Dig Me Out, published in 2021, is no longer available in print. But you can get the stories here!
This is “Head Like a Hole.”
I found a hole when I was weeding, I said.
We were in bed, our backs against the headboards. He had his latest ra-ra-team-building book open in his lap, his reading glasses on.
In the front yard, I said. Between the smoke tree and the hostas.
He used to be the chatty one at night, ready to talk about minutiae and mindworms, pulling me away from the gory and gruesome pages in my own lap.
It’s precise too, I said. Six inches deep. A couple inches across.
He looked at me then, his eyes magnified to comic ovals. That’s great babe, he said. What’re you going to put there?
I’m not planting anything, I said. The hole was just there.
He glanced down. The tear in my Sonic Youth t-shirt showed a stripe of flesh near my nipple.
Oh, he said. You think we have chipmunks, or moles, or something?
The lettering on his Blackhawks t-shirt was nearly gone.
No, I said. Not their type of hole.
Hmm, he said. He put his book down and shifted his body towards me. He threw out more ideas: mountain lions, coyotes. Nothing he’d ever seen in our town, he said, but the expanding boundary lines of Chicago suburbs might confuse wild animals. Trap them in a quiet street like ours.
I watched him talk himself further from reality, noted the patches of skull showing through brown and gray hairs, the blooming belly and budding breasts. Fat replacing muscle, hair migrating across his body, things reversing themselves. And in response to that movement, I saw only peace and contentment.
He fell asleep mid-sentence, his words transforming to nonsense sounds. Then, that familiar soft snore, the one that sounded like he was snuffling through silt.
*
Animals that dig holes: Moles. Chipmunks. Skunks. Groundhogs. They dig out grubs and earthworms for meals, seeds and bulbs for snacks. They build burrows and tunnels for shelter. Wild things are living in this sedate suburb. Underneath us.
When I can’t sleep, and I can never sleep, I study holes and their makers. I scour the web for pictures, the unique identifiers of each hole to each species. I take notes.
This is not crazy. This is what forty-nine-year-old women do. We throw ourselves into gardening, and we knead all we can out of our plot of earth. We buy gloves and hats, trowels and shovels. We grip green things and we decide what lives and dies. We nurture and grow. We watch things transform.
*
This is crazy, I said the next night. I stood in our bedroom, in my cargo pants and Replacements t-shirt, sweat in the pits and grass on the knees. The hole is bigger, I said.
You’re tracking mud, he said from the bed. I pictured all the ants and mites and tiny spiders and fleas that might have hitched a ride indoors on me.
I measured it, I said. It’s definitely bigger.
You measured it?
Come see!
He pointed to his book, something ra-ra-team-engagement. His GenX mindset was outdated, the new VP at his work had said. He needed to better speak to Millennials, the VP said, and assigned a syllabus of modern corporate bibles.
Did you cut yourself?
I looked at where he pointed, the crook of my left arm. I didn’t see anything.
Come on, I said, and ran to the front door.
When he joined me, he had a band-aid in his hand. Let me help, he said.
See? I said. It’s out there, and I pointed through the screen.
Your hostas look great, babe, but—
I switched on the patio light, pushed through the storm door, and slipped into my outdoors shoes. He called after me, and I gestured for him to follow.
We stood at the hole.
Maybe… he said.
I watched his lips move as his brain worked.
Don’t they have a Lab? He pointed towards the red Victorian, three houses down from our Craftsman.
It’s not a dog, I said. Look. He followed my index finger. It’s ten inches across now, I said. A foot deep.
He stood with his hands on his hips, a picture of superhero concentration. A forty-nine-year-old man. I’m sure that’s what he was thinking. A homeowner, a people manager, a husband of two decades. A knower of things, a problem solver. He probably thought I was looking to him for answers.
I felt a tenderness towards him then, that soft ache of a bruise in my chest. And I thought of just filling that hole in, the two of us. The hole could be something we wondered at, laughed at, something new to share.
But then he shrugged, his shoulders hitching sharply. I’ll fill it in tomorrow, he said.
