CW: death, bodily harm, emotional abuse.

I like car journeys in the passenger’s seat. They give me time to think and rethink things beyond the shape of my life. I’m not allowed to play music, but I can in my head.

Places blur. Memories tangle. Pitying voices from long ago garble in my ear on the thickened tongue of regret.

“Muniza,” my husband says, eyes on the road. “Your skin is slipping.”

Clunky keys open our heavy front door. I used to be able to smell forest pine on it. I can’t anymore. I wince at the mud tracked in from outside. I can’t quite bend the right way, so it’ll take ages to clean.

“Muniza.” My name is a complete sentence when my husband says it in that tone. I pull up my skin. Give my shoulders a shake. It doesn’t really do much, but it looks like I’m trying, which is important evidence for the rest of my life.

I set the grocery bags down, and despite myself it happens. My left eyeball rolls out of my head, and plonks onto the kitchen table. It falls off and stops beside Nadeem’s muddy shoes.

I watch him out of my remaining eye. Nadeem doesn’t have to say anything. We both know he’s a saint, the patience he has to have in this marriage. This isn’t what he signed up for.

When he’s asleep and the furrowed lines in his face have finally smoothed out, I open my laptop. Tonight I research recipes. He deserves an extra special dinner. I bend over in a way that avoids using my neck. The smooth tips of my fingers fly over the keys. I’m still getting used to how they feel. One good thing is I never have to cut my nails anymore because it’s all dead stuff.

My eyeballs wobble in their sockets but they won’t fall out again tonight. I’ve rammed them all the way in, stuffing the gaps with cotton rounds. I soaked the cotton in jasmine oil first. It’s his favorite scent.

My husband and I are very happy, really. Some things are tricky—you have to accept them because men’s idea of romance is so different from women’s. I heard that in a podcast.

For example, Nadeem doesn’t hold my hand anymore. He says it’s because he needs time to get used to the two thumbs on my right hand. He’d forgotten to stop, as he was piecing me back together. Got distracted.

He does so much for us. So I don’t say how could you do this to me or if you can focus on work, you can focus on these things too. Instead I use the little finger on my left hand like a thumb. It gets the job done.

It’s been hard for me to accept too. It still feels like only yesterday when the rose garlands sagged against my elaborate bridal clothes. They pricked at me with their sequins and raised embroidery, but I adored them anyway. They proved I was a married woman. I changed my profile pictures on all my socials to me in my red wedding dress and heavy gold earrings.

Maybe that’s what went wrong. I shouldn’t have shown us off to the world. The evil eye caught us. By mistake I voiced this once to my husband and he snorted, not looking away from his phone.

“What was there to give evil eye to? You didn’t look that good.”

But that’s husbands for you. Men don’t understand these things. And they have terrible memories. Because I remember that’s what my husband said after the accident, when I was sobbing into my pillow, asking why this had to happen to us.

“It’s nobody’s fault, Muniza,” he’d said. “It was the evil eye. Somebody envied us, and in a moment our lives were changed.”

He’d spoken so softly as he looked down at my newly distorted form, and with such a gleam in his eye. Love. A husband’s love is what keeps a wife safe. It’s what our elders said, and all the more true for me. I would literally be dead without him. He rescued me from the car crash. And now I’m more vulnerable than even before. I need a protector.

I find a good recipe for something that needs to be slow cooked. I can do another shop tomorrow. Get those few special ingredients. I’ll put on my shapeless outfit and my beanie that covers the ragged lobes of my ears. My mask. Nobody really looks at my hands. And if they do, they’re quick to look away.

My husband switches his lamp off, which is my signal to do the same.

It happens as I go to sleep, as it does every night. I always worry it might wake my husband, but it’s an interesting thing, how I’m the only one who ever hears it.

Tonight the voice coming sharp and clear from beneath the floorboards is Oogo’s. I loved that monkey though it was only a puppet really. He’d sit on a blue couch in his red T-shirt, popping up in between children’s cartoons some decade and a half ago. He’d conduct quizzes and announce birthdays.

“THAT’S RIGHT! YOU’RE DOING VERY WELL,” Oogo now says through the floor at me. “WELL DONE.”

I ignore him. Every inch of me is watchful of my husband, whose snoring form gives no sign that he can hear it.

“YOU KNOW ALL THE ANSWERS! YOU ARE VERY SMART.”

My left eyeball slips out as I fall asleep, and I find it in the morning rolled all the way to a corner of the room, facing downward unblinkingly.

