Broken in Soft Places

by Fiona Zedde

  “This is supposed to be good shit?” Sara felt her eyes go wide and owlish as the heat slowly subsided.

  “It tastes better cold, but yeah.” Devi laughed again and took another mouthful.

  When Devi tried to pass it to her, Sara held out a palm in the universal sign for No Thanks.

  “Well, if that doesn’t get you going, how about”—Devi reached into her pocket and brought out a baggy half full of weed, a tiny wooden pipe, and a plastic lighter—“this?”

  Sara shook her head again.

  “Come on. So you do this with Rille and not me?”

  Had she done this with Rille? Sure, she remembered Rille blowing the sweet smoke into her mouth again and again until her limbs had loosened and everything seemed possible. But this wasn’t quite the same.

  “It’s not the same.”

  “Does that mean I can blow smoke into your mouth too?” Devi’s teeth flashed in the dim light.

  Sara giggled and dropped her hot face into her hands. “No, you can’t.”

  She sighed into the darkness of her palms. Rille. Rille. Rille. So many things came back to Rille. Sara’s first time girl lust. Her hopes to be transformed into someone strong and fearless. Her hopes to be someone who didn’t flinch from life.

  The alcohol already spread searing fingers through her belly. When she looked up again, Devi had already filled the bowl of the pipe, working quickly with little light and, Sara assumed, a lot of practice. She flicked her thumb and a small flame burped from the lighter. Closing her eyes, Devi sucked for a few seconds from the pipe. Like a dragon, she blew the smoke out through her nose and into the air away from Sara.

  “Your turn.”

  Devi pressed even closer, her arm around Sara as she held the pipe to her mouth and the lighter at the ready. Suck. Release. Hold it in. Burn. It burned. The smoke singed her nose, inside her head. She coughed, holding out the pipe to Devi as her eyes watered and her lungs rejected the smoke.

  “It’s your first time; you’re supposed to do that.”

  “I think you’re trying to kill me,” Sara croaked, holding her chest.

  The second time, smoke slipped into her like breath.

  “That’s it,” Devi said, her hand a warm weight through the back of Sara’s blouse. “You’re a natural. You sure you haven’t done this before?”

  “No,” Sara giggled.

  She relaxed against Devi, not even realizing that she had been tense. A sigh left her mouth. That breath, along with her clarity, disappeared. She blinked at the darkness beyond their chair, the buttons of light higher up. Stars.

  “So back to this thing you got going with Rille.” Sara turned to watch the words form on Devi’s bow and arrow mouth. “I know you like her a lot, and that’s cool. But maybe…” Devi leaned closer. “Maybe we could do it together. You know. Rille, me, and you.”

  She made a strange attempt at waggling her eyebrows. Like Magnum PI, Sara thought. But not as bushy. And no mustache. And straight hair instead of curly. Closing her eyes, she shook her head.

  “I don’t think I could ever do something like that.”

  “It’s easy,” Devi said. “You’d be surprised just how.”

  Devi’s hand made slow circles on her back, and Sara sank into the warm touch, wondering what it would be like if she peeled off her shirt and kissed her. The thought came and went. Devi wasn’t what she wanted. Even with her short hair and angular body, she was soft. Sara didn’t want soft. She wanted someone who would make her feel. Feel something that would batter against the screaming thing inside her and make it shut up.

  “My brother just died.”

  The words tripped off her tongue and fell into her lap, irretrievable. She covered her mouth. Shook her head.

  “That sucks.” Devi’s words came slowly, and she leaned back into the chair, dropped her hands away from Sara, and reached for the bottle of vodka.

  “I know.” Before Devi could put the bottle to her own mouth, Sara pulled it from her. “It really, really sucks.”

  The vodka burned again, but she didn’t care. It made her feel like she could blow flames. Sara threw her breath into the night, but no fire shot out. She grabbed the bottle again. Same disappointing air as before. Another drink and Sara was surprised to find it salty. She choked.

  “You all right?”

  Devi looked at her with droopy-eyed concern. “Why are you crying?”

  “Am I? I didn’t noti—” A sound cut off the rest of her words. Then she felt like she was vomiting, vomiting sounds that curled up Devi’s face and changed her rubs into pats. On her back. Her thigh.

