Handstands on top of an Elephant
Ruby sweeps in, scissors hacking those big, round ears. Her pudgy hands don’t have much strength, so the blades just pierce the outer skin. Lucille offers no resistance. It is the indifference that is infuriating, those empty eyes that say, I know what you are. Ruby picks her up by the trunk, screaming, and hurls her across the bedroom. Lucille makes a crunchy sound when she lands, but has no time to react, as Ruby is on top of her again with the scissors, blades turned pocket knife, stabbing the body again and again.
It was Ruby’s father who first introduced Lucille. The circus had come to town, and with it came the animals. They were so big – there were camels, and elephants, and even a tiger. And in the show the man put his head inside the jaws of a tiger, and a woman stood on the elephant and did handstands, and two clowns kept interrupting and squirting the audience with little water pistols. And afterwards Ruby’s father played a game where he had to shoot little ducks—not real ones—that moved around in a small pool. You got two tickets for each duck, and father won enough tickets for anything on the middle shelf. He picked Ruby up so she could see better, pointed to Lucille, and said, ‘Maybe you could take her home and learn to do handstands together.’
Lucille has a long trunk, and large flat ears, and soft white tusks that bend and twist. Her fur is soft and grey, just like a gorilla’s, even though elephants are not gorillas. Lucille has a zipper on her back and sometimes Ruby’s mother takes out her bones and organs and muscles and places the skin in the washing machine. Lucille assists breakfast eating, and teeth brushing, and sleepless nights. She supports bathtubs and hair brushing and all the bedtime stories. When Ruby is angry, her mother is patient, so patient, until she is not. And then she screams and Ruby screams and Ruby runs to her room and buries herself and Lucille beneath the covers where she dreams of them both escaping on the back of a real elephant.
Ruby drops the scissors and grabs Lucille by the ear, dragging her along the floor towards the bathroom. She climbs onto a little stool to reach the sink and begins to fill the basin. She forces Lucille under the tap. The water makes Lucille’s skin turn a deeper grey, and some of the insides are coming out because of the cuts. As the basin fills Lucille begins to float, and taking a deep breath, Ruby pushes the elephant’s head under the cold water. Ruby holds her breath and begins to count as she presses the submerged head against the porcelain. She wants to get to sixty, but at fourteen she is already struggling and at twenty her lungs feel like they are about to burst. At twenty six she pulls the head out of the water and gasps, taking in mouthfuls of air and staring across at her own reflection. Underneath the droopy eyelids, now more sponge than elephant, Lucille shrugs, your ugliness is not my fault, she says. Ruby screams at herself and then fills her lungs again, plunging the elephant back into water.
It was not obvious when they stopped being friends. Ruby first got suspicious at the playground, when Lucille stayed behind. Thankfully someone spotted her sitting alone on a bench, and shouted out as they were leaving. Ruby ran back, relieved, but Lucille seemed distant and unconcerned. Things got worse around the time her parents started fighting. Father worked late and mother stopped cooking. Lucille did nothing. Worse, she seemed to enjoy the shouting. So, Ruby threw her out the window, but father found her in the evening and brought her back. When Ruby came in, Lucille had installed herself at the top of the bed. Her trunk was resting on the pillows and her front feet were arched forward. I know your secrets, she sneered. And Ruby felt shame. I will never do handstands on top of an elephant, she promised herself, slowly reaching for the scissors.
Flight of the dragonfly 