The Knife
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domestic violence, self-harm, drug abuse, rape
//PART ONE//
Divorce becomes part of my vocabulary when I am ten. I say it over and over to the other children at school who ask. My parents sit on the floral couch and tell my seven-year-old sister and I that they love us and that we will have two Christmases, two houses and two vacations now. That night, Dad moves into an apartment complex down the road, which feels like a different country. I have so many questions. Where do Nicole and I live? Do we move schools? Are Mom and Dad really sad?
Nicole and I spend some nights at Dad’s new apartment. The new thing at Dad’s is the slice of a creek that lays behind the sliding glass doors and the concrete patio with no furniture. Dad moved into this complex in the dead of winter, but it has no bearing on our willingness to go knee-deep in the icy stream. A tiny set of trees out back, woods so sparse that you could see right through the whole thing, stream and all, piques my imagination. It lies behind us, always a soft gurgle, with water that shines silver in the morning light.
One night, Nic and I eat pizza out of its greasy box off the coffee table, criss-cross-applesauce on the floor. Dad lazes in his recliner, eating a slice off his chest. I watch as crumbs spill off his body and into the chair’s crevices. An air of divorced-dad melancholy clouds the whole apartment. At Mom’s, we eat dinner at the table, and it’s usually healthy so I don’t eat it all. But tonight, I dine on a delicious cheese pizza from the people at Pizza Hut who know our names now. Nic and I start homework while Dad watches something on the History Channel about World War I. The narrator drones on about bombs while Nic looks for colored pencils for her homework.
She asks Dad for a pencil sharpener and he goes looking for one, searching under stacked up mail and in the junk drawers.
Dad, c’mon, I need it now.
Damnit, he mumbles, I’m still looking! I don’t have more than two arms!
Well why don’t you have one anyway? I always need one, she asks.
He snaps, If you need one so badly then why isn’t there one in your backpack already? I can’t see the future, Nicole. Give me a minute for Christ’s sake!
My stomach starts to hurt because I know a fight is about to happen. It begins as small rumbles in her mood, then his. Nicole gets upset, saying how It’s not possible for me to do my work unless my pencils are sharpened. Dad explains over and over that I cannot make a pencil sharpener appear out of thin air.
Finally, compromise. Dad will sharpen the pencils with a knife. Nicole is not pleased, but accepts this offer. Peace is restored and I can return to my own homework, which at 10, I take seriously, trying to be the best in my class so Mom and Dad will be proud of me.
Dad holds the small paring knife, forearm rested over knee as he hunches over to work on a pencil. With some pride, he hands Nicole the first one. Inspecting the tip of the eggplant purple pencil, she whines, The edges aren’t smooth like how a pencil sharpener does them. Dad hands her another pencil, a smoother one, and this will not do. My breath quickens, muscles in my stomach tighten in the way that makes me feel like I ate too much pizza, and I brace for impact. The back and forth continues, pencils flying and tears flowing from Nicole as she receives sub-par instruments. Dad begins to raise his voice, which he does often, and leaves rationalizing with my sister behind as he shouts.
Now they’re both screaming. I’m trying to interject, first with Nicole: Please, the pencils are fine. You can still color with them. I’ll let you sleep in my bunk. Then, Dad: Dad, it’s okay. Don’t get upset. Please. It’s no use. You are the dad.
The explosion happens anyway, and Nicole erupts in a tantrum while Dad roars into her screams. I think I am crying now but I can’t tell. The apartment feels unfamiliar. I look around and don’t recognize anything—-even myself. I feel strange in my body. This is not my home and I do not want to sleep here tonight. I want to call Mom, cry in her lap, and tell her that I couldn’t stop everything even though I tried. I imagine myself in the creek, freezing water around my calves, searching for baby tadpoles even though it is the dead of winter. Always looking anyway.
A strange, gurgling noise pulls me from my imagination. I’ve never heard this noise before. Dad is lying back in his brown leather recliner, sobbing into his hand, not even trying to hide it. He releases something that sounds like crying, mumbling something to himself that I don’t hear. He tells us now, I’m trying really hard, I don't know how to do this, I don’t have a pencil sharpener, just the knife.
