Robert McCool, Scones and Ash 1 1 part one- turned earth # I hadn’t gone by my birth name for over a year on the morning that I was stacking fresh raspberry scones in their wire baskets and heard the expected threat behind me. In a hoarse, smoky whisper he called across the counter, “Hey there, Belinda.” Despite the heat radiating from the pastries, I froze. # Chapter One- My mother, a draconian bitch and drunk, named me Belinda for reasons all her own. First, she could never pass up an opportunity to piss my father off, and as he was absent from my birth, no doubt doing whatever absent fathers did at the tavern, she threw aside his selections. He‘d chosen possible names from the country he was born in, Ireland. He chose girls’ names like Brigit, Shannon, Grace, and especially Fionna, his favorite. But none of his selections mattered to my mother. She was of German extraction, and predisposed to dictatorial acts. The second reason she chose Belinda was because she thought it had a nice ring to it, sounding just like “belittle” when said the right way. That kind of thing mattered to her more than the behavior of my father. He was Irish and couldn’t help himself, but a daughter had an obligation to her mother, and she planned to use that allegiance whenever possible. Anyway, my name was the last thing my mother ever gave me for free, from there on I was made to negotiate for anything I wanted or cared about. She never understood the caring part, but tormenting me freshened the twisted rhetoric of her
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Transcript
Robert McCool, Scones and Ash 1
1
part one- turned earth
#
I hadn’t gone by my birth name for over a year on the morning that I was stacking
fresh raspberry scones in their wire baskets and heard the expected threat behind me. In a
hoarse, smoky whisper he called across the counter, “Hey there, Belinda.” Despite the
heat radiating from the pastries, I froze.
#
Chapter One-
My mother, a draconian bitch and drunk, named me Belinda for reasons all her
own. First, she could never pass up an opportunity to piss my father off, and as he was
absent from my birth, no doubt doing whatever absent fathers did at the tavern, she threw
aside his selections. He‘d chosen possible names from the country he was born in,
Ireland. He chose girls’ names like Brigit, Shannon, Grace, and especially Fionna, his
favorite. But none of his selections mattered to my mother. She was of German
extraction, and predisposed to dictatorial acts.
The second reason she chose Belinda was because she thought it had a nice ring
to it, sounding just like “belittle” when said the right way. That kind of thing mattered to
her more than the behavior of my father. He was Irish and couldn’t help himself, but a
daughter had an obligation to her mother, and she planned to use that allegiance
whenever possible. Anyway, my name was the last thing my mother ever gave me for
free, from there on I was made to negotiate for anything I wanted or cared about. She
never understood the caring part, but tormenting me freshened the twisted rhetoric of her
Robert McCool, Scones and Ash 2
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emotional weather. She blew hot and cold, and I became a barometer measuring her highs
and lows.
When my father held me in his arms for the first time he forgave my mother’s
choice of names. When he saw my ridiculous copper hair he cried copious tears, many of
which landed on my face so it seemed I was weeping too. We were two of a kind, my da’
and I, much more than the tears and sentiment, we were bonded by a history I couldn’t
know yet. Tears come easily to me too, fighting comes on faster, and I can carry a grudge
for an eternity. That’s us, me da’ and me.
#
Almost every engaging tale begins with a senseless, yet meaningful death. My
story is no different, other than the question of whether you think it’s engaging or not.
This death is both supremely meaningful to me, and senseless in any context. He
shouldn’t have died in the way he did, he shouldn’t have died so young, or in this exile
country. His passing made me into a time-machine, gauging life in a before, and after he
was gone. My memories of him alive haunt me always, and seem to whisper in my ear
from a perch on my shoulder. Thoughts of him dead enrage me. He left me split apart,
like he was when he came to America, leaving his real home behind him, but festering in
his heart. We two, alike in life, shared a rich history.
When I was fourteen my father took to sick; mentally sick, mortally ill, and just
plain crazy. His illness began with a high fever and sudden disorientation. He fell over
like a stout oak tree would in a terrible storm and was rushed to hospital by some of his
co-workers. Not by my mother, mind you, she was doing better things, like drinking
herself insensible. She was also insensible for visiting hours, refusing to attend to my da's
Robert McCool, Scones and Ash 3
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hospital bed. She was terminally insensible after that.
Once he got to the emergency room he was placed in an ice bath, bringing his
fever down to a safe temperature. But his brain was already damaged. Never all that
stable to begin with, having lived half in and half out of the Celtic spirit world his whole
life, he complained in a loud voice to anyone who would listen that a dragon had entered
his body, burning away at his brain so that it could feed on his mind from the inside while
remaining undetected. His uncontrolled fever seemed to support his ravings, even if they
were wacko. So he was admitted to the psych ward. The sooner he went there the better,
because the emergency room staff didn’t want his verbal lunacy poisoning the healing
atmosphere in their pristine meat locker. They shoved him upstairs as quickly as they
could.
He was injected with Haldol until he couldn’t speak, until he was helpless enough
so the doctors could survey the extent of his trauma. His fever was elevated, but not
dangerously so, so he was sent for an MIR with enough sedative inside him to insure he
wouldn’t move during the procedure. He couldn’t even move his mouth, couldn’t
remember the noisy machine he was entombed in while it decoded his faulty wet-ware.
On the return trip his fever spiked and nobody noticed until a nurse saw how
inflamed his face and skin were. He was placed in another ice-bath, but couldn’t even sit
up in the tub by himself. For fear of drowning him an intern and the nurse held his
shoulders above the quickly warming water in the tub. His fever peaked in their hands,
then descended into safety. But his brain had left the safe part long ago.
The worse physical effect the second inflamed attack had given the poor man was
that his skin, particularly his chest and arms, began flaking away in thin sheets, like snake
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scales.
I wondered then if he was right. Surely his brain damage couldn’t cause such a
symptom? Could it? Either way, the next time I saw him he had livid red scratches
anywhere he could reach with his nails. His hands were bound in thick gauze mittens, but
even they showed red at the tips.
He was given broad range antibiotics to fight whatever infection was responsible
for the clinging fever. They didn’t work, because he didn’t have any infection other than
a minor one from his self-inflicted scratches. No infection? What about encephalitis? No,
the lumbar puncture showed negative. A tumor? None showed up in his MRI. Hepatitis?
Some other horrible viral beastie? Nobody really knew what was wrong, so they labeled
it, “persistent idiopathic fever”. It was a generic catch-all name explicitly implying
ignorance.
He was shipped off to a long-term care facility that didn’t discriminate against
patients based on income or insurance. If he had been aware of his surroundings however,
he would have raved and tried to escape regardless of illness. It was a facility owned and
operated by the Gray Nuns of the Catholic Church.
He lived alone inside his mind, or the dragon’s mind, for about two years. I
reached out to him with British tea and digestive biscuits, even the rough cut, oaty
“Hob-Nobs” he liked when I could find them. These small kindnesses helped pull him
back into my world, and out of the creature’s, for a brief time.
There were times when he was lucid, if you ignored his primary complaint, and
the two us had an opportunity to talk about many things I bet most teenage girls never
shared with their father. Like how he no longer feared death. In fact, he saw it as a
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blessing, and tried to invoke it by heavenly petition every night and day. Being consumed
from the inside out had made him skeletal thin and hopeless as any prisoner of war. This
once stout Belfast iron-worker in the ship-yard who weighed twenty-four stone six was
reduced to half his size, and all of his strength swept along away with his blazing brain.
And hopeless? His mind was often chained down by strong medications, so he forgot
who he was.
But he told me he never forgot who I was, or where I was. He could always find
the beacon of my blazing hair, so like his. Even when I was only a dim light in the fog, he
knew I was out there, somewhere. His invalid state had given us a chance to connect at
last, like looking in a mirror and seeing the other person sitting beside you. When I
looked into that mirror I did so with the same agate blue-green eyes as his, my nose a
pointer directly at his. I even saw his deep sadness and ensuing violence inside of myself.
My mother knew better than to grind my ass when my eyes grew glacial like da‘s.
She’d been the same with my father, wary when his eyes shone cold fire. After all, she
was only Aryan dishwater blond, with no Irish poetry in her soul. But the unexplained
fever still rolled around in his body like a fire dance, like flickering coals slowly roasting
his flesh and burning his poetry away on a personal pyre. When the poetry was gone
would be the true death of his soul.
On my last visit he was clear enough to hold a discussion about where his life had
brought him was when I became frightened for myself.
He described standing in a giant’s circle outside of Belfast, and clinging hard on a
solid tree while he listened to fey, long dead spirits call him with an unbearable
attraction. All he needed to do was release his hands and he would exist for all eternity
Robert McCool, Scones and Ash 6
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with them, although it wouldn’t be in an mortal state. It is a tribute to his strength that he
stayed and listened, then walked free of the grassy circle intact.
He spoke in loving terms of the Giant’s Causeway on the northeast shore. The
massive basalt columns rose heavenward over his head, and he knew for certain then that
the giant Finn Mac Cool had fallen in love with a Scottish lass and built the bridge over
the ocean from Ireland. In his haste, however, Finn didn’t build for duration, a common
flaw with giants. His mortal love lasted about the same time as his stone bridge falling
into the cold North Sea like a inept Atlantis. The ruins remain behind with their stories of
greatness running around in my father’s once poetic, but failing mind. And he told me
more stories, stories of heroes and cattle robbers, and the fey folk, the Tuatha de Danann.
Then he started to explain to me how the serpent consuming him originated from
my mother, how she infected him with a vicious meanness and an alcoholic bitterness.
She put the fire in him because she was a fire witch, a soured, hopeless dragon herself.
“It’s a firedrake she put in me,” he explained, “because of her Germanic ancestry, you
see.” He was completely Irish in his personal mythology, so he believed the inexplicable
had a very real place in everyday life. Thoughts of actual dragons weren’t too far away
from his own spiritual misperceptions. He told me how he felt the rippling movements
inside his chest, and how he knew the beast was almost done with him because of the
cracking in his limbs as the beast stretched out its own. This, then, would be the end of its
confinement, and his fragile cooked crab shell would break open to release the hot meat
inside.
But he had one last warning he struggled to give to me. As he began to burn up
for the last time, he fought to stay rational enough to hold my hand and plead. “Be aware,
Robert McCool, Scones and Ash 7
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daughter, for the serpent’s presence inside you darlin’, for it, and the control of it, are
handed down the female line.” I nodded my head, acknowledging his perception of what
was rational was the speech of a dying man.
I left him, knowing it was for the last time. It was time for him to go. And go he
did, in one last fever spike of 108 degrees. The ice bath they put him in started to smoke
and his brain finally turned to sloppy mush. The attendants had to wait to pull him from
the water for fear of blistering their hands. My da’ went out with a blaze. One nurse
named Odie, a black woman from the hot, deep south, stated as matter of fact she saw a
creature leave my father’s body at the exact moment of his death. A doctor believed she
was hysterical, so she was sedated, and sent off to be evaluated at the local hospital’s the
psych ward. This pissed her off so bad she quit without returning, and instead took a job
nursing in the hospital she’d been sent to.
Conal had left instructions for his disposal with a close friend also from the old
country. He was to be waked at his closest friend’s house, with dark stout and whiskey
abounding. They were to play traditional music as loud as they could rattle, so he could
hear it even from heaven afar. He was to hold a tumbler of Bushmill’s in his once meaty
hand, and the glass to be refreshed as he sipped from it. He was to be able to look upon
all the fine Irish girls, including myself, as we Irish toe-danced in a kicking leg circle.
Finally, when the wake was done he was to be bodily cremated, again. He had sent
money in an envelope to cover the expenses of the wake, the holy fire in the people
furnace, and his friend’s trip home to be scattered across the Giant‘s Causeway. In the
envelope was a brief note for the host of the festivities, and one for me.
Mine read, “You are joy to a dying man. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, but I
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was troubled and violent, as is, you know, your mother. It was the reason I married her.
She had as much violence inside as I did. I thought she would be a fine sparring partner,
but it turn’s out she’s just a drunk. Beware of her, she’s capable of incredible rage, and
calculated indifference too. You can never be sure where you stand with her. Most of all,
don’t trust her decisions concerning your safety.
“Well, I’m going home now, back to County Antrim and the wicked sharp shores
of the North Irish Sea. I don’t think I’ll ever be capable of cold again, so the razor wind
there shouldn’t bother me much.
“I will be with you always. Never forget that. I will. I swear that upon my soul,
and on Molly, my mother’s, too. Think of me now and then, and I will sit on your
shoulder and whisper spirit stories into your ear.
“Be careful, ‘tis a harsh world to grow up in. Love always, dad.”
It reduced me to hot tears in spite of the celebration surrounding me.
That’s his death, and last poor poetry. The jar of ashes I saw was no twenty
four-stone and six, but I’m sure they were spinning around inside the urn from his stay
with the little gray nuns. That was what was left of the man fashioned from old-wives
tales, supernatural imagination, and a prehistoric mythology he wore everyday like a
hair-shirt. I gave the jar back to my father’s best friend, and wished him a good trip to
Ireland and back. I sure wasn’t going there anytime soon.
I was confused while he lingered, and angry after he passed. What about you? Did
his struggle confuse you as you read it? Did his too brief life anger you for its pointless
end?
#
Robert McCool, Scones and Ash 9
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But how did these two troubled people find each other, much less have me? In
between the fights, I think.
My da’, Conal O’Conner, was a fine Ulsterman originally born in Country
Donegal, who sought work in Belfast, and soon became an ironworker in the shipyard
based on his size alone. Seeing spiritual and monetary poverty everywhere around him,
he came to America in search of greater opportunity, and a warmer climate. Looking
across the Atlantic Ocean at the atlas he decided to head for Michigan because it looked
like a giant gloved hand waving hello to him, all friendly like if it were Finn Mac Cool.
He arrived in Detroit in the blazing Michigan autumn and knew he’d found the place he
was destined for. He believed the sharpness of the red and gold leaves was a celebration
of his arrival.
But winter came along with its sharp wind and sleet, not to mention the uncaring
snow. He’d gone to the nearest Ford Motor Company assembly plant and was accepted,
again, because of his size. He was twenty-four stone and six of manual labor toughed
muscle, standing six two in his stocking feet. But the factory was warm in winter, and he
could do his repetitive robot-like job while silently savoring W.B. Yeats verses in his
head.
#
He worked second shift, and the practice of his co-workers was to go the local
titty-bar for a few drinks before last call. That was how he found my mother. Oh, she
wasn’t one of the exotic dancers, even tough she had the natural rack to be one. She was a
smiling cocktail waitress, looking real good and hot at the age of eighteen, and she
checked the big Irishman out more than once. He started leaving hundred dollar tips on
Robert McCool, Scones and Ash 10
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her tray. His needs were simple, a bed and a hot plate, a single book shelf for his poetry,
so he didn’t feel the loss of his excess money. Ford provided quite well for the Irish
immigrant who survived mostly on potatoes and ham and cheese sandwiches. The money
turned my mother on; it started her moist motor running, you know.
Then there were the weekends. Conal would get far into his cups near closing
time and begin singing drunken immigrant songs from a island he’d never see again in a
pure, haunted voice. Legend has it one night a bouncer tried to shut him up even though
the clientele were rapt in attention to the big man. The bouncer went down with one
mighty swing, and the other door-bruiser quickly decided to become a music lover.
Except, except when my da’ was hurting inside for the lack of his old, poor home. He
would begin singing “Danny Boy”. Everybody moved out of his range, and the rafters
rained down dust from the volume of his melodic, homesick cry.
It was during one of these “Londonary Air” solos that Greta approached Conal.
Other people yelled out for her not to get close, not to speak to or touch. But the
well-boobed woman touched him on the bulging bicep just as he reached way down
inside for the boiling emotion which would send his vocal climax all the way back home.
One woman screamed, the bartender ducked down below the bottles of fiery spirits. But
Conal merely stopped singing and looked down at the woman by his side. Really looked.
“Nice tits,” he said.
His skin smelled of honest sweat and Bushmill‘s. “Would you like to come home
with me tonight?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. I can leave as soon as the bar closes.”
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“Yeah.” My father was much better with words when he was less intoxicated, or
less horny.
It was an evening to shape both of their lives, both with good, and bad. My
mother loved my da’s hungry hands, and true to form, da’ loved her impressive bosom.
Bells, whether of warning or marriage, rang in his head. He sensed an inner
violence in her that matched his own, and so fell completely in love with what he thought
was a real fighter. They had a lot of no-holds-barred-sex, and so a primal bond of some
sort was formed. I think they both mistook that bond for love, because neither of them
were ever capable of such selfless affection as true love.
They were married by the mayor of the village da’ lived in, and they purchased a
modest, and most definitely white-trash, grey cinder-block house. I came along not too
far after, and Greta, my mother of haughty Germanic descent, quit her job to care for me.
That arrangement lasted six months. Thank God she went back to work when she did.
The couple next door to us didn’t have any young children anymore, and were
thrilled when my mother asked them to care for me while she worked. The woman,
Cordelia, was an excellent, loving provider, and the husband Richard was a steady anchor
when ugliness occurred in my home. It occurred with regularity, and either Cord, or Dick,
would hold me after the fact until I finished crying. The years I spent with them defined
who I could be, if I chose to. I wanted to be like them, but I was so deluded by my
parents as a child, and just too plain apathetic and naive as a teenager to make an
intelligent choice about what I wanted to be. But I was so cocksure concerning the male
species, considering them inferior, rough beasts. I’d find out how true that belief was
later.
Robert McCool, Scones and Ash 12
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#
Chapter Two-
Yes, I was angry after he died, but I had a right to be. The whole time he was in
hospital I was made to beg and plead with my mother in order to visit him. Cheek wetting
tears were a persuading requirement too. But my tears weren’t of frustration with my
mother, they were of burning rage. Regardless, my mother held the key to my visits,
literally, the keys to her car which she would dangle in my face until I was miserable
enough she could take pity on me, and that I would know she pitied me. Eventually I
started to cry as soon as she started up her tirade instead of the car. I became a
well-lubricated tear machine, a supplicate kneeling before the alter of my mother’s vain,
stupid machinations. How could she not foresee I would return her kindness in turn when
I was able to.
And I was able to not so long after my da’s death. I wasn’t living with her on the
day she was transported to the local hospital wearing a mustard yellow, all-over body
suit. Her past came back to her on that day, as she’d always been seeking out her death in
seedy bars, and now she‘d found it. Even way back when, while she waited for me to
finish visiting hours with my father, she’d sit in the closest bar and drink non-stop
bourbon rocks. I know she had an itinerate sort of death wish when she drove us back
home. We should have died, many, no, every drunken time over. As it was, she was the
one to die all alone. But before she did I held out her set of car keys over the bed, and
dropped them on the blindingly white sheet. The years of torment were almost worth it to
see her eyes wince as I returned her many previous favors. Priceless, simply priceless.
Anyway, I left and never returned. She was even cremated all alone, and her ashes put
Robert McCool, Scones and Ash 13
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into the rubbish bin. Her vain power reduced to dirt in the furnace’s flame, I thought I
was free at last.
#
Oh shit, I forgot. A whole lot of things happened before she died, before the first
crisis, so I suppose I should’ve told you earlier. It will have to be now, I guess, in order to
maintain any semblance of a normal linear progression. I tried early on in this story to
explain where I came from, and who I was. That’ll all change, but now you’ll know my
real problems began at home before she turned yellow and went to hospital to decline
into her wasted death. Sorry, my brain does that, avoiding unpleasant recollected events.
Well, better late than never.
#
I sought escape, I lied and manipulated for some small freedom in my quickly
closing in life. I became devious in the search for distance. I was one of the hardest
scheming sixteen-year-old girls on the planet, but it wasn’t the constant effort I had to
keep up that tired me out, it was the war zone I lived in every day. Every day I faced the-
‘pay attention or risk death‘ variety. My mother may have created it alright, but the real
enemy came from outside and insinuated itself into my life like the fucking viper he was.
I’m not sixteen anymore, and I have some distance now, but don’t mistake my
report of the next months to be easy. I’ve lived with them for a long time now, for years,
but they haven’t diminished much. In fact, some of the flashbacks are stronger now than
they were early after the demon days. Sometimes I live in them, totally emotionally
engaged, trapped with no way out. And then there are the nasty ones not even the
medication can release. I am a grown women now, with a frightened young woman
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trapped inside who sometimes relives her life in emotional memories full of pain and
fear.
#
Freedom first came in the shape of a boy named “Stoner” Macintosh. I found, or
should say I was found by the boy with the appropriate name. He smoked a lot of pot. He
was also a four-point-oh student, and the son of the village’s mayor. Nobody jacked him
around about his recreational activities. Oh, yeah, he also had the typical post-hippie era
forest-green Volkswagen van. Yea. The first time he asked me out I had him drive me to
Planned Parenthood where I started the pill. After those preliminaries, Stoner was the
lucky stiff I spread my legs for. I wanted brief oblivion more than anything, and I paid for
it in the only coin I possessed, my inner flesh.