No, I said too loud. It’s there for a reason.
What’s the reason?
I felt my own sharpness, a whip of anger. Don’t you want to find out?
*
Animals that shed skin: Snakes. Lizards. Salamanders. Frogs. Hermit Crabs. Some of them eat the skin once it’s shed.
At night, when I can’t sleep, and I can never sleep, I take long showers. I scrub, sloughing off dead skin cells on my loofah, and I shave, stripping my legs and crotch and belly and nipples and underarms of hair. After toweling off I scrape my feet with an emery board, bits of the callouses on my toes and heels coming away like coconut flakes. I sniff at them, dip my tongue into the pile and taste absence.
This is not crazy. This is what all animals do. We molt, and sometimes we consume ourselves for nutrients. We change. We transform in the ways available to us.
*
This is crazy, I said, but I want you to keep watch with me.
He looked at me a long time, and I could catalogue what he saw. The lost elasticity of my breasts, hanging down like pendants. The tightness of my stomach, gut bulging my stretched-out Pavement t-shirt. The gone color and life of my hair, long and limp against my neck. Like him, I was slowly sinking, gravity pulling at every part of us.
OK, he said. But doesn’t it feel like we’re spying on our neighbors?
I pulled him into the living room, on the brown microfiber loveseat from Room and Board. I turned the lights out.
He shrugged and sank down, smiling at the new game.
He talked at first, about the VP, the books he’d been assigned on management and personality scoring and conflict resolution. He wondered if the VP was trying to retrain him, or push him out. He asked about my current contract, UX design for an agency in the city. He asked about the people he knew. I answered in hmms and ohs and fines.
He asked how late we were going to stay up.
Until we see what’s happening, I said.
You get a scrape again?
I followed his finger to my knee. I didn’t see anything.
Watch, I said, pointing outside.
We sat in the dark and waited. The clock on the living room wall circled past eleven, then midnight. I felt him shifting more, jolting himself awake.
Remember when we’d just be getting started around this time? He scratched at his throat and shook his head. Hammering down shots over your sink, then cabbing to Neo? Thrashing all night? Then…
I drummed my fingers on the couch and remembered the harsh house lights coming on at five AM, sending all the night’s children scurrying. We’d make our way home, feet throbbing from the concrete dance floor, heads pounding with the echo of punk and goth beats. I’d turn rabid when we got back to my loft. Command him: fill me, bite me, tear me apart. And he’d obey.
Around one in the morning, he whispered, what are you expecting to see?
I’m not expecting anything, I said.
What if it’s a neighbor?
It’s not a neighbor, I said.
But what if…
He fell asleep mid-sentence, slumping down in his seat.
*
Animals that morph: The mutable rain frog. The golden tortoise beetle. The cuttlefish. The mimic octopus. Most change their skin and coloring for defense, or as a surprising offense.
At night, when I can’t sleep, and I can never sleep, I try on wigs. I paint my face. I dig out old clothes I never gave away.
When he and I were young, dancing till five, I did this for real. I dyed my hair jet black, wore leather and black lips. I cut and spiked my hair with fuschia, wore babydoll dresses and combat boots. I slicked my hair back, wore suspenders and a bow tie, handkerchief in my jeans pocket. I changed my body, and my body became change.
At some point, the only change left was age. Do the things older women did. Trade in discount paint brushes and kitchen shears for a stylist’s chair and foil, Wicker Park for Wilmette. Leave behind Riot Grrrl; embrace gardening. I was to watch things transform under my tutelage, and be comfortable with constancy.
This is not crazy. It’s what animals do.
*
This is crazy, I said the next morning. But it’s bigger. So we need to watch again.
Still in the chair, he stretched his arms overhead, the picture of rest. We need sleep, he said.
You got sleep.
Babe, he said, rubbing at the steel wool on his cheeks. We can’t do all-nighters anymore.
I wanted to tell him that all my nights were all-nighters.
I’m staying up, I said. I want you to join me.
OK, he said, his eyes wide. I never made demands.
