When I was 23, my brother introduced me to his corpse. After a ceremony at the medical school, he invited family to the hospital basement. We waited in a cool, dim hallway while he prepared the body. My mother grabbed my wrist, squeezing bones together.

“Ouch!” I said, and yanked my arm away to rub at invisible fingerprints.

“I’m here,” she whispered. “Remember.”

Inside the lab, the scent of formaldehyde stung my nostrils. My brother stood near a metal table where white sheets draped a human form. The subject for dissection was not overly large, only average, but fear made it massive.

“This is my body,” my brother said. He peeled the sheet down, revealing a man’s face and torso. The man was white, perhaps sixty years old, close enough that I could see pores on his face. The contrast between his waxen pallor and springy strands of hair made him look slightly fake, like a Barbie doll given a haircut.

My brother tucked the linens modestly and said words that were respectful. I don’t remember them. “Natural causes,” he added, “but that’s not science. Sometimes we don’t ask what happened, and sometimes we don’t know.”

As I looked at the man’s face, my brother began to pull at a neat seam on his forehead. As smoothly as he had removed the sheet, he peeled back the man’s scalp. It came away in a large flap—like a thick, curving orange rind. Then, I saw the inside of his head.

My brother went from college to medical school, became a neurologist, and married a psychiatrist; each step took him further away. My path to becoming a counselor was less direct. It spanned five states, nineteen jobs, a broken foot—and two or three broken hearts.

(My tally is uncertain. How do you count a heart when it breaks, and breaks again?)

There is no tradition of healing in my family; we are starting something new.

I had nightmares about the body for a long time, but postmortems are how we learn. It’s been four years since my brother stopped speaking to me. If we speak again, I’ll ask about his dreams….

*

“The Body” is excerpted from Slide a Mirror to Me (Transcendent Zero Press, 2017). While training as a psychotherapist, a young woman recovering from anxiety is called to counsel a girl who’s attempted suicide. Each must find a way to carry herself forward…
 
Slide a Mirror to Me weaves poetry & short stories woven into a loose narrative featuring villains, heroes, and hope. Buy it now at Amazon or, if cost is an issue, please contact me to request an e-ARC. A limited number of advance copies are available.