My stomach ache shifts into full body panic and electricity shoots through me. I didn’t even know dads could cry, but here is mine: tears and snot and sharp, stuttered breaths. We sit exhausted by the sheer weight of the melancholy, thinking about Mom, but no one says that out loud. The TV continues to drone in the background, crumbs scattered on the coffee table, no one speaking. The eruption is over.
Full of guilt and self-blame over not being able to prevent Dad and Nic from crying, I slink off to my new room and sit with the terrible body ache gushing over me. If only we had a pencil sharpener and not a crusty knife, none of this would have happened. I want Mom badly but I don’t deserve to have comfort as punishment for my uselessness. Nic is finished crying and Dad is too. Now, it’s my turn. I feel like the knife in my father’s hands, not quite up for the job of pleasing anyone.
//PART TWO//
I met Collin in the eleventh grade, a month after transferring to a new school. He gave me a seventeenth birthday present, a book titled, “The History of The World in 10 ½ Chapters” in front of the whole girls’ lunch table. He asked me to prom squished into the trunk of my blue Subaru Outback, strumming an acoustic guitar as he sang to me. I fell in love totally and honestly, as one does with their first love. We spent the summer driving around drinking strawberry milkshakes. We had sex for the first time in my childhood bedroom, me being the daring one and buying the condoms at 7-Eleven because he was too embarrassed. We graduated high school together and chose schools less than an hour from each other. Collin didn’t always say it, but I knew he loved me.
In college, we tried out adulthood: sleeping in the same bed, going to each other’s parties, grocery shopping and cooking dinners together. Stress became a third partner in the relationship slowly at first, then rushed in with the force of impending life. He became harder, gruffer, not wanting to sweet talk as much as discussing, the ways in which you need to shape up. For one thing, you’re drinking too much. Too drunk at all the parties. Enough with the weed smoking. I hate it and none of my friends do it. It makes everyone uncomfortable. You need to calm down and behave. We drank at parties: his poison a golden whiskey and mine a silver tequila alone in the kitchen.
With or without an audience, Collin did this game, aptly named “Five Finger Fillet.” Slowly at first, then quicker, then fast, he darted the tip of the knife in-between each finger, the knife going faster as his fingers twitched, boozy sweat forming on his forehead. In the kitchen, Collin pulled out his knife. Don’t play the game, I plead. Please, you’re going to hurt yourself. People gathered, red Solo cups shoved to the edge of the counter, his fingers spread out on the surface in anticipation, the knife moved closer. The game only stopped when he cut himself, I screamed, or someone else took the knife to try it on themselves—mutilation spreading like infection.
In college, my psychiatrist tells me the problem is not just anxiety, bouts of depression, or the hyperactivity of ADHD, but a combination of all three, with a new name: Bipolar Disorder.
The summer after college, we moved into a cozy apartment with high ceilings and long hallways. We were on Main Street, right next to a slew of dive bars and late-night rumblings that called to me like siren songs. I turned down an MFA program in poetry and took up a part-time job in marketing. Collin had an engineering degree and began his job at a starting salary I haven’t ever reached. We both make a decent effort at a normal relationship, though neither of us had a clue what that looked like.
His sharp remarks cut me more than ever, though. Loser, he said. Could never do better, he spat. You really have to try harder, he demanded. Did he really say that? Moments like this were sandwiched between love. Collin cooked dinner, stirred the red sauce that had to sit for hours. He bought me a laptop for my writing. I started a blog, and he read every word. Maybe we were alright.
Then, the Covid-19 hit. The world shut down and fear permeated everything. Collin worked remotely, shut away in a small office while I was left to watch the world disintegrate. I felt like I was going to die. A host of new drugs from friends in the EDM music scene filled the year of quarantine. The time period was one bad, neon-fueled, acid trip where the world was actually ending. Almost all of this was a blur except for a vague memory of swimming in the backyard with my college friends in a kiddie pool surrounded by the baby ducks they bought, high off either Ketamine or DMT at the height of the end of the world. Collin was absorbed in his computer screen. We lived two separate lives.
The world started returning to normal after almost two years, and in private, we wished to do the same, hoping— no, praying— that like everyone waiting for the end of COVID-19, we, too, could receive a vaccine that cured us of the resentment and bitterness left in our wake.
