The Rest of the Story

The second-floor room was not only packed, it was also stuffy despite the droning efforts of a small I-think-I-can-I-think-I-can window air conditioner. Knowing anything could happen at a public open mic event—dreadful poems about cats or pizza, 5,000 words delivered in a monotone—I considered the exit.

            My friend beside me rested her hand on my thigh. “I brought something to read. Please stay.” I smiled and relaxed my grip on the soft, bright sweater in my lap.

            When the first reader centered his girth behind the podium, my mouth hitched to one side. He usually goes last, I thought. I braced myself.

            He said he’d be reading a poem. It wasn't poetry. It was porn. After the first few words, I squeezed my eyes shut, hugged my ribs. A few more syllables and I began to hum ever so softly, twined my legs and leaned forward and back in tiny increments, didn’t stop.

I opened my eyes when I sensed motion nearby. My friend stood and headed for the hall. “Take me with you,” I told her but she didn’t hear. My scream was silent.

Through narrowed eyes, I studied my right foot,  meditated on its crushed-twenty-years-ago sesamoid bone and how the pain had flared recently. I imagined myself walking without shoes, without the custom orthotic that guarantees freedom from pain. Barefoot, my arch tries to make a fist with muscles and tissue someone seems to have scraped with a vegetable peeler.  Pondering pain, I decided, is preferable to hearing hurl.

The moment my mind brought up vomit, I recalled the stench of grade-school spew, the kind that on one level smells like cheese. I pictured a teacher summoning a janitor. When he entered the room, he’d locate the splat then dip his hand inside the sack he'd brought. He'd lift out a mound  of evergreen-colored crumbles and with his fingers splayed slightly he’d shake his hand over the mess on the desktop or floor. The absorb-the-barf bits would rain onto the wet, and shortly after, the room would reek of minty cheese, like if you ate pizza then chewed spearmint gum. As much as I love peppermint, I hate spearmint. It makes me seasick. I think. I’ve never been on a cruise.

~~~~~~

I had trouble sleeping the night of the reading. The morning after, I slipped into obsession mode.

“Why did last night rattle me so? Why didn’t I just leave?” I asked myself those things over and over. “Like my friend did. I sat in the back not far from the door. It would’ve been easy.”

At the kitchen table, I stirred my cappuccino to incorporate the steamed milk into the espresso. I like all of the beverage to be foamy, not just the top layer.

“I'll tell you why I didn’t move.” My words sounded loud, sharp. “Every body part weighed two tons. No way I could move.”

I relocated to the linoleum, my back against the snack cabinet door. Both my bunnies approached. I cringed as all 32 of their one-inch nails assaulted my thighs.

“Am I talking in my I-have-a-treat-for-you voice?” I asked. “Sorry, I don’t.” Again and again I slid their silken ears through my fingers.

“I was like Bambi in the headlights, " I told Domino and Coal Pepper, "or rather his girlfriend, Faline.  Like a doe in the road when her eyes glow in the dark and she won’t, can’t, budge. Instead she’s stuck stiff-legged in the purgatory between fight and flight. Motionless. Freaked. Incapabable of doing the one thing that’d save her.” I sighed. “That was me. Me was she.”

Domino climbed my shirt front to get at my face. Licked the salt  she found there.

~~~~~~

Later that day I sat cross-legged on the sofa in the living room, journal open on my lap.

“I wish so much I’d left," I told the golden walls.  "I thought I was all better, healed. Am I not? Why didn’t I leave?”

Those words—why didn’t I—they’re not four letter words but they could be. Blame isn’t a curse word but it ought to be. When the finger that’s pointing at you is your own, it’s so much sharper than someone else's. Freddy Krueger sharp.
         In that moment I made a decision, closed my notebook with a snap. A minute later I opened it again and began to write.

“I’m done being oblique, finished alluding to the rest of the story.

