Free Eve Out of Her Ruins by Ananda Devi

center of their anthill. Do they actually think they’ll find something here besides a girl’s corpse? You think that an angel will come down to Troumaron to show them the way? No, all there is here is death. If they’re astonished when death comes, it’s because they didn’t want to see anything. But I’ve got my eyes open. I know death will come and claim every one of us, in the worst way possible. That’s why I’ve begun practicing.

EVE
    The apartment smells like sulfur. As soon as I walk in, it begins burning.
    They’re waiting in the living room covered with calendar pictures. They ask the usual questions, edged with fear. I answer evasively. Then I figure it out. Savita’s death has changed everything. Her parents have been openly saying what they’ve been thinking: that I dragged her down into the pit. If she’s dead, it’s my fault, they say.
    My father asks me: Do you know anything about her death?
    I would have liked to say, I’m not guilty, but I can’t. Because I was her, because she was me, I’m guilty. We both died at the same moment. All that’s left of me is useless. The words lodge in my mouth. The taste of my saliva nauseates me.
    My father says: They said you set a bad example for her.
    I answer: Do you know any good examples around here?
    He immediately gets up and slaps my face. I was expecting it, of course. He has no other answer to my words. He has no other response to my presence. I moved as he slapped me, and the strike wasn’t nearly so strong.
    My mother has been reduced to almost nothing: a larva of a mother. I get up, tired. I don’t care about them. I don’t want to see them. They don’t know anything about her. They don’t have any imagination. How could they know what she lived through? She doesn’t matter to them. All that matters is what people think, what people say, it’s about appearances, the whole façade of normalcy, their pitiful pride. Their pride? There’s nothing to boast about here. Their mouths are thick with the sludge of mudslinging.
    Leave me the fuck alone, I say.
    All I can think about is lying in Savita’s calm sunlight.
    But he sees I’m tired and punches me, a solid fist punch to my face. I fall onto the armchair in shock. My mother cries out.
    He grabs my hair and forces me to look and listen to him. I shut my eyes and cover my ears.
    He yells curses. He lashes out in such a red rage that even our neighbors and their own neighbors can hear him. His fury echoes further and further, like the aftershocks of an earthquake.
    I’m not really paying attention to what he’s saying anymore. He yells at my mother while he’s still holding me by my hair. I wait, patiently, for him to stop.
    The only thing I tell myself is that I need to think about cutting my hair. Cut it short, very short. Shave it until my skull can be seen. I’ll go bareheaded. Like a lioness nobody would dare touch or even look at directly. Touch a lioness and lose a hand. Teeth sinking into skin, sharp and heavy teeth, teeth thick with blood. And then, digesting in the sun, the lioness will lick them gently to wash them. A lioness’s breath is thick and bloody. The beauty of a lioness digesting, golden and luxuriant.
    Finally, noticing my absent gaze, he yanks his hands out of my hair, pulling out several tufts as well.
    I go into my room at last. I spit bitter saliva. I throw myself onto my bed, paying no attention to the pain in my scalp. Everything I might ever suffer is nothing compared to what Savita endured.
    She was stripped of her body and her life by the sovereign man.
    He refused her any dignity and threw her into a trash bin. He decreed: You are nothing. You don’t exist. You’ve lived for nothing. You’renot useful for anything. You’re over.
    The man, in his uselessness, prevails. What does she say? What does she do? Does she cry? Does she accept the