In the Vines

by Shannon Kirk

  Johanna, my love, Johanna. My eyes are blind. What is this light flickering in my eyes; what is this blood, this blood dripping down my thighs. She sings your song, Johanna. Did you teach her today? Is that what this is? Is she your friend and you taught her to sing your song? Johanna?

  I’m crying, I cannot help it. I’m weeping to hear someone else pretend to be the voice of my beloved Johanna. My mental sides are mixing together, the hard drives of me, both malfunctioning. No, no, no, think. Think. I am a nurse. You are a nurse. Blood is not dripping down my legs. There is no liquid dripping down my legs. I refuse to believe there is blood on my legs.

  My legs are liquid.

  I pause. I inhale. I pause. I inhale. I am a nurse. My legs are not liquid. I inhale through my nose, which is clogged with emotion and phlegm, viscous is my interior and exterior. My feet are crumbling meat, my legs still rubber. The walls of the hall are a savior for me. I scratch at the wallpaper as if I can reach into the vines and the red and blue birds for traction and catch. My stomach and breasts are pressed flat against flat birds and vines, and I slide along my own hall, like a shadow creature, so as to avoid touching the toxic trail of vials and tea lights.

  I reach the kitchen.

  I’m standing in the entrance to my kitchen.

  Where am I? How did I get here? Who is here? What am I seeing? I am blind in the light and the gray clouds.

  I am not blind. I am a nurse. I am not blind, I’m just not believing. I am standing in the entrance to my kitchen. My yellow-lit kitchen. I am standing in the entrance to my kitchen. I am looking to my right at the humming Cate Dranal, who sits at my kitchen table. She is folding my underwear in three folds, picking each piece from my green laundry basket.

  “Mmm, mmm, mmm . . .” Cate shouts at me as some grand greeting, wild-eyed with a savage smile. Her humming is a violent humming version of “America.” She’s sitting in my blue-painted chair. My chair. She’s sitting at my table, in my chair, wearing a navy-and-light-blue ball gown. There are a few twigs in her hair, scratches on her melting pink-rouged cheeks, like she applied clown blush and then shoved her face in a bush, hard and fast, back and forth, raping twigs with her mouth and cheeks. Her ill-advised, CVS-brand black eyeliner, which she drew right inside the rim, like the deplorable she is, droops low into the dry, drooping bags under her bloodshot eyes. True-pink lipstick is not on her lips so much, but rather smeared around her mouth and staining her teeth.

  Cate is singing Johanna’s song. Johanna. Yellow light stings my eyes; the windows are swirling liquefied gray clouds. Johannawhereareyou? I can’t look, no, I will not, no, no, Johanna, I will not look to the left of me. No. I know you are in here too. I don’t want to see you. Johanna, stop moaning.

  Dangling from Cate’s finger, held aloft like ET pointing to home with his gold-lit finger, is my gold thong, a pair I wore for Kent Dranal on an occasion or two, or ten. One time, his teeth tore away at the lace hem around the leg holes. So anxious to arouse me, he tore the lace in two spots, leaving sagging loops away from the stitch line to the cotton and silk panel of my crotch. And yet, I kept them. I confess. Does Cate know her husband’s teeth made the torn loops she slips her fingers through?

  Don’t look to the stove to the left; don’t register the murmuring, murmuring, moaning. Don’t look, don’tlook, don’tlook, don’tlook. Don’t, no, I won’t listen to the gagging, don’tlook. She’s gagging. I’m gagging.

  A trickle of blood teardrops down past my knee to my ankle.

  That is not blood. That is only sweat. Don’t look down. Don’t look left.

  I turn my head to the left, for vision of my black stove and to identify a voice from this direction. An undefined and muddled moan, obstructed by something, murmuring and possibly screaming. It is indeed Johanna, and she’s in an impossible contraption. She is seated on top of my black gas stove, duct taped in place by at least an entire roll, her legs wound in silver adhesive, her hips, too, the tape anchored around the stove. I’m a nurse. Perhaps this took two rolls. I’m a nurse. She is sitting directly atop the right front round burner, her left hip spilling onto the middle griddle, where we make pancakes. Her arms are tied behind her back. Her mouth: duct-taped. She cries, she wails, the noises of a dying animal.

  The stove is not on.

  The stove is noton, noton. Oh, Johanna. Johanna. My, my, my Johanna. My Johanna. Here comes my neck swallowing my head.

  I vomit.