  “Don’t cry.” Devi patted her harder. “Shit. Come on. Everything’s going to be all right.”

  But Sara’s sobs didn’t stop. The sounds grew louder. Her throat raw.

  “Okay, let’s just take you home. Okay?”

  Sara nodded and Devi helped her lurch to her feet. The tearing flapped loose in her. She couldn’t hold it closed anymore. She couldn’t. Sara’s hands grasped blindly at the back of Devi’s shirt and they stumbled from the chair. The cement and bits of wire poking through in sporadic jabs scraped her hands and the backs of her legs. Sara, with Devi at her side, fled through the gauntlet of eyes piercing them in the darkness, then past the rose garden that made Sara gag with its sticky sweetness. She closed her mouth to the smell, and Devi must have felt the same way about the flowers because she dug hard fingers into Sara’s side and hurried them past the garden and underneath the intermittent streetlights that led to the other side of campus. Silence amplified their footsteps.

  “I’m really sorry that your brother is dead. Real sorry.”

  Sorry. Everybody is sorry. “It’ll be all right,” she said, tears dried on her face like glue. Sometimes it’s nice to think that. “Syrus isn’t really dead. He’s just away. Nicaragua, I think. Or maybe back to Jamaica. He really had a thing for Jamaican girls.” She paused. “Has. He has a thing for—” The words dropped back down her throat.

  Devi rubbed her back again, looking helpless. “You gonna be okay?”

  Sara didn’t answer. She shoved her hands in her pockets and bit her bottom lip.

  They walked past the library, its silent doors, the trees swaying like ghosts in the moonlight. Sara’s legs felt heavy as she climbed the steps up toward the overpass with its hissing of cars from the local highway down below.

  “He’s always going somewhere. Mama keeps saying how he should be an ambassador or something.”

  She stopped, stared hard at the vines clinging to the chain link fence that covered the inverted trough of an overpass. The world blurred before her eyes. In spring, the Vreeland brochure said, purple and white trumpet flowers exploded from the vines, giving the small overpass the look of a wedding arbor. Now, it was far from springtime. And the vines looked more like dark snakes winding through the fence overhead, threatening to sting the heads of passersby.

  With one foot still on the stairs, Sara clung to the railing. Beyond her clenched hand was nothingness. A gap between the hip-high barrier—meant to guide the infirm and uncertain along the stairs—and the sheltering arch of the chain link above the walkway. A small gate. The brochure didn’t say how easy it was to escape the cage of vines and flowers, to slip through that opening. On the outside of the overpass sat thick concrete planters, like theater seats, filled with dirt and the thick roots for the yet unbloomed trumpet flowers. While Devi leaned against the railing, sulkily staring into the darkness, Sara slipped past the gate and stepped free.

  Devi jumped off her perch. “Wait. What are you doing?”

  She stumbled as she came toward Sara. But Sara didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to. With her face pressed against the fencing, fingers lashed through it, she balanced on the planters. Her feet sank into dirt and tangled in strong brown roots. A wave of dizziness assaulted her and she whimpered, squeezing her eyes shut. The crushed green smell of the vines pressed against her face. Below her, traffic rushed. People in c
ars hurrying home to their families. To brothers safe in their beds and sisters waiting for them to wake up. Her heart beat faster and faster.

  “Sara! Come back down here.”

  The fence felt cool against her palm. It dug into her hands as she crouched, back to the traffic speeding below her. Under her thin ballet shoes, the cement was hard. Syrus had given the shoes to her when she turned seventeen. She’d always wanted to take ballet, but they were too poor and she was too old. “For your dreams,” he said, putting the curling black slippers in her hands.

  A noise coughed up from inside her. He wasn’t really dead was he? No, he wasn’t dead. The world couldn’t be that unfair. He was coming back. Her fingers, hooked into the fence started to shake, then her whole body.

  “Why couldn’t I be the one who died?”

  She threw the words out of her for the first time. Knowing as she said them, why. Syrus was the adventurer, not her. He sailed off for the unknown after high school. He made friends with boy soldiers and refugees. He sent presents that smelled of a faraway sea. He’d taken a chance, burned in a steel box rather than live the kind of life he had nothing but contempt for: college, corporate slavery, creeping death.

