Mind the Rhythm

Lane Bynum
→BFA PT 2027

Content warning: This story contains mention of graphic violence, blood, eating disorders, and self harm.

I’ve been trying on an unfamiliar sort of calm. When the walk sign is lit up across the crosswalk and I’m half a block away but it will change before I can cross if

I do not hurry, I try not to quicken my

steps. Breathe. It’s okay. It will change, and then it will change again, and maybe you will make it, and if you don’t make

it you will have a minute to stand on

the sidewalk and breathe. And maybe

that will be good for me.

I’ve been trying to sit in comfortable silence with the person I’m dating, or

not dating, but seeing, and I try not to wonder what the difference is. I try not

to think about how maybe I am not as smart or funny or interesting as the other

people he has dated, or seen, and I try not to care when he tells me a story

about one of the girls he has seen, and

he can’t remember her name because he’s seen so many people before me and will see so many more people after me.

I try not to care when he calls me my

best friend’s name as he reassures me, “No, I’m not interested in her, and there

is nothing to worry about. I promise.” I

try to be a grown-up for him.

I try not to dwell on the fact that when he does compliment me, which he does often, it is always, “How pretty you are, how sexy, such a good girl,” and it is

never about how I talk, how I think, how

I breathe.

I’ve been trying to eat more, three meals

a day, a foreign concept. I try not to feel

a sadistic sort of pride in myself when

I begin to shake and feel very dizzy after I’ve skipped breakfast, and lunch, and dinner, and the breakfast after that.

I try not to lift my sanitized hands or the tips of sharpies to my nose for the sweet burning smell.

I do not scream when I slice deep into

my finger as I am cutting up celery, and did you know celery has almost zero calories, and that it takes so much energy to chew that you actually burn calories just by eating it? I do not call anyone or tell anyone or go to the doctor because really, it is no one’s problem but my own and it should get better with some Band-Aids and time.

The fresh blood on the kitchen tiles blends into the months-old stain of

gas station wine, and I decide that

there is no point in cleaning it up. After

a few days I no longer register it when

I walk into the kitchen, which I rarely

do anyways.

When I come home to the smoke alarm

in my apartment chirping every thirty

seconds, shrill and penetrating, I do try

to replace the batteries. I drag a table

over and climb on top, stand on my tiptoes and try to reach up and grab it. When only my fingertips can graze the plastic, and I am beginning to feel faint from the standing and stretching, I climb off of the table. I learn to live with the sound. I let it ring until it no longer registers, let it fade to the back of my skull where it thrums, dull and constant.

I try not to worry when it’s been a week and my finger is still swollen, oozing pus and starting to smell sour, and the weak pulse of pain becomes angrier and more persistent.

I try not to worry when there are layoffs

at the deli where I work, and my boss tells me my hours will be cut in half. I try not to think about the bills piling up on my coffee table, how they now come through marked URGENT in big red letters. Instead, I think of the dandelion seed I saw floating in the wind that morning, diving and soaring for minutes before settling softly on the pavement: Wasn’t that so pretty?

A good luck charm from the universe saying everything will be okay in the end, and if it isn’t, it’s not the end?

When I cannot take the pain any longer, and eventually do go to the doctor, and they tell me “I’m so sorry, you’re going

to lose the finger, and why didn’t you come to us sooner?” I try not to worry.

Instead, I think about the wording “lose the finger” which is a delicate way to

say, “We are going to perform a surgery where we sedate you and cut off your finger with a very sharp blade.” I try not

to worry about how my lost finger was

my left ring finger and if I ever get en- gaged, which seems impossible now that the boy I was seeing is now seeing someone else who is smarter and more interesting and funnier than me, but if I

do get engaged, where will my ring go?

I think about something I saw on a boy’s computer once, a piece of tape that he had written the words “mind the rhythm” on in bold sharpie, and I wonder what

that means. I try to mind the rhythm.

When I slam the middle and pointer fin- ger of my right hand in a car door, and I wake up to them purple and doubled in size, I do not call anyone, I do not tell anyone, and I do not go to the doctor.

I start ignoring the phone when it rings. Picking it up and sandwiching it between my shoulder and ear while I speak is too much work, and besides, I have one-hundred and six episodes of Jeopardy saved on my DVR, and it isn’t going to watch itself. The phone rings twice a day, once a day, once a week, and then not at all.

When the blade of my bagel guillotine slicer slams down and slices the top of my right ring finger as I am trying to adjust the bagel, I do not call anyone,

I do not tell anyone, and I do not go to

the doctor. I wrap it in Band-Aids, and think about being sixteen, and the morning my friend’s mother showed me how to use a guillotine bagel slicer. I think about how I had tried mushrooms for the first time the night before, how I was still a little bit high and how everything still felt a little bit magical. I think about how that friend was sent away to rehab a few months later, and how her mother died a few months after that. I think about the funeral, how the friend had been given two days to grieve before she was sent back, and how that was the last time I ever saw her. I wonder if she is still in rehab, and if I will ever see her again, and I think of her kind mother, who I will never see again.