It didn’t feel quite right to me at the time, but then how would I, a child virgin,
know? The experience was like an alien invading my body with some kind of probe, both
emotionless and misdirected. It was a simple, payback fuck against my mother, and I paid
plenty of times for my subversive freedom.
We’d get pleasantly buzzed, have some same old single riff sex accompanied by
The Grateful Dead on the van’s stereo, then go our separate ways to study, or whatever.
He drove me to the hospital to visit my da’ the last times, and back to Planned
Parenthood to score more pills. Our arrangement wasn’t innocent, because we used each
other, but it wasn’t complicated either. The most complex we got was using a bong.
But me, so cocksure about men, or boys, thought I had him by the short-hairs. I
thought that sex was the sure way to control men. By their glands. Then I overheard him
talking to another boy in the school hallway. His friend asked Stoner what he liked best
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about me, what was most important, and would our relationship have any lasting power?
Stoner replied, “The most important thing? Hmm. Well, jeez, that has to be her tits.
They’re incredible to roll around on. Real rockets. Will it last? Don’t think so; she’s a
year behind me, and I’m headed for the west coast as soon as school is over, and there are
more breasts, I mean girls, out there. Ya know what I mean?”
I certainly did know what he meant. My illusions about sex controlling men
collapsed right there, but I felt no ill-feelings towards Stoner. I’d been in it for about the
same reasons he had. I’d thought it was freedom for me, but I was wrong. It’d been no
more than killing time for both of us.
Did my mother notice my activities? Hell, she never once noticed that I was
stoned because she was completely smashed all the time by then. She already thought I
was the devil incarnate, but the brimstone she smelled on me was no more than pot
smoke trapped in my clothes.
Did I ever consider my substance abuse to be anything like hers? Did I ever notice
my own morality backsliding into jaded promiscuousness? No, I was too busy plotting
how to get outa there. In any way, outa there.
#
My mother still had the gray paint-faded house. Her wages and tips sharply
decreased when the alcohol finally took control of what remained of her life. Da’s
disability covered the small mortgage payment, but not much else. She got nervous one
day, all of a sudden, like the issue had never existed before. She should have seen the
holes and poor condition of my jeans, she’d have known then. If she had cared at all, I
mean. What made her really nervous was a threat that she might run out of booze one
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day. Anyway, one night at work she stumbles, literally, into Walter Taft. He feels up her
breasts as he straightens her back up. She likes the brush of his busy hands, so she peers
through her foggy gaze at the man who grabbed her. He reaches over and pinches one of
her nipples and smiles like some teenage boy getting his first big thrill. He’s drinking
bourbon too, so she sits down and has one with him. The good lord made them, alright,
but the devil matched them up. It was surely a match made in a beer-sign lit, smoke
choking hell for me.
I will never understand how he said he worked for Ford too, but didn’t have a
permanent roof over his head. She bought the story after fucking him in his car later that
night, well, actually she fucked his paycheck, and then he moved in the next day. But he
moved in a caravan, towing two children after. The teenaged daughter, Lilly, moved in
with me, instantly shrinking my room in half with another twin bed. I didn’t really know
where the little toad of a brother slept, I never cared to.
I tried to think of somewhere I could escape to. Cordelia and Dick were getting up
in years, and frankly, their moral code wasn’t the same as mine just then. Stoner was
definitely out. Why didn’t I have any good friends? Even vapid classmates would be a
step up from my situation, and I could get a menial job to pay rent to her parents.
Definitely a pipe dream, one with Stoner’s heavy duty block of black hash in it. How
could I have friends when I couldn’t bring anyone home to meet my family? Regarding
my low position in life, isolation was still better than mortification.
This was Michigan, and I was out there under the massive hardwood trees with
the rest of the hillbillies and sauna crazy Swedes. It may have been spring, but Michigan
releases its winter slowly, seeming more to savor the iron automotive punishment of
Robert McCool, Scones and Ash 17
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salt-caked streets and tree boughs groaning heavily under a late snow’s weight. I spent as
much time outdoors as my fingers and toes could stand when I wasn’t connected with
Stoner, but I understood this wasn’t a permanent answer to the claustrophobic and toxic
conditions inside my house. So I tried. I did try.
I ignored my roommate, and she silently agreed to the arrangement at first, a
condition subject to change as the building crisis grew. Her little brother was too small to
consider as a person, so I treated him like a non-entity. He never knew, having been
emotionally abandoned as a newborn baby. He lived in a world made for one, which was
probably the best for him, given what his reality really was. He was constantly searching
for what was never there to begin with. I pegged him for a future serial-killer.
Then my roommate became a bitch, for reasons I’d discover later, and I thought
she made my life hell. She began to threaten me, to tell on my nocturnal habit of meeting
Stoner, or anything else nasty she could make up about me. I hated her, and she hated me,
plain and simple. One night I got home particularly late, and definitely still very stoned,
and she went to my mother with the information. That was when I got “the talk“.
I was just shy of sixteen and already knew a whole lot more about sex than most
girls. I knew it for recreation, I knew as a sticky solace, and I still considered it as a
possible pry-bar to lever against the male species. Well, c’mon, I was a little off with that
last one, but I somehow knew it would be true enough in the near future. I thought I knew
enough about sex to keep it nice, and safe.
“You better be nice to Walter, Belinda (can’t you just hear, “Belittle”?), He pays
the bills and keeps a roof over our heads. Got it?”
Funny, I thought our house was still our “house”. When did that asshole take
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over?
Only after her little one-way chat did I understand her “nice” meant to sacrifice
my body for the paycheck she needed in order to submerge her brain even deeper into
liquid oblivion. She could no longer work, but she could still sip away on a highball glass
all day and night. But to sacrifice my body, to him? The goddamn filthy beast? No, I
don’t think so.
#
I was just past my sixteenth birthday, which nobody recognized or commented
about, the first time I had the sordid brand of “nice” my mother meant shoved in my face.
The image remains burned into my brain, and I can’t blind my mind to it, no matter how
hard I try.
I came home one night not exactly late, and snuck up the stairs to the bathroom
first. Then I heard noises coming through the wall of my lit bedroom; deep guttural
grunts, and sharp intakes of breaths. Honestly, I thought my roommate was having an
asthma attack. I stood up, zipped up, and rushed to the closed door of my room. I opened
it slightly, just a crack, only enough to put my eye to. I closed my eye immediately,
already too late, and closed the door silently.
Walt was porking his daughter from behind, at the foot of her bed. In the hallway
rage blazed my cheeks fire red. Had it been one second? Two? Maybe three at the most,
but I’d seen enough. More than enough. Walt’s dick was like a club, a sawn off baseball
bat, and while her reamed her out Lilly looked like a delicate orchid being stamped out.
How could she survive this brutality, on a one time, or maybe even a constant basis?
I ran to the phone, meaning to call 9-1-1. Then a sickening thought hit me and
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took away my breath. Why hadn’t Lilly ever called for help? Or, after tonight’s assault, it
would be her call to make, not mine. What if she denied the whole horrible scene? I
decided I should talk to her before intervening on her behalf. Reasonable? I thought so at
the time.
So, I’m standing in the kitchen drinking a glass of water and hoping it would
wash the poison from my mouth when Walt’s heavy step comes down the stairs. I looked
around the kitchen I was trapped in and saw a butcher knife. I whisked it out of the
wooden block it lived in and shoved it into my back pocket.
“What are you doing up?” the son-of-a-bitch asked. “What? You’re just dragging
your ass home at this hour?”
His question left me an out. “Yeah, I’m just getting home.”
He squinted at me like I was some insect he wanted to smash. “Yeah, right.
You’re next, you know. I‘m going to enjoy doing you too, you little bitch.” With that said
he made his way to the master bedroom. What did he say? I was next? When I went to
my bedroom I still carried the knife. I slept with it under my pillow like it’d been
delivered by the lacerated flesh fairy.
#
I’ve never lost that anger, that all-encompassing rage at all the players in the
soul-killing arena happening right in my own bedroom. Walt was a piece of shit, for sure,
and Lilly allowed him to shit all over her. But then there’s my mother. She knew, how
could she not know, what was going on under her own roof? She allowed these atrocities
by turning a blind eye to anything that wasn’t a paycheck under her roof. She gave Walt
permission to ravage us all for a few bucks. So much for motherly love. Honestly, I
Robert McCool, Scones and Ash 20
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shouldn’t have expected anything more out of her.
I tried talking to Lilly that night. Tried to, at least. “I saw what was happening in
this room tonight. Want to talk about it?” She was instantly on guard, with her defenses
flaring up hard and fast. She refused to acknowledge my statement. “It’s okay to talk
about it with me, I’ll never say a word.” I believe she hated me more for her tears than
anything I might have said then, or in the future.
“You didn’t see nothing.”
“Lilly, your father was assaulting you. That’s nothing?”
“Yeah, nothing.”
“Lilly, Lilly, I can help you. I can get him away from you. No more rape, and
safe.”
The concept horrified her. “No, I have to be with him. There’s nowhere else to
go.”
“No, you’re wrong, there are places you can go, with people who’ll take good
care of you.” She moved on the bed and I saw a blood stain under her. “Oh my God, he
really hurt you!”
“It doesn’t hurt.” Then she began talking about what really did hurt. About how
she had to act like she enjoyed it, or she’d get smacked around. Or worse, how he’d hit
her on her abdomen, deep yellow and purple bruising fisted hits. A couple of times she
couldn’t walk afterwards, and had to miss whatever school she was in at that moment.
She told me that because of her treatment at her father’s hands they moved around a lot,
mostly staying in motels or tiny apartments. The law followed them, but never had a case
of anything but an asshole of a father. In a dry husk of a voice she said, “My brother has
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21
to watch sometimes. My dad says it’s a part of learning how to be a “real” man. The look
on his face is very scary, like he’s already planning how he’ll treat women when he
grows up.”
I shook my head. “Oh God, we have to get you out of this somehow.”
Then her face twisted up into somebody different, somebody very ugly. “You
know, if you were around more often, he wouldn’t be taking a go at me so often. This is
your fault too, so how can you say such bad things about my dad? You’re part of it. And
so is your pathetic mother. You’re all part of it.”
While I couldn’t deny my mother was pathetic, I wanted to smack her for
implicating me. The only involvement I had in this disgusting situation was as a future
target for her fucking father. This mess was most definitely not my fault. Then she said
her father had commented to her that he thought I was going to be a “juicy piece” when
he got to me. “See, then you’re going to be like me. Just like me.”
Her words sickened me as much as they terrified me. The girl had a dangerously
distorted view of life, and got it honestly. The very air in my bedroom was twisted like it
lacked oxygen to breathe in.
There was no place in the house to hide. I could lock the bathroom door, but that
was it. I made all trips into my bedroom as brief as possible, and mostly when he wasn’t
around, I studied at the kitchen table, something I hadn’t done for years. I’d stay away
all weekends, creatively explaining I sleeping over at a friend’s house.
Yes, I had cultivated girlfriends at last. Not many, and no honest ones I could
share my secrets with, but the few I had I used as much as I could in order to stay away
from home. They had a circle of sleepovers that rotated between each girl’s home. Not
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22
mine, of coarse, they knew better than ask with the insight girls have for other girls. Still,
they accepted me into their carousel weekends.
I noticed one thing in common with each of their homes. The hallways to the
bedrooms were filled with photographs of the girls in a progressive order, from infant on.
My house had no such massive photo album, and I believed it was due to only pretty girls
having their pictures taken. With my hot copper hair and thin milk skin I’d never once
considered myself to be pretty. I did get it though, it wasn’t necessarily just my looks
which were vacant from our walls. It was my mother’s indifference too, or worse.
So I played nice, something that didn’t come naturally to me, and was even sweet,
something I’d abhorred in other girls. We did each other’s hair, even my strong waves,
baked cookies, and talked about boys. They all knew of my involvement with Stoner, and
asked point-blank what “it” was like. I had to think, the most these respectable girls had
ever done was get their boobs felt up. “Like a silken injection of fleshy steel.” They liked
that. A lot. The phrase even floated around the school, mutating at every telling. It didn’t
give away my growing abhorrence to the act.
We watched insipid chick-flicks. “Beaches”, “Steel Magnolias”, “Terms of
Endearment”, “An Officer and a Gentleman”, “Pretty in Pink“, and “Pretty Woman”.
What the hell, it killed time, and pushed away the war I’d have to return to. During one
movie starring Whoopie Goldberg I became aware that one of our inner circle was gay.
Foundling gay, and confused, but most certainly lesbian. Suddenly she was much more
interesting to me.
She became a lot more interesting to me. One Saturday was declared to be an
“occult” night. Out came the Ouija board. Thank goodness the spirits stayed away,
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23
particularly my father’s. He probably skipped out for fear of another girly movie to
follow. But then Kim, the girl I decided I wanted, pulled out a trade size paperback on
Chinese Numerology, and instructed how to put our numbers together, like birth-date,
time of birth, and the like, and reduce them to a base number. That base number was to
be our “life-issue”. Every girl was something different, and the explanations for each
rang true to me. I went last.
Kim looked up number 8, opened her mouth, then closed it again. She did this
weird whole looking into my eyes thing before she spoke. The other girls got very
agitated while they waited for her interpretation of my number, wondering why mine was
so full of portents. “You are a number 8, Belinda. Your issue is power.” Power? What
power did I have? “You will seek power, and learn about controlling that power if you
want to survive it. You may use your power for either good or evil, but you will never
stop seeking for more until you die. Your number is the same as the rulers of each
Chinese dynasty, from prehistoric, to now. Practice, learn about your power as soon as
possible to prevent it from taking you over, instead of you controlling it.”
I didn’t know what to say. I was the only one there who had been handed such an
ominous prognosis. Kim touched my hand and said, “You’ll be just fine. I know it.” For
the next few weeks I retreated as far into the woodwork as I could. There was a curious
chill coming at me on those nights. Perhaps the girls were worried I’d put a hex on them.
I know there were times I would’ve liked to.
Then something happened. The movie of the week was the romantic monster,
“Titanic”. From the very beginning the movie was incredibly detailed and beautiful, and I
thought I’d really enjoy it. Then came the scene where Rose is mounting the deck of the
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great ship, and she reveals her face for the first time from under her large brimmed hat.
One of my friends gasped, I think it was Sandy. “Belinda! Look at that!” I peered all over
the television screen for something exciting, but found nothing. Sandy grabbed my
shoulder roughly. “Look at Rose!” Then she hit the pause button. The other girls were
looking back and forth from me to the screen, each getting more excited as they did.
“Belinda! You look just like Rose! Can’t you see?”
I could, but denied it. “No, she’s much more pretty than I am. We don’t look alike
at all.”
“Will you quit running yourself down? I’d like you better if you just accepted that
you’ve got some very good qualities, and one is you look like Kate Winslet.”
The wavy red hair was pretty close, and the wide spaced agate eyes, although
mine looked more like Rose’s did when Jack pulled her away from the stern rail and the
churning, freezing wake; eyes full of internal fear and rage, set inside a face helplessly
fighting bitter resignation. I didn’t have the too-cute dimple in my right cheek, but the
English oval face and juicy lips were mine, as was the British white skin and unseemly,
womanly roundness. Okay, I could see that. “Yeah, I think you’re right after all. I’m a
movie star.” I was debating this absurdity when I heard Jack’s voice addressing Rose
rather harshly. “That fire inside you is going to burn out-” His words caught my attention,
and train of thought. The fire inside; a popular topic lately.
Kim said, “You’re very beautiful, even if you’re not a movie star.” I felt the
magnetic waves of attraction from her bombarding me, more intense than from any boy
I’d known. Did she think I was gay too? I shook all thoughts of sex right out of my head
before they gave me away. The girls kept commenting on my theatric twin throughout the
Robert McCool, Scones and Ash 25
25
whole movie, especially when Rose stripped for her portrait.
“Whoa! You’ve got much better breasts, Belinda.” I agreed, even lifting up my
pajama top to display my pride. Although we’d seen each other in various states of
undress before, I captured all of their attention. I thought Kim was going to faint she was
breathing so hard. Nobody commented on her, which left some questions in my mind, but
they did compare my boobs to Kate’s. I won. So, she was prettier than me, but I had a
better rack. Everything balances out in the end.
The incident explained things about these get-togethers. My role with the girls
became clear to me after my physical declaration that I had the best tits between us all.
They feared the dark, sucking hole of rejection as much as I feared domestic rape. Plus I
was an unsavory kind of undomesticated pet, there to be looked down on, and welcomed
only as better than nobody to look down on. Better than having nobody to be better than.
These were the problems of life and death the girls were working out. I wished them luck.
#
Then something wonderful happened the summer I was sixteen. One of my
girlfriends father was a music professor who also taught young gifted musicians during
the summer at a music camp called Interlochen. The camp was way up north, just south
of Traverse City, close to Lake Michigan. He told his daughter the camp was looking to
hire some teenagers to do the grunt work while great music played in the background.
They needed housekeepers and kitchen staff in particular. It sounded too good to be true,
but I told him I could go for the whole summer. I didn’t explain that I hadn’t talked to my
mother yet. This was an opportunity to get out of my living situation for months, and with
the wages, maybe forever.
Robert McCool, Scones and Ash 26
26
I sat down with my mother and explained it all. She was more blurred-eyed than
usual, so I kept at it until she finally looked at me. “Gone for the whole summer?”
I waited for her instant rejection and march towards making me cry. “Yeah.
Listen mom, this is a great opportunity for me. A chance to make friends with kids who
live all over the state, and a chance for me to get away for a little while, if you know what
I mean.”
Her eyes positively blazed, perhaps with a fire-drake behind them. “You don’t
know anything about anything, smartass.” I thought she was going to hit me, but the
booze that had once made her dangerous now made her arms heavy as stone. “As long as
it’s a way to get you out of the house for a while. You think everything revolves around
you, but it doesn’t. You’ll know better when you’re my age. You have other people to
consider, ya know.”
I didn’t really understand her little speech entirely. “Like who, mom? Who should
I consider?”
“Me and Walt for starters. And you treat Lilly like she was shit. But, no, up on
your high horse you can’t see that, can you?”
“Consider Walt? What do you mean?”
“He keeps a roof over our head and puts food on the table. You need to treat him
with some respect.”
I was angry now. “Do you know what he does to his daughter?”
“No such thing, goddamn you. You make up these lies about him, but they’re not
true. You’re a little bitch, a little lying bitch.” She paused to take a drink and I smelled
the whiskey weeping from her skin. “Go on then, go to that camp. Just get out of my
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hair.”
My mom. My ever-loving mother. Was there anything left inside her now? Who
she had been while I was a little child was long gone, leaving this empty husk behind
simply waiting for death to claim it. Yeah, I was definitely going away for the summer.
#
What clothes I had fit inside a tiny suitcase alongside my “feminine needs”. I
waited outside for my friend’s father to pick me up. Walter was gone, but the dripped oil
from his car remained, a dark splotch on melting asphalt. The smell of it, so like his body
odor, nauseated me, so I stood at the curb, an anxious hitchhiker for parts unknown. The
professor pulled up and stopped for me. “I’m so glad you could come. I think you’ll
enjoy it.”
I already knew I was scruffy looking from the too few haircuts, and the
camouflaging, saggy clothing I had to wear for safety at home, but inside his blue
Lincoln I also felt dirty and trashy. I just looked forward to being able to take a shower
without danger. “I know I will.” As soon as the words left my lips I felt a hot flash rip
through my body, and even though the car was air-conditioned, I broke into a fast sweat
across my forehead. The sensation passed, but its memory remained within my body’s
core.
#
Chapter Three-
The camp was wonderful. The most wonderful thing about it was the fact that
good old Walt wasn’t anywhere in sight, and Lilly wasn’t within earshot. I felt so free I
didn’t notice how hard my job was. The four compass points for me were sheets and
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28
towels, lemon oil polish, and bathroom floors and showers, including the fixtures. I loved
it, actually loved it all. Even now I think of that summer almost every day, and relish the
job and the boy I met there.
In the long summer evenings I would walk around in the evergreen and deciduous
tree and listen to snatches of free floating voice and instrumental melodies. I could faintly
smell a whiff of Lake Michigan when the wind blew in from the west, and the sheltering
pines were pure perfume. I didn’t have anywhere to go on my days off, or bartered
transportation to get there, so I soaked up the sun, walked silent in the rain, and read the
ridiculous romance novels the previous tenet of my cabin left behind. Not for one minute
did I believe one word in them, but they were better than the television room and other
staff members in it. I was definitely a loner now, and the camp allowed me to be one
without accusing me of some crime. Ah, at last, the space to breath.