  My throat burns. Bile now on my feet, which . . .

  My feet do not exist. I don’t have feet. There’s no need to look down at the vomit to see if it met my feet because I’m feetless. It’s okay. Okayokayokay.

  I cannot quit these tears. I cannot clear these clouds.

  Can I speak to Cate who folds my underwear at the table? The woman who ignores my sickness on the floor, my sister on the stove, my cries, her cries? Might I speak reason to the woman who hums on, calm in singing more about “America” and folding my underwear in three? Can I beg Cate Dranal to help me and help my sister, even though she is an obvious psychopath, the very cause?

  I stare up at Cate Dranal from my kitchen floor. I collapsed, given the absence of feeling in my feet, my hands barely missing the pile of my sickness. My feet do not exist. Blood drips down my legs. No, my legs are blood. Only blood. I can’t move. Johanna.

  Cate looks down upon me and hums.

  Using my arms, which prickle, turning to liquid, too, I drag my torso sideways toward the stove. I’m like a limp animal, chewed free of a bear trap, legs mangled and useless.

  Blood is draining from my femoral artery along the kitchen floor. Gettostove. FreeJohanna.

  I am a nurse. Blood is not draining from my femoral artery. That’s a mind’s split fiction. I’m not cut. My legs are freezing cold to no feeling. I cannot move them. I reach Johanna’s bound legs.

  Cate Dranal launches herself from my kitchen table and barrels for me as I pick and pry away at duct tape in a panicked attempt to unwind Johanna. Cate’s blue-on-blue gown is strapless, and I note the mottling of the skin on her arms, red blotches against the whitest of skin: she’s either suffering poor circulation or unable to calibrate temperature. I’m a nurse. Or are those red blotches not red, but a rust red, like dried blood? Cate elbows my cranium, crashing me backward, landing me on my buttocks and into my open shelves, which host a collection of yellowware mixing bowls, platters, cups, figurines, tureens, gravy boats, and plates. I hit so hard, the antique shelving unit shakes and dozens of pieces fall and shatter to the floor, but in some miracle, miss my head. A shard slices my left hand at the fatty part between thumb and gun-barrel finger.

  Johanna wails from her throat, her voice muffled under the tape.

  Cate sets one hand on the burner dial under Johanna’s legs, while holding a syringe, which I presume is filled with pento, to Johanna’s jugular.

  Johanna, my Johanna. Be quiet, love. Be quiet. Lookatmebeingquietforyou. I will sit silent and be quiet because quiet will make her stop and I am going to sit here on the floor with my blood legs and my bleeding hand and the bees in my brain and without my feet and I am going to make all of me and even my blood and even the bees be very, very quiet and we are going to be quiet and the woman is not going to hurt you, Johanna. Johanna, shh, shh. Johanna.

  I am a nurse. My legs are not blood. My right thigh has a throbbing hematoma. My left hand is lacerated and requires ten sutures. My brain is not filled with bees; it is oxygen deprived because I am still only inhaling in bursts through my throat. I do not close my eyes to inhale through nostrils as I should. You surely should. I surely should. Cate keeps her hand on the burner dial and a needle to Johanna’s neck.

  Cate Dranal clears her throat, stops humming about “America.” She looks at me with one eyelid dropping like she’s having a stroke, but it’s more that she’s moving through a quick catatonic state. I should know. She’s a reflection of me in this moment. Then she clears her throat again, and both eyes fly wide and she’s staring
at me on the floor, her syringe in one hand to Johanna’s jugular, her other hand on the burner dial on which Johanna is trapped.

  Cate speaks.

  “Oh. My dear. Lynette Viola Vandonbeer. What a fucking lovely name. Rich bitch has everything she needs, but she wants a married man, so she takes him and fucks him. Kent told me everything.”

  Don’t look at her. Look at Johanna. Tell her to be quiet. Be quiet with me, Johanna. Johanna. Don’t look at my blood legs, sprawled here on the floor with the broken bowls. Nana’s bowls are broken. I’msosorry. Don’t look at my bloody hand or the bees buzzing around my head. Stop crying, darling. Look in my eyes and be quiet. Can you see my eyes? Are they too clouded? Okay, darling, I’ll wipe them.

  I wipe my crying eyes so Johanna can see me being quiet, which, medically speaking should not make physiological sense. But it is logical to me, so I wipe again. The blood from my left hand swipes across my face. I must look like a red raccoon.