  “No one has to die.” Devi’s voice came from far away, sounding as shaken as Sara felt. Maybe worse. “Sara, come on! Quit fucking around.”

  Clinging to the outside of the overpass, crablike and immobile, Sara bit her lip until it bled. Trembled as if gripped in a fever. She heard other voices, but couldn’t make them out. Was she afraid? Is that why she was here instead of buried halfway to Jamaica in a pretty coffin only those looking at it from the outside could appreciate? Was it her fear?

  Hands grabbed and pulled her away from the fence. She screamed. “I don’t want to be afraid! I don’t. I don’t.”

  “You need to be afraid, you crazy b—”

  “What’s she on?”

  The cement scraped her knees. She swung wildly for a moment over the gallop of cars. Air rushed past her face.

  “Grab her!”

  She stumbled into someone. Two someones. Cold hands gripped and swung her around to face a tight pale face. No one she knew.

  “Are you all right?”

  Sara shook her head. Her body trembled. With gummy eyes, she looked around, peering between the white faces and the darkness. “Syrus?” Another tremor came and she hugged herself. “Please help me.” Sara swayed from the hands that held her captive. “Please.”

  *

  With the sun already a dull white ache behind her eyes, she woke up in her own bed. Naked and tucked under the thin covers. From the shelf above, Syrus’s photograph smiled down at her. Raven’s face hovered next to his. Not smiling.

  Raven sat on the bed beside her. “My mama always said you should only do drugs with people you trust.”

  But that wouldn’t be brave.

  A smile wavered on Sara’s face. “Next time,” she said.

  But it wasn’t drugs that she wanted for her next time. And as soon as she felt well enough to take what she wanted, Sara went after it. With the sun a warm weight on her shoulders, she wove through the courtyard, empty except for a couple sitting under the waving shade of a palm tree. Third court lay sleeping too, sullen in the full glare of a mid-afternoon sun, waiting for night to fall and one of a half dozen parties to begin. The hammocks strung across some lower balconies swayed forlorn in the light breeze, waiting for bodies to fill them. Sara walked underneath the Japanese lanterns connecting many of the third floor balconies. In the light, they looked cheap. Like overpainted knockoffs, some torn and dingy from constant exposure to rain and sun. As she climbed the stairs to room 318, the smell of old beer, piss, and vomit followed her.

  She knocked on Rille’s door with only a little bit of fear trembling in the pit of her belly. Rille’s surprised face appeared at the threshold, and though Sara saw Thalia sprawled on the bed, her naked thighs barely covered with a thin sheet, she took what she wanted.

  “I’m not afraid,” she said.

  Rille watched her, snake-eyed, waiting for more. “Okay.”

  “I want to see you tonight.” Her breath slowed, waiting for the rejection.

  But Rille’s eyes opened wide with surprised pleasure. “All right. What time?” She didn’t turn back to look at the girl lying on her bed.

  “After class, six thirty,” Sara said.

  “Come back to my room. I’ll get food from the cafeteria for us.”

  Class came and went. Night arrived quickly. When Rille answered the door a second time, there was no one in the bed. It lay empty, piled with pillows, plump under a swirling fog of incense. Across the small room, the balcony door was open. Strings of multi-colored holiday lights shyly illuminated two plates of brown rice with pale slices of chicken breast, a saucer of orange crescents, and two small bottles of orange juice. Sara crossed Rille’s threshold, breathless and clear-eyed. And it was easy, she thought. Like jumping off a cliff.

  Show Me Love

  Stephen/Atlanta

  Rille’s head poked around the bedroom door, curls catching the first rays of the morning sun. “Are you up?” She didn’t wait for an answer.

  Stephen yawned and stretched the sleep from his body, back cracking in a series of satisfying pops. Beside him, but separated by the usual ocean of space in their king-sized bed, Sara stirred. Rille came fully through the door, holding a tray weighed down with pancakes, maple syrup, scrambled eggs, and sausages. Except for a black apron and a pair of panties, orange with multicolored heart-shaped peace signs, she was naked. The apron made a tease out of her nakedness, allowing small glimpses of hip, breast, and waist as she moved toward the bed.