It was on one of my days off I first saw this skinny, scruffy boy out in the woods
practicing on a saxophone. He was at least as unkempt as I was in his thin-threaded,
faded out jeans and sneakers so old the sole had blown out on one of them. I didn’t figure
him for a student, but I thought he should be, for he was consumed by his music and the
echo of it off the trees. He didn’t even seem to be aware of what he was playing, or where
the next note would fall, so I knew he wouldn’t see me hiding behind a large tree. He
played a little silver sax, like a bright clarinet, and the notes from his instrument were
crystalline clear when they soared towards heaven. When his eyes were closed, most of
the time, I studied him. He was maybe twenty, had wild hair like mine, although his was
dark, not my waves of copper, and his fingers were nimble and fast. The way he tongued
the notes it made me think he could play a girl as well as he did his metallic mistress.
Robert McCool, Scones and Ash 29
29
In fact, the first words I said to him were, “With that tongue I bet you really know
how to satisfy a woman.” He was hiding behind a maintenance building where he
smoked dope, and he started at my voice, maybe afraid somebody caught him smoking.
Or, maybe because I addressed him in that way. He stood staring at me until I pointed at
the half joint the was holding, and asked, “Care to share?”
It wasn’t long into the buzz that I told him how pot always made me horny. He
agreed. We kissed until my knees gave out and he was holding me up. “I know a place,” I
told him, then took him back to the moss-softened clearing in the pines where I’d heard
him playing. It felt like home for both of us. We spent all night talking about who we
were, and I got in right before it was time to get up. I wasn’t tired all day, because I’d
been right, his tongue played pure music on my body.
His name was Merrill Ashe, and I will never forget his mouth on me, so much like
Kim‘s would be.
There were times we’d lay on his bunk and tell each other what part of life
brought us together. He shared many of the same complications I had. Dead alcoholic
mother, wicked step-father who threw him out when his mother died, dirt poor but getting
by, and even his shortage of regular haircuts. This sharing, as intimate as it was, wasn’t
going to leave this summer camp, but it was fine, so fine while it lasted.
That’s when I realized what was important. Everybody had to find something, or
somebody, that was fine thing, a happy memory, just to keep putting one foot in front of
the other. To make an unbearable life bearable. I told him that. He was my one fine thing.
In return, he told me that the first step he took on the path to playing serious jazz revealed
his life’s mission, his fine thing to follow. And then he told me he could be himself with
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me, like he felt when he was playing his saxophone, and that was a mighty fine thing too.
The nights we shared were both honest, and finite. When the camp closed and school
began we wouldn’t communicate, but we’d remember. For always we’d remember.
On the day I left my mother actually came along with Walt to pick me up. I’m
sure her reason was to check out how rich the school looked, and see how much I’d been
paid. Merrill stood and watched me load up until he couldn’t stand the tension. He knew
all about my mother and Walt, and he looked like he was going to scream. He came to me
and held me tight for just a moment, a few breaths, then let me go. It was more romantic
than I’d ever seen in the girl’s sappy movies, or read in the pulp romance novels I’d left
behind for next summer. He was so caring, so reassuring, that when my mother started
asking questions about him, and bad-mouthing me for getting involved with a college
kid, I didn’t care. He was fine as any future female lover, right to the end.
We had to stop at three bars on the way home so mummy dear could catch a buzz,
but the memory of Merrill was a strong enough buzz to get me all the way home, and
long after.
#
Sixteen and a half and I’m a junior in high school, taking driver’s ed classes, and
probably failing trigonometry and physics. I got totally lost somewhere between an
Archimedean Spiral and Boyle’s gas laws. Hell, I couldn’t figure why those classes
would ever be important anyway.
My life was way more physical than physics. Take the filthy beast for example. I
was still dodging him at home, and didn’t see anyway around him other than to be, or
even live, someplace else. I had what left of my summer’s wages, after mother made me
Robert McCool, Scones and Ash 31
31
give her half, with a, “shut your mouth and be happy I don’t take it all. You owe me.”
What was left wasn’t going to get me very far, or at least as far as I knew I’d have to be
from him, so I opened a savings account and hoped it’d grow on it’s own.
Lilly was still pathetic. I couldn’t help but think of that way even though her
circumstances were way worse than mine. I prided myself for successfully avoiding the
son of a bitch, she couldn’t do anything about him. If she’d contact the police they’d try
to smooth over the situation in the name of domestic peace, instead of thinking of
something more protective. He’d beat her to a pulp. Oh, not her face so somebody would
notice and report him, he wasn’t willing to relocate again, not away from the sweet
situation he had in my house. But he would hurt her. Really hurt her. She’d told me when
we were still talking that he was a pro at avoiding her visible areas while hurting her
body as much as possible. Shit, I wanted to run away and drag her along with me. Fat
chance of that happening.
#
One evening after spending some study time at one of my girlfriend’s house I was
alone in my room changing into my flannel pajamas with my back to the door, when he
grabbed me from behind. My pajama top’s buttons sprayed across the room, and his claw
marks across my chest burned and bled. Then my bottoms were ripped completely away.
I kicked and screamed at the top of my lungs, I flayed with my arms while I tried to kick
him in the balls, but he was strong, way too strong for me to break free of his arms. He
threw me face down on the bed and grabbed as much of my hair as he could, pinning me
down while he loosened his pants and pulled out a penis as big as a pony’s. God, how he
must have mutilated Lilly time after time, and now he was planning to do the same to me.
Robert McCool, Scones and Ash 32
32
And then there she was, Lilly looking in through the half-opened door with a huge smug
smile on her face. All the sympathy in me was pushed right out of my heart.
Then my breath was pushed completely out of me too when he laid his weight on
my back. I knew I was going to pass out and probably die, so I panted like a dog in order
to stay conscious as long as I could. Then he jammed his club into me, and I screamed
even though I had no air in me, louder and louder than I had before. Nobody was going to
help me. I felt blood running down my thigh as a niggling detail compared to the deeper
pain inside. I couldn’t even pant then because I wanted to vomit, but couldn’t do that
either. He was killing me, and enjoying every bit of it.
I felt under my pillow and grabbed the knife I kept there. The sharp side of the
blade cut into my thumb and palm, but I didn‘t feel it. I grabbed the handle and slid it out.
Walter began to groan and pulse his slimy seed inside me, and I felt a rage-filled flame
reach out and heat the cold steel knife to sun yellow. I knew it was hot, so I swung the
blade wildly and forcefully, and felt the handle stop when it struck something hard, like
bone. I’d liked to have cut his dick off, but it was still pumping away inside me. But the
blade dug deep into his thigh, and with the last of my breath I pulled the blade upwards
like a zipper.
Then he screamed, and pulled away from me to see what I’d done. That was when
I ran. I knew that even with a knife I was no match for him one on one. So I ran. Wearing
only a torn pajama top I ran next door to Dick and Cordelia’s house and pounded on their
door. Cordelia opened it, registered what I looked like, and yanked me inside. Good thing
too, Walt was following me and gaining ground. He pounded on the door. Many times.
He yelled and beat on the door like he’d never get tired of doing it, but he stopped before
Robert McCool, Scones and Ash 33
33
the cops showed up.
#
Cordelia pulled me back into the bathroom and looked me over. “Can I have a
towel to wash up with?” I asked. I felt like I’d fallen into a pit of rotting garbage, and I’d
never be able to wash the stink off.
“No, dear,” she replied, “that’s evidence. I’ll get you something to wear though.”
She came out of her bedroom carrying a set of pink sweats. Pink, sweet Christ. “Put these
on, the Sheriff is on the way.”
There wasn’t much left of my blood-streaked top to pull off, and the sweatshirt
reminded me of how cold I was. Not just the chill from running around naked outside in
Michigan’s treacherous autumn nights, but also the bone shattering cold of icy semen
running down the inside of my frightened thighs. The kind of cold that leaves an icicle
through your heart.
#
There was a polite but insistent knock on the front door. I heard it, but lingered
back into the shadows of Cordelia’s kitchen, and tried to peer out through the front
windows of the house. I saw two black squad cars pulled all of the way up to the front
porch. Dick groaned when he saw the ruts they’d leave behind, but opened the door for
them all the same. Two deputies stood together, successfully blocking any escape from
any criminal. “Why don’t you come inside?” Dick was polite, but obviously pissed about
his well-tended yard. “It’s cold out there, and you’re letting it in.”
They came into the living room, waved aluminum report folders around, then
finally asked what the problem was. “Somebody reported a rape?”
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“Would you like some coffee, officers?” Cord said in a high, tight voice. She was
uncertain about handing me over to them, regardless of my injuries. They declined her
offer. “I’ll put some on anyway.” The tall dark-haired Deputy watched her walk back to
the kitchen with a puzzled expression, then he shrugged. The shorter, sandy-haired
Deputy with frigid blue eyes began asking questions of Dick.
“What happened here tonight?”
“The young lady who lives next door was raped by her mother’s live-in.”
“Really? Where’s this girl now?”
Cordelia pushed me in the direction of the officers. “She’s right here.” I think I
grimaced at her with some anger, but went to the living room.
“What’s your name?” the bigger one asked.
“Belinda. Belinda O’Conner.”
“Is this true? Were you raped?”
He had an odd tone in his voice, like he didn’t really believe in rape. Even so, I
answered, “Yeah.”
Sandy man quickly asked his question before the big guy could ask another one of
his own. “Does the man who raped you live next door?” I nodded. “Would he still be
there?” I shrugged. How should I know? He looked at his companion and said, “Why
don’t you go next door and see if you can find him?” Blackie’s eyes narrowed, but he got
up and left anyway. I saw sergeant stripes on the sleeve of sandy-man’s coat. That
explained it.
“Are you badly injured?” How could you be injured goodly?
Cordelia broke in with, “She’s bleeding, and in shock, I think.”
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35
He looked into my eyes and I knew he had an icicle in his heart too. Why? “Are
you injured, Belinda?” He remembered my name, how nice of him. Then the world
turned too fast on its axis, and I hit the carpet.
#
I woke up in the emergency room, and when a nurse talked nicely to me I broke
completely down. One kind comment tore away all the toughness I thought I’d had. They
were planning on doing a rape kit, and photographing my injuries. I was no more than
putty to them, and did what they required me to do. Somebody put a few of stinging
stitches in me, which would itch like hell later, and cleaned up the gouges on my chest. I
knew it hurt, I just couldn’t figure out which hurt the worst.
Then the sandy-haired Deputy pulled the dividing curtain back and came to my
bedside. He smiled, but it wasn’t false or patronizing. He meant it. “Hi, my name’s
Deputy Brickman. You can call me, “Brick”. All my friends do. We didn’t get a chance
to finish my report earlier. Do you feel up to it now?”
Where was I going to go? “Sure, if you want to.”
“They did a rape kit here, and there’s no doubt that’s what occurred. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me too.” I started crying again.
Deputy Brickman, I wasn’t too sure I wanted to be his friend yet, held out a linen
handkerchief to me. “Go ahead, take it.” Like snatching a piece of bait, I took it from his
hand. It smelled of crisp starch and leather polish, and I wanted to blow my nose in the
worse way, but this was a real, cloth hankie. He smiled again. “Go ahead, I’ve got plenty
more.” I blew my nose and it seemed the snot would never stop. He laughed. “Wow, you
really needed that.”
Robert McCool, Scones and Ash 36
36
“What happened at my house after I passed out?”
“Well, you know, I find this sorta interesting. The man who raped you…”
“Walt Taft. I hope he rots in jail.”
“Yeah, well, when my partner got to your house there was only one beat-to-hell
old car in the drive.”
“Uh, that would be my mother’s.”
“Okay. So, being careful, Craig has his weapon out and pointed forward when he
knocks on the door. Then this little skinny girl, Lilly, opened the door for us and we went
inside.”
“Lilly was still there? He didn’t take her?”
“She is his daughter. Right?” I nodded. “I’m guessing he was in a hurry. So, my
fellow Deputy interviewed your mother.”
“That must have been a treat.”
“He asked me how you could live in that kind of situation?”
“You’re seeing how I lived in that situation. I’ll carry the marks for the rest of my
life.”
“Marks?”
“Yeah, marks. The fucker ripped up my chest.”
“Would you show me?” he asked softly. I think he knew he was walking a thin
line. Not that I cared, my chest was already in some doctor’s report in glorious color.
“Close the curtain,” I ordered with a wave of my hand. He did. I peeled the
hospital gown away from my butterfly patched, anti-biotic ointment smeared chest
gently, not so much because of the pain, which really did hurt, but for the growing heavy
Robert McCool, Scones and Ash 37
37
numbness in my arms. I think they wanted to sleep through all this too. I watched his
eyes as I exposed my breasts to him. He was good, I’ll give him that much, but I had a set
of gravity-defying balloons that were dangerous to any man. I’d seen how most men
looked at my dressed tits like they were some juicy pork-chops they wanted to suck to the
marrow. His eyes opened wide and his pupils got dark, and that was it. He was taking all
of me in without once licking his lips.
I don’t know long polite is to a criminal investigation, but the length of time his
eyes rolled over me like a pinball seemed polite, at least to me. “Okay, Belinda, I’ve seen
what I needed to see.”
“I bet you did.” He blushed. “What did you do with Lilly? She really needs to be
away from that fucker.”
“Put into the hospital’s care. She‘s going to be evaluated before she can enter
foster care.”
“Psych ward?”
His eyes narrowed. “Yeah. What do you know about her?”
I bit my bottom lip. “What just happened to me happened to her, a lot. I tried to
get her to call the police, but she said she had to be with him.”
Brickman shook his head. “I’m sorry, I know you must have tried to help, but
that’s a common condition.”
“What about her little brother?”
“She has a brother?”
“Yeah, in training to be a real man like his daddy. You didn’t find him?”
“No, no sign of any brother.”
Robert McCool, Scones and Ash 38
38
“Lilly’s really messed up, you know.”
“Yeah, well, when we were talking to her she completely disassociated. I’m not
sure she’ll be able to return to this painful world. The whole time we were with her she
kept asking for her daddy in a vacant voice. Over and over, until she realized he’d left her
behind. That’s when the shade was pulled down.”
“Oh, God, I’m so sorry for her.”
“Not your problem. He did that to her.”
“Yeah, I saw them once. That was when I decided to keep a butcher knife under
my pillow.”
Brick started. “A knife? You had a knife?”
“Yeah, like I said…”
“Did you use it on him?”
“Yeah.”
“How bad?”
“Maybe some vein in his thigh. He was bleeding like the pig he is.”
“Where is the knife now?”
“Don’t know. Maybe I dropped it.”
Brick pulled a cell phone from his belt and flipped it open. Looking at its tiny
screen, he shook his head. “Excuse me, I have to go outside to make a call. Will you be
okay?”
Would I be okay when he was gone? And just when did his voice turn softer and
more considerate? When I told him I ripped into the bastard? I don’t know, but it seemed
like I’d garnered some real respect from him when I told I’d struck back. “Sure, I’ll be
Robert McCool, Scones and Ash 39
39
fine. I should be getting out of here soon anyway.”
“Hold that thought,” he threw back over his shoulder as he swept aside the
curtain. Hold that thought? What? I wasn’t getting out of here soon? Then I really
couldn’t think of anything else, until I twisted the sheet into a rope, maybe in case I’d
need it to escape. He came back. “I put out an alert to as many hospitals as we can reach.
If a man comes in with a stab wound anywhere around here they’ll get a hold of us.”
“Good idea. What did you mean by, “Hold that thought,”?
“Where are we going to take you? Do you really want to go home and deal with
your mother right now? Do you want to go back into your bedroom?”
Good thought, why hadn’t I thought of it first? It was my life. “No.”
“So what do we do?”
“Dick and Cordelia’s?”
“Your neighbors?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s four in the morning.”
“Let me call them.”
“I’ll take you there if they agree.” I looked around but didn’t see a phone. Brick
jumped up, but he wasn‘t going to share his official one. “Let me check at the nurse’s
station, they usually have a cordless for patients.” He was back in a few seconds. His
popping in and out and made me nervous with his urgent energy. Was I as urgent to get
to someplace else other than here? Not really. Not unless it was completely safe. Not
even to Dick and Cord’s. He handed it to me and sat down.
I punched the numbers, and it only took three rings to connect with Cordelia. “Is
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40
that you honey?”
“Yeah. They’re done with me here at the hospital. Can I stay with you for the
night?”
“Of course, you needn’t even ask. I’ve put sheets on your bed because I was
hoping you’d call. I’ll be waiting for you.”
“Thank you, you’ve saved my life.” She quit the connection but I thought I’d
heard a sob before the call ended. I turned to Deputy Brickman. “Well, I’ve got a place to
stay tonight.”
“I’ll have to interview your mother tomorrow, when she’s maybe not so
shit-faced. I’d like you to be there. I’ll get you from the neighbor’s if that’s alright.”
All of a sudden I could laugh again, and it felt so free I didn’t want to stop. Brick
raised one eyebrow. It was a good interview trick, that eyebrow. “You want to talk to her
when she’s less shit-faced? Good luck with that.”
“It’s really that bad then?”
“Maybe in the daylight you’ll see some mustard on her.”
“She’s dying.”
“There’s news. She’s been dying forever, and the only reason she’s still around is
that she’s a dragon.”
“Excuse me?”
“A winged serpent, a fire-breathing reptile. You know, with scales and all that
shit.”
“Why do you say that?”
“My father told me before he died a horrible death. He told me she had put a fire
Robert McCool, Scones and Ash 41
41
dragon inside him, and it burned him up.”
“C’mon.”
“Fine, don’t believe me, I can’t help that, but it’s very true. She’s a goddamn
dragon.”
“Uh, right. For the sake of not arguing I’ll say I believe you.”
“Whatever. Can I get my clothes now?”
“They’re right here. I’ll meet you by the nurses station.” He carried away the
phone. Did he think I’d want to make another call? To who? My girlfriends? Did I want
to make another call? Shit, I was too tired and my thinking had dipped into a paranoia
much like I got smoking pot. Too bad I hadn’t had near as much fun getting paranoid as
when Stoner and I sucked in and exhaled great gouts of thick smoke. Oh, well.
A middle aged woman not dressed in nurses scrubs came in while I was gingerly
pulling up my sweat pants. I jumped. “I’m sorry, Belinda, I didn’t mean to startle you.” I
made a vow right then to never turn my back to a door.
“What do you want?”
“I’m a social worker. In cases like this one we’ll need to make an appointment for
a follow up on your case.”
“Follow up? Why?”
She sat down on one of the uncomfortable stools in the room. “Well, most girls
suffer extreme depression and post-traumatic stress syndrome. You may not feel it now,
but you’re a very good candidate for PTSD.”
“PTSD? A venereal disease? You think that bastard gave me a disease too?”
“No, PTSD, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, like I told you. I want to meet with
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42
you at least one more time. I’ve got an opening in two weeks, at 3:30 in the afternoon.
I’ve give you a reminder card.” She scribbled something on the back of her business card
and handed it to me. I wanted it to slip out of my fingers and fall to the floor, but she
made sure I had it tight in my hand before she let go. “There then, I’ll see you in two
weeks,” she announced and left through the drapery. I turned the card over and found her
name. “Anne Flores, LISW”. More initials I didn’t understand. I put it in my pocket.
There was a phone number on it, if I chose to cancel the appointment. Perhaps I’d wait
for a week, then bow out gracefully.
I finally got released, with help from Deputy Brickman. The nurses all looked at
me with pitying eyes, and one began to cry as Brick explained that I needed to leave. I
thought that if she wanted to cry she should try having stitches in her ass. I know I almost
cried when they rubbed against my clothes.
#
I climbed into the back seat of his cruiser and immediately felt like a criminal
behind the steel mesh and bolted down shotgun. It wasn‘t a feeling I wanted, or needed,
so I stared out the side window and watched for landmarks to guide me home. Well, not
really my home, next door to it. We didn’t talk at all on the way, and probably couldn’t
have anyway between the spitting police radio and the static and flashing light monitors.
When we pulled up to their house, not on the lawn this time, he escorted me to the door
with his hand on his gun. He wasn’t taking any chances that Walt would be outside. Cord
opened up and I pushed past the gun-totin’ lawman with a low, “Good night”. I wanted to
sleep for three or four days before I thought about anything again. Even Brick. Maybe
mostly Brick. Cord took me to my old room and handed me a pair of pajamas that she’d
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43
warmed up on the heat register, and kissed my cheek. For that moment, that one brief
moment, I felt loved. I waited until she left the room before I cried into my pillow. Sleep
was never so welcome before.
#
Chapter Four-
I cracked one gummy and grainy eyelid half open when I heard the phone ring.
The bedside clock said four-thirty. Am? Pm? I didn’t care. I’d slept all day, and would go
on sleeping as long as I wanted to. I closed my eye. Cord came into the room. “Belinda?
Honey? Are you awake?”