The trees start getting their leaves back, and it is unseasonably warm. I wrench open the small window of my bedroom, but I am slow to prop it up with a book, and it crashes quick onto my thumbs. I watch them crackle and twist, and I sit with my pink balloon hands. I look out the window at the town house across the street.

I take some time before yanking them out. I watch the old man who lives in the house struggle to carry his groceries up the steps to his front door. I am very fond of the man, and though we have never spoken I often daydream long conversations between the two of us. It is clear to me that he does not have a wife, or children, or grandchildren, because he leaves and returns to the house alone, and his groceries are only enough for one. Because I am generous, I give him a wife in these daydreams, and two children who call him three times a week. He and his wife have been married many years, but their love has not faded with time as it often does. We have a long conversation while I am standing in the window, and I tell him about my troubles at work. He assures

me that everything will work out, that there are plenty of jobs I am well suited for and it will be easy to find another.

He tells me that his youngest daughter just gave birth to her first baby, a boy,

and that he came out healthy. “Nine pounds!” he says. I do not know if nine pounds is small or big for a baby, but still

I smile and congratulate him. “Nine Pounds! You must be so proud.” He is.

With my hours cut I feel out of practice

at the deli, and it is harder now to separate the swiss cheese slices with so many fingers bandaged. When I am cutting

turkey on the meat slicer, and I sever my left pinky finger nearly clean off, and it dangles limply towards the floor, held

on only by a thin piece of skin, I am not surprised. I think of the inevitability of it all, how embarrassing it is to fall victim

to cliche. A finger lost to a meat slicer. How novel.

I worry not for my finger, but the new cut of turkey stained with my blood that must be thrown away. I think surely I will be fired. This time, I cannot avoid the doctor. A coworker shrieks at the sight of my blood, which is, I think, an overreaction. My coworker suffers from dramatic tendencies. She will not stop talking until I am in her car on the way to the doctor’s office.

The doctor is more frantic now when he inspects my hands and their many bandages. “Why didn’t you see me sooner? How could you let this go on so long? What were you thinking? What. Were. You. Thinking?” I wish he would calm down. They are not his fingers, and it is none of his business, really. When the doctor says,“There is only one thing we can do. It’s your lucky day. We have a pair of fresh hands that have just come in from the morgue, and even though they’re not a perfect color match, we could remove your hands, what little there is left of them, and sew the new ones right on with only a few minor operations.” I tell him, “No, thank you. That sounds like quite a lot of work, and I’ve become accustomed to life with fewer fingers, and surely that will translate to life with only two fingers.” He becomes very angry with me, which I feel is entirely unprofessional, and after a minute or so of his protestations, “Why not try?

We can give you brand-spanking-new top of the line hands, and you…” I have already stopped listening. I am listening to the crinkle of parchment paper underneath me, and enjoying the cool air from the

ceiling fan hitting the part of my back exposed by my hospital gown. I wonder why they gave me a hospital gown and insisted I change, when they are only looking at my hands.

When my ninth finger, my left index, is bitten off by a Rottweiler and the owner says, “Sorry, so sorry, please do not take me to small claims court and please do not tell animal control, I have nothing except for Daisy, my precious Rottweiler, my princess, and if she is taken away I will die,” I watch her sob and think of my coworker, how both of their faces crumple and turn very red when they sob, and how embarrassing it is to look so terribly ugly. I try not to think about how unbalanced my hands feel now, one pinky on the right hand and nothing on the other. I try not to think about how no fingers is probably better than just one finger. When I stop trying, I grab a kitchen knife with my mouth, and drop it onto my pinky. My aim is perfect, and the knife passes cleanly through bone before clattering onto the counter top.

My final finger lands on the floor and rolls to the same spot where the first finger fell so long ago. It looks like a baby carrot, lying on the blood-wine stained tile, and I think about how my mother used to give me baby carrots and ketchup and a teacup full of frozen blueberries when I got home from school. I add up the calories in a handful of baby carrots and one serving of ketchup and one teacup of frozen blueberries. Only one-hundred and seven. When blood continues gushing from the wound, I try not to notice how there is more than usual, how, actually it is quite a lot of blood, and maybe one finger would have been better than none after all. When my head is TV static and I begin to fall, I try not to think about how there is no one to catch me, and how if I hit the ground I might never get back up, and how there

is nobody to let themselves into my apartment and wave smelling salts under my nose and wake me and hold me and tell me everything will be okay. I try not to think about any of those things. I try to mind the rhythm.

Lane Bynum is terrible at minding the rhythm.

Writing to a Leaf