  Stephen was definitely up. He dropped Rille’s pillow across his bare lap, consciously not meeting Sara’s gaze.

  “Did someone deliver breakfast?” Sara asked, shoving her thick dreads and traces of suspicion from her face. She sat up against the pillows and tugged down her nightshirt.

  “What, you think I didn’t cook this?” Rille thrust out her lip, eyes sparkling early morning dew.

  She shoved Stephen’s book off the bedside table with her elbow—it dropped to the wooden floor with a dull thump—and moved the tray in its place, being careful not to overturn the carafe of water sitting nearby.

  With a dramatic flutter, Rille tugged a napkin from the pocket of her apron and draped it over her shoulder. When she knelt on the bed to plump Sara’s pillows, a pale brown nipple popped from behind her apron.

  “I know it’s early, but we have a long day ahead of us,” Rille said. She stepped back from the bed to look at them both, smiling. Her narrow shoulders moved like bird wings under the loose straps of the apron.

  One after the other, she pulled two empty plates from under the white bowl of eggs and sausages, whipped serving tongs from the pocket of her apron, and shared out breakfast. She brought the plates to the bed, putting one on Sara’s bewildered lap and the other on Stephen’s.

  “I’ll be right back.” She grabbed the carafe from the nightstand and left the room.

  “What’s going on?” Sara yawned, looking at the food on her lap as if live snakes lived there.

  He shrugged. Whatever it was, he liked it. He bit into a sausage link and moist, meaty flavor exploded in his mouth. Turkey. Sara’s favorite.

  “It’s good,” he said. “Try it.” Stephen waved the bitten end of his sausage under her nose, grinning, knowing she wouldn’t taste it.

  Sara pulled back, nose wrinkling. “I’ll try my own, thanks.”

  Stephen laughed. “I think she’s doing this, whatever this is, for you.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “What do you doubt? That I can cook?” Rille tripped back into the room with three glasses and the carafe full of grapefruit juice.

  “While you two weren’t paying attention, I mastered breakfast. The pancakes I made from scratch, squeezed the grapefruit juice fresh—”

  “And the eggs you laid yourself?” Sara plucke
d at the fluffy yellow eggs with her fingers since Rille seemed to have forgotten to bring forks.

  “Very funny, darling.” Rille served her own breakfast, poured juice into the three glasses, and brought it all to the bed on the tray. She sat on the bed facing them, the tray just touching her knees.

  “I’m taking you both out today. Eat up and shower. Obviously, I’m joining you for both.” She grinned. “And wear comfortable clothes and shoes.”

  This was a side of Rille Stephen hadn’t seen in months, the playful lover with the wicked smile he could never resist. And Sara couldn’t resist either no matter how much she tried to. Under Rille’s warm gaze, she made a burrito out of a pancake, eggs, and sausage, drizzling maple syrup over the creation before taking a cautious bite.

  “That’s my girl,” Rille murmured, leaning in to wipe a smear of syrup from the corner of Sara’s mouth.

  She sucked the sticky sweetness from her thumb before tucking into her own breakfast with both hands.

  “Don’t we get forks?” Stephen asked, more for Sara’s benefit than his.

  “Use your hands,” Rille said around a mouthful of eggs. “Everything tastes sweeter when you eat it with your fingers.”

  Stephen chuckled. “You might be right about that.” He swiped his pancake through the syrup on his plate and bit into it. Next to him, Sara laughed, covering her mouth and batting away the fingers Rille danced across her ribs. He swirled the food across his tongue and swallowed. It did taste sweeter.

  *

  “Oh my God, this is fantastic! I haven’t been to one of these in years!” Sara’s voice rose above the noise and music and the sound of cheers surging up from the crowd around them. Calypso music blared from the speakers on top of the passing carnival truck.

  Peachtree Street swelled with hundreds of vibrant bodies, all throbbing to the beat of calypso, soca, and reggae music that pulsed from the gigantic speakers on the passing parade floats and trucks. It was Caribbean Carnival time. In front of Stephen, a thick woman, dressed in fringed jean shorts rising sharply into the crack of her butt, jumped out from the crowd of spectators to join the parade. She pumped her hips and jiggled her breasts to the beat of the music, inciting a small riot in the group of men standing nearby.