So that night, after his shower, and the next night, and the night after that, I led him into the living room. We turned off the lights, settled into the couch. I watched the lawn. He watched me.
Remember, he’d say. The quiet and the dark now made him nostalgic. He became the chatty one again. Remember the song you danced to at Neo?
The DJ played Bauhaus, Ministry, Depeche Mode, and I danced to all of it. I was twenty with a fake ID and black eyes, and the bouncer let me in every time. The dance floor spun and cratered, smoke silhouetting all of us. One night they played a new song with heavy synths and pounding drums. Head like a hole, black as your soul. I thrashed, kicked, headbanged, jumped. My hair long and black, a whip I wielded.
Remember, he said, laughing a little. The alley?
When the bar closed, he followed me into the long alley to the street. I pulled him out of the exodus and up against the brick wall. The words I said lost to the ringing in both of our ears, to the thrum of blood as I pulled him into a cab.
Remember, he said, looking at my Bikini Kill t-shirt with pit stains. All the shirts you stole?
We’d go to cheap shows, the bands playing small clubs before grunge and punk went mainstream. Some bands got bigger, some died after the show. He distracted the merch guys with questions about stickers and buttons, and I’d lift what I could, slip off through the crowd. Back in my loft, he called me sneaky and wild, grew hard. I made noises, guttural and gritty.
After, when he slept, I’d unroll the t-shirts, smooth them out. I’d feel a part of something.
Remember, he said, pulling me back to then, ignoring now.
He fell asleep mid-memory.
*
Animals that age: all of them.
At night, I count all the Me’s. Purple-haired, brunette, black, bleached blond. Cigarette-thin and healthy-fat. New Wave, Goth, Punk. Anti-marriage, wife. Feminist, realist. Transforming my shape, my outlook, my Me-ness, searching for the thing that would snap into place and make this carcass feel like home.
But it never worked. And now the carcass is hardening calcifying with age.
I have to cut it back, force myself out, do what animals do.
This isn’t crazy. This is crazy. This isn’t crazy. This is—
*
What are you doing?
I froze, my hands curled around dirt. The man behind me.
Hey, he said. What are you doing?
I sniffed, smelled his swamp breath and sweat. I turned around in the hole, which now came to my waist, breathing hard, exhaling little grunts. I saw what he saw, the dirt on my feet and hands, my threadbare Nine Inch Nails t-shirt. Digging, hunched over, dirt flying between my legs to arc into the air.
I woke up, he said, and you weren’t there.
He’d hoped for something small. I know he’d imagined running out of the house, waving his arms wildly at the animal at fault, baring his chest and bleating in the language of animal alphas.
Every night? He was shrinking before me, cowering. Or I was growing taller.
I brought my fingers to my face and striped my cheeks with dirt.
I don’t understand, he said.
My throat only grunted and growled. Animals don’t use words. They dig. They run. They tear and bite and gnash teeth.
Hey, he said, and I could hear the plea there. Talk to me.
I took a deep breath of the night air, felt the wind pull and curl my hair into a crown. Then I crawled from the hole and loped towards the house, my limbs loose and hot.
Wait, he said.
The door was open, an overconfident male leaving his burrow unguarded.
You can tell me, he said, please, tell me, what’s happening, what what what
My feet trailed dirt on the stairs, leaving tracks another animal could find. So I made for the bathroom, stripped off my t-shirt and underwear, turned on the tap.
He gasped. What happened?
I looked down at my naked body. I saw rotting meat, like always.
He touched my arm, and I bared my teeth. Babe, seriously, what is this? He pointed.
I looked again. My breasts were dotted with dirt and cuts like extra nipples. My stomach was red with scabs and raw skin. My pubic hair had gone patchy, my legs bore razor nics in the shape of stripes. Everywhere, small ovals of skin missing, some oozing.
The man breathed horror in and out. I remembered it’d been a long time since he’d seen me naked. I remembered how low and driving the drumbeat in that song, how hard I pounded the floor with my feet.
I raked my nails across my breasts, creating red welts. I need out, I said.
Stop, he said.
This is dead, I said, drawing over the lines again with my nails. Blood seeped from one path.
