Clutching the can
opener, I glance back. A man too far to see clearly but his footsteps ring like
bells. They’re coming on fast. The streetlight catches his square
head. Could it be the bouncer from the Player’s Retreat? Done with work
he’s got somewhere to be in a hurry. I move over to let him pass.
The headlights of an oncoming car appear. His footsteps drop back. Mom taught
me to stand still when a snapping dog got off his chain. Don’t let them
smell your fear. Stay still or they’ll go for your throat. His footsteps come on again. Show no fear.
For once I’m glad I’m a brownette. I recognize the bouncer from the
Player’s Retreat. He’s
taking off his work shirt as he walks. Why is he
doing that? Maybe he has to be somewhere in such a hurry he has to change his
clothes on the way? Keep walking. Don’t show fear. It’s just Jimbo. God bless …The
song so close. He’s passing soon he’ll be gone. I get way over. the child
that’s got his own A transistor radio,
the old kind Mom listens to when she sits in the orchard with a quart of Budweiser, is
tied to his belt loop. Mom, he’s running. I know he’s coming for me. Get into the street,
do your running in the middle of the street. The blue shirt snaps over my
head. He crooks his arm around my neck. Them that gots the song
half lifts me, unbelievably strong.
"Keep
walking. Don't scream or I'll cut your throat," he says. The air rasps in
his nostrils. He carries me off the sidewalk. I drag my right foot. The
chicks in the incubator cheep cheep under the fuzzy lights, bunch together, one chick
always gets stuck underneath.
"I can't
breathe," I plead, pulling at the shirt. “Please.” I hear an oncoming car
splashing over the viaduct, far away, going somewhere, but I am where the headlights
can’t reach. I stumble.
"Shut
up.” He tightens the shirt, jerks me to the left. In my mind’s eye,
he’s squeezing my neck between the sleeves of the blue shirt and leaving me where Mom
and Easton will never find me. Numb as I am I almost cry out. I’m not
loved well if those are the two who love me best. I’ll haunt Mom’s sleep
like the ewe that died bleating in the orchard. Easton will forget me after they
give him his sketchbook. Don’t forget me, Easton, I hitchhiked five states to
see you. I can’t die without you knowing about those five states.
“Please, I can’t
breathe.”
“Down on
the ground,” he barks. He’ll stop, try to do something, and then I’ll
make myself small, and crawl like I did on the farm when Mom came with the harness.
I’m roll into culverts under the road. The bouncer doesn’t push me instead he commands the ground to
come up and pull me down. He’s above me somewhere.
“Take
the shirt off. I can’t breathe”
One
tug and my jeans are at my ankles. He twists the legs around them. I
can’t run.
“You don’t
need to breathe,” he taunts.
“I want to see
you.” My voice comes up from my knees.
Air rolls in,
cider air, rotting crab apples. Lifting the veil from a bride’s face is the opposite
of this--a secluded place as far from love as you can come. I twist my head. What I
want to see is where I am. In an alley that the tracks must run through, not an
alley that connects to streets, but one that is fading back to weeds. The viaduct
cuts it off. There isn’t anyone to cry for help. Wait, are those shacks
in the corner of my eye? Some homeless people might be sleeping there. If only
I’d worn my glasses. He grips my head. His nostrils flare into skeleton
key holes.
“Look,
ugly,” he says, sweat glittering his forehead like rock salt. His eyes are dull
as little nickels. “Am I prettier than you?”
“Yes,”
I say. Does he really have a knife? There it is with tape wrapped over the handle,
tossed on the ground beside him. He sees me see it,
bares his teeth. His teeth are true white in the plum jelly of his gums.
“I have
thirteen dollars.”
He
curls his lip, pins me with his weight. When he reaches for the knife, he holds the
rusted blade to his face. He’s admiring it.
A heaviness fills my head. I picture Mom’s knife gutting a hen on plucking day,
the glistening innards falling, grit bag and yellow intestines, a pure liquid like peach
juice dripping. I once licked the rawness from my fingers, sampling the poor
hen’s fear. Will he taste me afterwards?
He
sets the knife beside my hip. “Do what I say.” He reaches under
himself.
“I believe in goodness and light.”
”Don’t matter,” he says, freeing himself. “Police down here
won’t believe you.”
Mom, come with the garden hoe and BB gun no matter how drunk you are. You
won’t, you wouldn’t even if you could.
“I’m kind,” I murmur. I feel him try to push inside. My virgin
body won’t let him in. He thrusts but his stomach is hurting me more. He’s
still outside me. “Help me out.” The rock salt on his forehead starts to
flake onto my face. “Kiss me, he
says, wiping sweat off his nose. "It would help.” I kiss him. His lips are warm and wet like
anyone’s. It doesn’t help him. His thrusts go soft.