• • • •

I’m shorter since the crash—I think my husband misplaced a vertebra or two—so my clothes don’t fit well anymore. It’s not a big deal. Just means everything kind of scrapes the floor as I walk.

I do my shopping. Feed the ducks. They’re not all ducks, I’ve found out. There are coots and moorhens too. I told Nadeem but he didn’t care. Men don’t really like animals, I think.

At night I ask him what he thinks of the dinner. He likes it. The meat could be softer though, he says. I pull apart a piece in front of him. Soft like butter.

“It’s been slow cooking all day,” I explain.

I should have thought before doing that. But it’s not easy to focus when I’m tired—I’ve been keeping myself from falling to pieces for so long.

He presses his lips together, and gets all quiet, and in the end he says he has to go out to finish some work, and he’ll be back late.

Before I sleep, I Google sex tips in bed.

Oogo doesn’t appear, which is good, because I need a break. Nostalgia makes me uneasy. But it’s only temporary because soon I hear the voice of that nice lady who used to read storybooks aloud in that children’s TV show back in the nineties. She had strawberry jam lipstick, elegantly positioned frizzy hair, and a striped cardigan that slipped easily up her slender arms. I can’t see her, but I can, in a weird way, as her voice floats up through the room’s floor.

“BUT BILLY DIDN’T LIKE THE SWAMP MONSTER,” she says. “BILLY DIDN’T LIKE IT AT ALL.”

Lingerie won’t work anymore, I decide. It never had, looking back. I order some cleansers and moisturizers, and I get out of bed to try on a different dress. I think it could work. I don’t blow-dry my hair because it falls out in clumps. Instead I add more glue to my scalp and arrange my hair as best I can. It’ll dry overnight if I’m lucky.

“‘WON’T YOU BE FRIENDS WITH ME?’ ASKED THE SILLY SWAMP MONSTER. ‘I KNOW LOTS OF GAMES.’”

What if I could be stitched back better? I’ve never considered this before. My husband’s family were the best tailors in their village, going back. They still move around in fabric commerce and are a big thing in retail. Whatever that means. I’ve never asked. You don’t have room to ask because they were always talking about themselves and how elite they are.

But how hard can sewing be?

After a bit of Googling, quite hard, it turns out. Especially with hands like mine.

I’d forgotten to charge my laptop. And I’d run out the battery listening to podcasts on attachment styles as I’d done the washing up and vacuuming. There’s a lot of information out there. About trauma and why you love the people you do. It’s all so different from what I saw growing up. I’m not sure I fully understand all of it. But I can’t stop reading and learning about it all the same.

The screen goes blank, and I cringe away from my own eyes reflected back at me. One is just about to fall out again. I push it gently back in and try not to swear. It’s important to love oneself even at your lowest. Even if no one else does.

I don’t really want to go downstairs to get the charger. I know what waits for my attention alone in the dark.

On the other hand, I’m not going to sleep anytime soon. I have too much on my mind! The last video I saw was about how to stitch pom-poms. It got me thinking.

So I go downstairs. I don’t really need the light but it always hurts my skin, being in the dark, so I switch them all on as I go. I know it won’t save me from what waits. It can reach me even if I’m surrounded by people or listening to a hundred conversations.

It’s usually after midnight the voice is loudest. Through that unused cabinet downstairs that I never open.

“IF YOU GO OUT IN THE WOODS TODAY, YOU’D BETTER GO IN DISGUISE!

IF YOU GO OUT IN THE WOODS TODAY, YOU’D NEVER BELIEVE YOUR EYES!”

Just an earworm. Voiceless but leaving an imprint of words like a stamp, forcing itself onto my tongue so I mutter along despite myself. I think that’s what I hate about the voice the most. The pull it has on me. I wonder what it feels about the fact I hate it. I wonder if it will ever decide to stop talking to me.

Before I go running back upstairs with the charger, I force myself to slow down enough to dig out the family sewing kit.

The head of the biggest needle watches me from the round pincushion like a wide-open pupil. I can’t suppress a shudder. These needles know me in ways other people never will. They’ve been inside and outside my skin. Connecting my muscles together. Looping strong thread through my joints so I don’t fall away.

I take them all upstairs.

I’m tired and there’s so much to absorb. It doesn’t matter—I’m high on anticipation. I pull up pages on sewing. Human anatomy. Ocular muscles.

By dawn, I’ve done it! I have laced my left eyeball to the back of its orbit.

I jump up and down. I wave back and forth. It stays firmly in. I feel myself warm in pride.

And I can do even more! I just need time.

I look in the mirror. My left eye is absolutely beautiful.

