by Amy Reed
When I open my eyes, I am disoriented. I focus on someone new, someone I haven’t seen before, sitting in the corner, leaning back in his chair like he knows something the rest of us don’t. His dark hair is messy and hiding half his face. His jeans are dark and his T-shirt is black and his arms are half covered with tattoos. My eyes meet his and I suddenly forget how to breathe; I feel the courtyard whoosh close around me, and everything in my body burns and feels numb at the same time.
“That’s Dylan,” Skyler says behind me, making me jump. She has momentarily escaped the table with her parents and has come back to torture me. “He’s too old for you.”
I look at you, and your face is turned in the same direction. You are oblivious to both Skyler and me. You have the same hungry look on your face I must have had on mine.
ἄρμα
LOVE
Once upon a time, you would not have recognized us. People were not people but big fleshy boulders, with two sets each of hands and legs and fingers and toes, one head on top with two faces looking in opposite directions. It was not a pretty sight, these human balls, but they were happy, whole, rolling around wherever they pleased. If they found a long straight road, and especially if it started at a bit of an incline, they could get going so fast they could change the molecules in the air; they could burn the grass into crispy tendrils, turn sand into glass, melt rocks into magma.
The Sun is a man. His sons were hairier than the rest and slightly more muscular. They were stubborn and less adept at multitasking. They rumbled and belched when they rolled.
The Moon is a woman. Everyone knows this. When her daughters sang, the oceans moved. Their flesh was soft, and when they rolled they liked to know where they were going.
But the Earth, she is a fickle thing. He is full of tides and plates and seasons and volcanoes, the constant flow of water and earth, part Sun and part Moon, always. He is both male and female, and her offspring were the same—one face mustached and low-voiced, the other smooth with heart-shaped lips; two arms thick and tight, two arms long and graceful. You looked at one face and perhaps she was smiling, but then you turned her around and he was frowning on the other side. But the sadness was only shallow and soon passed. They did not know true sadness, for they were never alone.
We must not forget the gods and their jealous insecurities. We must not forget how power corrupts, how it craves itself, how it chases its tail like Ouroboros. There was something threatening about these eight-limbed creatures, something great and powerful. Their completeness was something even the gods didn’t have, and these children of flesh were prideful. They forgot their place. They thought they had a right to heaven.
This is the downside of being complete. Others want what you have. They covet your doneness.
So the gods, in their epic tantrum, threw thunderbolts and cut each ball right down the middle. Each cut was its own snowflake, a surgical fingerprint; no two were alike. The balls became sad crescents—the Moon only half full, the Sun eclipsed, the Earth with a big bite taken out of it. Those who once rolled so gracefully became wobbly upright creatures who had to learn how to walk on two legs like toddlers. They were stretched and turned like grotesque clay, their heads spun around to face forward, their gaping wound pulled shut and tied at the belly button. They were shaped like fleshy stars.
And so love was born. The once-complete creature became two incomplete halves. Out of the pain of being separated came the yearning to be whole, to be reunited with that single lonely creature whose jagged edges are an exact mirror image of our own.
“We’ve got work to do,” you announce, pulling on shorts and a tank top. It is early, too early. But right away, I can tell you’re on a mission. And there’s no stopping you when you’re on a mission.
“What about breakfast?” I say.
“We’ll grab it on our way.”
“On our way where?”
“To get tools.”
You are normally not an early riser. But here, maybe you will be someone else.
When we get to the courtyard we find that everyone is already out in the fields working. The only people left are Maria and another woman on child-care duty for the day, one man tidying up in the kitchen, plus the half-dozen children of the farm, who are busy drawing at the picnic tables. Both women are breastfeeding, Maria with Bean attached to her chest, the other with a much older child. I know I met the woman yesterday, but it’s all a blur and I can’t for the life of me remember her name.
“I don’t think that’s her kid she’s feeding,” you whisper. The woman is white, and the child at her breast is many shades darker.
“Maybe the father’s black,” I offer.
“I don’t think so,” you say. “Did you see any black guys here?”
“Maybe he’s not here,” I say. “Maybe they broke up.”
You look at me skeptically. “How old is that kid, anyway? He can definitely talk. Do you think he just goes Hey, Mom, give me your boob when he’s hungry?”
I shrug. You shudder. “It’s so gross,” you say. “To breastfeed a kid that old.” According to whom? I want to say. What makes you such an expert? I’m not sure where this spurt of anger comes from. Maybe I’m grumpy from being woken up so early.
Maria grins big when she sees us and motions us to come over. I start moving in her direction, but you grab my arm. “No time, Max,” you say so only I can hear. A couple of the kids look up at us curiously, then return their attention to their drawings.
“Later,” I shout over to her. “We’re in a hurry. We have a lot to do today.” You smile a big fake smile as you pull me away. You’re the one who decides we can’t talk, but I’m the one who has to worry about being rude.
“Okay,” Maria says back. “Let me know if you need any help. The kids can help too. Right, kids?”
