Free Notable American Women by Ben Marcus Page A

likewise use the meal of oats as a crushed paste under my arms or at the nape of my neck when I am fasting. In the evening, I spray my eyes with plant milk before retiring; this lubricates my blinking apparatus during sleep, throwing more light into my dreams, though I’m not much of a believer in the imagination. Every Sunday, I chew heated strips of linen, then stuff a handful of bleached soundproof linen in my mouth to prepare the area for food or speech purges.
    If I’m going to say something important to my father, I’ll fasten a tourniquet around my waist before I eat, to prevent lower-body absorption of the nutrients, which drives all of my bodily resources into my head in one huge rush, ensuring that my Dispute and Conflict Faculties will be fully charged.
    Monthly, I cast a hot mold of my inner mouth, to catalog the changes to my palate, which helps me discern my purpose as a “person” and divine my next move in this world. The goal is to dilate the mouth cavity so that it can store more wind and inhale or alter the excess language in a room—since language is made, changed, and destroyed by air and man-made wind— although I would emphasize that I am not a word-eater. In the great state of Ohio, where I once had a home, there is a collection of Ben Marcus Palate Casts—also called Thompson Sticks, if the molding extends into the windpipe—that chart the structural changes to my inner head as I have trafficked into the present moment (huffed). My palate is shrinking and turning smooth over time, as certainly is my head, my hands, my heart.
    I pursue food with my head and limbs wrapped in various fabrics, usually linen filters extracted from the Great Antenna—which increases the speech vitamins in my food, and primes my body to decipher women’s radio waves, in case a command is given and Mother requires my help—but also cottons, wools, and rayons, burlap, and woven foil. I wear a helmet when I eat meat. If my diet requires bread or bread sticks or soaked dough, which it rarely does, or if bean oil, stew, or cake is indicated as a surface disguise or color filter for the object I’ll be concealing in my body, I must take the nourishment while blindfolded and breathe into a cloth mouth-guard for one hour afterward; otherwise, I’ll die. Cheese is forbidden because it conceals accelerated milk. But I have farmed and eaten a cheese made from antique water samples left to harden and mold in my sister’s wooden jewelry box. It’s a translucent cheese with no nutrients or calories, but it animates the body during sleep and possibly improves deep listening skills. If something is being said, anywhere, I care to hear it. This cheese is also produced naturally in the hair of women who diet on girls’ water and follow a promise of stillness.
    If I wear a food bell, although I haven’t worn one since my father attempted a tonal study of my motion within our home, and the bell rings while I am eating, indicating a spastic posture toward the meal, a fast is required to slow my body’s motion. When I was at my physical best, as a teenager, I could run away from Jane Dark if she or her assistants were chasing me—to enforce my copulative obligation at the Silentist compound—and I was frequently agile enough to keep the Ben Marcus Locator bell from ringing, even if it was fastened to my neck. I could run gracefully enough, though to many observers it appeared that I was hardly moving my limbs at all, arcing over the territory as if someone had thrown me.
    Fasting is a common element in the Thompson Food Scheme, naturally, and it is fasting that will be recommended to the reader before setting forth into this book. The kinds of deep fasts, food-deprivation strategies, and language-cleansing styles certainly vary. Nor do fasts necessarily cause weight loss or decay of bone and muscle, although if I fast while listening to a recitation of all-vowel