I take in the scars across my face, my arms, my back. Sutured together but leaving lines running through me. Cracks.

I wonder if the needles can help me get rid of them.

Next morning, I whiz excitedly through my chores. Nadeem is soft, forgiving, but I’m too distracted to ask for forgiveness. He goes to work by noon.

After he leaves, I put kajal on my eyes for the first time since everything. The skin around my eye is soft. I still have to use eye drops, but from just looking at my eyes you can’t really tell I’m different from anyone else.

Then I sit and read and make notes.

I dig out all the wall mirrors that used to hang around the house. I’d put them all away. Now I take them to my room. Put them under the bed.

I pause. What if tonight he wants to sleep in our room?

But no, I think. I know he won’t. He was a little extra nice this morning. I know that means I’ll be getting a text saying he’ll be working late tonight, so sorry, don’t make extra chapatis. I’ll sleep downstairs so as not to wake you.

Evening, and I’ve set everything up. I start on my extra thumb. Detach it. Quickly, quickly—try not to look right at it—put gauze on the bit that’s bleeding. Do I feel pain, I wonder. Maybe? How would I know? I’ve been so busy studying what other people want of me, I can’t remember how to begin being myself.

It’s not very late at night but the voice starts again. I hardly pay attention to it. I’m sewing the thumb back where it belongs on my other hand. I’ve arranged the mirrors around me on my bed so I can see the work from every angle.

Finally I sit back and raise my hand up.

It looks really good! Like when I stitched my eye back into place, my success excites me. The in and out of sewing motion was like being on a little boat bobbing its way to a new and incredible future. A new, incredible me.

Then I hear it properly. I’d been kind of moving with the beat of the voice without realizing it, and now that I pay attention it’s the first bit of “We Like to Party” by the Spice Girls. Not the chorus.

Just

“I’VE GOT SOMETHING TO TELL YOU!

I’VE GOT NEWS FOR YOU!”

Over and over.

Then, when I sit back, I feel the first stab of pain. I mean, real pain. At the root of the thumb as I try to move it. The music stops. A new voice rises from the floorboards.

“This isn’t really my fault,” the shaking voice says.

Nadeem.

I don’t ever remember him ever saying anything like that. And it’s not like him at all. So scared and feeble.

“This isn’t really my fault.”

“This isn’t really my fault.”

Pause.

“Hello?” I look up despite myself.

The floorboards are bright. I’ve used so many lights and mirrors for my sewing project, my room looks like a stage with spotlights and misdirections. The floor looks back at me, full of anticipation. As if I’m about to put on a performance.

“Hello?” A gulping sound. “Muniza?”

I lie down and roll over. Sometimes the voices are confusing. I focus on my breathing.

Maybe I go to sleep. I wake up to new voices.

“I want to finish my Masters degree. I’m at home all the time anyway. Might as well do a degree. Online.”

“A good wife gives herself to her home. To her husband. Who will do everything?”

“I will. If I can do all of it, why won’t you let me? In fact, actually . . . I don’t even need your permission? I can do it myself?”

A snort. “How?”

“I’ll figure it out.”

“Not if I don’t want you to.”

And he . . .

He.

It’s a good thing I’ve put the scissors away and that I’ve done my last stitch, because the world turns to black, and I pass out.

Next morning, my head is full of scrambled up white noise. I’m a little slower. Nadeem had arrived late last night and had fallen asleep downstairs without noticing anything.

Something makes me hide my hands from him as he kisses me and leaves.

I go to the unused cabinet. Take out the glass jar. Stare at it.

It’s so quiet now as I hold it.

The problem really was that I hadn’t been truly honest. My husband had often complained about how I’d fall to pieces at any inconvenience. How I over relied on him to do things. So when part of my brain fell out, I didn’t want to tell him. I felt so ashamed. In the end I’d just put it in a glass jar and into that cabinet, and tried not to think about it.

But now things are different. Now that I’m on the ultimate self-improvement project ever, I’m not going to neglect it anymore.

Today I read about brains. They’re very good at hiding things from us. Being on our side but working against us. Splitting us into conflicting fractals. Dreaming big, but scaring us into staying comfortable. Admiring the brave, but committing the mundane.

It might, I concede. It might know what’s best. But I’m more than the bits that make up my brain. Me, the whole of me, is the one who makes the decisions. And I suddenly knew something. Something the voice hadn’t told me. Something I didn’t remember before.

Nadeem, saying, “Now you won’t be going too far, will you?”

And that gleam in his eye that never had anything to do with love.

