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. "

The Bodacious Maturation of Wonder Riley--3

It is my heart’s desire to be a writer when I grow up. There. I said it. And I plan to, need to, verbalize that fact a lot more. In order to get the concept, my very destiny, deep down inside my bone marrow. Toward this I’m-a-writer-at-the-cellular-level-end, I have ordered business cards. They feature a fuschia feather pen and pot of ink illustration. Fuschia happens to be my favorite color. My beauty mentor and next door neighbor, Francoise Suzette Orleans, assures me that pink clashes with my hair, but I’m okay with that. I believe aside from those pertaining to safety, some rules are made to be not just broken, but shattered with great verve.
            In addition to procuring calling cards, I have recently taken on the task of  composing my resume. Tell me how you think this sounds as a career objective: I, Wonder Riley, desire to dart around this world with great ebullience, leaving a trail of clever and profound words in my wake.

            Once they noticed my authorly ambitions, which was approximately thirty six months ago, Pip and Nip proceeded to present me with a word-a-day calendar every single year for Christmas. I endeavor to use interesting, but not pretentious, verbage as the average American reads at an eighth or ninth grade level. To date, my favorite word is grok. It means to understand profoundly and intuitively. Just between you and me, I often wonder if I will ever find someone who groks me, besides Granny Cat. Clearly it’s not Charlie because so far he has failed to grok the fact that I’d like him to put his kisser on mine. The fact that he’s never grokked this particular whim of mine, not even once, deeply offends my feminine sensibilities. He just does the fingertip smooch. Sigh.

            Now if you have the occasion to bestow upon me a gift, perhaps for my birthday which I must tell you is April first (Please do not squinch up your face when I tell you that. It has already provided me with considerable grief during my thirteen years of existence.), a good choice would be a journal. Big or small. Ornate or humble, it matters not. Or notebooks. Legal pads. You know, stuff to jot on. I have gleaned from craft books that a writer must always be within arm’s reach of paper and pencil. Just so you know, Charlie stole 18 miniature-golf pencils for me once upon a time, so I’m pretty set with regards to writing utensils. I could use a cute little pencil sharpener though. Or perhaps a chic tote bag that would lend me an air of jaunty professionalism.

            With regards to my future, there is a vision which I conjure frequently. In this apparition, it is the summer of my eighteenth or perhaps twenty first year. I am standing on the landing of a train depot, flanked on either side by an enormous, psychedelic paisley weekender satchel. My destination is Monroeville, Alabama, home to Harper Lee. For your information, Ms. Lee wrote To Kill a Mockingbird, my very favorite book in the entire world. I plan to appear on her doorstep before lunchtime on the fourth of July and beg her to mentor me in wordsmithing. For this privilege, I am willing to bake biscuits and/or divest her property of dog droppings. I am not certain but I am thinking she’s the type of gal who would be in possession of a Beagle.

            It does darken the mood of my heart to consider the grief my absence will afflict upon Granny Cat. I'm fairly certain Pippa and Nipper will not mourn my exodus as it seems to have been their goal all along.

            One afternoon when we were having tea in the front parlour, Granny Cat picked up my hands and pressed them to her heart. I could feel the steady strong beat of it under my pinkie fingers.

            "Of course they love you, Hannah Persephone Eileen," she said. "You are such a precious and unique young lady and they created you, with of course the assistance of the good Lord."

            I smiled and nodded, but in the valley in the middle of my chest, I did not grok my parents' affection for me.  Not one whit.

To read Part I, click here.

To read Part II, click here.