Stop!
He looked at me, and I know he was searching for that young girl pounding the concrete, black boots and black shirts and black hair, combat gear for war on the dance floor.
She’s in here, I said. She’s trapped.
Babe, what are you talking about? What did you do?
I can’t be this anymore, I said. This skin. It’s not me. I grabbed at my breasts, pulled at them hard. This isn’t me, I said.
You mean, he said. I watched him stall, watched him struggle. I watched him, and I wanted him to understand. I felt that tenderness again, that bruise. He could help if I let him, if I–
Are you, do you think you’re, depressed? His mouth curled around the words he never used. Or maybe, he said. Could it be, pre-menopausal?
I’m buried alive, I said, and the heat tore through my throat into a nonsense sound, a growl and a groan.
The water still ran, and the steam rose. I stepped into the shower, and watched my dirt gather at the drain. My skin turned brown and slid down into a pool of rust.
He leaned against the sink, making sounds that were probably words. Asking questions: was the job the problem? The house? The move out of the city? Or the things we hadn’t done, the traveling, the procreating? Or was it the distance between us, the nights in bed with books and not each other. Or, he mused, let’s face it, we were getting older, right, and we were starting to sag and shrink in weird places. Our bodies would no longer let us dance all night and tear each other apart. And that’s tough, he admitted, and maybe we need to talk about that, maybe with someone else.
Why, I said.
What?
Why didn’t you know, I said. That it was me?
You mean – digging the hole?
You don’t see me, I said.
That’s not, that’s not right.
Because this isn’t me, I said.
Wait, he said, waving his arms. Wait. Why did you do this? Did you trick me? You, you set a trap is what you did. Why?
I thought of animals that set traps. Stoats pretend to convulse to draw bunnies closer for the kill. Jaguars and pumas mimic primates to bring them near. And the Amazonian spider makes a massive facsimile of itself with debris and web, to ward off predators. This is something animals do.
At my silence, my distance, he stripped down, pulled off his Bears t-shirt and gym shorts, his loose plaid boxers and watch. He shivered when he stepped into the shower.
We faced each other.
Please babe, he said. Tell me what to do.
He was always good at this, at following my lead.
I see you, he said. For, what, twenty years. I see you. I love you.
I watched his mouth move. His words pinged off my skin like hail.
What do you see, I said.
He smiled. How you dance, he said. How you move. No one and nothing moves like you.
I don’t feel this body, I said. I don’t feel it move.
That’s not true, he said, grabbing my shoulders, shaking me a little. You used to snarl and bite at me in bed. Remember? That loft mattress. You’d rip through me to get to me. And then you’d just give yourself over. The way you shook, the sounds you made. Fuck, I’d lose it just watching you.
That was— I stopped. Was she buried in here? Did she ever really exist?
He reached behind me and turned the now-cold water off. He pulled the towel from the rack, draped it over my shoulders.
We’re older, he said. We’re different. That’s all true. And I look at myself and wonder who that is. I do. Jesus. It’s like, it’s like opposite day or something. My hair, my gut. And when I think about it too much, it makes me, god, almost crazy.
This isn’t crazy, I said.
No, I know.
This is crazy, I said. The two of us. We don’t belong out here.
He laughed. But you wanted to move out here! You said you wanted this.
I wanted to be something else, I said.
Shit, babe, that’s easy. Remember how much you used to change? Do it again. Try something new.
I did, I said, pointing out the door.
I can join you, he said. I’ll go to the gym. I’ll, fuck it, I’ll get a new job. I’ll make more time for you. We can do this together. We can go to counseling even. We can make a change.
I did, I said again.
What do you mean?
I dug.
He squinted at me.
I tried to do the things I could, I said. I planted hostas. I pruned the trees. I weeded. I—
The towel fell off my shoulders as I felt a growl escape my throat.
I found holes, I said. So I researched what they could be. And I found all these things animals do. The ways they change to survive.
He trembled, and tried not to.
I’m just an animal, I said.
OK, he said to the floor of the tub.
