Alpha

Arms: I sit in this new white room and the men and women in coats are staring at me from the other side of a one-way mirror. I cross my arms and I know that it sounds strange that a woman like me would be worrying about my arms with scars and tattoos and burns. But I can feel their eyes. I can’t help but grab my arms and pull them into me so they can’t see what I’ve let myself become. I can almost hear them, and hell that’s bad enough. I want to go home.

Back: If there’s another mirror behind me I don’t want to look. The eyes are heavier, almost painful back there and I press my back against the chair until my spine grinds against the cold metal. It feels like I’m back during my first day on the humid, suffocating island of parrots and tribes and war, where I got these beautiful patterns and markings in days where time had no meaning and five years was nothing. But the eyes across the glass are different and colder and darker and judging and I wish I could tear them from their sockets.

Collarbone: There’s a line of scars there and I uncross my arms to touch it. I have a lot of scars but these are different. Each one is a line I drew with a knife I had used to kill a stranger and the islanders cheered me on as their own. To them these scars were the claws of tigers and lions sewn into a warrior's necklace, but to me it’s a reminder of what my eyes have seen and how ashamed they think I should be.

Digits: One of my fingers is missing. It’s my left ring finger and I had used to think about how I’ll never be able to wear a wedding ring. But it’s not like anyone will want to marry some girl who was taken in by an island after climbing from the wreckage of a Boeing, then torn back to this country by men with grease paint, guns, and American flags emblazoned on their shoulders. The people in coats thanked them for ‘saving’ me and now they write on their little clipboards and their eyes bore holes in my skin. It’s almost as if they’re afraid I’ll kill another one of them. They should be.

Eyes: Theirs are even worse than mine. It’s been three weeks and their eyes are like little pinpricks against my skin and I pray that I will go numb and they will finally declare that they have found where the devil has touched me like the witch doctor and the priestess of my jungle. But instead I stare at the mirror and hope that my eyes meet theirs and they are unnerved enough to look away. They know I’m sick and angry. I know it, too. But they thought I wanted to come back and they can go to hell.

Face: They’re waiting for me to break, I know it. There are tattoos on my face, curling around my eyes and down my cheeks to strike fear in the heart of my enemies. I remember reading somewhere--long ago, before the island--that people who had tattoos on their face had given up all hope of ever being a normal person. I haven’t given up yet, but yet means I will and that’s what they’re waiting for. Their eyes are heavy enough that I’m going to crack under their weight and it’s only a matter of time.

Gums: I haven’t smiled in a long time. My gums started bleeding my third week on the island and everyone there said it was normal for foreigners. But I picked at the base of my teeth with my nails and did my best to clean up. But the dirt of the jungle and the salt of the ocean and the sand of the bay has a way of getting everywhere--in your mouth, your nails, your hair, your eyes. Maybe it’s better that I killed them. I’ll never do what they ask. I’m angry, tired, and hungry. They’re scared of me. I want to go back to the island.

Hair: I let it grow out over the years. Women would tie feathers and grass into my braids and one of the men had given me a bone bead to thread between a few loose strands. I had always thought it was the most beautiful thing. But now that I’m in this room it’s greasy and dirty and stuck to my forehead and their eyes are pulling apart what I had once thought beautiful. I tried to undo the old braid but my hands shook so hard I gave up. I don’t think any of my college friends would recognize me anymore. And I had been looking forward to my senior year, too.

Iris: The island children had cooed over my blue eyes and I let them stare and smile when they asked me to say something in my silly American accent. The priestess had blue eyes and the first time she saw me she had taken a knife and tried to tear mine from my skull with a screech that reminded me of that jaguar I had helped kill that day. Her eyes were just as wild, her claws just as sharp. I hate the color of my eyes now. They said that if I don’t start complying, they won’t give me any food. I’ve had worse threats. I’m not scared of them.

Jugular: My second week on the island I saw an islander tear out the throat of a rabbit with her teeth. Or maybe that was me. Everything is twisted into a cold, delirious fever dream and my eyes can pick out of green leaves and scarlet blood and sun-beaten skin. I’m slowly losing pieces a bit at a time. I know I would do the same to those eyes on the other side of the glass. One of them says something about tying my hands so I can’t tear out my own throat. I won’t give them the chance to.

Knuckles: I busted my knuckles punching a rock in a bloody rage. I was lucky I hadn’t broken my fingers because I didn’t like the idea of the witch doctor taking my hand in hers and snapping the bones back into place with sickening cracks that still ring clear in my mind next to her watery eyes that stared at me as if I were the most intriguing thing she had ever seen, a girl with smooth flesh instead of thick, sun-beaten skin. I might have been for all I know.

Legs: I pick at the dirt marring the inked carvings on my legs. The swirls like wind and waves are supposed to mean swiftness or something like that. The translation I got was a bit shoddy but no matter what they mean they are a work of art and every time I run I wonder if they actually work. They probably don’t, though, I like to pretend they do. But the eyes couldn’t believe in that sort of thing. I want out of here and I will scream until they listen.

Mouth: I don’t remember what I’ve said to them or if I’ve said anything at all. Their eyes say all they need to but they insist on the intercom above my chair asking me to move or do something else inane and mundane. I wonder if they know who they have holed up in this facility. I have climbed to the top of the tallest trees and fought the bravest warriors and stood at the edge of cliffs and closed my eyes and breathed the scent of war, and that I would rather die than never see my jungle again. Maybe I will.