I am a sexual abuse survivor. All my life I’ve felt like a freak for it,

like the child left in the center of the circle at the end of a game

of Farmer in the Dell. I’m not alone. Statistics say at least 1 in 5

women have been sexually abused. Count the women around you—

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.  Don’t think for a second the eyes of the

wounded ones will glow. They don't always. I can

sometimes spot them, but most of the time their Suzy Sunshine

Syndrome runs way too deep, be it nature or nurture. More often

than not, their competent  functioning misleads.”

        I shut my journal and leaned forward to collect my phone off the cocktail table. Tapped a message to my writer gal pal: If that ever happens again, take me with you when  you leave. I poke the SEND key with a metallic fingernail.

“She’ll know what I’m talking about,” I said, “’cause she’s a Suzy Sunshine too. "

Out of the Box

I lay in bed that night with Mac’s gun box heavy on my chest, the frayed strips of old percale sheets still intact, a cloth cross over my heart. I picked a spot on the ceiling and addressed it.
            “Help. Please.”

            Remarkably, I got a few hours sleep. The green numbers on my clock radio glowed 2:36 when I heard a door open slowly, carefully, somewhere in the house. Inside me, my heart bulged, made my skin feel tight. My eyes stung. Dang it! I need more time! 

            I heaved myself up, the gun case solid against me. I peeked out the window beside my bed. My eyes bridged the seven feet between my house and the Macs.’ I squinted at their Venetian blinds. They formed a solid white wall. I whimpered.

            Nothing stirred outside except the rain that was starting to fall. It had been so long since we’d had rain. A stair creaked and I clenched every part of me. I let go of the box and winced as it thudded against my thighs. I picked it up and shook it close to my ear. Felt and heard the weapon’s weight slide left, then right, inside the box. 
            In the moonlight I focused on the cloth bow and whispered. 
            “Maybe just seeing the gun’ll make him stop. I mean really, I don’t have to kill him. I can just point it at him. Shoot him in the leg if I have to.” The thought of his maroon blood creeping across my beloved pink and green tulip-basket quilt, staining it forever, gave me pause. “Or, I can do what I always do. Roll on my side. Squeeze my eyes shut. Pretend to sleep.”

            I gulped nothing and rapid-blinked tears. Wished tonight was tomorrow. Then it occurred to me: if I don’t stop it this time, the bad thing’ll go on forever and I—

            I gritted my teeth. Balanced the box on my knees, pinched the end of one of the strips. Waited. I focused on my doorknob. The shine of the moon was so bright, surely I’d be able to see the knob twist. Then I'd yank the cloth strip. Flip the latch, fling the box open. Ready, aim—

            I held my hand in front of my face. Even in the half light, I could see my fingers were a blur. Oh, no! What if my gun hand shakes so bad I miss his leg and kill him? Think! What else? What else can I do? I tore at my thumb nail with my teeth. Then I knew. 

          I shoved the gun box off my lap. Tossed back the covers and tiptoe-ran the eight or nine feet to my parents’ bedroom. I barreled through the door and bent over their bed. Pounded the mattress between them.

            “Wake up! Make him stop! Now!”

