could make you not love her.
Her teeth glint when she smiles. Turn the light on. I’ll show you.
You twist the other way and grope around until the bedside lamp flickers on, warm and bright. Slide your glasses on. Turn back just in time to watch the woman you love reach behind her dark hair, unzip her skin.
She gleams in the lamplight, all pulsing muscle and sinew. You are floored by the intricacy of her, the way her flesh is composed of a multitude of thin lines all headed in the same direction, like someone carefully wove her together. You cannot believe her skin hid all this detail, all this red. Red like your favorite candy, like a Valentine’s card, like a heart—your heart, beating fast.
You suck in a breath to speak, and your mouth fills with the scent of metal, of the earth opening. Before you can get any words out, she says, I need your help.
4.
The entire time you’ve known her, the woman without skin has been carrying this, the heavy weight of her secret. Its limitations.
Her suit, as she calls it, is delicate, so thin it’s almost see-through. You imagine it ripping, just like a pair of tights. Swallow.
It also can’t get wet, she says, and you wince, remembering all the mornings you stepped out of the shower with your hair dripping, all the nights you suggested going out in the rain or snow.
She doesn’t ask you to behave any differently, but you do. Of course you do. Painstakingly blow-dry your hair each night. Stay in with her, cozy and snug, while the wind howls outside.
When you have to leave—for groceries, class—you make sure to return with an offering. A cluster of flowers, a candle, oddly shaped rocks, cut paper. There is so much beauty out there; you want to bring it to her.
But what she likes best, you learn, is food. This, you can provide. The windows fog from the heat as you cook for her, all things pickled, simmered, fermented. You feed her bowl after bowl of broth, briny anchovies, leeks so tender they’re sweet. Bake the bread fresh, knead pasta dough and peel potatoes until your hands cramp, until you must accept that you cannot cook more than she can eat. Insatiable, you think as she spreads you out on the table before her—dessert.
Gradually, the woman begins to take off her skin more often. Each time this happens you are awed by the sight, hushed. You are not allowed to touch her, when she’s bare like this, but looking is enough.
She stares back at you, unblinking. Eyelids, you learn, are all skin.
5.
Winter dissolves into a wet spring. You sit at the window and shake your head at the world, its inconsiderateness. Decline your friends’ invitations—and when you can’t decline, leave early. It’s no big deal. You don’t have as much fun as you used to, anyway. Your roommate tries not to stare, but you can feel her eyes on you, wide and grave. Each time you leave, she hugs you too tight, reminds you to call if you need anything.
One night, you lose track of time. You’d started telling a story, and it’d been so long since you’d made people laugh like that, so hard they were gasping. Your roommate had grinned and refilled your glass, asking for another story. Which is how you’ve ended up stumbling home late, heavy with wine.
You peel off your wet clothes in the hallway, make sure to dry yourself properly, inch by inch. Finally you slip into the bed, wondering why you feel like you’ve done something wrong—it’s not like you’re not “allowed” to go out. But the woman without skin just pulls you close, gives you a tired kiss.
I missed you. Couldn’t fall asleep without you, she whispers, and you sigh, thinking how lucky you are, to be loved like this.
6.
For your birthday, you ask for one present: you want her to meet your friends. You have planned this meticulously. A small dinner—only six of you—at an upscale restaurant you know well. You show her the forecast, perfect and clear. No rain for miles.
The woman without skin agrees to come, smile tight and toothless. Just for you, she says, and you squeal, kiss her like she’s agreed to hang the moon for you.
You are on edge from the moment you step outside, scanning the sky for signs of betrayal. But you’ve planned this well—the night is bare and cloudless. You lead your girlfriend easily into the restaurant, to a table at the very back, where no one will bother you.
By the time the food comes, you’ve relaxed. The woman without skin can be charming, and her skills are on full display tonight. Even your roommate, who started off the night drawn and tense, can’t help but give into her teasing with a laugh.
You know it’s going smoothly because everyone’s drunk and giggly by the time the main course arrives. And then, in a flash, disaster—your roommate playfully pushes her boyfriend, who then drops his steak knife, which falls straight onto the woman’s arm. You suck in a breath, feeling the ambient noise around you dim, as though the two of you have stepped into a bubble. The woman immediately places a hand over her forearm, so you can’t see how bad it is.
Pass me my purse, she commands quietly, and you understand your role here. Act normal, don’t make a scene.
I’m gonna run to the restroom real quick, she tells the table, and the sound turns back on.
She seems fine when she returns. Her sleeve has a small rip, but all you can see under it is a perfectly innocuous-looking band-aid. You exhale, tipsy with sudden relief.
Above the table, the woman without skin jumps back into the conversation like nothing happened, answering the boyfriend’s apology with a careless laugh. But beneath the tablecloth, her fingers drum out an insistent rhythm on your leg.
At first, you chalk it up to nerves, but when you try to catch her hand, she jerks away from your grasp. And as the minutes tick inexorably towards dessert, the drumming of her fingers steadily building, you realize she’s not nervous. She’s angry.
She holds it in until you get to the car, arms laden with presents, the birthday cake turning into a pit in your stomach.
I told you this was a terrible idea, she seethes, her grip tight on the steering wheel. But you just had to guilt me into doing it anyway, didn’t you?
You start to protest. That was a freak accident, totally unforeseeable. And she agreed to come, you didn’t guilt her into doing anything. Or at least if you made her feel guilty, you didn’t mean to. But all this does is make her angrier.
So now it’s my fault? She shakes her head, laughs an ugly laugh. God, you’ll do anything to avoid taking any fucking accountability.