I am now. “Yeah,” I mumbled into my pillow.
“Deputy Brickman is coming to interview your mother, and he’d like to have you
there if you can.”
“How long?”
“How long? You mean the interview? I have no way of…”
“’Till he gets here?”
“Oh, about an hour. He wanted you to have time to clean up and eat something.”
“Okay.” Not very likely.
“Why don’t you get up and take a shower first.” I didn’t respond. “Belinda? Take
as long as you want to in the shower.”
I hadn’t thought of that. A nurse had cleaned me up at the hospital, but I still had
the stink of the beast on me. “Thanks.” She left the room and I dropped off the mattress,
with just a hint of reminder about hidden stitches. I ran the shower until it lost its hot,
scrubbing away at my skin with a soft washcloth, and then I dried off with a huge, soft,
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44
and flowery smelling towel. I radiated bright, red hot, the same color as the scratches on
my chest. I smeared greasy ointment on them, removing the butterfly bandages as I went.
Nothing bled, so I figured I was better. Back in my bedroom was another set of sweats,
and they were red as my skin. I’d never seen Cord or Dick doing anything like exercising,
but if they chose to they’d be well dressed at least.
The smell of bacon and the cackle of scrambled eggs met me long before I
entered the kitchen. Cordelia was in her glory; taking care of, and providing for a child in
the house. I saw how deeply she yearned for, and regretted not having a child in the
house. I saw the core sadness behind her present happy face. From nowhere I asked
myself if I was to be her child now. The answer was a simple, “I hope not”. I got a cup of
coffee and sat down.
“You know, you really shouldn’t drink coffee,” she said. “It’ll stunt your growth.”
There was the mother talking, already.
“Yeah, and eggs have too much cholesterol, especially balanced out with the fat
overload of bacon. You’re cookin’ up some toxic mixture there. You want me to live out
the day?” I didn’t say it like it was a joke. I was in no mood for mothers or jokes.
“And many more.” There was a knock on the front door, and I heard Dick get up
with his newspaper in one hand and answer it. I heard low voices, one was Dick’s, and I
thought the other was Brick. Then the Deputy came into the kitchen. “Good morning,
Belinda.”
“Afternoon.”
“I work second shift, it’s morning to me.”
Then I remembered him working last night, thank God. “Do you always work
Robert McCool, Scones and Ash 45
45
second trick?”
He smiled with grim humor. “Yeah, I get to deal with all of Michigan’s various
entertainments; drunk drivers, loud parties, and drunken domestic complaints.” He sat
back a second, then gulped. “Uh, I don’t mean yours'.”
“No offense taken,” I said as I stared down at the tabletop. “I’m glad you were
here.”
Cord turned around with the egg skillet in her hands. “Then you’ll have some
breakfast with us.” He tried to argue, but I can’t remember anybody winning an argument
over her cooking. He sat down next to me.
“Coffee?” I asked.
“Yeah, that’d be good.” I got up and poured him a cup, then set it in front of him.
He sipped at it. “Mmm, that’s good.” Cordelia laid plates in front of us and we both dug
into them. I thought I wasn’t hungry. Brick wiped his mouth with a paper napkin when he
finished, and got up to get more coffee. “Belinda?” holding out the pot.
“No thanks. I’m trying to limit the number of times I have to wipe today.”
Cord spun around. “You’ll not talk of that horror during breakfast, and I’m sure
the Deputy doesn’t want to hear it while he‘s eating. Okay?”
Thanks mom. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
“I mean, it’s bad enough you have to talk to that miserable woman again.”
In the happiness of the kitchen I’d forgotten what I had to do next. Not because I
felt happy, but because it really was the last thing I wanted to do. Deputy Brickman saw
my face fall. “We’ll make it short, Belinda. No need to drag out the pain.”
Without any segue, Cord burst out, “But where is she going to live?” Cord asked
Robert McCool, Scones and Ash 46
46
about me. “Could she stay here?”
He looked me in the face. “You’re sixteen now, you have a choice. I’m guessing
you don’t want to live over there,” with a pointing motion of his head.
I shuddered. “No.” I thought about Dick and Cordelia, and how they lived the
well-deserved retirement life. I’d never fit into their style. “Listen Cordelia, I’m young
and disruptive and obnoxious as a teenager can be. I’m not sure you’d want me around
for very long. You like peace and quiet.”
Brick actually seemed to agree with me. “You have how long until you
graduate?”
“A year and a half.”
Brick leaned back into his seat and moved his mouth around in deep, unspoken
thought. Then he rubbed his lips. “Ah, look, you don’t know me from Adam, but I just
can’t let you get lost in the system, which is what would happen to you if these fine
people decided to throw you out.” He smiled at Cord when she opened her mouth to
disagree. “I’m joking. Ah, about you, not the system.” He turned back to me. “I’d be
willing to check into the foster care availability.” He looked at both of us for some
affirmation, and didn’t get it. “You can live on your own, Belinda, but I’m guessing you
can’t afford it. Why don’t you let me check things out? What can it hurt?”
I nodded, and heard a gasp from Cordelia. “No, I’m not leaving you permanently.
I just want to know, that’s all.” Cord registered my comment with the slightest dip of her
chin.
“Well, may as well get the nasty stuff over with,” he said and looked at me.
I got up and put his plate and mine next to the sink. “I’ll do these as soon as I get
Robert McCool, Scones and Ash 47
47
back.” Cord didn’t look at me. Outside, Deputy Brickman walked across the frost-crisped
grass and then stood on my house‘s porch.
“Get your clothes, books, and anything else you need while I’m talking to her. I
don’t think you’ll be coming back soon.” I opened the door and the scent of whiskey
almost choked me, and Brick leaned back and took in a deep lungful of outside air, then
nodded to me to progress inside.
“Mom? Where are you?” My, but wasn’t being polite? “Hey, is anybody here?”
The house was silent, and it reminded me of what happened last night. It was silent, too
silent. I was now feeling like some disposed garbage, and I wanted to burn the place to
the ground and cast salt on the earth beneath it.
She came out of the bedroom using all her limbs to navigate. Her arms reached to
the walls kept her from falling down, and her feet, once given the compulsion, couldn’t
stop until she landed in her chair. She looked at Brick with yellow eyes. “What’d you
want?”
“I need to interview you, Mrs. O’Conner, about what happened to here last night.”
“I already told that pig who was here last night. Nothin’ happened.”
Jim motioned for me to go and collect my possessions. “Nothing happened? Then
how do you explain Belinda’s injuries?”
“She’s a lying little bitch, is how. She does this shit for attention.”
“So, are you saying you weren’t at home at the time of the assault?”
“I was here. But there weren’t no assault.”
“Why did she have to run to the neighbors house in torn pajamas?”
“She’s a slut. She don‘t care if she‘s naked or not.”
Robert McCool, Scones and Ash 48
48
I heard her last comment from up in my room as I tried to fit the pieces of my life
so far into a battered suitcase. I yelled, “You sorry-assed sack of shit!” as loud as I could.
I was trying to squeeze one more pair of torn jeans into the case when I saw the blood
stains. They were splashed all over the floor. I stared at what I’d done. Me. Where had I
found the strength to strike back with no air in my lungs? Hadn’t I felt a strong burning
inside before I hit him with the knife? I seemed to remember I did. I did feel a flame of
some sort, and it saved my life.
I carried my school books in a back pack, and the few clothes I had in my single
suitcase and walked down the stairs. Setting them by the front door, I knelt in front of
what had been my mother at one time. “Why did you betray me?” I didn’t expect an
answer, at least a sensible one. “Why, goddammit? Why?”
“I told you to be nice to him, didn’t I? And now I’m going to lose this house. All
because of you. You’ve always been my burden to bear, and now you want to hurt me
even more? It‘s more than I can bear.” She sounded so sad when she answered me, but
then she gulped and looked that her end table for her whiskey glass. Not finding it at
hand, she glared at me with pure, undisguised hatred. “You’re lucky I don’t put the fire in
you too, bitch. I’d burn you up like I did your goddamn father, curse his goddamn name!”
Before I knew it I’d slapped her so hard the force of it turned her whole body in
the chair. She didn’t move, and I was scared I’d broken her neck. What fucking irony that
would be, she’d have the last laugh, again. Then she turned to face me. “And you’re just
like him!”
“Good!” I shouted, spittle flying. Then I got in her sickening sweet smelling face
and hissed, “You can’t hurt me, or anybody else ever again. You don’t have the fire
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49
inside you anymore. You put it out with all your drinking. You don’t have it anymore,” I
screamed at her, “I do!” What the hell was I yelling about all of a sudden? My mouth
made the words, but my conscious mind wasn’t telling it what to say. Where was it
coming from? My burning hate for her? Then I leaned over and whispered right into her
ear, “I’ve got it now. Me. Not you.”
She didn’t look at me, but her frame seemed to collapse in on its self, a burned out
husk even tiny fire demons wouldn’t go slumming in. Until she got to hell, that is.
“Uh, Belinda?” Brick asked softly and took my elbow. I want to get a couple of
photos of your room, if you don’t mind.”
I’d forgotten he was in the house. I pulled my fangs back in and smoothed back
my hackles. “Sure.”
Now he looked frightened. “What the hell was that all about? Yelling that you had
the fire now?”
“Nothing. It didn’t mean nothing. I just wanted to pay her back some.”
He looked away, but I could tell he was still thinking about my outburst. In my
bedroom he looked over the scene with eyes wide in disbelief. Blood had spurted
everywhere. “Craig, I mean the other Deputy, told me about this, but I didn’t believe him.
If Walt went very far he probably bled out and died.”
“That’s a loss,” I spit out.
“No, you did good. Very good. I sorry he had to assault…”
“Rape, Deputy Brickman. Not assaulted. Get it right. Raped.”
He tossed off an apology, “Sorry. Anyway, you did good, Belinda.”
“Let’s get out of here,” I muttered. I’d seen enough blood, my own, and the filthy
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50
beast’s too. It was time to leave this mausoleum. I grabbed my set of house and car keys
I’d left behind last night. They were mine, I’d earned ‘em fair and square with all my past
pleading, bargaining, and begging. Besides, I couldn’t see my mother driving very far, so
I figured I was doing the world a favor when I snagged up her set too.
Brick led me out of the house without a goodbye to my mother, with my suitcase
in his one hand and the Department camera in his other. “Hey, when you develop those
could I make a poster of the best one?” Again, I didn’t mean it as a joke. All I wanted to
do was to go back to bed and smother myself under covers.
He laughed and shook his head. “You know, I don’t have a clue about who you
are, other than the Stoner connection, but I like you. Uh, as a person who rises above fear
that is.” My mouth was open. The Stoner connection? “Hey, I’m a cop, Belinda. We
know things about the community that we need to know in order to keep the peace. No
harm on your part, no foul. Okay?” He looked into my eyes. “Besides, he the mayor’s
son, and the mayor is a poker buddy to the whole Sheriff’s office. Can’t let the royalty
get in trouble, can we?”
I knew my face must be green with nausea. The last thing I wanted to think about
now was sex or pot. “He’s headed for the west coast, you know.” I felt like retching.
Brick did see my sickening complexion. “Then you’ll stop seeing him.” It wasn’t
a question.
I nodded, and added, “You really don’t know who I am at all if you think I’m not
afraid.” I was, of just about everything, and everybody besides Deputy Jim Brickman. I
decided it was okay to call him Brick now.
#
Robert McCool, Scones and Ash 51
51
I found out one other person I wasn’t afraid of anymore. I was frantically digging
into my backpack, thinking I must have left my biology notes in my room when I was
trying to load everything up yesterday. For some reason I panicked, like my whole life
hung on the papers I couldn‘t find. I couldn’t have cared less to be honest, but there was
this sudden weird need to find them, wherever they were. I trotted over to my house and
entered without a key. Inside the stench was overpowering. How much liquor does it take
to foul up a place? How much does it take to foul a person up? Whatever that amount
was, the house stank like some seedy, shit-kicker tavern.
I found my mother on the floor, unconscious, her tumbler having tumbled out of
her hand and rolled across the floor. I checked her breathing, and she still was. I called
9-1-1 hoping they’d get here before it stopped. I heard sirens approaching, and I was
woozy from the fumes, so I went out on the porch, out of the certain death stench. I
inhaled and exhaled like it was any other day, but I knew it wasn‘t, and never would be.
It was truly the beginning of the end for my mom. I didn’t know exactly how I felt about
this. She was going into the hospital to die, but so unlike the way my father went. Her’s
would be too quick, too merciful as far as I was concerned. That was when I remembered
I wasn’t afraid of her anymore. I remembered shouting at her last evening that she didn’t
have her power anymore, that I had it now. I still didn’t know what I meant by that
declaration, but I’d seen the light go out in her eyes then. She was already dead, and only
waiting for her alcohol saturated flesh to slip into the last dark corner.
A black cruiser pulled up in front and Brick got out. I could tell he wanted to hold
me and comfort, but he was on duty, and too close to this situation to risk rumor. Besides,
I didn’t want him too. He’d be doing it for him, not me, and my dying mother had built a
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52
life on that program. “Your mother?” I nodded. “The ambulance is almost here.” Indeed,
I heard the siren ringing off of the houses on my block. “Why don’t you stay out here and
give me a statement while they attend to her?” I nodded again. He felt my hand. “God,
you’re near frozen. Why don’t we take this next door?” I nodded, and led him off the
porch and across the frosted grass. I didn’t feel cold at all, and with some good luck,
maybe never again.
Cordelia rushed to get a blanket for me as soon as I came through the door. She
wrapped it around my shoulders and helped me to a chair like I was the one the EMT’s
should be attending to. Finally I insisted, “Enough already!” I saw the hurt in her eyes,
but I couldn’t help my outburst. I felt something once agitated was now kicking around
inside me.
“Tell me what happened,” Brick said, and I did. It took all of a minute and a half.
“But unfortunately, I didn’t think to look for my class notes.” That was all that
mattered to me now, not family, not friends, just the next step to take. The right step. I
didn’t, couldn’t, know what it was.
He looked shocked. He couldn‘t know either. “Can’t you get them from a friend?”
“Do I have any friends now?” I didn’t know who they’d be.
Cordelia couldn’t contain her care any longer. “Of course you can dear. Give
them a call.” I shrugged, because I didn’t know if I wanted to.
Brick snapped his fingers in my face. “Belinda? Hey, Belinda!”
“What?” I replied while blinking my eyes.
“Do you want to go to the hospital? I’ll take you.”
I shook my head. I didn’t know what I’d have to gain by going. “Maybe
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tomorrow.”
“Okay. Well, I have my statement to type up, so I better get going. Call me if you
want to?”
I looked up from the floor. He seemed so tall from this point, so solid. “Yeah,” I
replied. I didn’t know why I’d do such a thing.
“Are going back to school tomorrow?” That I just plain didn’t know. “You
should, you know. Getting back into your routine will heal faster than hiding inside
yourself.” He looked meaningfully towards Cord. She nodded in return. “Good night,
Belinda.”
I looked up at him again. “Thanks, Brick. I really do mean it.” He looked into my
eyes for a few seconds. “I know you do,” he said as he touched the doorknob.
#
I called two of my girlfriends to ask for their notes. Both of them were occupied
doing something else and couldn’t break away to find them. I called Sandy. She hung up
as soon as I said hello. I sat with the phone on my lap and shook my head. I was now
down in the muck and sewage where their sisterly sadism lived. I was the one raped. Not
to them. They’d say I was somehow asking for what happened to me. After all, I’d
already had a sexual relationship with Stoner. They didn’t know it had already ended.
What more did they need to prove I was some sort of common tramp? I bet their parents
had talked to them before I was even out of the emergency room.
How had it spread so fast? Small community, somebody close to one of the
sheriffs, a few phone calls burning up the ether, slack jaws called into chewing juicy
gossip. Without even knowing it, I’d had my fifteen minutes of fame. I was now a tramp,
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a whore, and not a victim of circumstances. I started to cry. Seventeen, and my
sorry-assed life was already over.
The phone rang. I stared at it like it was a poisonous viper with a harsh voice. I
answered. “Belinda!” It was Kim. “Oh, my God! Are you alright? Sandy called and said
you called her and…”
“If you’re going to tell me I’m a tramp, you can hang up now.”
“Oh no, no, no. I didn’t where to get a hold of you before. Are you okay?”
The taste of her friends’ sewage was still strong in my mouth. “I’ve got stitches in
my ass, and my chest is like a roadmap. I’m sick, and angry, and all my so-called friends
hate me. How do you think I feel?”
“Not all your friends. Can I visit you?”
Investigation, or attraction? I really liked Kim, although maybe not yet the way
she might want me to. “Do you have the biology notes from last week?”
“Yeah.”
“Bring them with you.” I told her where Dick and Cord’s house was, but not that
mine was next door. That, she didn’t need to see.
#
Kim arrived and comforted me with her honest concern more than she could
know. I didn’t feel like hiding in bed from her, and that was welcome enough. We talked,
not about the assault, but about my thoughts and feelings for the future. Did I look
forward to returning to school? “God, no, but I’ve been told that getting back into a
routine is the best medicine.”
“What about the girls? You know how they are.”
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I was copying her pages of precise notes when she said that. Did I? How about,
did she? “How they are?”
She stared into my eyes until I blinked. “You know. You talked to them.” Her
eyes were sending more of the story than her words were. I studied her girlish face. “So
fuck ‘em.” Then I cared what they might say about her. Maybe, after all she was sitting
here instead of anyplace else. “The question is, how are they with you?”
She nodded. I apparently asked the right question. “You know about me…”
“Doesn’t matter to me, Kim. I think you’re more real and interesting than any of
them.”
“Does matter to them, though. As long as they have a deviant in their group to
look down on they feel better about themselves. If fact, they all knew about me before I
did, but I didn‘t understand the signals they were putting out.”
I thought about her confusion and estrangement. Was I worse off than she was?
“Signals? So I was a deviant too.”
“Yeah. I have a confession to make. When you joined us I felt relieved. I wasn’t
at the bottom of the barrel anymore.”
Jesus Christ, what a social order. “Well, at least that’s over.”
“What are you going to do?”
“About?”
“Everything. Are you going to disappear into depression? I mean, will I still be
your friend?”
I shook my head to loosen the kinks. She‘d put an honest name to what I was
feeling. Depression. “Do you want to be?”
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“I don’t do very well all on my own, and I’d rather have your friendship than
theirs. We could be rejects together.”
I was warmed by her honesty again. I figured it was time to offer some honesty of
my own. “I don’t…”
“Yeah, I know. I wish.” She giggled.
“Love takes many forms.”
“Okay, so you know and don‘t worry about it, I’d love you as a friend. If you can
return it.”
I took her hand on top of the dining room table. “I’d love to. Especially because
you take such excellent notes.” She laughed, and it was fine. Very fine. I had to tell her,
“Listen, I’m frightened by most things now, and about everyone. What am I going to do
when I go back to school?”
She did the staring into my eyes thing again, and I felt like shivering. “Belinda,
you have a new power in you. Remember? Power? I don’t know where it came from, I’m
guessing not from the attack, but I can see it inside you. It wasn’t there before. I doubt
you have much to be frightened at in school.”
Nice speech, particularly the spooky, mystical part her seeing inside me. But then,
she was the girl who told me that Chinese numerology declared power was to be my
“life-issue”.
How do I tell her that Walter is still out there, somewhere. I’ll never feel safe as
long as he is in my thoughts. We finished up with the classroom notes and the
heart-to-heart and she drove away in her parents’ car. I didn’t know what to do with this
friendship thing, but I’d try to figure it out as I went along. At least I’d go along for as
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long as I could.
#
Chapter Five-
I didn’t want to deal with the house after my mother died. Then I had to, never
mind being sick with depression. I couldn’t pay the mortgage payment, and I’d heard her
say a hundred times or more that she could lose it without da’s disability or Walt’s slimy
wages of sin. Now, here I was with the piece of shit place to do something with.
“Here, Belinda,” Dick called to me and then handed over an address book. “This
guy is a realtor. Even more important, he’s honest, or at least he was when we used to
hang out at the VFW together.” The guy’s name was William Lestrange. Strange name.
“Go on, give him a call.”
I did. “This is Bill,” he answered, “How can I help you find your dream home
today?” He sounded like a sleazy shyster, and with a name of, “Lestrange”, how normal
could he be? Anyway, I explained my situation, and my connection to Dick and Cord. He
asked a few questions about my situation, then set a time when we’d meet. Lastly, he
asked to speak to Dick privately. I handed over the phone and went to my bedroom to
sleep some more.
When he showed up at our door he was cheery, downright exuberant when he
shook my hand. He said he’d talk to me in a while, but first we had to get past the reunion
part. It was a happy occasion, a meeting of war buddies and the time lag between them. I
was touched. I’d never known men who could be so totally themselves, and not care what
anybody thought of them. They’d paid their dues, and paid some others’ dues too.