After two years in that apartment, Collin bought a house with a purple front door and we talked about getting married, what we would name our children, clinging to any semblance of normalcy left available to us. Still, nothing changed. He screamed and used his hands much more often, starting small: swiping my glasses off my face, taking the car keys and my phone, until it escalated to pushing and pinning me against the wall with a single arm. Once, he pinned me to the bed with his whole body while our neighbors called the cops after hearing my screams.
My drinking got worse. I couldn’t hold down a job and resigned myself to waiting tables after lasting two months teaching. Collin was seething, my failure a personal assault to the very values he held dear: success, appearing normal, having a wife who knew how to cook and clean. I revolted: more drugs, booze and destruction. Everyone but me agreed that rehab was the solution. I shipped off and he threatened to leave me if I came home early. I came home early and drank on the train ride with a strange man. He picked me up at the station past midnight. We drove home on a knife’s edge.
We stopped speaking, becoming two strangers in the same house. The damage was too large to hide from any longer. I sat in the bathtub and imagined my life in another apartment, with another lover, happy and sober and safe.
I’m done.
Collin seethes, You will NEVER do better, NEVER be able to live on your own, NEVER find another person to put up with all your bullshit and Please stay, please don’t leave, I’ll change— I know I’ve said that before but this time I really mean it and Why aren’t you listening to me? What the fuck is wrong with you? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? He screams an inch from my face, spit flying, and a shocking calm comes over me. The icy feeling spreads through my body like a cleansing of the blood, like standing in the silver creek behind the old apartments in January. This is the last time.
The explosion occurs. I do not apologize, do not cry tears of platitude, do not tell him I’m sorry and I’ll behave better. I stare at Collin and feel strong for the first time. He goes into the kitchen to finish an entire bottle of golden whiskey. Through this, I still believe I love him. I didn’t learn that love can grow from disease until years later.
With a single shove, he clears the kitchen table and pulls out the knife. Fingers spread out on the table, weapon in hand, he begins. He stabs the pointed blade in between fingers with so much anger, the table quakes. Faster and faster, the knife goes as drops of red blood form on his knuckles, hands already battered from punching drywall. This is YOUR fault, he screams. EVERYTHING, ALL OF IT! You are a MONSTER, you have DESTROYED our relationship, EIGHT YEARS DOWN THE FUCKING DRAIN!
For the first time, I do not give him what he wants. I tell him, YOU are the monster. With the knife in his hand, I leave him in the kitchen, walking slowly and methodically up the stairs, each step another jab of the blade into the table.
//PART THREE//
My body suffered from years of abuse at the hands of others. One night, I was drugged and taken into the bathroom at the bar I worked at. I became a stranger to myself on a silver examining table in the hospital two days later. The next week, a security system was installed in my house by my dad, who couldn’t sleep at night knowing I lived alone, nightmares plaguing both of us.
I hit what everyone calls “rock bottom” after the breakup, which devastated me more knowing that I no longer had Collin to blame. When things felt like they couldn’t get any worse, a dear friend who was also using drugs died. Losing him to an accidental overdose caused a full-body chill and a heaviness I haven’t shaken. I decided to sober up. I saw my future, and it was a void. I realized I wanted to live, especially knowing that my friend could no longer take the breaths I had so often wished away. Over the next two years, I worked harder than I knew possible and learned how to be kinder to myself, and my life started falling into place.
One day, my life changed for the better.
On our first date, we sat in the rain drinking coffee outside because we were too distracted to notice trivial things like weather. Mikey walked me to my car and asked me out for a second time. Our second date ended with kissing in my car outside a concert at my favorite local music spot downtown, leaving me feeling like a teenager, although I was 27 and Mikey was 30. They drove around for another hour before returning home that night, they tell me, high off the potent cocktail of hormones and adrenaline, the city lights blurring into a rose-colored haze. The rest of the month went on like this, each adventure an entire world opening before me, each minute apart a testament to the power of the heart’s yearning.
We waited until the fifth date to sleep with each other. Well, I asked them to wait. I was terrified to open my body up to someone I had love-feelings for. Mikey showed up only months after the assault. Their kindness and thoughtfulness was so tender, it made me cry in private. Was I someone that deserves something this good? Falling in love, really falling in love, was bittersweet for someone like me, because in the process of accepting it, I must also acknowledge that what I previously experienced was anything but that. I thought about my past relationship a lot, Collin’s hands versus Mikey’s, what they do and don’t do. I thought about Collin’s lips, his words spat out like blades, death by a thousand cuts. How Mikey’s lips coo my name and kiss me so sweetly even when I’m asleep.