They all look up and nod yes. A little boy around four or five demands in a squeaky voice, “Do you know why the Lorax is sad?”
“Oh,” I say. “Um. I forget. Why?”
“Because corporations keep cutting down trees to make freeways,” he lectures. “And genetic engineerings and the bad guy named Monsanto makes fish with three eyeballs.”
You guffaw behind me. I can’t help but smile. “I don’t remember that part of the Lorax,” I say.
Maria laughs. “I think River might have gotten a few things mixed up.”
“But he’s basically on the right track,” the other woman says. “Dr. Seuss was a revolutionary, you know. Seriously subversive.” Maria nods like this is common knowledge.
“Come on,” you hiss, and I let you drag me away.
You instruct me to make peanut butter sandwiches. You find apples, carrots. We throw our peasant meal into a canvas bag you discover shoved in a corner. The clock on the wall still reads 10:47.
“What about coffee?” I ask.
“No time for coffee.”
You’re the foreman of our operation, and I am the worker you picked up on the side of the road by Home Depot. You give me instructions, and I obey, nodding yes and saying little. Carry this WeedWacker, grab that plastic chair, those milk crates, that board, this pink flamingo, that flower pot, this little broken figurine of an owl. We raid the garage for anything useful we can find.
I chop the waist-high grass around the trailer with the WeedWacker, and you follow with the mower. Seeds and grass fly through the air and stick to the glue that is our sweat, get tangled in the Velcro that is our hair. We become one with the heat and the stickiness and the itch. When we are half done, we take a water-and-peanut-butter-sandwich break.
“This is our initiation,” you say, picking something that looks like wheat out of your hair. Your skin is already bronzing. You are already becoming part of the sun.
“Initiation into what?”
“Our summer of hard labor.”
The sun is almost directly above us in the sky. Sometime somewhere, I learned that this means noon. We get back to work.
We tame our new home.
We soften all signs of neglect. We mow the grass until it’s flat and uniform, and we build a table out of milk crates and abandoned wood. The plastic chairs wobble, but they’re not too bad. As we sit eating the last of our food, surveying our day of work, you’ve got a satisfied look on your face. I can hear you crunching an apple, and the sound comforts me. The birds accompany you with their music. The leaves rustle harmonies.
“Did you see that woman’s armpit hair?” you say.
“What woman?”
“The one breastfeeding that toddler. It was as long as the hair on my head.”
“But not pink, I hope.”
“No, not pink,” you say. “That would be unnatural. That would, like, offend the Earth Mother Goddess or some shit.” You laugh at your own joke. I look across the lake, at the other side so eerily empty.
“Max,” you say seriously. You look at me, raise your eyebrows, stop chewing. I already know what you’re thinking. “That guy. At dinner last night. Sitting in the corner.”
“I know.”
“He was beautiful.”
“Very.”
“How old do you think he is?”
“I don’t know. Maybe twenty? Twenty-two? Skyler says he’s too old for us.”
“She said he’s too old for you.”
“But I’m older than you.”
“Only by seven days.”
“Whatever,” I say.
“Time to swim,” you say. “Let’s get our suits on.”
So we do, our motions matched and fluid. From far away, I imagine someone might think we’re twins. Since we were little, teachers have always said Those two are attached at the hip, and I’ve taken it as a source of pride.
We have always understood that our relationship comes first. There have been a fair share of romantic sides, most of them yours, but none ever lasts too long. You always stay true, rarely even sleeping with the same boy twice. Most would think of this as problematic; they do not know you’re being faithful to me. For you, there is a difference between sex and love. And what we have is love. The rest is simply entertainment.
Perhaps it is harder for me, my attractions being more ambiguous. You can safely say boys on one side, Max on the other. The line is straight and sharp. But mine curves all around; everything is gray instead of black and white.
I thought I was in love once. I never told you this. I knew it would break your heart. I let you think the relationship was something less, something like all of yours. By then, I had only a few kisses, a couple make-out sessions, and one awkward virginity loss with Hans, that German exchange student sophomore year. But then I met Elka, and at first I tried to pretend it was just a fling. I reported our trysts to you, doing my best to imitate your carelessness. You’d laugh and call me a slut, and I knew you were proud of me. But then I found there were things I didn’t want to share, things I wanted to be just mine. Like the way Elka would cup my chin in her hand when she thought I said something cute, the way she’d always rest her head on my shoulder when we watched movies, the way we’d breathe in each others’ breath when we kissed.
I don’t blame you for our breakup. I know it wasn’t meant to last. Elka was on her way somewhere dark and I didn’t want to go along for the ride. Not like with you. Your darkness is familiar. Your darkness I’m good at handling. But I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I stayed with her. What if the drugs were just a phase she would snap out of soon, and I’d have her back the way I wanted? Sometimes I wonder if things weren’t as bad as you eventually convinced me they were, if maybe your jealousy was more at play than concern for me. But this thought never lasts for long. I know you love me more than anyone in the world, more than Elka ever would have, even if she could stay sober. I must remember this. Above all else, this is what’s important. Girlfriends and boyfriends will come and go, but you will always be my constant.
