Enter the body, p.1
Enter the Body, page 1
Dutton Books
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York
First published in the United States of America by Dutton Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2023
Copyright © 2023 by Joy McCullough
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Content Warning
Dramatis Personae
Part One
Trap Room
Juliet
Trap Room
Juliet
Trap Room
Juliet
Trap Room
Juliet
Trap Room
Ophelia
Trap Room
Ophelia
Trap Room
Ophelia
Trap Room
Ophelia
Trap Room
Ophelia
Trap Room
Cordelia
Trap Room
Cordelia
Trap Room
Cordelia
Trap Room
Part Two
Part Three
Ophelia
Trap Room
Ophelia
Trap Room
Cordelia
Trap Room
Cordelia
Trap Room
Cordelia
Trap Room
Juliet
Juliet
Trap Room
Juliet
Trap Room
Juliet
Trap Room
Juliet
Trap Room
Author’s Note
Timeline
Acknowledgments
About the Author
_142821975_
For anyone who’s ever wanted to retell their story
Content warning:
While none of the following events happen on the page in this telling, these things are referenced as having happened in other versions of these stories: sexual assault, mutilation, and death by many forms, including suicide, murder, hanging, burning, drowning, and intimate partner violence.
Dramatis Personae
(in order of their appearance in William Shakespeare’s plays)
Principal players
Lavinia: Daughter of King Titus Andronicus; nineteen; enigmatic (and bloody)
Juliet: Daughter of Lord Capulet of Verona; thirteen; eager (despite the knife in her chest)
Ophelia: Daughter of Polonius, advisor to the king of Denmark; fifteen; ethereal (and drenched)
Cordelia: Daughter of King Lear; seventeen; driven (with bruising around her neck)
Supporting players
Joan of Arc : (burned at the stake)
Gertrude: (poisoned)
Desdemona: (strangled)
Emilia: (stabbed)
Goneril: (died by suicide)
Regan: (poisoned)
Lady Macbeth: (died by suicide)
Cleopatra: (bitten by an asp, suicide)
PART ONE
Women may fall, when there’s no strength in men.
—William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet, 1597
[Trap Room]
(The trap room beneath all the stages, anywhere. The ghost light is perpetually on, but it illuminates very little. Which makes it easier to keep to oneself.
That woman with blood on her hands, for example, always wanders into the same corner, every time she crashes through that great stage of fools to this space beneath. Muttering to herself, but never to anyone else.
The one in the nightgown with strangle marks around her neck—clutching a handkerchief like it’ll save her from these men, these men—she usually heads to a corner too, after the fall. But only because she doesn’t know what else to do.
It’s a room, but there are infinite corners.
Enough for everyone to avoid the zealot in singed armor who reeks of the fire that burned her. Or the wild-eyed queen who looks as though she died a dozen deaths before she drank the poison that brought her here. The sisters who killed one another definitely need their own corners.
They crash through, again and again, these women, while the boards above their heads creak with the trodding of the ones who live, or die in glory.
It gets to be monotonous.
But now comes a girl the others aren’t accustomed to. It’s not that she hasn’t been down here before. In fact, she arrived before the rest of them, a violent splotch of ink from the quill of the Bard so young he hadn’t yet mastered his instrument. She is the first draft to his later masterpieces; without her they don’t exist. And yet they can be forgiven for not remembering her; the moment they see her, they do their level bests to shove her from their minds.
You would too. Only I won’t let you.
The jolt this first-draft girl receives when her body crumples to the ground is the least of her concerns. Those concerns are pretty evenly tied between the blood that gushes from her mouth, and also from the end of each arm, where hands should be. But hands are not.
She doesn’t even bother uncrumpling. What would be the point?
But there’s one woman under this stage compelled to help her, one who has known violence herself and is young enough to remember, while old enough to imagine herself maternal, even if she never survives to bear a child. This maternal one—in a flimsy nightgown that is by design transparent when stage lights hit it exactly right—approaches the bloody heap.
She strokes the girl’s hair, soothes the frightened creature until she looks up. The woman startles; for a moment she’s not certain whether this girl is prey or predator. Perhaps she is covered in someone else’s blood?
She is—but not at her choosing. And her lack of hands offers irrefutable evidence that the girl herself has been on the receiving end of some significant evil.
The woman brings forth her handkerchief, the one that causes her such endless trouble on the stage above; she might as well put it to productive use while she has the chance.
It’s a ridiculous thing, flimsy as her nightdress and no match for the ghastly amounts of blood streaming down the girl’s face. But wielded by one who wishes to be of use, it somehow does what it is meant to do.
The girl is still wrecked; that cannot be undone. But she is no longer a horror show. And after everything she’s been through, the miracle is not that she lives, but that she does not want to be alone. She still craves company. She resists the corners.
This girl, her name is Lavinia. Names are important, even if no one says them. Let’s say she’s nineteen. She considers her options. The woman with the handkerchief has already retreated. The women in the corners are there for a reason.
There are other girls who want nothing to do with corners, though. Cordelia, seventeen, sits in the center of it all. Bedraggled, she’s clearly been through some shit, but it’s more important than anything that she keep it together, that you not see the struggle.
And nearby, another girl. Ophelia, fifteen, is soaking wet. Absolutely drenched. There may be a few leaves in her hair.
Lavinia watches these girls—calligraphy to her splotch of ink—who resist the corners. They see her, but their gazes glance off her. They are shoving her from their minds, like I said they would. In fairness, they both have a lot going on, even if they aren’t missing appendages.