My body is a scorecard for grief. Thin, white tally marks cover my stomach and right upper thigh like ghostly train tracks carved by a red pocketknife stashed in the bathroom drawer. When I slept with people for booze or drugs or to feel desired for a few moments, I thought nothing of my scars. But now it’s Mikey, so perfect with their curls hanging off slender shoulders, with an openness behind their eyes, with the softest touch I’ve ever felt.
I opened myself and they fit inside perfectly. For the first time in my entire life, I was fearless. The past emptied and nothing in the world existed except the present. Every nerve in my body sang the same song. You are safe, my body crooned for the first time. The future unfolded in all its glory, and I saw us. The realization burst through my body in a moment of ecstasy. We laid there afterwards, rolling over on our stomachs, elbows propping us up, staring at each other in awe.
We showered and Mikey washed my hair with the attention of a salon shampooer, head massage included. They washed all the spots I couldn’t reach on my back. I was struck with how bittersweet the moment was. I thought about my mother and father and wondered if they ever washed each other’s hair. They probably did, but I tried to imagine how it looked when they loved each other. Then, Collin and the gaping hole he left inside me. Finally, I remembered Mikey and returned to the shampoo.
The year flies by and in our second summer together, Mikey asks me to be their wife. The word “wife” rolls around like a fat blueberry in my mouth: juicy, sweet, bursting with the season. They ask me on top of the rickety-looking Ferris wheel in Virginia Beach’s boardwalk amusement park.
Baby, please? Will you?
They hold out my mother’s ring, the one she gave us, the one my father gave her, and slide it onto my finger. I hold my hand up to the sun and watch the blue Sapphire and diamonds refracting rainbows, imagining that perhaps my parents’ love is captured inside. Perhaps their adoration is wrapped up with Mikey’s love inside these shining stones—all unconditional.
Yes, I say, and cry until we reach the bottom of the ride. The man operating the ride takes our picture, both of us pink-faced and smiling. We celebrate at the Tiki bar, then stumble onto the beach, getting drunk on love and margaritas. This is the best day of my life, I think, and I know it as moments unfold. Time can put you in multiple places at once: a feeling that this treasured memory will always be in the present, and also in that present moment I could already feel the memory forming into the past.
Love bends time. It cannot erase all memories (I have tested this) but somehow every sweet moment eases the sharpness of pain, dulling it and reducing the sting. Love has no edges, only an open expanse stretching out as far as we can see.
The pocketknife sits in the furthest corner of my bathroom sink drawer, stashed under packages of fake nails and eyelash glue to be hidden. I haven’t used it in over a year, my scars fading slowly from red to purple to white, just a shade or two lighter than my skin color. I don’t use the knife, but I don’t throw it away, either. Its presence is the relief I need now, no longer the thing itself. For the next few weeks, the knife makes its presence known, I can feel its energy radiating from the drawer. When I brush my teeth, it hums a siren song. I wash my face, and it vibrates in its drawer. I apply mascara in the mirror, the knife scores tally marks in the wood. I lie to myself and say that resistance, not the destruction of the knife, is what makes me strong. I have the power now, I choose not to hold the knife, I tell myself. I know this is a lie. This is temptation and I am not that person anymore.
I take out the red knife. It’s old and rusted— the corkscrew, bottle opener and a nail file don’t pop out anymore. What does open is the blade, the big one. I study it, expecting it to transform like magic. Instead, it sits still, poised and ready. No singing, no vibrating, no visible energy radiating from it. It is just a knife. Without ceremony, I snap it and walk to the kitchen trash can. I drop it among cups of yogurt and the spinach we didn’t eat. It goes in with a thunk.
I take out the trash Monday morning. I never hold the knife again.
Catherine Hall Carson is a Richmond, Virginia native with a deep love for writing and teaching. She graduated from James Madison University in 2019 with a B.A. in English literature and a concentration in Creative Writing. Catherine is the poet behind The Land of Opposite Attractions (Brandylane Publishing, 2022). In her free time, Catherine loves to journal, take on art projects, read, and be outside. She is currently working on her second poetry collection and writing short stories. Catherine teaches creative writing classes in Richmond and loves every moment of it.