You’ve learned it’s easier to just stay quiet when she’s like this, so you lean your head against the window, let her tire herself out.
Back home, you lock yourself in one of the bathrooms, take deep breaths until your hands stop shaking, scrub the streaked mascara off your face. By the time you slide uneasily into bed, she seems calmer—calm enough that you dare ask what she’s going to do about the tear.
It’s fine, she says, lips pressed tightly together. I’ll just have to get a new suit.
That night, you dream about it—the long expanse of her skin spread out in front of you, on the couch and on the kitchen counter and on the bed, always the bed. The thin scar on the side of her knee, the tiny freckle at her pulse point, too small to see unless you’re up close.
When you wake up, you wonder. Whose skin has she been touching you with?
7.
When you finally call, your roommate picks up the phone on the first ring, asks no questions. A few days later, you return from your usual grocery run with your old key safe in your jacket pocket.
You tell yourself it’s just a precaution. Things have been okay—good, even. The day after your fight, the woman without skin apologized profusely. She’s great at apologies, you’ve learned. She can pinpoint exactly what she did wrong, to the letter. And she always swears it won’t happen again.
Lately, she’s started talking about getting married. Making promises. I want you to be mine forever, she says, unblinking.
One dry spring morning, she finds you in the kitchen chopping strawberries.
Be back soon, she says, dropping a casual kiss on your cheek. She doesn’t tell you where she’s going, but she doesn’t need to. A year in, there are things about the woman without skin that you just know, no explanation required.
But as the minutes lengthen into hours, you wonder. You know what she’s trying to do, but not how. And the how is suddenly all you can think of, fingertips stained bright red.
When you start going through her things, it’s not because you don’t trust her. Quite the opposite. It’s because you need proof that you’re wrong, that there is a different answer out there, some magical method for getting a new skin other than the brutal, obvious one. In the empty house, you hunt through the trash, dig through the pockets of her coats, turn her books upside down to see if anything falls out. Until finally, elbow deep in the darkness under the bed, you grasp something solid. Pull.
In the bag in the box under the bed, there are seven photos of seven women. They’re not obviously a set, but something in the slant of light, the composition, tells you she took them.
The last photo shows your girlfriend, lying back laughing on a bed—this bed. Her hand is up, half covering her face, as though trying to stop the person taking the picture. Her eyes—impossibly—are brown. But it’s the teeth that get you: a pair of slightly yellowed canines peeking out from a bright smile.
You sit on the floor and stare at that photo for a long time, trying to find a way to spin this into the answer you wanted. Maybe she was wearing brown contacts, for some reason. Maybe she’s gotten her teeth whitened. Or maybe there was never a tooth in the jewelry box—that makes way more sense, actually. You must’ve hallucinated it, made it up. You shove the pictures back under the bed, tell yourself you’ll forget about it.
But you cannot unknow what you know. And the next morning, when you finally snap and check the jewelry box, the tooth is still unapologetically there.
8.
You wait a week, then two. Until finally, on the hottest day of the year, long after the grass has given up and shriveled brown, the sky shatters into rain. All day, you stare out the window and wonder if it will last. But it does—goes on long enough that your phone beeps. FLASH FLOOD ALERT. STAY INSIDE.
It takes a while for the woman without skin to fall asleep that night.
It’s so loud, she whispers, encircling you with her arms. She’s been like this for the past few days, bringing you coffee in the morning, pretending to laugh at your jokes. Like she can sense it.
You wait until her breathing slows, her grip relaxes. In the low light, you can just about make out her face—this face you’ve loved, even after you knew it wasn’t really hers.
You slip out of bed quickly, counting on the hum of the air conditioner and the still pounding rain to cover you. You do not change: just go. In the entryway, you pause only to grab your jacket, check the pocket for your old key. It’s still there.
You close the door softly behind you, and before you know it you’ve made it off the porch and into the rain. Your glasses are useless in this much water, but you wouldn’t look back even if you could. If you did, you’d definitely turn into salt, melt.
You’ve made it halfway across the street when you hear her.
You’re leaving, she says, voice flat.
You freeze midstep. Turn, in the middle of the empty street. The woman without skin leans casually on the porch railing, wrapped in your favorite robe—the flowery one she got you for your birthday.
I have to, you say. You want to move towards her, force yourself to take a step back instead.
The woman without skin looks beautiful in the blue glow of the streetlights, gentle, all that dark hair falling soft and loose around her face. Not her hair, you remind yourself. Not her face.
I just don’t understand, she’s saying, a quiver in her voice. How can you leave after making all the promises that you’ve made?
You didn’t make any promises. But you know what she really means, and shake your head. You didn’t promise her this.
You turn away and in an instant her hand is gripping your forearm, faster and harder than should be possible.
You said you loved me. Unconditionally, she says, and she keeps talking, but your brain is stuck now—fixed on the image in front of you. Through the raindrops on your glasses, you watch as your girlfriend gets soaked, drenched to the skin, and nothing happens. Nothing happens to her.
She sees you realize it. Lets go of your arm. You step back, vision suddenly clear. I didn’t think I needed conditions.
Huysmans
by Gerburg Garmann
L. M. Pino is a queer Mexican writer living in the Bay Area. A proud member of the San Francisco Writer’s Workshop, she is currently working on her first novel.
Gerburg Garmann, a painter, poet, and recently retired professor of global languages and cross-cultural studies at the University of Indianapolis, is now fully concentrating on the arts. Her scholarly publications appear in English, German, and French in international journals. Her artwork and poems have appeared in various magazines and anthologies around the world. She specializes in creating art for women.
Ignatian Literary Magazine 