Then we went to my house. I let Bill in and stood back. “You’re not going to get
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much for this place,” he told me as he took his first look around. “And you’re going to
get a helleva lot less in its current condition. God, what distillery branched out here?” We
walked through each room, with him critiquing each, my hopes shattering more with each
step. Then he looked me square in the eye. “I know you’ve been through a lot.” He
opened a kitchen cabinet door. There was a mess inside. “I know a cleaning crew who
would work for you with the understanding you’d pay them when the house sold.”
“Yes?”
“You’re going to have a monster yard sale.”
“Yes?”
“Yeah. My wife can help you sort stuff out. Plan on the weekend after next, and
advertise. Advertise in every paper and classified ad flyer. Hang up fliers on every
telephone pole, all over town. Get it out on the street as much as you can, because you
want this,” waving his arm all around to encompass the whole house, “to be done. Get
this carpet,” he instructed, and pointed to the living room, “ripped up as soon as possible.
The cleaners might be able to get rid of the smell before they lay down the new stuff.”
“New stuff?”
“Carpet. Spend a hundred dollars and get a thousand in return.” I nodded. “I’m
going to do everything I possibly can to help you, but you’ll have to sell it for more than
is owed on it or you’re dead. You understand? Dead?”
“Okay, I can do that. Uh, I think.”
“And for God’s sake, keep your grades up. Cordelia would string me up if she
thought I was overloading you. Right?”
I laughed. The thought of Cord hurting anybody was a hoot.
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59
“Oh, so you think not? Let me tell you, Dick was a hard man to handle back in his
day. He was angry that his importance got lost the minute he stepped back on our shores.
It was very hard for him, for a long time.”
“The war?”
“The Korean war. A nasty business long before Vietnam. Some guys couldn’t get
past the action. Dick was one of those, he’d been a Medic, and seen more than his share
of tragedy. Anyway, one day he runs into me, all cool and smiling and all. I had to ask
why. “I was just given an ultimatum.”
“Oh yeah?” I prompted.
“‘Cordelia said she’d hang me up by my balls,’ pardon my French, if he didn’t get
to a real life. Never seen him so happy, and he’s been that ever since. The thing was, he
must have missed being told what to do, and when to do it, by a superior officer. Funny,
Huh?”
I revised my opinion of Cordelia. “And well you should,” Bill agreed as if he read
my thought. “I’ll give you the numbers you’ll need, and round up as many friends as you
can to help. And talk to the lending bank. Now. We have to know what we need to get
out of this dump. Ah, house. Your house.”
I already knew it was a dump. I gulped. “Uh, I don’t have any friends.”
He looked me over very carefully. “Not since the attack, huh? Great, just great.
Goddamn teenage girls. Uh, with present company exempted, of course. Well, I’ll see
what I can do.”
Suddenly I had a thought. “How much…”
“Oh, I won’t take it all, if that’s what you’re afraid of.” He winked, actually
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60
winked. “I think you’ll find my fee most reasonable. Dick would’ve never given you my
number if it were otherwise.”
We stepped out on the porch and into fresh air. He held out his hand. “I like you,
Belinda. You’ve had a rough road to travel recently. You’ll be fine now, I promise.”
I wanted to bite his hand off. “How can you make such…”
“Because I see the fire inside you, that’s how. I’m not saying it’s going to be a
whole lot better for a while, I’m saying you’ll rise above all adversaries. That’s what
matters.” Then he walked to his car, climbed in, and drove away. I felt my newfound
confidence in him wrap around me when he left.
#
By the next morning any fleeting confidence had flown away. Cordelia came into
the bedroom. “C’mon honey, time to get up for school.” I’d been dreaming about a
side-show style parabolic mirror focused only on suffering, and I growled at her like an
animal. Then she pulled the covers off. I started to scream at her, but heard Dick’s voice.
“Cordelia has never shown you anything but love, so if she tells you it’s time to get ready
for school, you do it.”
“Oh, you mean Sergeant Cordelia.”
He gave me a funny, kind of disturbed look. “Get up kid.” End of argument.
I got up. When I peed I noticed the stitches in my vitals had dissolved like they
were supposed to. Yea. I took an unenthusiastic shower, without shampooing, and threw
on what I found in my unpacked suitcase. In the mirror I looked like myself. Yea,
wouldn’t Rose and Jack be proud of my appearance now? I carried my book bag down to
the kitchen, dumped it on the table, and poured myself some coffee.
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“You’ll be okay today,” Cord said softly.
“Yeah, everybody’s saying that recently.”
She looked puzzled, like she didn’t know if to be hurt or more supportive. “What
do you want for breakfast?”
“This,” I pointed at my coffee mug.
“You need something on your stomach…”
“I don’t think I can stomach school, let alone anything I might throw up later.”
My, wasn’t I the vicious little monster?
“Do you want me to…”
I held the keys to my mother’s piece of shit car. “No, I’m going to drive.”
Cordelia clasped her hands in front of her. I couldn’t blame her if she didn’t know me
anymore. I finished my coffee and went out the door without saying goodbye.
The car started. I put it into reverse and backed out into the street, and it didn’t die
on me. I was surprised. I drove carefully to the school and parked in the student lot where
all the better-to-do kids parked. I’d ridden the bus until now, while my old friends always
arrived in Sandy’s mother’s Chrysler Town and Country, a can full of girlish viciousness.
Then I sat behind the wheel and pushed the sickness back down into my body, where no
one could see it. Swinging my backpack out of the car, I walked slowly, and shakily, to
the doors of what could be the first new worse day of my life, and walked in just like I
belonged there. The world was too large, I was too fragile. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.
#
I knew everybody stared at me. Some glared with spite, some followed me with
curiosity, and compassion. Some of them knew I was there but ignored me like I wasn’t.
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Like my old friends. I didn’t see anything but their backs all day.
Kim said hello to me once, then stayed silent as ashes. I liked her more and more.
Then there were the boys. This wasn’t good, clean, fun like Stoner, this was a
rape. That alone made me a victim to their jokes and snide remarks. Oh, nothing I’d want
to stab them over, nothing outright, but those comments floated around the air inside the
school. Never a social animal, I withstood the shit and went about my business, even
though I wished I were back in bed. It was a shit day all around.
Then I got home, and decided a nice nap until tomorrow would be good, so I went
right to my bedroom. They let me sleep until six o’clock, and supper.
They never asked, but passed the potatoes when I reached for them. I ate mostly
what I didn’t swirl around my plate, without recrimination. Maybe because it was Friday,
maybe because I’d lived up to their expectations. When I rose to put my plate in the sink
Dick told me, “Oh, I almost forgot, Belinda, a lawyer phoned today. He said to tell you to
call him tomorrow. I’ve got his number…”
“A lawyer? What the hell for?” Okay, I caught some recrimination then. “What
have I done wrong now?” I set down my dinnerware and climbed to bed. I didn’t change
first, just took off my shoes and slid between fresh sheets. Cord must have put them on
today while I was gone. Fresh sheets twice in less than a week. When I lived with my
mother washing the sheets was up to my discretion, and I went for weeks without
changing them. I only had two sets anyway. People have different priorities, and mine
had always been a lot lower that others’. Of course, mine mostly concerned survival.
Sheets? Somewhere below that.
#
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I held Dick’s handwritten note in front of my face while I drank a third mug of
coffee. I needed the courageous caffeine buzz to call this out-of-the-blue lawyer, and I
tried to think really hard what I might have done wrong to somebody. Offended some
shit-head for just existing? I had a bad feeling about this.
I called the number on the paper. An older male voice with an unmistakable
accent answered, so I told him who I was. “Great! Great! I’ve had a hard time finding
you, girl. I even called the Sheriff’s office to get your number.”
Great, the Sheriff Department knows everything. “Who are you, and what do you
want with me?” Here it comes, bad news.
“My name’s Stephen McAllister, and it’s rather what you want from me.”
“What?”
“You don’t know it, but I’m contacting you because of your father’s will.”
“What? What will? He died a long time ago.”
“Not so long ago, to be sure, but the contents of his last will and testament could
not be disclosed until your mother died.” Alright, this guy was one of my father’s
drinking buddies, and he was having a helleva laugh at my expense.
“I don’t know who you are, but this isn’t funny. If you call again I’m going to call
the same Sheriff’s office you like so much.” The phone was on its way to the cradle when
I heard him yell, “Firedrake!” I stopped my hand. “What did you say?”
“Firedrake. He told me to say it to you to make you believe I was sincere. I assure
you I’m totally sincere. Your mother put it in him, didn’t she?” The coffee had made my
mouth too dry to reply. “Belinda, I was your father’s attorney. Honest.”
Rubbing my tongue around inside my mouth, I croaked, “Why now?”
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“He didn’t want your money to be discovered by your mother. He saved it for
you.” I couldn’t comprehend. “Listen, can you come to my office today? I think it’s vital
for you to know what’s yours'.”
“Where’s your office?” He told me it was about ten miles away, and we set a time
to meet. I had time to take a real shower before I left.
#
He was even more the Irish gentleman in person, even to offering me some of his
Bushmill’s Black whiskey. The desk, books, and filing cabinets had decades of thick pipe
smoke on them, and the air smelled of peat. I passed on the whiskey, and crossed my
legs.
He picked up a pipe and began to load with black tobacco. “Oh, I’m sorry, that
was thoughtless.” He held up the tobacco and asked, “Do you mind?” I shook my head.
After all, it was his own office. He finished packing the pipe, picked up a lighter and
exhaled a thick blue cloud of smoke. It was where the office got its peat moss smell from.
“Well, let me get right to the matter at hand. Your father left you an amount of money
equal to about $150,000, mostly in high yield bonds and certificates of savings.”
I was stunned speechless. He looked at me to see if I heard him. I nodded. “He
wanted you to have whatever you wanted in life. As he said to me one night in a bar, ‘It’s
bad enough she’s got the mother she does. I really fucked up there.’ Excuse my
language.”
Then he laughed with the ease and strength of somebody who really knows how
to enjoy a good joke. It was a grand laugh, and I felt better for hearing it. “Now, for the
good part.” Could it get better? “The house you live in.”
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“Lived in. I’m selling it. I can’t afford it.”
He laughed again, and the joyful noise echoed around the walls. “That’s his little
surprise for you. The house was paid off long ago.”
“But my mother was always worried about missing a payment.”
“His, and her’s, payments went right into a savings account for you. Very funny,
isn’t it?”
“But the bank…”
“The bank was in on it. They loved putting all that money into one of his savings
accounts instead of seeing it fly away. If you’re selling it, that’ll be that much more in
your pocket. Can you see why he didn’t want you to know about this while your mother
lived?”
I nodded. “But how could he know when…”
“She’d die? He wasn’t a stupid man, Belinda. A little too prone to poetry and
destruction maybe, but not stupid.”
“If he wasn’t stupid, why did he marry her?”
“He understood her as if she were Irish. But that appetite for violence is not
strictly ours’ alone. Other, more vicious races know it too. Your da’ didn’t know the
difference, unfortunately, for both of you.”
“So, what do I do with all this money now?”
“That’s up to you after you sign some documents for me.”
“Is it cash?”
“No, something better. Nobody can take it away from you. The bank manager will
be more than happy to explain all of this to you.”
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I was already thinking about how, and where, I’d live. “So I can’t touch any of
it?”
“I didn’t say that. Let’s consider a hypothetical situation. Leave the bonds and
certificates where they are. Only use the savings account sparingly, collecting interest for
the future, your future. Sell the house, and take only what you need for now. Let the dust
settle down. There’s no hurry to spend this small fortune, is there?” I shook my head no,
and really meant it. This was mine, all mine, and only mine. “Well, good then. Come,
sign these papers, and walk away a woman with broader possibilities.” When I was done
he handed me an envelope with the “mortgage” savings bankbook and the deed to my
house in it. It was no more than a feather weight in my pocket.
#
Chapter Six-
The whole way home I felt a burden on my shoulders. What the hell was I going
to do now? I had his money, but I didn’t have my da’. It wasn’t a fair trade, at all. I sunk
lower and lower into the car’s busted down driver’s seat until I was peering down the
road through the steering wheel. At home I parked the car on the street and crawled out of
the crappy thing. I had just enough strength to get inside the house, hang up my coat, and
head directly to bed for the day.
“So what was your meeting about?” asked Cord. She was at the counter making
cheese biscuits, one of my favorite things. I tossed the yellow envelope on the table. She
glanced at it, and me. I climbed the almost too steep stairs and threw myself under the
blankets. This day couldn’t end soon enough for me.
#
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Kim called around five to ask if I wanted to come over for the night. I took the
call because it sounded like it could be an amusing distraction from thinking about my
da’s blood money. Kim wouldn’t care if I had it or not, she only wanted companionship,
and had chosen me as that companion.
I ate dinner with Dick and Cord, eating six of her incredibly fluffy biscuits.
Neither of them mentioned the contents of the envelope, even though It had been opened
and moved out of supper’s way. I ate in silence, and they respected my quietness. There
were moments when I wanted to stay with them all through school, but I knew, and now I
think they did too, when I was going to go find my own life. I’m guessing it hit Cordelia
hard, as she would worry about me, and my solo life, until I was thirty. It was sweet, but
it was also the reason I had to leave. Love could only stand so much pulling and tugging.
After I put the dishes into the washer I left without saying a word. Not to offend or
punish, but because it felt right to keep my peace. Decisions would have to be made soon,
but not tonight.
#
Kim was kind of like a puppy when I got there. She bounced around and giggled
and had a great time all on her own. We spent most of the night talking, and I decided to
tell her about the rape.
“I never knew he was coming. I should have, I should of protected myself better.
He pinned me down and tore my pajama bottoms off, and all I heard was that ripping
sound tearing part of me away. And all I could do was to keep breathing into the
mattress.”
“Does it hurt to talk about it?” she asked.
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“Yeah, in a way. Talking about it makes it real, when all I want to do is forget it
in the secret code of normalcy, like, ‘Oh yes, I fought back, and it never really happened’.
But that’s pure bullshit, and the longer you hide inside the bullshit the more lost you get.”
I felt a tear on my cheek and wiped it away with my hand.
“Are you afraid of the future?”
“You know, I‘m not sure. I’m so afraid of everything else right now I can’t tell
where it starts or stops.”
“That’s how I was. All of a sudden I thought everybody knew about me, and they
probably did, thanks to our mutual friends. I felt out-numbered, cast out. I thought my life
as I knew it was probably over.”
“Was it?”
“That’s the funny thing. It was over, but I landed in a much better one. One I
could decide about.” She looked away. “And here I am, with a better friend than I’ve ever
had. I think it’s just the transition period that’s painful.”
“Then I hope I’m done transitioning.”
Kim laughed, the grew serious. “Ah, about that, you have some big changes ahead
of you.”
What was she saying? It sounded like her numerology stuff. “What do you
mean?”
She tried to shrug my question off, but I pinched her arm. “Owe! You didn’t have
to…”
“Tell me! What are you saying?”
She did the looking deeply into my eyes trick again. “When I look inside you I
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see another creature trying to get out. It is your guardian spirit, and it will protect you if
you let it.”
I shook my head back and forth rapidly. “Now your sounding like my father and
his talk of fire-dragons inside him.”
“How do you know it’s not true?” She put one finger on my cheek. “It’s there, if
you only recognize it as part of yourself.”
Her fingertip felt like electricity and cold water mixed together. I wanted her to
pull it away, but while it was there I could feel a heat building up in my belly. Was this
love? Sex? Or was it a guardian warning me away from her touch? How the hell would I
know?
“It’s your guardian, Belinda.”
If I was a freak, what was Kim? “How do you know this stuff you’re telling me?
Do you make it all up?”
“It doesn’t matter what I say, it matters what you feel inside. I’m only letting you
know in what way you’re special.” She removed her finger. “Wanna watch a movie?”
#
I slept in all morning at her house. It was wonderful to sleep in the same room as
somebody I didn’t have to fear. I got up when I heard noises from the kitchen, and found
Kim and her mom were there. Kim smiled when she turned to me. “Coffee?”
“Always.” I sat down at their table and sipped. They were having a friendly
mother-daughter conversation. I studied them like they were something under a
microscope. They were beautiful together, spitting images separated by a time that treated
her mother well. Finally, I felt the need to discuss my inheritance. I began very casually
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and built up to the disclosure of funds. Kim sat down. Her mother sat down.
Kim said, “God, that’s great, Belinda. You can live like you want to now.”
Her mother countered, “College. You can afford to go to college.”
Uh, I didn’t think so. “Well, I’m real uncertain about that right now.”
I moved on to my house problem, ah, situation. “I’d be glad to help clean up,”
Kim replied.
“Ah, I’ve hired a cleaning crew.” No way did I want her anywhere around the
house in the state it was in.
“Alright, I’ll make up the fliers and post them! Okay?” Her mother laughed. “No,
really, I mean it.” Her mother laughed again. “Sweetie? You know you have a hard time
finishing anything. Belinda needs to have those papers posted this week. Are you sure
you can do it?”
“I can for her. It’s not my fault, mom. It was those other girls, they made me feel
like dirt.”
I broke in fast. “I’d be grateful if you did that for me, Kim.” There then, one job I
didn’t want to do was just allocated away.
#
Kim did hang the fliers, and the monster yard sale brought in a little money. I
gave her half for helping, for being such a good friend. The house sold cheap at $55,000,
which I didn’t mind at all. I paid off the cleaning crew, the carpet installers, William
Lestrange, and gave Dick and Cordelia five thousand dollars.
“You can’t do this honey,” Cord told me when I put the check in her hand.
“You’re going to need this when you go to college.”
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Again, the college thing. “Uh, about that. I’m not going.”
“For God’s sake why not? How do you plan to…”
“Look, I’m a mediocre student, at best. I think my calling lies elsewhere.” She got
that old hurt look around her eyes. “Really, I have a good feeling about this decision.
Please, keep the money. Think of it as decades of babysitting payments.”
She stuck the check inside a cupboard and dusted off her hands like she’d been
touching something dirty. Something dirty that came from me. I wanted to throw up, it
hurt that much.
So many changes had taken place recently that I stopped to think what I’d
become. Good? Bad? What was I? Who even cared?
It was later, when I huddled down into my covers that an image came before my
eyes, an image that described me perfectly.
Like Kim had said about herself, I was dirt. I was turned over earth, full of grubs,
worms, and little artillery pill bugs inside. But I was also warm and fertile, a pungent bed
for growing something useful in. Like flowers, maybe. Or maybe thorn bushes.
#
part two- buried alive
#
Chapter Seven-
I rented a small apartment, had a landline phone installed the day I signed the
lease, and bought a few pieces of furniture for it. Nothing fancy, just a place to be me.
Cordelia wasn’t even hurt. I invited Dick and her, and Kim, to come over and see the
place once I put away my few possessions and hung new towels in the bath. My
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full-sized bed was basic, as were the simple cotton sheets, and my dining table had
placemats for four on it.
It wasn’t enough that Cordelia bought me flatware, a cooking pan set, and a set of
Correll dinnerware too; she instantly began to think of ways to make it “more homey”. I
didn’t have the heart to tell her I liked it the way it was. However, I could see colorful
potholders coming over the horizon. I hoped they wouldn’t clash with the packages from
the ramen noodles I usually ate at home.
Kim brought salt, a loaf of fresh bread, and a sage smudge stick. She also brought
me a huge armload of flowers and vases to put them in. She placed the salt in a dish and
sat it by the door. She gave us all a bite of bread to eat. “I wanted to cover your Irish
traditions.” Then she walked around the whole place with her smoldering sage. “I also
want to put a protectorate around the place, and drive any spirits away.” That was Kim,
all spooky, serious, and goofy at the same time. The sage stick still stunk, however.
I ordered pizza. Cord, Dick, and Kim sat at the table. I leaned against the wall and
let sauce run down my fingers before I’d lick it off. It was disgusting, slippery and slimy,
and I loved it for the first meal served in my place.
After they all left I sat down and thought about stuff, stuff I hadn’t had a chance
to think about before. I wanted a better doorstopper chain, and maybe new locks too. If I
didn’t tell the manager, he couldn‘t hand over my keys to any service man asking for
admittance . I wanted to put dowels in all the sliding windows.
I didn’t want a television though. I had no room in my new life for complacency.
There were two things I really wanted. I wanted music around me all the time. I wanted
to remember Merrill Ashe and his jazz amidst the trees, in the soft night. I didn’t have my
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mother anymore, or Cordelia for that matter, to complain about when, or how loud, I
played it. I wanted a lot of discs, and a stereo to play them on. I thought about an I-Pod,
but realized it would prevent me hearing what was around me when I was outside. I did
buy one, however, and gave it to Kim for Christmas. I also wanted a cell phone with
9-1-1 first on speed dial.