• • • •

One night, while my husband is asleep at my side, I detach my arms. First one, then the other. It’s not hard. Pain sits on my tongue light and tart, like a lemon mousse, filling my mouth with saliva.

My arms fall with a soft thud onto the rug. They pull themselves forward, fingers and thumb doing all the work. Those muscles made by rolling dough to make round chapatis are coming in handy.

The pain grows distant. Purpose animates me now.

One arm carries the other to reach the door handle. The one that goes vertical loses the gold bangles it usually wears, and the circlets lie forlorn on the floorboards.

Together my two arms shuffle until they get to the family sewing kit. I’d returned it to its original place downstairs.

My arms drag it back up the stairs to me. I’m glad they’re so full of energy. They have work to do.

I watch from the bed as they unzip the kit and take out the needles. The spools of thread.

The scissors.

He won’t wake up. I’ve needed sleeping pills at various points in my life. They’ve come in handy tonight.

Where I come from, we have a ritual when a couple gets married. They sit together for the first time as a married couple, and someone places a mirror in front of them.

The couple looks into this mirror. Two people in a single frame. Just the two of them, in a single reflection.

When Nadeem finally wakes up, we look at my dressing room mirror together. He screams and screams but I had the foresight to tamper with the vocal cords, so he sounds very far away. I don’t want to stitch his lips together. I still want to hear his voice when he settles. Communication is very important in relationships.

When his sobs subside I tell him, through our shared connection, that if we were truly soul mates, then this is what I’ve always been meant to do. I can save him!

Some wives would wash their hands of husbands like him. A man so selfish. Cruel. Misogynistic. But I want us to be different. So what if, I ask him, what if his wellbeing is literally knitted to another human’s? Looking out for himself would mean looking out for two. This will be good for his character, I tell him. He’ll finally learn the greatest thing a person can learn to do in this life—how to love.

And yes, I also got distracted in the process, so I apologize for him having only one eye, which I now wear around our shared neck. His arms are flattened and stitched around my belly, the bones lying on top of my femurs. I had to sand them down so they’d fit, but I’m sure if we had to extract him and build him up again, it could work.

His mouth and throat are by my sternum, his lungs sharing space in my rib cage. It’s a little cramped in there but I’m prepared to give this marriage a real shot. I’m happy to walk the walk. We’re going to work on this marriage.

And become our very best selves!

His mind, I’ve scattered around myself in places I can keep a tab on it. I’ve kept some of the messier pieces nicely in a row of jars in the fridge. I don’t think he needs his heart. He can use mine.

The first step for him to deal with his trauma is to learn he’s safe. Then he must learn he’s capable. I’ve forgotten what the third thing is. Never mind—we have lots to read and learn together.

I had a plan for self-care too. It’s important to invest effort in acts of kindness for our future selves. So I’d spent some time before doing all this removing parts of my brain and stitching them back until I hit the exact right cut. I used a new kitchen knife and a butcher’s block. Precise cuts of my brain, punctuated by me testing out how I feel without each tiny bit.

Then I hit on what I was looking for. The part of my brain so eager to talk to the whole of me using voices from the past. The part that would have been so full of recriminations at this path we are embarking on.

It’s the toxic part of me, I tell Nadeem. He moans in response, not really paying attention. I would have been worried I’d damaged his cognitive centers, but I have access to them. I know he’s there. He’s just a little bit stressed right now. Learning takes time. And perhaps, because he’s never really trusted himself, he can’t find it in him to trust me yet. Because I too am now perceived as part of his untrustworthy self.

I’m giddy with excitement, I tell him. We have so much to do!

But it’s not all about him. I need to give myself space away from ideas that could hold me back. So that little recriminating piece of brain matter must go.

I put it in a little glass jar. We go on a car ride. I sit in the driver’s seat with the combined skills of the both of us. I also get to play music this time! The music helps drown out the alarmed medley made up of Oogo, the reading lady, all the songs and TV shows of my childhood, all in chorus, all urging me to reconsider.

When I slip the lid open and tilt the small bit of flesh into the river, I imagine it not sinking or becoming fish meat, but instead swimming along. Brains can be survivors. Brains can evolve.

I imagine it darting here and there like a fish. Singing to itself with no one to police it. Maybe I’d still be able to hear it on its travels but I’m sure with all it will have to experience, it won’t have time for me.

It would travel the world, my bit of wily resilient brain matter, until it reached a distant shore. And then, I say to Nadeem with just a little bit of wistfulness, what if another me regenerated all around it? Fully whole and fully free?