We float. I practice stillness. I feel the breeze’s gentle nudges toward the shore. When I get too close, I flap my hands like lazy fins, and I move back toward the center of the lake. I try not to imagine what might be under me, what dark and hiding things are slithering where I can’t see them. You don’t seem afraid. The water is an extension of you. I think I hear your voice in the song it makes. You are floating in the corner of my eye, your face tilted toward the sun and a gentle smile on your face, and I think there must be nothing in your head but this water, this single place in time. This is your gift, this miraculous ability to just be wherever you are. You are weightless in more ways than one. The best I can do is float on this water while all the thoughts in my head threaten to drown me.
You float, serene, while I am the one burdened with memories. I have the job of holding on to your history, our history. I’m the one who remembers why we are here. I’m the one who has to be scared. You do not question the logic of paying a homeless guy to buy you whiskey. You do not question the idea of two teenage girls wandering around Seattle at night with the bottle in a paper bag, you taking five gulps for every one of my sips. I always know you’re getting drunk when your arms start waving in the air when you talk, the way you make yourself bigger the less sense you make. It’s when I’m ready to stop that you’re just getting started.
Men are drawn to drunk girls. They have a sixth sense that alerts them when a girl somewhere reaches the point where she’s incapable of making conscious decisions, when she has no one to protect her but a wimpy best friend. When you stumbled and fell slow-motion to the pavement, three chunky frat boys miraculously appeared to catch you. You laughed as they helped you back on the sidewalk. You thanked them even though I knew you couldn’t see them, even though your eyes couldn’t focus. You didn’t notice when one of the boys’ hands squeezed your breast unnecessarily, or when the other two shared a knowing smirk.
“Sadie, let’s go,” I said.
“Where are you girls going?” one said.
“We’re going home.”
“Oh, Max,” you slurred. You giggled as you leaned against one of the boys, as his big fat hand snuck its way under your shirt.
“Sadie, let’s go,” I said, pulling on your arm. They were not butterflies in my stomach, but bees, wasps, hornets, fierce and stinging.
“We’ll give you a ride,” one said. They all looked the same. “Our car is right around the corner.” He pulled keys out of his pocket, jangled them like a cat toy, and you grabbed at them, purring.
“Let me drive!” You laughed, and the boys laughed. The one with the keys mumbled to another that he was going to get the car. Something sharp tore through my whiskey haze, something barbed and hot and terrifying.
“Sadie, we have to go,” I said. “We have to go right now.”
“We’re getting a ride,” you said. “We don’t have to take the bus, Max!” You announced this so proudly, like you had found us a great deal. The boy propping you up had his hand fully under your shirt now. I could see it moving around, like some kind of alien disease. He was grinning at me with droopy eyes.
A car pulled up. The boy leaned out the window. “Get in,” he said. Something loud and ugly was blaring from the stereo, the kind of music frat boys listen to so they can pretend they have something to be angry about.
I said, “No.” You said nothing. You got in the car, and it drove away before you even had a chance to close the door.
I stood there on the curb as the music faded away. “Oh my God,” I remember saying aloud, to no one. The street was empty. No one saw. You were gone. You were drunk, and you were in a car with three strangers. And it was my fault. It is my job to keep you safe, and I let them take you.
My hand was shaking as I called everyone I could think of. I called your dad, but he didn’t answer. I called my house. I even called Elka, even though we had broken up two months earlier and weren’t speaking. I didn’t leave any messages; I couldn’t commit any words to being saved for later, couldn’t take on the responsibility of defining what was happening. Anything could have been happening to you, but I was
still worried about getting you in trouble.
I had drunk a fair share of that whiskey bottle, but I had never felt more sober in my life. I felt the crisp night air taking bites out of my skin, saw every city light burning, cruel and menacing. It was the end of the world. I was not breathing. I did not deserve to breathe. I had lost you.
I thought I was dreaming when I heard music again in the distance. The screech of tires as the car turned the corner is what finally convinced me it was real; this was really the car driving toward me, this was really me running toward it and yanking the back door open; this was really you falling out and onto the curb, your mascara smeared down your face and the neck of your shirt ripped; this was me screaming something into the night air, not English, not even language; this was me scooping you into my arms; this was some asshole muttering “crazy bitch” as the car drove away, taking the angry music along with it, along with the boys who have absolutely nothing in this world to be angry about.
“What happened?” I screamed as you wept. You shook your head no. I searched your body for signs, for answers. “What did they do?”
“Nothing,” you whimpered.
“Sadie, what did they do?”
“Nothing!” You broke free of my arms and stood up on your wobbly legs. You started walking.
“Where are you going?”
“I have to find a bathroom.”
“We have to go home, Sadie.”
You kept walking.
“I’ll call a cab,” I said. But I didn’t call anyone. I didn’t even take out my phone. I just followed you across the street and around the corner. I followed you as you walked toward the dirty neon sign of a windowless bar. “Sadie,” I said. “You can’t go in there.”