That evening I spent three thousand dollars at Best Buy, and put the whole thing
together by myself. I sat on my sofa, remote in hand, and played John Coltrane’s version
of, “My Favorite Things”, first. I hoped Merrill was listening to the same song as I was, it
would bring a small circle back around to itself and free the world of a little misery.
Then I pulled out my homework and started on it. Weird. I was now independent,
no longer broke, but I was still looking at school next year. I played music as I sat at the
table, and felt a little bit alone.
#
A couple of days later Jim Brickman stopped by. The Sheriff’s Department knows
everything, and apparently I was the current topic of discussion. He wasn’t in uniform,
and he was carrying a small bouquet of yellow roses. “Hi, can I come in?” he asked.
“Sure, make yourself at home.” He looked around at the bare white walls, the
spartan furniture, and me. I said, “Not much to look at, but it’s mine.”
“So, that attorney found you?” Was there anything he didn’t know about my life?
“Yeah, he did. I guess I should thank you for that.”
“No need to.” He held out the flowers. “Can I put these in water?”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry. My friend brought me some vases, if I can find one that’s
empty.” I didn’t, so I added the roses to an already full container.
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“Kim?”
“What did you say?”
“Was it Kim who brought you the flowers?”
What business was it of his? I didn’t answer.
“Well, I just wanted to stop by and say howdy.”
“Thank you.”
He looked down at the floor, started to stammer, then looked at me and asked,
“Would you like to grab a burger one night this week? I mean, it can’t be much fun
eating alone all the time.”
What the hell? Was this supposed to be a date? “Ah, I guess it’d be okay.” He
beamed back a smile to me. “Are you, like, asking me for a date or something?”
The high beam dimmed. “Call it something. You don’t have an excess of friends,
but I’m offering, if you’d like. Friends.”
My radar was now humming at full power. My last encounter with a man had
kinda thrown them off my emotional menu. “Yeah, we can grab a burger,” I conceded.
“Good. How about on Thursday? I’m off.”
My social calendar didn’t even exist. “Okay, fine. I’ll be here.”
The smile returned. “See you then.” He walked away with a kind of swagger I’d
not seen before. What was I thinking of? What was he thinking of? Probably not the same
thing.
#
Kim made me promise to call her after the burger thing.
He was a perfect gentleman the whole time. He took me to a real sit-down
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restaurant, with waitresses and all. They specialized in a half-pound patty of ground
round, with bacon and real cheddar cheese on top. Plus a pile of other garbage to put on it
if you were a masochist. “Do you eat here often?”
“God no. Craig does though. You remember Craig?”
The other Deputy from the night of my rape. Yeah, he was pounds over rapid
pursuit speed. I opted for the plain burger. They arrived at our table with a perfectly
cooked mountain of golden steak-fries. Jim drank a beer, and I had iced tea with lemon.
There wasn’t any room for conversation around the sandwiches we stuffed in our mouths,
but after I conceded defeat and put down half of my burger, I had a few questions I
wanted to ask.
“Ah, Jim…”
“Brick. Please call me Brick. My friends do.”
“Ah, uh, okay, Brick. Can I ask you some questions.”
He got a serious look on his face. “Shoot.”
Good. That was what I was thinking of too. “I want to make my apartment safer.
Any suggestions?”
He made the suggestions I’d already thought of. “Oh, there’s also an alarm system
you don’t have to install in the wall. It mounts to the door itself.”
“Sounds good. Could you help me?” I wanted to hook him fast. What good was it
to have a Deputy for a friend if you couldn’t ask him about the slightly unlawful.
“I’d love to, thanks for asking.”
“Uh, there’s one more thing.”
“Yeah?”
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“Can you help me get a gun?”
“What?”
“A gun.”
He started shaking his head. “No way, you’re not even of legal age yet. Listen, I
don’t know what you’re expecting, but a gun is a drastic measure.”
“Walter. He’s still out there, somewhere. I bet the son-of-a-bitch won’t forgive
and forget.”
“That’s what we’re here for, Belinda. We carry guns.”
“Yeah, and how soon could you be at my place if the bastard broke down my
door?” He looked thoughtful, took a good pull on his beer, then looked in my eyes.
“Do you like to hunt?”
“What?”
“Hunt. You know; deer, rabbits, and the like.”
“I’ve never, and I’d never. It’s barbaric.”
“You can buy a shotgun, and a hunting license, at about two dozen places in this
area. Hunting’s one of our big local attractions.”
“I don’t know how to shoot a shotgun. I was thinking of something more point
and shoot friendly.”
“Not going to happen. But I’ll help pick out a shotgun that fits you. Then we’ll go
to the shooting range and I’ll teach you how to be deadly with it.”
“That’s the best you can do?”
He laughed so loud the other patrons all swivel-necked to look at us. “Yeah.”
“Okay. I’d appreciate it.” I looked at my watch. It was still early. “Can we go? I
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need to get some sleep.”
He nodded. “Still hiding in the covers?”
Why did he have to let me know that he knew everything about me. It was
beginning to piss me off. “Yeah, at least there’s no boogie men in my bed. Just me.”
He opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, and stood up. He
didn’t offer to take my arm on the way out either, but he did open my door for me.
As he returned me to my place he made a clearing noise in his throat. I thought,
here we go, he’s going to ask me if he can come up. “Ah, I know you’re very sensitive
about this,” goddamn, I was right, and very disappointed in him, “But I can install a new
lock and the alarm while I’m off duty. That means while you’re in school.”
“Did I hear you right? You want into my place while I’m away?”
“It’s the quickest way. I can have it done tomorrow.” I wanted to shudder. The
thought of a man going through my personal items made me nauseous enough to roll the
monster burger around in my stomach like a meat washing machine. “Okay, I’m sorry. It
can wait.”
The thing was, I didn’t think it could wait. Every minute of anxiety I felt was a
march step to madness. “Okay, you can do it. I’ll get you my spare key. But there’s one
thing you must promise me.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t go through my personal stuff. You’ll promise?”
He smiled. “I promise.” The smile got bigger, “Thank you for trusting me, I know
it must be hard for you.”
When he dropped me off I unlocked my door, pulled the apartment key off my
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ring and handed it over to him. “Oh, shit. How am I gonna get in after you change the
lock?”
“I’ll meet you in the student parking lot. You’ll know me, I’ll be the one in the
patrol car.” He flexed his brightest smile on me. “Hey, I had a good time tonight.”
I fixed an eye on his mouth, and replied, “I’m jail bait, Brick.”
The teeth never retracted into a hurt look, and his mouth flowed into a more
friendly grin. “Not forever.”
I stood there, reflecting on his statement while he drove away. Was it a good
thing? I shrugged, I had time to think it over.
#
I called Kim, as promised. Her first question was, “Is he hitting on you?”
“Not outright, but remember, he saw my boobs in the hospital. What man can
resist?”
“Or woman.”
“Yeah, sorry. Or woman.”
“Are you going to buy a shotgun?”
Maybe. “I think maybe I should. That evil fucker’s still out there, wherever out
there is. I’m scared.”
“Yet you are so strong, so determined. I’d rather think Walt’s afraid of you. You
cut him last time.”
“So the next time he’ll make sure I don’t have a knife in my hand. I can’t live in
fear forever. I think a gun is the right answer.”
She laughed. “Don’t ever get mad at me, okay?” She got quiet for a moment. “Did
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you takes notes in history class?”
“I always do, but they’re crappy. You need to copy them?”
“Can you come over after school tomorrow?”
“After I get my new keys from Brick. I can even give you a ride, if you don’t
mind being seen in the booze-mobile.”
“I don’t mind, but you need to know something.”
“What? I can’t stand anymore high school drama.”
“People are calling you ‘dyke’ behind your back. It’s from being around me.”
Of course it was, what else could it be? “Fuck ‘em.”
“You’re sure?”
“Okay, what else is going on?”
“I could arrange to not be seen with you.”
Stupid, stupid girl. “As if. You’re my friend, and I don’t want you hurt. If they’re
bothering you, you tell me. I’ll teach them all some manners.” Where was all this
high-toned bluster coming from? The thing was, I meant it, every word of it.
“If you’re sure.”
Yeah, yeah. “Name one person. I’m guessing it’s one of our old friends.”
“Well, Sandy does run her mouth. It could be her who started it.”
I felt my fiery muscles flexing already. “Fine, I’ll deal with her tomorrow.”
“You’re not going to hurt her, are you?”
“Nothing more than her feelings, like she did yours. Okay?” No response. “Hey
Kim, say goodnight. I’ve got to get to bed.”
“Goodnight, Belinda. See you tomorrow.”
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I hung up, changed into pajamas while facing the door, And turned off the
overhead light. Still, the little nightlight that lit up the whole apartment was a reassuring
glow.
#
English Literature, Composition, Biology, Civics, and History made up my day. I
was a bored, C to C- student, taking too much time to think of other things not in the
course curriculum. I believed Kim was right, that it was Sandy putting her mouth on me.
Of the social club I always disliked her the most. She needled Kim a little too much, a
little too harsh. It didn’t mean anything then, but it sure as hell did now. I planned on
giving her every opportunity to bad-mouth me today. Just what I was going to do then I
had no idea, but I was sure something would come to me.
It happened after lunch. I walked down the hallway a little too close to the wall
when she had her head in a locker. I banged it, and she pulled her head out, rubbing her
left temple. “Fuckin’ dyke! Why don’t you go collect your little piece and get out of this
school? Nobody wants you here slut!”
I wanted to stop and crack my knuckles, my hands felt so powerful. I took a touch
of fire from one hand and shoved it into her mouth. It happened so fast nobody saw it.
She staggered back, a look of horror on her face as she tried to say something to me. I
didn’t care to hear anything she had to say, so I turned around and walked away. She fell
to the floor, and that’s how she was discovered.
The EMT’s arrived fifteen minutes later, and rushed her to the emergency room
where she was placed in a cold bath. Her fever spiked at 106 before they cooled her
down. She tried telling the staff what happened to her, but they all laughed behind her
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back, knowing the fever had confused her.
Except for one old black nurse who remembered my father’s complaint, and the
creature she saw rise up from his burned out embers. She’d been sedated after pointing it
out the last time, so she didn’t say a word. When Sandy could speak plainly again, the
nurse asked her for specific names. My name came up. The nurse looked up my father’s
file on the hospital computer and compared notes.
#
“Belinda, some nurse is calling here, wanting to ask you some questions about
your father’s death.” Cordelia sounded beside herself.
“How did she get your number?”
“I don’t know, she didn’t say. Do you know what this is about?”
I didn’t have a clue. “Did she leave a number I can reach her at?”
“The emergency room number. Here it is…”
“Did she sound friendly?”
“She sounded concerned.”
“After all this time?”
“Call her. It’s better to know than not know.”
“Fine. Thanks, Cordelia.”
“I’ve got some really nice kitchen accessories for you. How about I come by this
weekend?”
“I’d love to see you. Make it Sunday, okay?”
#
The nurse was nice enough when I talked to her. She wanted me to refresh her
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memory as to my father’s long illness. Not one time did I say fire, dragon, serpent, or the
other multitude of labels for what ailed him. She asked if she could meet me, perhaps in
the hospital cafeteria?
“Why? What does all of this have to do with me? It was a long time…”
“Sandy Merchant.”
“What?”
“Sandy Merchant. She came in with a burning fever. Said you had something to
do with it.”
“No, I don’t believe I’ll meet you.”
“You mistake me. I don’t want to blame or incriminate you. I only want to talk to
you.”
“Why?”
“I might be able to help you.”
“Oh really? Why didn’t you help my father then?”
“I knew you’d say that. I couldn’t. He was the recipient, not the bearer. Now
you’re the bearer.”
“You know a lot about me already.”
“But you know nothing about me. Aren’t you curious?”
“About you? Not really.”
“No, not me, the fire inside.”
“Who are you really?”
“Let’s say I’m an older woman who knows good medicine from bad medicine.
I’m talking about your gift.”
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“Look, I’m sorry, but you think I have something I don’t.”
“Not yet, you don’t. You’re flying blind, and your mind can’t remember what
your spirit can do, or did, in Sandy’s case. You’re dangerous.”
Dangerous? I’d be dangerous if I had a gun. I’m a girl just trying to get by. I
didn’t dignify her comment with a reply.
“Belinda? One time? Please?”
Like I had to be somewhere else. “Fine. When?” The next day, after school.
#
Kim asked, “What did you do to Sandy?”
“I’m not exactly sure, it happened so fast.”
“Really, you don’t know.”
“No, but I’m meeting this nurse at the hospital. Care to attend?”
“Why?”
“Because I asked you.”
“No, why are you meeting her?”
“She seems to think I’ve got some dangerous magic about me. She said she wants
to help me.”
Kim was quietly thoughtful. “Remember when I told you that I saw a spirit inside
you? I called it a ‘guardian’.”
“Yeah, and you also said my life-issue would be power. How am I doing so far?”
“You’re collecting your power, and this spirit is one form of your power. What
did you do to Sandy?”
“I hit her on the head with the locker door.”
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“You hit her on the head, and she has to go to the emergency room? I heard she
had a horrible fever.”
“I must have hit her a little too hard.”
“Bullshit! It was you. You put that fever inside her, and you know it.”
“C’mon, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Why is it that other people seem to know more about you than you do yourself?”
“Oh, you mean like being called a dyke?” I took a deep breath, because I wanted
to get the next phrase out before I offended her. “I mean, it’d be great if I were, but I’m
not. I love you, but there’s no romance in it, so we’re closer than if we were fucking each
other. Sex screws everything up.”
“How long did you practice that speech?”
I burst out laughing, and almost drove up on the curb. “It was that bad, wasn’t it?”
“Don’t patronize me.”
I had no business asking her, but “Have you ever had a lover?”
“I already told you no. Why?”
“Because you’re quite the catch.”
She took my right hand in her’s. “So, who’s fishin’? You?” I didn’t pull my hand
back.
#
Her name was Odie Jefferson, and she was old enough to think about retirement,
but only under her terms, not the hospital’s management. She had a tray of food before
her, some kind of mystery meat, and a pile of rice. After I said hello and introduced Kim,
she said, “My family used to raise rice.”
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Okay. “Where?”
“In the Delta.” She spooned some rice into her mouth and chewed slowly. “I
know what kind of beast lives in you, child.”
“Beast?” Kim eyes lit up. This was her kind of thing, not mine.
“For want of a better word, a dragon. Like your father complained of before he
died.”
That turned down some of my defenses. “Were you with him?”
“You mean when he died? Yes, I was. And because of that I rated a trip to the
psych ward.”
“For God’s sake why?”
“I saw it leave his poor, wasted body.”
Kim jumped in with, “It wasn’t his soul you saw?”
Odie spooned some more rice in her mouth, and chewed slowly. “No, I know
what a soul looks like, and if his soul had any smarts it would have left him far before it
got burned up.”
I brought it back around to me. “So, you saw this, ah, creature, leave his body?”
“In Technicolor. Terrible thing, it was.”
“Are you suggesting I might have this same, creature, inside me?”
“Not quite. You’re its master, not its victim. Well, you would be its master if you
were trained on how to use it.”
“Trained?” Kim almost jumped up out of her seat. “Didn’t I tell you, you’re
collecting power, Belinda.”
I thought the nurse might jump up out of her seat too, although more slowly.
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“What do you know about this, child?”
I shook my head, and said, “She’s the resident mystic. She tells me my life-issue
is power. How to get it, how to use it, stuff like that.”
Odie peered at my face. “Don’t you mock her. She understands more than you
do.”
“See, I told you not to patronize me. I know stuff.”
“So do I,” I replied, “and one thing I know is this is a bunch of crap.”
“You’re making a mistake,” Odie warned around a mouthful of rice with a little
mystery meat and gravy thrown in for good measure. “If you don’t work with it, it will
work on you. Look at what it did to your mother.”
“Hey! Hold it! How is that you know so much about my life?”
“That’s the funny thing about electronic records,” she answered, “They’re in there
forever. All a body need do is to look, with a little help, that is.”
“Help?”
“You have yours', and I have my gift. I can pull information out of a computer
like street girls can suck off a John. And that fast too.”
Kim was actually blushing, and I was trying to put the image of Odie soul-kissing
a monitor out of my mind. It wouldn’t leave. “So I have a gift. Why?”
“Your father said it travels down the female line. It must be true, because they’re
aren’t any dragons in Ireland. Not since Saint Patrick, that is.”
“I don’t want to be like my mother in any way. Can I get rid of this, ‘thing’ I’ve
got?”
“No.”
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“No?”
“You’d have to die without a female heir to get rid of it. Seems like a pretty high
price to pay, doesn’t it? She cut up more, ah, “meatloaf”? “Salisbury steak?” “SOS”?, and
put some in her mouth. She was way braver than I was. “Odie? When you say, ‘train me’,
what do you mean?”
She took her time chewing the brown mass in her mouth. “See, I bet you don’t
even know when it wants to get out and do something. Did you mean to put that girl in
here? Did you have some problem with her?”
I thought about my walk down the hallway. “I had a problem with how she treated
Kim. But no, I just wanted to bump her head into the locker door is all.”
“Well, your complaint was tongued in fire.”
“Tongued in fire? That sounds cryptic enough.”
“And after you left her? Did you know what you’d done?”
“No. Should I?”
“Absolutely. Take your little friend here,” and Kim perked right up. “One night
the two of you are going to be lying in bed together…it’s okay, I’ve got no complaint
with how a body loves, and you’ll have a nightmare. You’ll be protecting yourself
alright, but she might end up as toast. You got me?”
“I’m not a lesbian, but thanks for your approval anyway.”
Odie rolled her eyes at Kim. “Is she always the last to know a thing about
herself?”
“Yeah, take this fire thing, for example.”
Odie laughed silently. “Good luck to you. I hope she’s worth it.”
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Kim laughed silently. There must be a conspiracy to keep the humor hush-hush.
“Yeah, so do I.”
“Back to the main topic, please. How would you train me? How long would it
take?”
Odie had a spoonful of rice just entering her mouth, but she looked up at me
sharply, and lowered her spoon. “For you? A stubborn white girl? It all depends. Right
now you‘re just casting shadows wherever you go.” In went the rice.
“On what does it depend?”
It seemed like minutes passed. Surely she must be finishing her lunch break by
now. “On whether you listen to your friend here. On whether you listen to me or not. The
exercises are simple, but the mind must believe and take mastery. You think you can do
it?”
“Look, Odie, I don’t know what to believe. I run around frightened all the time,
and I have no idea what I’m doing after school is over. My life’s complex enough
already.” I thought of what I’d said about my out of control life, and what she’d said
about the danger of not knowing what was inside me. “But okay, I’ll try.”
“You will try. Hmm, your life is going to get even more complex now. What will
you do, I wonder? So, is that a solid promise?”
I nodded my head, out my hand over my heart, and told her, “I promise.”
Kim grabbed my arm and shook me. “Great! This is so great!”
Odie did laugh out loud then. “You’d think she’s the one doing it.”
I didn’t reply, but I didn’t pull my arm away either.
#
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Chapter Eight-
Saturday morning Brick took me to a hunting supplies store out in the country.
The owner didn’t have any visible tattoos, facial scars, black leather jacket, or NRA signs
on his wall.. If fact, he looked like a typical middle-age father, and he spoke that way too.
“Long time no see, Brick. How have you been doing?”
“Great. The job’s the same, and the perps…”
“Are the same too.” Both men laughed. “Who’s this here with you?”
“This is Belinda, Stan. Belinda, meet Stan. He knows everything about anything
that shoots.”
“I’m most pleased young lady. I take it you’re the one looking for something
today.”
“Yeah, she is. Something in the way of a shotgun.”
“Really? Are you taking up hunting? There are so few women…”
“It’s for defense.”
Stan looked me in the eye, and didn’t smile when he asked, “A boogieman?” I
nodded. “Well, that changes everything. If you want to protect yourself,” he moved down
the counter and pulled a shotgun off the wall, “You might think about this.” He handed it
to me. It was smaller than all the other guns on the wall. I tried to hold it like I’d seen on
crime shows. It was so light, and it fit in my hands.
“This is a Berretta ladies’ version of a twenty-gauge. It’s a gas-driven
semi-automatic, so you don’t have to worry about pumping a shell into the chamber.” He
pointed at the parts he described. “The barrel’s a special alloy. It will warp if you fire
about two hundred rounds non-stop, but the weight is the bigger issue. It won’t tax your
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arms. The stock is cherry wood, with this big rubber cushion on the butt to lessen its
kick.”
Brick was smiling like we were in a candy store. “This is a very good selection,
Belinda.” He turned to Stan. “It’s a full choke.”
“Yeah. It should be great for short distance hunting, if you know what I mean.”
“But I don’t know how to fire something like this. I was thinking of something
more like a small handgun.”
