On Earth As It Is In Heaven

“The Undernetting” by J. G. Orudjev

In the summers we leave our mother’s for our father’s house. It stands on a quiet street on a quiet block where no cars seem to pass, where nothing seems to breathe at all. Red dirt gives birth to great green spikes that shoot up all around the house, and to three-pronged creatures that climb all up its sides.

Find me in the jack-and-jill bathroom, taking bitter bites of soap. I’m trying to clean my insides. I have recently been made aware of Noah’s ark, and when I try to sleep all I see are the gasping bodies of all of mankind in the water. At mass it is always horrible and they’re always telling us horrible stories, but after, all the SUVs in the parking lot seem to glisten and I feel forgiven and all my insides feel clean. My sister is on the other side of the door, in her room, painting her eyes. Tonight, I will climb into her bed and my head will be as quiet as the street our father’s house stands on, except part of me will be thinking about how much I’ll miss her when I’m all by myself in my sleep—I am always doing that, pre-missing her like that.

I’m the first girl in the world who won’t grow up to be a woman. I just barrel through the earth like a bulldozer, or a boy. Imagine the factory where all the big sisters of the world get made. Imagine that big metallic mouth spitting out peach-fuzzed straight-backed big sisters, all glossing their lips in sync.

The one time my sister tried to draw a woman’s face on mine, I somehow came out more boy than ever. I found the fact of my ugliness between the toothpaste confetti in the bathroom mirror. I sincerely questioned His divinity right then. I hate God, I muttered under my breath. Then I bit some more soap.

I should mention my sister is a non-believer, so it’s pretty much up to me to save her soul.

We watch daytime television in our father’s house. On one channel, a supermodel talk show host goes on a date in a fat suit. The tape plays for the studio audience, and we watch them watch it. On another, a woman and a man and a baby await the results of a paternity test. “You are not the father!” the host shouts, and the man cheers, the crowd boos, the mother weeps.

We play games too. In one, a storm has swallowed up our houses. Our husbands are gone at war. All we have now is each other, and this forest. Also there are babies in our tummies. We build a pillow fort. It will be hard, we tell each other, because we will miss our husbands and our houses but together we’ll make it through. We huddle close and think up names for our babies. Lemondrop, Clementine, Lilypad, Sparkly Girl.

Sometimes my sister starts to tell me what men and women do together while I am sitting on the edge of her bed. I nod calmly, thinking there is no way any of that is true, and even if it is, it’s none of my business.

Other times we just say each other’s names, over and over, until they’re just shapes, until they stop making sense anymore.

My mother has thoughts about my sister and her short skirts, her black nail polish. “That girl is damned,” my mother huffed on our drive here. “The devil’s hand is over that girl.” I imagined the devil’s hand as the red claw-clip that holds my mother’s fuss of black curls together.

“You know, your father told me that when that girl was born, she didn’t cry,” she continued. I looked out the window at our town: one flat dark cloud over the flat dark earth. “That girl was born dead.”

In my mother’s mouth, she is only girl, never sister. That word belongs only to me.

When it’s so late it’s morning, and our father is sleeping in the bedroom across the hall, me and my sister log on to chatroulette. We click through the pixelated carousel of teenage boys, men with grey, scraggly beards, other little girls. We stop for a minute on a man whose camcorder is angled down towards his middle. He’s positioned himself on a navy blue rolly chair, his hand is working furiously under the plaid of his boxers. “Ewwww!” my sister says, laughing, and she elbows me into saying it to: “Ewwww!”

I feel itchy. My sister clicks on. I still hear his jagged breathing while she discusses anime with a highschooler in Canada.

It is so hard to stay pious. God plants landmines everywhere.

My sister’s mother lives a town over. She is agnostic and wears a lot of jewelry. Whenever I see her, it is like seeing my teacher in the supermarket. My mother is in the state below us loving Jesus first, turtleneck sweaters second, and me third.

While our father is at work, we play with Bratz dolls in my sister’s bedroom. We give them names, we toil over their histories. My sister’s girl is Sheila Magenta Spears. Mine is the one we make the boy one, because we cut her hair short and put her in a tank top. We usually call her Brad. Today we are fighting over whether to make Sheila the estranged wife of a soldier in Iraq, played by Brad, or the ex-wife of a famous movie star husband, played by Brad. Rain thumps the window, quickens.

Like sisters, we tolerate each other’s cruelty. We say words like stupid and dumb to each other, words that are banned at my house and which tingle and sting on my tongue. It is only when she calls me half-sister when something hot and acidic begins to rise in my throat.

I won’t cry, I tell myself. I will chase her with scissors, and when I catch her, I will cut off all of Sheila’s tinsel blonde hair.

Before she can run, we hear a sound so loud it shakes the house, threatens to split it in two. The lights flicker above us, the carpet vibrates below us. It is God knocking, I think. I’m going to have to answer for all my sinning this summer. And then there is my sister, who I didn’t have enough time to save. She pulls me tightly to her chest.

Outside—our father—perhaps he can see it. Fiery white stripes cutting the dark day sky.

With her heart beating against my cheek, I pray first for His mercy on her. Then, I pray instead that wherever He sends her He sends us both, because I can’t imagine any kingdom without her. Her doll is still clenched inside her fist. I wait for eternity counting the veins in her arm, the rubber bands looped around her wrist.

About the writer

Cortez is a short fiction writer in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Brooklyn Rail, The Good Life Review, and BULL. Find her on instagram @veganchorizo.

About the artist

J. G. Orudjev is a collage artist and painter living in Frederick MD. Her work explores the nature of memory, transformative and transitory states, and the act and language of making meaning. She has a background in sculpture and printmaking, and a deep love of craft. She is a member at NOMA gallery, Frederick.