He’s pushing the air out of me, I can’t stand him on top. Cheep cheek the
chicks in the incubator. I’m going to throw up. A chick smothered,
lifeless clump of dandelion fuzz. My eyes roll. I don’t
whimper. I don't make any sound at all. I could be in my room, the square pink
room with rosewood dresser that came on a sailing ship with grandmother from Prague.
I have to reach under the drawer to pull it open. The bed board with carved
daffodils. I’m curled in the sag of my mattress, just enough room for me.
I pull up the quilt fluffy with goose feathers. He isn’t trying anymore.
He stops. I work at my twisted jeans, wiggling, trying to
pull my right foot free. "
“Nah, you’re too ugly.” I hear his zipper. He gets to his knees,
struggling to get his arms into the workshirt sleeves. “Give me your thirteen
dollars.”
“No,”
I almost wail. “I’m not ugly, you are.” You’re a bouncer,
you can’t even rape. .
I’m
afraid he’ll kick me but he runs down the alley. He throws his voice out of the
trees. “If you go to the police I’ll find you. ”
I roll over onto my
side. Why’d you tie me up, Mom? People can see what you did. It
shows in my face. You wanted me to be, but I’m not ugly. To get inside my
prettiness you enter through my neck. I’m a
listener and that makes me the best conversationalist. I’ll just stay here for
he rest of the night. I don’t want to walk in the dark anymore.
Where’s my bag, the bag with my glasses and thirteen dollars. Over there, he
must have kicked it, scattering the contents. I fumble on my glasses.
*
I’m not the Angelique who left her hotel room a couple of hours ago.
I’m ten Angelique’s different from the one who left Iowa. Easton, maybe
he’ll disappear when I get to him, or turn into a monster. The Davis lobby, dozing when I left, is
wide-awake. Men loiter shuffling their bedroom slippers, whispering.
Birdmen. Their feather arms angle at their sides, their noses jut like long legged
buzzards. The desk clerk stands to get a better look at me. Everyone has seen
the man carry me into the alley. Why else are they all looking? The desk clerk calls
out, “Check out at nine a.m.” I nod. Behind his head recipe
cards read. Unplug Hot Plates. Peace to All Who Enter Here. I bite my lip to
keep from laughing. Every one of them seems to know exactly what happened to me.
They hate me. Why?
I
unlock the door to my room. Has someone been here and pulled the top blanket back?
Could he still be in the room? I check under the bed. No one. I push
the bed against the door. The mirror tries to see me but I duck and strip. His
skin odor creeps from the sweater. I ball up the new black sweater with mutton-leg-sleeves
and stuff it into the wastebasket. When I decide I still smell him I lift the
mattresses and throw the sweater between them. The empty wastebasket reeks of
him. His smell is everywhere. Even in the cinder I pick from the backs
of my legs. No cold water, only hot, percolated water, until the spray of water is like
the tail of a comet. I don’t feel my body at all. I stand in the
shower, scalding myself. I listen through the water for footsteps in the room.
The alley didn’t happen.
I stretch out
on the wood floor and stare at the light bulb. Men pass in the hall. I press my
cheek to my Selected Poems and Letters of Emily Dickinson, tracing her full lips,
her brown eyes so full of what they’d seen from her father’s backyard they
bulged. Her face reminds me of my own. In a different universe she is my
mother. Ugly like I am. Mr. Higgins are you too deeply occupied to say if my
verse is alive? But Mr. Higgins withheld his praise; it was his fault she died
unpublished and unknown.
I lose myself
in Emily’s letters leaping with her between thoughts. I don’t need the
light to read them. The snow is very tall…that makes the trees so low.
I hear her over the man in the next room as he runs water, clears his throat and
spits. There has been frost enough. Let us have summer. Someone
shuffles down the hall, bumping against the door. I wait for them to pass by. I
miss the grasshoppers much. They try the door. The hair stiffens on my neck. The crack
of light under the door has a footprint in it.
“This my
room,” a man slurs.
I hold my
breath.
Finally he
staggers off. If I close my eyes, one of them will stumble in. My head drops to my
chin. I drag my eyes open. They burn like a forest after a rain of stones.
Light. The first bite of sun has come to eat into darkness. I splash water on my face and pull the bed away from the
door.
“Room not
to your liking?" the desk clerk smirks. He scratches his chin with my guest card.
“You owe for phone calls.” No sleep makes sounds rush out of
nowhere. The desk clerk scratches his chin again.
“I made
one local call.” I dare him to repeat his lie.
"My
mistake,” he apologizes.
There are
postcards in a rack behind the desk. Pictures of the hotel in a lovely long ago,
fleshy palms sprout from pots and a chandelier drips from the ceiling, women in tailored
suits and high heels crossed their legs on the lounge chairs. Their lipstick so red.
I’ll never
come back to a place like this, I promise to love myself better.