Ophelia is not okay, but she’s not trying to conceal it. She is soaking wet, after all. It’s pretty hard to hide that something has gone awry. She doesn’t just walk around like this, normally, with pond scum clinging to her dress. This is not usual, except for every time the water drags her down and she crashes into this purgatory.
Cordelia is used to ignoring Ophelia. But now this third girl is here. Watching. Disturbing the norms of the trap room. Cordelia thought she was alone. She’s used to being alone. Her own sisters are there, each in their own corners, and even they don’t glance toward her. It’s not that Cordelia likes it this way; it’s just the only way it’s ever been, even up above, and how on earth is she supposed to adjust to something new at this point?
Anyway.
Here they are. For a while. Time doesn’t mean much in this place. They’ve just arrived, or maybe they’ve languished for an eternity, when Juliet crashes through.
Juliet, age thirteen, is also not okay. This is evidenced by the dagger in her heart. She’s making a big production of it too. Even Cordelia can’t look away as the girl wrenches the dagger from her chest and makes a show of figuring out where to put it. Like it matters.
Ophelia considers approaching her, helping her. She’s not sure how, or if she’s allowed, as though there are rules here. But when your world has been composed entirely of rules—rules that landed you here, in fact—it’s a difficult adjustment.
Lavinia flinches at the sight of the dagger. She’s safe now—at least until she’s called back up and it starts all over again—but logic is nothing against her memories of what a blade can do. Anyway, it’s not like she could help; she doesn’t have hands.
Cordelia works hard to act as though the others aren’t there. She has had enough of dramatic, bleeding girls to last a lifetime. Or an eternity, as it were.
Once Juliet figures out the dagger situation—all she has to do is release it and it’s gone, which is a lesson that might have been valuable to learn sooner, but this eternity has no time for is regret—her gaze lands on Lavinia.
And then darts away—I told you it would—and searches desperately for something else, someone else to latch on to. It’s harder for Juliet to shove Lavinia from her mind. Perhaps it’s their shared experience with daggers. Perhaps it’s her youth. She would have nightmares, if sleep were permitted here.
Ophelia allows her eye to be caught. She understands Juliet’s panic and glances apologetically toward Cordelia, as though it’s her fault this other girl won’t acknowledge their presence.
Juliet isn’t bothered. It won’t be the first time she’s been required to wrest attention from the unwilling.)
a rose by any other name
You think me weak
that I would plunge
a blade into my heart
because the boy I loved
lay lifeless at my side.
But love is weakness.
Love is ripping out
your beating heart, laid bare
to the slings and arrows
of outrageous fortune.
Or maybe that vulnerability
is a kind of strength.
Hard to say
while the blood
drains from my body.
Here’s what I knew of love
growing up in that house:
My nursemaid’s devotion
above all else.
Father’s love of his name,
his wealth, himself.
Servants rutting
behind the stables,
perhaps not love
but want at least.
And Mother?
Mother found
less love than I
in the House of Capulet.
Mother was a child
when betrothed to my father.
You think that’s the way of things,
but that’s a lie, a symmetrical heart.
(A lie unearthed
when Father wished
to ally himself
with the House of Paris.)
The other girls Mother’s age
waded in the creek
and braided the hair
of dolls they loved more
than Father would ever love
as Mother was led
to the marriage bed,
a seed planted
that could never bear fruit.
So many seeds sown
but if planted
in unprepared soil
they won’t have
what they need
to grow.
Any decent farmer
knows that.
Finally my seed took root
when Mother was no longer a child,
a miracle considering
the wreckage of her body
after so many unborn children.
Some gone
before she knew they grew.
Some just as her belly began to round,
would tear off pieces of her heart
as they fled her body.
And some survived
until she summoned
all her strength
to push them through
a passage not meant to be breached
an ocean through a pinprick
and out they’d come
skin blue and cold.
By the time I arrived
pink and needy
she could barely look upon me.
She looked upon the altar instead
the church offering not love
but certainty and structure.
It started before I was born.
When she could not control
her womb, she could memorize her scripture,
make her confessions, complete her penance.
And then I arrived, but
I too was unpredictable.
She dragged me to Mass
where I watched the weight
roll off her shoulders
as I squirmed on the hard pews
through endless liturgies
that could never surprise
or disappoint her.
Poor little rich girl
the servants might say
if they heard my woes.
I never wanted for anything
but love.
A fortune’s worth
of dolls and ribbons,
feasts and balls,
gowns and trinkets.
Who was I to complain
if Mother was cold
and Father was
Father?
Even Nurse
who truly showered me
with adoration,
listened to my every woe
and wove her love
into every mended seam,
careful curl, bawdy joke.
Even she loved me
like a daughter.
Like
a daughter.
A substitute
for Susan,
the one she lost.
Most of the time
that was enough.
I always knew
my course was set.
The perfect daughter
until I became
the perfect wife.
Still, I used to daydream
of a life like Susan’s.
(If my beloved nurse’s
child had lived.)
Simple cot
in servants’ quarters,
garments the same,
day unto day.
Fingers raw from
scrubbing dishes or
soiled laundry or
hauling water for
the mistress’s bath
but also
a kind of freedom
in clear roles
in honest work
and the chance
to marry for love.
[Trap room]
(In the trap room, one woman shifts from her corner, agitated. She’s tempted to interrupt, tell this girl who wanted for nothing how ungrateful she was, how foolish to throw it all away. To stab a sword through her own heart.
As far as this woman is concerned, clear roles and honest work can just as easily get you run through by the sword of the one you married for love.
But no one notices this woman’s agitation. Just like they didn’t notice her up above.
Ophelia listens, rapt, to Juliet’s story. Verona is far from Denmark, but Ophelia feels at home in the tale of complicated families.