            As I watched my parents climb out of their separate slumbers, somewhere in the house I heard a door shut slowly, carefully.

~~~

Gracie's eyes never left my face as I told my story. Tears leapt from her chin to her lap where her hands worried a hankie.

            “You did wonderfully, Pet," she said when I finished. She gathered me into her arms and spoke against my shoulder. "I’m so proud of you, so glad for you.”

            I melted against her and wept for what seemed like forever. All the while, she poked through my hair with her age-dry fingers, releasing every tangle.

            “Go home and fetch the box,” she said finally. “We’ll have pie when you get back.”

            After we ate, licked our plates, and put our dishes in the sink, Gracie led the way to the living room. She patted the spot beside her on the sofa.

            “Have a seat,” she said. “Bring the box.”

            After I settled beside her she told me to open it. I tugged at the rag ribbon and drew it away. Undid the little brass latch. When I lifted the lid, I gasped. There was no gun. Instead, there was a glass pie plate and an index card that turned out to be Gracie’s secret recipe for strawberry rhubarb pie. Underneath that was my dresser cloth, the one she said I’d need some day.

            I shut my mouth and faced Gracie, eyes wide. “It’s not a . . . ”

            Gracie nodded, smiled slightly. “I know. Mac came up with the plan. I hoped it might work, prayed it would. Oh, how I prayed. Thank God it did.”

            I held my ribs tight and grinned. “Mac saved me,” I said. “I thought it would be you, but him saving me from beyond the grave? That’s really cool, don’t you think?”   

The Scaredest I've Ever Been

This is what it feels like.  To live in a house that’s haunted.  Possessed.    I’ve never seen “Amityville Horror.”  I'm too chicken.  I think I remember the commercial though.  Didn’t it say the house was alive?

Mine’s like that.  My house.  I can feel it breathe.  The frame, underneath the brick skin and Pink Panther insulation flesh, expands and contracts when it takes a breath.  In a rounded way, like ribs.

The house has help.  Being bad.  I can’t see the winged, Notre Dame-like gargoyles, but I can hear ‘em.  Their loose jowls flap.  And slap.  I listen to the splash and slippery drip of their saliva.  No.  It’s drool.  They know supper’s soon.

Do you have any idea why creepy concrete critters, with forked tongues and eyes that bulge, cover God’s fortress?  I’m pretty sure I know.  They’re looking for a crack.  A way in.  Into the goodness.  Where the angels are.  See, they want to devour the cherubs.  Feast on ‘em.  Use their rough and slimy serpentine tongues to lap at the chubby baby bellies.  

They’re ready, can hardly wait, to snap the holy bones and slurp the marrow that leaks out.  Most of all, they wanna chow down on the scarlet, still throbbing angel hearts.  Make pigs of themselves on the sweet, golden goodness that lives on either side of heavenly sternums.  No way, no how, do they want that to ever shine again on God’s green earth.

I didn’t read about these guys in the World Book Encyclopedia.  Didn’t have to.  They tell me their hissy secrets almost every night.  Right before they say, “On your mark.  Get Set.  Go!” 

They whisper and whine, so I’ll worry and fret.  Then I can’t help it.  My fear pheromone.  It leaks out of me.  Like pee.  I’m pretty sure that’s how their slave finds me.  Shhh!  Don’t move.  I think I hear him.

I know!  I’ll think happy thoughts—Myrtle Beach in August, hot chocolate with extra marshmallows—the big ones.  Oh!  The time my cat, Ginger, had kittens in the laundry cabinet in the basement.  I swear.  It smelled like Campbell’s Chicken and Stars soup. 

Here.  I’ll smile.  Aren’t my teeth pretty?  Betcha can’t tell I sucked my thumb ‘til I was 12, and then some.  Maybe I can trick my fear gland, and it won’t spray.  Crap!  It’s too late.  I’ve already started to shake.

Did you hear that?  The squeak?  That’s the stairs.  The ones at the top always creak when he starts down.  And of course.  Here come those dang devil birds.  Every night they flock to my windowsills.  Wrestle for front row privileges.  ‘Cause they wanna . . . gape . . . gawk . . . at . . .

Hey!  Maybe if I pretend I’m asleep, he’ll go away.  Naw.  It won’t work.  It never has before.  Why would it now?

I’ve got it!  I’ll scream.  Really loud.  Inside my head.  “Mom!  Dad!  Somebody!  Help!”  If Kreskin can bend a spoon with his brain, surely I can wake someone with mine.

I sniff.  Smear my snot.  Naw.  That’s never stopped him either.

C’mon!  C’mon!  He’s not on the bottom step yet.  Think!  Think!  Okay!  Okay!  Here’s what I’ll do!  I’ll roll myself up in my sheet and quilt.  Super tight.  Like a Taco Bell enchilada.  Maybe that way, he won’t be able to penetrate.  My defenses.  Not this time.