Excerpt: Pussy Burn

This novel excerpt was written by Zena Suri in Catapult’s first 12-Month Novel Generator graduating class

I walked like a penguin to the kitchen, grabbed vodka out of the freezer, placed my lips over the ice cold opening and started to chug. It was liquid anesthetic, coating my throat, warming my chest. I held on to the freezer door. I intended to put the bottle back but it felt too good. I took a couple more swigs and wondered how bad I would scar, and what that scar would look like.

It was around the Christmas Holiday. I was at home trying to rest and relax before a week of shifts. I always liked working the holidays. The ER was calmer, only people who really needed it came in.

I cued up a documentary about blood diamonds, then went to the kitchen to make some tea. I stood at the stove, boiled a pot of water and dropped a rooibos redbush tea bag into my mug. The mug did not hold heat well. It was scorching after I poured in the water. I grabbed a small towel, placed it over the handle and walked back to the couch.

My mother bought this couch. We were shopping at Crate & Barrel. She worried that I would fail in life and wouldn’t be able to buy a couch for myself. I worried about that, too—so I let her buy it for me.

I was settling into a cross-legged seat, when I felt the mug start to slide from my grip. I tried to catch the bottom with my other hand, but it was too hot.

Instead, the mug fell, steaming hot water splashed out, falling into the triangle of my lap. Red tea hit my body, seeped through thin, boy shorts, swam over my pubic bone, and rolled down, to the top of my labia, into my inner thighs.

I could smell flesh burning like crispy barbecue ash. My groin was soft and sensitive from a recent Brazilian wax, as if it had been prepped to burn.

Mind and body separated. The shock of burning hot water on my vagina delayed my pain response. I hobbled over to the bathtub. COLD WATER, I screamed to myself. Screaming, then, crying. Neither reaction relieved the pain, so I became silent and panted. I was trying to rationalize with my body, telling it not to hurt, not to burn.

I inched out of the tub, onto the floor and crawled to my bed, flipped on the ceiling fan. I was still panting. I had no idea how to take the pain away. Every nerve sizzled like severed electrical wire. I thought I may have deserved this, maybe I was being punished for promiscuity. No, I don’t believe in punishment. I believe in wake-up calls.

I grabbed my phone off the bedside table. Chris and Andreas had texted me at exactly the same time. I wrote back , “sorry I can’t meet up” to both of them. I scrolled through contacts in my phone.

I didn’t want to call anyone. I called everyone. It was Christmas week, no one answered except Sara, my friend who was an ER resident at USC.

Me: “You have to come over here. I need help.”

Sara: “What happened.”

Me: “I burned myself. Really badly.”

“With what?” She asked

“Boiling hot water.” I told her.

“Where is the burn?” Sara.

“I was making tea—the mug fell in my lap.” Me.

“Start drinking,” Sara said, “I’ll be there soon.”

When Sara walked through the door twenty minutes later, I was lying on my comforter, in starfish position. The ceiling fan was blowing, I had a vodka bottle in one hand, and was fanning my crotch with the other. The skin on my pelvis was now bright red and I could see blisters forming on both inner thighs. Sara stood in the doorway, like she was scared if she walked any closer, my skin might fall off.

“I think you need to go to the ER.”

“Sara. There is no way I’m going to the ER.”

I pictured a bunch of ER residents huddled together, talking about the ER attending who burned her pussy off, the same way they talked about seeing anal objects, like dildos or toy submarines, light up on xray.

Besides, I should be able to take care of myself.

*

Zena Suri spends most of her time in New York. She is a singer, musician and painter. Girlness is her first memoir.