Stan frowned. “No way, even if you are here with Deputy Brickman. I could lose
my license.”
“I already explained the situation to her. Look, if you buy this I’m going to teach
you how to shoot it.”
Stan added, “I have a firing range behind the building.”
“See, we can come out here and blast away until you’re comfortable. I’ll even
start today, I don’t have to work until five.”
I looked at both of them. They seemed so earnest, so serious about my safety. Full
choke, gas-driven, semi-automatic, chamber, stock, dangerous goddamn pipe. Would it
be dangerous enough for Walt if he showed up? “How much?” The nice man behind the
counter told me how much. I didn’t know that people would spend more than a thousand
on murdering animals.
I started writing a check, but Stan asked Brick, “What shells?”
“Double-ought, I think. Two boxes for now.”
Stan figured up my new total with the ammunition included. This had turned into
one expensive burglar alarm. I paid Stan, and Brick and I walked around the building to a
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set of bunkers and far-away paper targets. Brick selected one with a fresh target, opened a
box of shells, showed me how to load them into the gun, then pointed and fired. The
noise was surprising.
“Oh, God, I forgot ear protectors. Hold on a minute while I borrow some.”
I held on, to the shotgun, and on to my dwindling nerve. Did I really think I was
going to be able to use this pricey monster? Brick returned, slid the earmuffs over my
head, And showed me how to hold the stock against my shoulder when I pulled the
trigger. I aimed, and fired, and almost landed on my ass. I straightened back up and
rubbed my shoulder. “You’ve got to stand this way with your feet just so, and the stock
stuck tight into your shoulder. Try it again.”
I felt a good solid thump on my shoulder, but it didn’t push me around this time. I
fired again, lookin at the target for the first time. It remained intact.
“You want to work some more?” I did. By the time we left I’d shot all but the
three shells I wanted left in the gun. The paper target was in shreds, and Brick had taught
me everything there was to know about the safety lever. My shoulder was sore, but my
mouth smiled past the cordite I breathed in. I was very much alive again.
When we returned to his car, he leaned over and handed me a bag from the store.
“Congratulations, this is a gift for you.”
I pulled a small box out that said, “Gun Cleaning Kit”. It was like getting roses on
a first date. Oh, no, he’d already sorta’ done that, but this was better. “Take care of it, it
could save your life.”
“How do you take care of yours?” I asked.
“Like it’s a dangerous lover.” I liked that. My lover was long and hard, and didn’t
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need to be coaxed into going off. Yeah.
When I got home I called Kim and cancelled my stay-over. It was too suggestive
to say sleep-over, so I changed it. She didn’t notice the difference. I liked Kim, even
loved her at times, but wasn’t ready for any kind of sexual conversation with anybody. I
put ten compact discs into my changer, turned it up loud because Miles Davis was
blowing his horn, and then opened up the box of gun cleaning stuff. I read the directions,
hoping I’d understand them better with practice, and put my beautiful new lover on my
lap.
It broke apart like an infatuation forgotten because of a new, more serious love,
and I massaged the whole thing over with cleaning oil that smelled of caution and secrets.
When I finished I took it in my bedroom and leaned it behind the door, I wanted it close
to me while I was sleeping.
#
Cordelia stopped by on Sunday with another delivery of what she thought I
needed. As soon as she was in the door, she sniffed, then looked cross at the smell of gun
oil. “Have you bought a gun?”
“Yes. A shotgun.”
Then she looked sad. “Oh, child, what are you doing with a gun?”
“Protection. Walt’s never been found.”
“You don’t even know how to use it.”
“Deputy Brickman showed me how.”
“Deputy Brickman ought to have more sense.”
“I asked him. I’m tired of being afraid all the time. I’ll sleep better knowing I can
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defend myself.”
“I don’t like it, but I guess you have to do what you think is right. Even if it’s
wrong.”
Right? Wrong? How could she decide? She wasn’t the one bent over a mattress
and getting drilled by a monster. I was.
#
Chapter Nine-
Appointments, appointments. There was Anne Flores, the social worker. I
couldn’t figure out what a social worker had to do with my situation, but I showed up at
her office at the appointed time. She opened her office door, smiled at me, and gestured
for me to enter. “How are you, Belinda?”
“Fine, I guess.”
“Take a seat.” I sat, suddenly tense, with my leg and arm muscles bunching up for
a possible flight. “How are you managing since I last saw you?”
I explained everything that had happened since the night in the emergency room.
Oh, except the shotgun and the dragon thing. She didn’t interrupt once.
“You’ve had an incredible load on your plate. I can’t think of how you’ve done
it.”
“Well, Dick and Cordelia have been very supportive. And I have a friend now. A
real friend.” I described Kim and how we became close during the crisis.
“Tell me, are you drawn to Kim? Sexually, I mean. Some women who are
brutalized often feel safer in a lesbian relationship, if only for long enough to start the
healing process. It’s an unresolved mother\daughter complication sometimes.”
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“I didn’t have a mother, so I think you can rule that out. Kim is Kim. She’s funny,
and spooky sometimes. That’s what we share. Not personal juices.”
“Okay, I only wanted to ask. Do you feel anymore safe?”
That was one question I wanted to lie about, but I didn’t feel safer, really. The fact
I bought the gun in the first place showed I was never far from fear. “No.”
“What about that nice Deputy who was with you? He seemed very fond of you.”
“This is a trick question, isn’t it? You really only want to know if I’m hanging on
to him out of fear, if I’m that dependent. Don’t try that crap on me.”
“Well, I hit a sensitive subject, didn’t I. I’m guessing he’s more fond of you than
you are of him. Is he hitting on you?”
“No. Can I go now? This is pointless. You’ve seen me, so you’re off the hook.”
“I deal with angry women all day. It’s a part of the situation. You didn’t ask to be
raped, you didn’t ask to be frightened. But you are. Can you think of any better reason to
be pissed off?”
No, that about covered it. “So, do I have that PTSD shit you told me about?”
“Of course. You expected something different?”
I leaned back in my chair, suddenly feeling like maybe I wouldn’t run. “Can it be
cured?”
She smiled; gotcha! “It can be dealt with. You see, your past is a large pack you
carry on your back, only you can never set it down. Therapy helps you sort through the
stuff in your pack, and maybe toss out some of the heavier crap. You can’t get rid of your
history, but it’s possible to let the present come alive enough you can see your future.”
“Therapy? You said, ‘therapy’. Am I crazy? My father was crazy, you know. Did
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I inherent his illness?”
“No, you didn’t, you couldn’t. This is a state of being, not an organic disease. It’s
your reaction to traumatic events that were not in your control. Your father was a
tragedy.”
“My father? You knew my father?”
“If you decide to continue seeing me I’ll tell you how I know of your father.”
“Blackmail. You’re blackmailing me.”
“Only until you make a commitment to work with me, and decide what you can
continue carrying, and what you want to get rid of.”
“I could report you.”
“For what? It’s just us two women. Your word, versus my professional
confidentiality. I can‘t talk about anything we say in here.”
“Why are you doing this shit? What did I do to you?”
Anne leaned back in her chair, way back, and looked at me over her half-lens
reading glasses. “Belinda, there is so much you don’t know about yourself, about
possibilities, both good and evil. You can learn it all. You’re the most promising
candidate for healing I’ve met in a long time. Simply put, I want to work with you, and
you’ll benefit from it as much as I will.” She leaned forward. “So, are you ready to sign
on?”
“If I say yes, will you give me one little detail about how you know my da’?”
“Just one.”
“Okay, I’m in. So…?”
“You see, I work with Odie Jefferson. Can you return next week at this time?”
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I nodded, even though I was still chewing her disclosure over. I’d ask Kim to
think about it later. It was her kind of weird co-incidence.
#
I kept an appointment with Brick to go back to the firing range. I bought four
boxes of shells, my own ear protectors, and spent all morning destroying paper targets. I
was attaching the gun to my body like a deadly tumor. Brick was very helpful, instructing
me on the different firing stances. When he wrapped his arms around me to demonstrate
the shoot-from-the-hip stance he was warm and alive against my back. When his arms
intentionally brushed against my breasts I didn’t mind it at all, and he knew it. He, at
least, was helping to protect me.
On the drive home he said, “You’re getting very good. I’d say you have a real
feeling for the gun.”
Feeling powerful as the gun‘s kick, and reckless, I replied, “You don’t know half
of it.”
He turned his eyes away from the road to look at me when he asked, “What do
you mean, ‘the half of it’?”
“I keep it in my bedroom so I always know it’s there. Some nights I bring it into
bed with me.”
He got that uncomfortable look men get when their penises harden under a pair of
jeans with a heavy leather belt. “You don’t have shells in it, do you?”
“Not in the chamber.”
This was heating him up in a hurry. “Do you have any idea how dangerous…”
“Fuck, Brick, look around. Everything is dangerous. We exist only by the grace of
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the universe.”
“I’m not dangerous, Belinda.” His voice was soft, but not pleading.
“You don’t know that. What if I took you into my bed, and you broke my heart?
That’s one serious kind of dangerous, isn’t it?”
He was struggling now. “If you took me into your bed I’d never break your
heart.”
I realized how powerful it was to toy with this man. “Or, you’d kill me if I found
another lover.”
“If I was in your bed, you wouldn’t need another lover.”
I didn’t have a ready-made response. In fact, I felt myself warming up too. I shut
my mouth and tried to think about shooting something. Or somebody.
He pulled up in front of my apartment building and killed the car. He was trying
to think of the right words to say what I already knew he was going to say. I granted him
mercy. “Brick, you’re the best man I know.”
“Thank you.”
“That’s alright, it’s true. You’re also turning me on.”
“Really?” His face lit up.
“Stop being so smug, you know you are. I’m thinking of you helping me, and
they’re good thoughts. But I can’t do it. I just can’t right now.”
Shock covered his face like sweat. He nodded his head, accepting what I’d said.
“Is it Walt?”
I nodded back. “That piece of shit is still in my life, and usually he’s about all I
can think about. He’s the reason I sleep with my gun some nights. I have this totally great
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fantasy that he gets into my apartment some night, comes to the foot of my bed, and I rise
up and shoot his dick right off. Then I put a round in his face. Then, if I’m really enjoying
the process, I go through a box of shells before I call 9-1-1.”
“Now you’re turning me on.” he joked with a laugh. “I must remember not to ever
piss you off.”
I looked at his laughing face, tilted my head to one side, and in a serious voice
threatened, “Remember it.” He stopped laughing. “So, to repeat myself, I want you. But
not like this. You can stop looking so stupid now,” he closed his mouth.
And then opened it to speak. “I think I understand.”
“Oh, and by the way, did you forget that I’m only seventeen? That I might be a
little underage for you?”
“Cops never talk.”
I opened my car door. “Thanks. These are the happiest hours of my life right now.
I really owe you.” I slid out and got my gun case from the backseat.
“I won’t forget that.”
“What?” I asked, puzzled. Forget what?
“That you owe me. How about if you treat me to dinner some night when I’m not
working?”
It didn’t sound too dangerous. “Fine, I’d like to.” He was driving away before I
realized I’d agreed to my first real date. That was when I got my first warning, that I
maybe didn’t like men as much as I thought, and here comes more confusion as a
companion.
#
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Then there was Odie Jefferson, with Kim playing tag-team. We met her on
Saturday afternoon at her home. Her little house was comfy, cozy even, and smelled
stuffy, like old woman. In a way I thought the combination said wisdom. I hoped.
“Have you given any thought to what I said?”
“Hmm?” I’d been staring at a doily on the arm of the couch.
“What I said, in the hospital?”
“I honestly don’t know. There’s been a lot going on.”
“Is it too much for you to see me? Cause if it is we can quit now.”
Kim was watching us like we were opponents in a tennis match. She opened her
mouth to speak, but I jumped in. “I don’t know, really. Can you give me one sign or
example I might have this thing?”
Odie frowned, but kept looking in my eyes. “You want to see something?”
“Could I? It’d be a good argument to keep seeing you.”
“Stupid white girls. I don’t know why I bother. I should just let you go up in
flames by yourself. That’d be a ‘good argument’.” I didn’t move a muscle, didn’t say a
word. Even Kim stayed quiet.
I’d pissed Odie off. She stood up and walked back into her kitchen for what I
thought might be some potion cooking on her stove; some nasty tasting, vile soup of
unmentionable ingredients. She came back with a tray holding a plate of cookies, cups,
and a tea pot. I figured the potion must be in the teapot, wasn’t that how all the evil
step-mothers did away with bothersome children?
Kim sniffed the air, smiled, and said, “Earl Grey, my favorite!”
Odie smiled at her. “These here are rice cookies.” Then she got dreamy eyed, and
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added, “My family used to farm rice.”
So she’d already told us. I picked a cookie and bit it. It was amazing! Easily the
best cookie I’d ever tasted. Odie was still smiling when she looked at me. “Good, aren’t
they?” She poured Kim’s cup full, and said, “It’s the rum. I put 105 proof rum in them.
Back when my family were still slaves they worked the cane and brewed up the sugar
mash for plantation owners. Rum was the only medicine they had, besides prayer, so all
their children grew up drinking the stuff.” She turned her head quickly in my direction.
“Not unlike your ancestors. They had the first bottling distillery in the world.”
“Bushmill’s.” She nodded. “It was my father’s ticket home. He’d drink and
remember where he came from.”
Odie spoke in stronger, more authoritative voice. “So, now we know where we
come from. Are you going to trash your history by destroying yourself. Or will you pick
up the responsibility you’ve been given to carry for a while?”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’re only the latest to house the fire. Generations have before, and I’d like to
think many more will. It’s up to you.”
“The thing is German, not Irish. I don’t have anything…”
“Hush up! You are who you are.” I shut up. She set her teacup down. “Take off
your shirt.”
“What?”
“Take off your shirt.”
Even around other women now I was self-conscious about my too-womanly body,
and I was only wearing a wife-beater tee shirt under my sweatshirt. No bra, and with one
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chill draft, I’d be embarrassed by my body‘s tightening response. “Go on, there’s a
reason for this. I’ve seen it all in the hospital already, and you’re not any more special.”
I lifted my sweatshirt up over my head and threw it on the chair behind me. Kim
was suddenly much more aware of my presence in the room.
“Hold your arm out, palm up.” I did.
“Think of holding a baseball, or anything else that’ll work for you, in the palm of
your hand. Go on.” I’d never played sports, didn’t even go to the games. I had no idea
what a baseball was supposed to feel like. Odie tilted her head. “C’mon, you can do
better than that.” I shook my head, “Yes you can!” I shook my head again. “Look, you
stupid white trash slut, I’m wasting my time on you. You’ll never get out of the gutter, or
away from men who’ll fuck you in a train until you bleed!”
A heat snapped into my hand, and I held it out to the old black woman. My face
was a scarlet roadmap to hell and eternal damnation, and sweat ran down my body like a
river that knows there’s shattering rocks below the falls, but can‘t resist gravity.
“See,” she said softly, I told you you could it.”
I caught a glimpse of Kim out of the corner of my heat-wave vision, and she was
staring at me openmouthed, and ready to run away. I lowered my hand. I reached for her
with my other hand, and touched her soft face. “It’s okay, it’s okay, I’d never hurt you.”
At least she didn’t pull away.
“You see now,” Odie said, “a lot of women can only access the fire through anger
and rage.”
“Is that it? I have to be willing to kill in order to use it?”
“No. You can learn. You don’t always have to hurt somebody. I knew a woman in
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Mississippi used it to light her cigarettes.” Odie laughed. “Of course, with that display
nobody ever messed with her.”
“Do I have to have my shirt off? What’s the reason for that?”
“I didn’t want you to burn your clothing up. This was your first conscious attempt
to control it.”
“Where do I go from here?”
“Home, or wherever. Think about what happened today and practice. Don’t worry
if you can’t call it up on your own.”
“Do I see you again?”
“Sure. Let me know ahead of time and I’ll bake cookies.”
So that was that? I thought she was going to teach me something useful.
“It is useful, Belinda. You’re very good at this, and you’ll do fine. And you’ll
know when to come to see me. You’ll know.”
Kim got up, and I pulled on the sweatshirt. I wanted to thank her, but for what?
“You’ve already thanked me.”
She was turning more like Kim, with her mind reading. We left her house and
went walking in the crisp air. My hand and arm forgot what they’d done in there.
“Hey, I’ve got an idea. Let’s get stuff to make dinner at your place. We could talk
about what happened. Maybe do it again.”
I wasn’t so hot on replicating my burning palm, but supper sounded good. “What
are we having?”
“Spaghetti. It’s the only thing I know how to make.” She laughed, and then I
laughed along.
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#
Chapter Ten-
Stop. Whoa. Take a break. Maybe even set this story down for a little while.
There are moments when your life changes, and you’re not sure where you’ll go
from there. I’m going to write about a couple of those moments as I now remember them.
I’d like to think I was really present at the time, but maybe I didn’t understand their
meaning. So, this is my second chance to talk about the turn my life took, and drug me
along behind it.
My memory was controlling me, and every trip down memory lane was to brave
the idle thugs hanging around the alleyways seeking fresh employment. They stood
around listlessly, smoking cigarettes and spitting; watching and waiting for my dark
shadow. The street I lived on was anxiety, my address, desperate.
I hope I write this better than anything that came before. I hope you understand.
Okay, let’s go on with the story.
#
We bought sauce, pasta, stuff to fix a salad, and Kim bought candles to dine by. I
snuck a box of Earl Gray tea in the bag too. It was her favorite. It was dusk as we reach
my place, a time of parting shadows and a pointer to caution. I put something dark and
moody on the stereo, Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue”, I think. I couldn’t shake the afternoon
at Odie’s. I’d done the unthinkable. I looked at my hand over and over, but couldn’t see
any scars or discoloration.
“Hey, Johnny Torch!” Kim yelled. “I could use a little help in here.”
She was funny, and smart, and I was very fond of her. When I got in the kitchen
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she was stirring a pot of sauce, and trying to break the spaghetti noodles in half. Half of
them scattered over the counter. That was when both of us started to laugh
uncontrollably, and the release of the day’s tension smelled like fresh oxygen in our
noses. “The salad’s yours',” she pointed. “If I get the chance to screw up my part, so do
you. Get busy!”
My kitchen was filled with laughter, and about forgetting my personal fire.
Dropping the pasta into the pot became an adventure, and I threw bits of lettuce at her
over my shoulder. She waved the sauce spoon under my nose, and I licked it.
The matches I used to light the candles smelled of brimstone, of an underlying
wicked condition. The dishes Cordelia had bought me were actually pretty once I looked
at them. So was the flatware as it flickered in the candlelight. We loaded up on both our
efforts and sat down, just like normal people do. But we both knew, as we did all the
time, that we weren’t normal. This night, eating watery spaghetti together, didn’t worry
about normal, didn’t know what it meant, and didn’t care to be normal.
My eyes were captured by her as she ate in tiny bits. For some reason she seemed
to be somebody powerful in her own right. Not with flame, but with knowledge and
gentle understanding. In my eyes she glowed, a softer reflection of the candles’ lambent
radiance. She so funny, so self-deprecating without putting herself down. She was an
unexpected gemstone in the rough.
After we ate I put Miles Davis’ “Porgy and Bess Suite”. Under Gil Evans’
masterful arrangement the music was spare, rich, and ultimately tragic.
“What is that music?” Kim asked from the kitchen sink. “It’s beautiful, but so sad.
Is that all you listen to, sad stuff?” I heard a clatter of plates. “Hey, get out here and dry
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these. You don’t have a rack.”
So I went to the kitchen and grabbed a cutesy Cordelia supplied dish towel. Why
hadn’t she thought of a drying rack too? I picked up the first plate and rubbed it all over,
then stuck it away. I started on the second. Then I saw the sauce on Kim’s chin and
started laughing. “What? What do you think is so funny?” She was laughing too.
I reached over to brush the sauce away, but my hand never made it. I leaned into
her face and licked it off instead. She paled to white. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry,” I said
without any remorse.
“Why?”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“You didn’t hurt me.” She kissed me on the lips, amateurish for sure, but I felt the
need behind her lips. I kissed back, growing greedy for her mouth on me. She pulled back
and lowered her dish-soap bubbled hands from my face. I was sweating from the exertion
to not pull her into me and squeeze with all the love I’d ever missed. “Belinda,” she said
as a prayer, “This is for real?”
Did I hesitate? No. I put my hands on her breasts.
We stood looking at each other in front of the sink for enough time to figure out
what was going to happen next. She was shaking all over, and my knees ceased to exist.
“Look, I can’t stand up Kim. We need to take this someplace else.”
“Your bed?”
I nodded and replied, “Yes.”
