Antioch swore she could smell gold, that she could taste it in the air. See, she’d say, her tongue bubblegumming onto her nose. See. Right here. She’d lick and sniff and then point at a spot on the ground. That’s where my great-great-grandfather dug for gold, she’d say, and she’d take a piss right there, souring the earth with her insides. Afterward, we kicked up the dirt the way we learned from watching alley cats and pretended we were rich from breathing. If I cut your lungs out, I’d wash them and pan the runoff for gold, Antioch liked to tell me. I always giggled because supposedly everything turned to silt in her hands. Dust Girl, the neighborhood called her. Apparently, she was cursed, which was why she gloved her hands in wool during the winter, silk during the summer.
Antioch was a gymnast, and she wore her gloves even during practice, but that’s all she ever did: practice. Rumor had it she didn’t compete because the judges would’ve forced her to perform ungloved. Our instructors—all Russian—never understood Antioch’s reluctance. You’re magic, they’d say, and sigh as she vaulted, her thighs like twin gibbous moons across the mats, her torso an entire arc. The Russians didn’t believe in Antioch’s curse, and why would they? I figured they didn’t have these sorts of curses in Russia—curses that turned a girl’s touch to dust or tuned a nose to gold’s precise frequency. These sorts of curses only hit girls who’d been spirited away from their mothers, girls who’d never set foot on land where they’d been spit out like tobacco or phlegm. That’s what Antioch told me. She’d been born in Hong Kong, but her uncle had brought her over to California and named her after the town that lynched his Chinese forefathers, miners, the lot of them. The same uncle didn’t understand the value of milk. According to Antioch, it’s why she developed a wandering mouth, fitting keys underneath her tongue and sucking the water from things like paper and pith. Anything can become dust or even gold if you suck hard enough, she explained between sets before hurtling away, tape-wrapped ankles unzipping the air.
I liked her, so I watched everything she did. It’s how I mastered the beam: how to toe-grip four inches of bar and imagine my core as a bowl of water, its rim even and dry. At practice, Antioch and I shared the same corner, and I always let her go first, my eyes following each mount. Stop ogling, she’d laugh, but I couldn’t. Every time she lifted her right leg, I’d catch a splatter of moles along her ass cheek and think of how they’d taste like miniature medals in my mouth, gilded and cold. I studied our routines this way, memorizing the rhythm of victory along my tongue: moles like medals like nipples like moles. Mount, split jump, back handspring, dismount. If Antioch had a wandering mouth, mine was its collar, a fraught loop winding ever tighter.
I got good. I got better—sometimes even better than Antioch. The Russians loved it, called me krasavitza, what a beauty, but all I knew of beauty was sweat-soaked silk kissing my skin, kissing the air, kissing the beam. One afternoon, Antioch laddered gloved fingers along my neck until my shoulders were perfectly set. I never fell from the beam after that. She came to every meet just to watch, and I learned to spot her ankles even with my chin tipped towards the ceiling. They were always the brightest things in the room, winking and raw from all the times she pissed in rose bushes as I kept watch. Whenever I medaled, she let me touch the skin and feel it weep. Doesn’t it hurt? I’d ask, already knowing the answer, and Antioch would nod along. Of course, it hurts. She’d tilt a smile at me, then place one sheathed hand on top of mine and press down till I felt bone. Ashes to ashes, she’d say while eyeing the medal around my neck, and dust to dust.
I only ever saw Antioch take off her gloves once. It happened after I sprained my wrist on a vault. That afternoon, she tugged me into the woods behind the gym. She told me she had a secret to share. Just between us, she whispered, and she licked her lips as if readying herself to spit out a truth. She didn’t, though. Instead, she pulled down her shorts and told me to cover for her as she squatted by a patch of weeds. Ca-li-for-ni-a, she sang, but I could still hear her piss.
Watch, Antioch said when she was done. She brought one hand to her mouth, then another, nipping off each glove and sucking till the silk crumbled. I must have looked surprised—her fingers were clear like jellyfish and looked hard like glass. They were unlike anything I’d ever imagined, and I told her so even as I leaned in. Come closer, Antioch smiled, and when I did, she butterflied those fingers between my legs and nosed my armpit, breathing hard and deep. It made me cry because I wanted her to smell gold, to find something worthy in me that she could pull out like a coin or a curse or even a soul. Please, I sobbed when she sleeved herself inside me, so she pressed onward, kissing me and making dust out of the hair caught between our teeth. When I came, I looked down to where I gripped her, to where she had me hilted at her wrist, and instead of blood or slick or dust or water, what flowed between us was gold, rivers of it. Antioch, I gasped, and we threw back our heads and laughed, laughed until all the gold poured out of us, turning the dirt into treasure, our bodies too.
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