But I can’t morph anymore, or shed my skin. Not fully. I don’t get to.
OK. He stepped out, wrapped my discarded towel around his waist.
But I can dig a hole.
OK. OK. He did that thing where he bounced on his toes a bit. OK, he said again. I’ve got an idea.
He grabbed my hand, pulled, and I let him. He jogged, leading my naked body behind him out of the bathroom, down the dirt-covered stairs, into the dark living room. He dropped my hand, then powered up the turntable and speakers. He found the record, put the needle in the right groove.
Watching me, he bobbed his head to the first snare hits and the wordless cries. Then, banged his head to the keyboards and guitar.
I looked out the window, at the hole.
Dance, babe, he said over the dark beat. You remember.
His bare feet began to pound the carpet in a sort of march and jump. The towel fell away, and he was a middle-aged man with paunch and thick pubic hair, his face turning red. He sang along with Trent Reznor, and his throat turned into thick cords of effort.
Dance!
The chorus started, and his muscle memory took over, pogoing up and down, pumping his arms, sweat beading along his forehead and neck.
He stopped as the chorus went back to verse.
Come on, babe, he said, huffing.
I shook my head.
Dance with me. You can do this.
I shook my body, darted between him and the record player.
Stop, he said, as I reached for the stylus. He grabbed my arm, pulled me toward him, and I yanked away, back to the record player. He grabbed me again, and I yanked again. He grabbed both arms, and I pushed him, and he stumbled, turned his ankle, swore.
I ran, out the front door that still stood open to the night.
At the lip of the hole, I looked down. At night, when I couldn’t sleep, and I could never sleep, not in this town with the quiet of a tomb, I came out here and I dug. First with the tools afforded women who garden. Then with feet, kicking away clods of dirt and stamping down what remained. Then, with hands, claws, my entire body burrowing into the earth to find what hid underneath.
This isn’t crazy, I said when I heard him behind me again.
I didn’t say that, he said, his voice high and tight, his body still naked.
Through the open door, the song, the drums.
When my hands and claws gave out, I’d brought out my exacto knife, the one he used to slice open boxes in the mail. I dug underneath my skin to see if I was still there.
Through the door: No you can’t take that away from me.
He moved toward me like a big-game hunter, and his hunting skills were still shit. We could just fill the hole in, he said.
But my head, I said.
He held his hands out in front of him, a shield and distraction. Right now, he said. We can just fill the hole in. Easy.
All that work, I said.
I bet it was, he said, gentle, too gently.
I’m not crazy.
I know. But we can fill the hole in, put all this behind us.
And then what?
He leaned back, puffed out his cheeks, looked up at the sky. The sun will come up, he said. We’ll take the day off. Stay in bed. Talk, read. Whatever you want. Sleep.
I can’t sleep.
OK, he said. His new questions, new thoughts, moving across his face. His easy sleep, his easy contentment, his alone. OK, he said. Then we’ll watch movies, order in pizza.
And then what?
We’ll take the next day too, he said. The wind moved shadows across his wet cheeks.
I pictured it, the two of us in our bed, hiding from the world. Creating a burrow of our blankets, a place we could remember, a place we could start again.
But at some point he’d fall asleep, mid-sentence. And I’d be awake long after.
No, I said, and stepped into the hole.
*
Animals that hibernate: Wood frogs. Deer mice. Squirrels. Hamsters. Bats. Bears.
I can’t sleep, but maybe that means I’ve been saving up. Maybe now that I’ve got my hole in the ground, now that I’ve said goodbye to things above, I can slip into a summer’s nap.
The man says I need to come out, put some clothes on, come with him to a doctor. He frets and cries, begs me to stop slicing, stop tearing, to remember. He speaks, and all the words blend together into a hum, like the buzz of good synth and industrial beat.
Animals that cocoon: Moths and wasps. Animals that chrysalis: Caterpillars.
Maybe I’ve been building my cocoon, my body turning hard like a chrysalis. And maybe I’ll break out soon.
This story first appeared in Dig Me Out by Amy Lee Lillard, published 2021 by Atelier26 Books.