We made it to the bed, fell into each other’s arms, I pulled my clothes off, then
her’s off. We lay naked face to face, exploring each other’s bodies. She was delicate
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where I was sturdy, dark brown where I was red. “My God, I’d thought I’d never get to
touch these,” she said, stroking my breasts. I reached between her thighs and cupped her
pubic hair. She convulsed with pleasure. She did the same to me and I pushed against her
fingers.
I don’t remember when we pulled away from each other, when the last sweet kiss
had been delivered express, but I do remember how happy, how free I felt.
The music was long over, and I needed to pee, so I got up, went to the bathroom,
put on the tea kettle, and walked into the living room naked. Suddenly I felt nervous, like
I was being watched, like ants were crawling up my back. I sped into the bedroom, threw
a robe on, and grabbed my shotgun. Kim leaned up and exclaimed, “You’ve got a gun in
here? You have a gun?”
I didn’t answer her, and went into the living room, with the sharp snap of the
safety going off. I stared through the peephole. Nothing. I hand checked each window,
double checked the door lock. Nothing. So why was I feeling stalked?
I wondered if it was because of what I’d just done with Kim, but who would care,
much less spy on. Okay, I was paranoid. Maybe I’d smoked too much pot with Stoner,
and became conditioned to feel paranoia any time I had sex. Yeah, right. There really was
something wrong, and I wouldn’t give up until I knew what it was.
Kim came out of the bedroom with just a tee shirt on. “Why do you have a gun?”
The tea kettle whistled so I got down two cups and pulled out a tea bag for each. “Earl
Gray? You remembered?” I smiled at her and nodded. “So, why do you have a gun?”
“As a defense.”
“You really think you’re going to be attacked again?” I gave her a look. “Ouch.
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Okay, who is it?” I swirled my teabag around in the cup and shrugged. “Do you know
how to use it?”
“Oh, yeah. I even enjoy it.”
She pulled her teabag free. “Are you afraid? Is that why you grabbed it?”
“I’m afraid, yeah. See, the thing is, I don’t want to be afraid anymore. The gun is
a part of the preparations I need to take.” She turned into me and I cupped her ass with
both hands. “I want you to be safe when you’re here too.”
She kissed me. “Do you hate the L word?”
“’L word’? What are you talking about?”
“Love.”
“I don’t hate the L word.”
“But you’re bitter.”
“What?”
“You can’t see yourself in love, can you?”
“Do you mean with you? Cause you’re the best thing’s ever happened to me.”
“Can you say it?”
I squeezed her butt. “Okay, I love you.”
She looked at me for some time. ”I love you, Belinda” She took a sip of tea. “As
much as I love this tea. Thank you.”
I let go of her and went to the stereo. I inserted a ten disc cartridge into it. She was
following my every move. “Okay, that’s taken care of. Let’s drink our tea in bed.” She
beat me through the door.
#
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It must have been around midnight when there was a knock on the door. I jumped
bad enough to wake Kim up. “Wha…”
“Shh, there’s somebody at the door. You stay in here, no matter what. You
understand?” She nodded silently.
I put on my robe and picked up the shotgun. The knock came again. I made sure I
jacked a shell into the chamber, and walked to the door. “Who is it?” I yelled.
“Brick. Deputy Brickman.”
“Why are you here?”
“I’m sorry, I was near and decided to check and see if you were alright.”
“I’m fine.”
“If you crack your door I’ve got something for you.”
“What?”
“You have to open up.”
“Why can’t this wait until morning?”
He didn’t reply at first. But then, “I’m sorry, I guess I’m being silly. Well, if
you’re okay…”
“I’m okay.”
“You all alone?”
What? Emotional red flares slashed the air, my suspicious inner bells rang loud
enough to wake up the neighborhood. Well, not really. But they should have. “Umm,
why do you ask?”
“If you have a evil meanie inside I’m compelled to protect you.”
Go away, just fuckin’ go away. “Jim, I was sleeping when you woke me up. Do
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you think we can end this conversation now?”
“Okay, sorry. I guess what you do in the privacy of your home is not my
business.”
What the hell was he talking about? “Yeah, I’m glad you see it that way.
Goodnight, Brick.”
“Goodnight, Belinda.” I heard heavy steps walk away. I made my own steps back
into the bedroom.
“Who was it?”
“Deputy Jim Brickman. He wanted to make sure I was safe.”
“Odd time of the night to be knocking on doors.”
I slid under the sheet. “It’s even odder than that.”
“What?”
“Curl up to me, I’m frozen.” I was shaking, but not from cold. Unless you
included my cold steel lover.
“Hey,” Kim whispered in my ear, “I know a way to warm up.”
I laughed into her back. “You know, for a beginner you’re very enthusiastic.”
“And what’s wrong with that?” She asked, and kissed me so I couldn’t answer.
#
I took my schoolbooks with me when I took Kim home. Her mother sang while
she fixed us breakfast, and one song was, “My Favorite Things”. I wanted cry from
happiness. I’d gone from showering with my lover this morning, and playfully
shampooing each other, to a home like I’d always wanted. I’d read that you couldn’t
mourn what you never had, but my heart knew different. I could stretch out here and hug
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the whole house, and the family in it. Breakfast was a holy Eucharist; the pancakes
wafers, the orange juice holy wine. I ate the flesh, drank the blood, and put my hand on
Kim’s thigh. I could’ve died then and smiled the whole way to the grave. Instead, we
pulled our books out and struggled through the material for the History exam together.
All things end. When I was outside her house Kim asked, “What are we going to
do now?”
“I suppose we’ll make up excuses for you to come to my place. Do you think we
could get together here?”
“No, my sister and brother.” She looked down. “I was thinking more about when
we’re in school. I know I’ll give us away every time I see you.”
“Me too, but who cares?” I picked her chin up with a finger. “Are you saying you
still want to deny who you are? It’s that important to you?”
“I don’t know Belinda, I haven’t thought that far ahead.”
“Then let’s play it by ear tomorrow. At least Sandy won’t be spouting off.”
She laughed. “Yeah, well, that’s a blessing. I love you.”
The declaration made out in the open air shocked me. Was I afraid someone
would hear? Was I denying what I was? I touched her face, fighting every fear of
disclosure. “I love you too. Thank you for last night.”
She teared up. “Go away, I want to kiss you too much to resist long.”
I climbed into my crappy car and drove away, and she stood on her porch the
whole time. When she disappeared I felt a hole suck light out of my belly.
#
School still sucked, with or without Kim. The History exam wasn’t as bad as I’d
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thought it would be, and decided to study with her before every exam. I must have picked
up more information because of the electricity between us. We said goodbye at the school
door, and I collected my car from the lot. I couldn’t take Kim home because I had a
meeting with Anne Flores.
I knocked on her door and she opened it with a smile. “Belinda! I’m so glad you
came.” I bobbed my head as a reply. “Hang your coat up and we’ll get started.” I threw it
on a chair.
She eyed me over. “So tell me, what happened? You’re positively glowing.”
So, I couldn’t hide it. “Something good happened on the weekend.” Once the
words started they flowed out as forceful and certain as lava, and with as much heat.
When I finished I tried to catch my sprinting wind.
Anne didn’t respond right away. She seemed to be digesting a tasty dish. “I’m
very happy for you.” Then she leaned forward. “But something disturbs me.”
Shit, I thought, she’s going to tell me the weekend was some kind of coping
mechanism. But she didn’t. “The Deputy who came by Saturday night. He’s the one
who’s been so helpful to you?”
Yeah, that slimy thought had occurred to me too. “Yeah.”
“Do you think he’s trying to get you into bed?”
Coming from her, it sounded true. “Yeah, I do.”
“What are you doing about that? Are you ready for that kind of attention?”
“Sometimes I think so. Most time’s not. Anyway, I have a shotgun.” Then I
explained how, and why.
“Well, if he helped pick it out for you, and taught you how to use, he must know
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that you will use it.”
“On him?”
“Perhaps it’s my social worker curiosity.” She relaxed, so did I. “We were going
to address some of your memories. Is that okay?”
“I’m not sure I can right now, but I’m willing to try.”
“Remember this, Belinda, we’re after memories so vigorous they’ll trigger their
own resurrection. Powerful memories. You still…”
“Yeah, I want to.”
“Okay, I’m going to hypnotize you. Does that frighten you?”
“I don’t know, I’ve never been.”
“Well then, I want you to relax.”
I dove into the murky waters of my past, with Anne piloting me the whole time. I
ended up in a memory of my father holding me. I must have been about three, and he was
a giant in my little eyes. He was tickling me and laughing when I laughed. Although I
didn’t know it at the time, his breath smelled of whiskey, and when I breathed it in I got
dizzy. I felt loved, safe, and wanted. There was no better memory for me. I resurfaced to
consciousness with a lighter heart.
“Was that painful?” asked Anne.
“No, just the opposite. I wouldn’t mind going back there again.”
“You can, anytime now, because you brought it up with you. Memories must be
just memories, not a place to hide in, or to hurt yourself with. Next time I’ll direct you to
another place inside, one maybe not so pleasant.”
“When’s next time?”
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“How often do you want to work?”
“Ah, everyday?”
She laughed. “Let’s get together, ah,” she flipped through an appointment book,
“Day after tomorrow. Same time?”
Between Kim and Anne I felt new, and improved.
#
The winter rolled on. I studied during the week, practiced at the shooting range
Saturday morning, and rolled around with Kim whenever we could. I was learning stuff
about the female body I’d never known. You know, a tongue is sweeter than a reaching
finger, a neck was delicious as new apples. We were deeply in love, with a need to be
close all the time. I knew it would eventually give us away, but when it came neither of
us got hurt.
It took place on a Sunday morning after a night of love-making and endless
caresses. We were sitting in Kim’s kitchen and her mother was making pecan waffles.
She turned from the waffle making and said, “I know.”
I knew what she meant, but Kim missed it. “Know what?”
“I know you two are in love.” Kim blushed scarlet. “No, it’s okay.” She wiped her
eyes with her hand. “It’s not for me to judge. I want you to be who you are, not what I
think you should be.”
“I never meant to offend you,” I whispered.
“I know you didn’t, and you didn’t.” She pointed a fork at me, and spoke angrily.
“Don’t you break her heart.” Kim began to cry.
“I won’t. To break her heart would be to break mine too.”
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She forked a waffle from the maker and pushed it on Kim’s plate. Her voice was
tender when she told her, “Eat it before it gets cold, honey.” She poured more batter in.
“In a way, I envy you.”
“Why?”
“You’re feeling the heat of first love, a passion that can keep you warm even
when you’re my age.”
“But you love dad, don’t you?”
“With my whole soul. But it’s true, the young can’t understand that they’re
young.” She pulled a tissue out of her apron pocket and blotted an eye. “All I ask is to
keep your grades up, and when you want to get together you do it at Belinda’s place. I
wouldn’t even ask that, but your brother and sister are so nosey, not to mention your
father‘s heart condition, and I don’t feel like trying to explain the situation to them.”
Kim looked up at her mother’s face. “Thank you.”
“Thank me later, eat your waffle now.” She forked one to my plate. Then she took
my hand. “Remember what I said. Okay?” I nodded.
#
Brick was edging his way around my broken barriers. He often came shooting
with me, and often invited me for dinner when he was off-duty. I grew accustomed to his
presence by my side, his aftershave in my nose, and he never, not even once, tried to
seduce me. But there was something about him that made me nervous, even suspicious.
He knew of my every coming and going. Oh, it was probably what anyone could learn if
they paid attention, but it implied he paid a lot of attention to me.
Little things would slip out of his mouth. Little details too close to my chest for
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him to be interested in, but he was. We were at the range once, and I was reloading at the
clay pigeon field. I found that I liked aiming in a fast moving arc and blasting the black
Frisbee to tiny pieces. I got a thrill every time I nailed one.
“So, did Kim stay over last night?” He said it in a disinterested, even tone, but I
backed away and removed my earphones.
“Why do you ask?”
“Oh, I was driving by at about eleven-thirty and saw lights on. You usually have
lights on that late when she’s over.”
Putting my muffs back on, I turned, yelled, “Pull!” and took the target out before
it traveled ten yards. “There’s a saying Brick,” I replied with my gun pointed down
towards his feet, “No man shall come between a woman and her best friend.”
“Please, don’t misunderstand, when I go past your apartment it’s to make sure
you’re okay. I don’t plan on coming between you and anybody.”
“Pull!” and the flying disc didn’t make it any higher than the shooting stand in
front of me before becoming black confetti.
“Really. I’m not trying to spy on you.”
“Really.”
“Honest.”
“We haven’t got anything between us to fight over, so I’m going to listen to you.”
“We could have more.”
I froze for a second, then began loading shells in the gun, thinking the whole time.
“I like you, Brick. I like you a lot. You’re good company to have dinner with, you seem
to want to protect me, and you got me though the worst night of my life. But because you
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got me through that night, you know I’m frightened of men. Even good men like
yourself. You know what I’m saying?”
He actually smiled. “Of course I do. However, never blame me for trying, and I’ll
keep trying until you decide I might be worth it.” He began to load his over-under twelve
gauge. “I’m very fond of you.” Then he looked at me. “You know, you really don’t know
me. If you would come to my house for just half an hour, you’d see better who I am.”
“Come to your place.” I thought it over, and decided he could be trusted. “Okay,
fine. When?”
He almost danced a little victory dance. “Wednesday night. I’ll cook for you.”
“You cook?”
“Amongst other things. Really, you won’t be disappointed.”
“Make it six?”
“Great!”
I ran through the shells in the gun and packed it still warm in its case. “See you
then,” I told him over my shoulder. I wanted to go home, clean my iron companion, take
a long shower, and run my mouth over every inch of Kim’s body. The gun cleaning was
exercise for my certain, knowing hands, the shower to wash away Brick’s invitation, and
the oral, sucking conquest was to make me forget I might want his approval.
#
Kim and I were laying naked on the couch. I was savoring the taste of her skin on
my tongue, and she was badgering me. “Odie told you to practice. You haven’t even
raised a little finger to try since.”
“It’s too bad that you don’t have whatever it is, it’s right up your alley.”
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“What did she say? ‘If you don’t learn how to use it, it will use you’.”
“And what about if you’re the one that gets hurt? I can’t let that happen.”
“Bull. You’re afraid.” I pinched her left breast. “Ouch! Stop that. You know I’m
right.”
“So, you’re going to piss me off to work up a little fire? That doesn’t sound like
too much fun.”
“I don’t think you have to be pissed to do it. Odie had to the first time, but you’re
beyond that now.”
“You’ll leave me alone if I try?”
“Yeah.”
“Even if I don’t cough up anything?”
“Yeah, but you really have to try.” I tumbled off her and the couch and landed on
my butt. She giggled. Then I stood up and held my hand out, palm up. “Concentrate!” she
ordered.
I felt an itch below my pubic bone, thought about scratching it, didn’t, and
returned my focus to my hand. The itch wasn’t an itch, it just felt like one as it traveled
through my body. I felt an intense burn streaking across my chest that was gone a second
later. It traveled down my arm, a rushing heat-wave with a mission, until I felt it in my
hand. My palm itched horribly. I almost reached over to scratch it, but a tiny glow began
above my fingers. It was a ball of light the size of a marble. I looked at Kim and her
mouth was gaping open. Holding it out to her I willed it to grow. Her face lit up by its red
light, then she pulled back as the fire grew. When it was the size of a soccer ball I willed
it away, and it disappeared.
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“Good enough for you?” Her face was more naked than the rest of her body. She
nodded her head.
“What were you thinking about when it started? I mean, did you have to get
angry?”
“I was thinking about scratching my pubic hair.”
“No, really.”
“Really. It itched under my skin. Well? That display seemed pretty harmless.”
“Not to me, Belinda. I think you can do a lot with it you don‘t know about yet.”
“Like putting it in Sandy’s head?”
“Fire’s the most primeval power of humankind. We wouldn’t exist without it. I
think this is more important than frying stupid girls.” She took a deep breath. “They’re
beginning to talk about you again.”
“Who?”
“Kids in school. The going phrase right now is, ‘What a waste of great tits. I
could show her how to use em.”
“That’s from boys?”
“Yeah. I expect graffiti in the ladies room next.”
“That stuff doesn’t bother me. What about you?”
“Um, let’s say I’ll stick by you no matter what. But don’t go melting everyone.”
I’d been thinking while she talked. “Hey, how about this- you write on the wall
with a Sharpie that I’m your whore. Write it just like that- I’m your fuck slave. Head ‘em
off at the pass.”
“You’re my, ‘fuck slave’?”
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“Well, you wouldn’t want to lie.” We both erupted in loud laughter until we
couldn’t breathe.
#
Anne took me down the memory slide-pipe fast and far. I felt like I couldn’t
breathe as years and scenes flew past my descent into a dark, wet chamber. My body
curled up in order to fit in the confining darkness. Then I heard a heartbeat. It was loud,
and all around me, counting the clock rythymn I grew by in inches. My thumb found
itself into my mouth, and I was comforted. There was nowhere else to go at this time and
I was warm, floating in encircling flesh.
Then a bright light flashed into my blind eyes. I was in a fire, didn’t know what a
fire was, but knew I was surrounded by flames of rage. This was my first experience of
my mother’s talent. It hurt; both the blaze, and the hatred that drove it. I heard voices, one
was loud and piercing even in my saline bath. I felt the fire thrown, heard the scream that
followed, felt a surge of powerful fight-flight hormones beat in my blood.
Then I woke up. I was curled up on the floor, tears running into my ears and snot
pouring over my lip. I moaned and wept, I rocked back and forth until my frail stomach
would stay inside my body. I think I screamed a couple of times. Then it was black.
The second time I woke up Anne was holding a cold washcloth on my forehead
and stroking my cheek. I was content to simply breathe for a little while.
“Can we talk about it?” Anne asked. I was still mute. “I’m sorry, Belinda, I didn’t
mean for you to go so deep. There’s something inside you that wanted you to go there.
Do you know what it is?”
Air passed in and out of my body freely again. “You work with Odie Jefferson.”
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“Yeah? Does she know what’s inside you?”
“She didn’t tell you?” Bless the old woman’s heart.
“No, of course not. She told me about your father, and his struggle. This is
related?”
“I’ve got a fucking monster inside. You must know.”
“No, really I don‘t. Can you tell me about it?”
I held out my hand, palm up. A wisp of glowing gold feather ignited a hard ball of
red hot. “This good enough?“
Anne was sitting back, her face horrified. “Belinda, make it go away, I’m
frightened by fire.”
Well now, we all have our own little complications, don’t we? I snuffed it out
with a fleeting, half-conscious thought. “There you go.”
“This memory you went into? It’s about your, ah, gift?”
“It’s about my mother. She was a monster, even before I came along.”
“How does it apply…”
“Maybe I’m a monster too. So, you want to keep meeting? Work on my
flashbacks maybe? Get past the trauma of my rape? Or,” my sarcasm dripped summer
roofing tar, “something hotter?”
“I still believe the rape is the first priority. That,” pointing at my hands, “has little
to do with the horror you went through that night.”
“I guess if I’d known how to do this trick back then, good old Walt would be a
pile of ashes now. Too bad.”
“Is that how to see this? As a weapon?”
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“Yeah, that, or to toast marshmallows over. What good is it? It isn’t going to
make me get a better grade in Algebra Two.”
“Listen, can we meet day after tomorrow? Same time?”
“Friday, right?”
“Yes. I really want to see you again.”
“Fine, I guess. If you want. Oh, do me a favor, don’t share this with Odie.”
“I wouldn’t even if I could. Patient, therapist confidentiality. You’re safe with
me.”
I got up and turned the doorknob to escape. “Belinda?” Damn, almost free.
“Yeah?” “Thank you for trusting me, I really didn’t mean for you to go where you went.”
I swung the door open. “Yeah, it’s okay.” It wasn’t, but I smelled clean air from outside
and had a need to get there as fast as possible.
#
“You did what?!”
I leaned across the table and shushed her. Her father came in and opened the
refrigerator. He smiled at us. “You know, you two are thick as thieves. You could be
sisters, but you never fight.” He popped the tab on a can of beer and walked away. Kim
stuck her tongue out at me.
“You know,” I whispered, “I have a use for that.” I was pointing at her tongue.
She blushed deep crimson.
“Okay, you did what?”
I explained my weird meeting with Anne. Kim shook her head. “Power. It’s all
about power, just like I told you. You’re learning about your power.”
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“The thing is, Kimbo, I didn’t ask for it, don‘t want it.”
“Some things you can’t choose. Speaking of, why did you agree to go to Jim
Brickman’s house. It sounds purely dangerous to me.”
“He’s not totally a bad guy, really. He’s helped me a lot since that night.”
“He wants to be better than chums with you.”
I pulled a torn corner of paper out of my notebook. I wrote, “You’re the one I
sleep with,” and pushed it to her. She blushed again, and mouthed, “I love you”.
“Okay, can we get back to Civics class? You helped me pull a C on the History