Oliver Benjamin
Roy and Sprout came in from the house, flushed and happy.
Leona looked up and away. On top of her anger she now felt an
elephantine sadness.
“Hey, you’re the bitch that lives next door to me!” he declared.
“Excuse me?” Sprout said.
“You’re not as hot as you think. I’ve seen better.”
Suddenly, Leona liked the boy a whole lot more.
“Watch your mouth, kid,” Roy threatened.
“Ha!” he shouted, “They should have put her in a whorehouse,
not a halfway house. The noisethat comes out of that room. She’s
cheap as beans.”
“Listen…” Roy warned.
“You’re just jealous,” Colin said to the kid, though he was pretty
jealous himself.
“She’s a freak. She doesn’t even have a belly button,” he
announced.
It was true. She didn’t. Roy and Niles had already discovered
that.
“How come?” Leona wanted to know.
“It doesn’t matter,” Roy tried to say, but Sprout had already
pulled up her tank top to reveal, but for a faded scar, a flat stomach.
Perfectly flat. Like a doll with no genitals, there was suddenly
something other-worldly about Sprout, as if she was not real after all.
Everyone stared at her except for Roy and the kid.
“I used to have a pierced navel,” she explained, “I made love with
a man with a pierced navel. Our jewelry got tangled and ripped out.”
They all winced involuntarily.
“I didn’t go to the hospital and the wound became infected. There
were complications and emergency surgery. They removed it.”
“Couldn’t they make a new belly button for you?” Colin tried to
joke, “Sew one on?”
“I can’t have children as a result,” she said. “If I can’t give birth,”
she explained, “I won’t take it either.”
Everyone nodded in concert, reluctant to question her opinion
on the issue. No more jokes from Colin. Even the boy fell silent.
But Leona positively shook with fury. She was furious that she
felt guilty for hating Sprout. It was a complex mixture of feelings, one
that needed to be confronted, not through meditation or discussion
or crying as she had been accustomed, but directly and without
restraint.
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