  “You look at me when I’m talking to you, bitch!” Cate Dranal shouts from her towering height, me crumpled on the floor by the shaken shelves, broken yellow pottery all around me. The heavy bottom of one of the big bowls we use to mix cakes, the one that is an inch thick, teeters by my hand, the edges around the bottom now jagged and sharp. The way Cate bends from her height to me and shouts is like she’s an abusive mother with a wooden spoon at the stove top, shouting at a quivering child at her apron strings.

  “You will sit there and listen to everything I’m going to say or I will turn on the burner and burn your sister alive, right here, on your stove. Or, who knows, I could also pump her with this pentobarbital, right into her neck, and I think this much quantity would kill her or coma her for fucking ever, and who knows, maybe you’ll lose more tonight. I don’t know what I’ll do. But you will listen either way.”

  I will make you a nice cup of tea, Johanna. Tonight. Your favorite, my love. Yes, the caffeine-free rooibos chai, with milk and honey and two slices of cinnamon toast with no crust and buttered heavy. I’ll give you the rest of the wine too. And we’ll go away tomorrow. We’ll get away, get away, getaway, way, way. And, and, and, maybe we’ll go to, goto, goto, your favorite little villa in Positano and we’ll sleep late, just like you like. I’ll get you whatever you need. Please, please, be still, stop fidgeting. The needle cannot go into your neck. Please be quiet. I will be quiet. See. Please, Johanna.

  I am not quiet. My mouth works against me.

  “You fucking crazy bitch! I swear to God, if you hurt my sister, I will make your living life a fucking hell!” I’m seething, literal spit frothing out of my mouth. I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m a nurse. I should talk reason into this situation, defuse the tension, like I’m trained.

  Cate Dranal is laughing. A nasally laugh, clogged and halting, a car working to stop in the rain and the antilock wheels can’t catch.

  “Oh, really, please, Lynette Viola Vandonbeer.” She says my full name like a bully on the playground. “What a bitch’s name. And your sister’s name, please, Johanna Vandonbeer Pentecost. She’s a cunt. You’re a cunt. Fuck you.”

  Cate moves to crouch in front of me, blocking me from reaching Johanna at the stove. But at least her hand is off the burner dial and the vial away from Johanna’s neck. She hikes up her gown to her knees, fisting the scratchy tulle lining, which is ripped in spots. She wears no lining, no underslip, no Spanx, because she’s an animal. The stitching on this dress is uneven. It’s homemade. It’s awful. It’s psychotic. She made this dress. She made this dress.

  “Oh, do you like my dress, bitch?” She says in a taunt, pivoting her head with each word, side to side. “I made it. I thought maybe if you saw my beautiful gown, you’d invite me to your stupid charity ball this Friday. Right? Yeah, I read up on you. I made this dress all last night and today, in between dealing with Kent, of course.” And she’s doing her phlegmy, rattling, awful laugh again.

  When she crouches, her hiked gown rides up her formless legs, and yet she keeps her indecent crouching pose, her knees hovering and splayed to each side, her pointed elbows jammed into the tops of her thighs—this position is much like a tracker in the woods, crouched to the ground, pontificating over evidence. I can see the crotch of her cotton underwear, a large earth-covering grandma pair. No wonder Kent preferred me and my Brazilian wax. I’m fixed on thoughts of Kent folding this exact pair of yellow underwear, which I presume came from a plastic package of three. This is not rational to concern myself with Cate Dranal’s underwear. I am a nurse. I am a fucking nurse. Can I reason my way out of this? Is there a logical, or medical, solution?

  Johanna, she’s talking to me now! This is good, darling. Good. Good. Good. Be still, I will speak with her to free you.

  “Get out of my house, you bitch!”

  What am I saying? I’m losing this situation.

  Johanna. Johanna. Johanna. Iamtalkingtoher, darling. We’ll go away tomorrow, I promise.

  Cate Dranal caws at me, like a crow with a dry throat. “You don’t get it yet, do you? Lynette Viola Vandonbeer. You may be a nurse, but you’re dumb. There’s no way out of this. You don’t get it, do you?”

  Perhaps I do not get it. I look to her face, which leans in on me now. Her face is a full moon, but sagged and dry, showing her age. Her dragging, tactless eyeliner drags more. She doesn’t care for herself, doesn’t use toner or moisturizer. Doesn’t give a shit about her appearance, not in a graceful-aging or benevolent-apathetic kind of way, rather in an aggressive, you-will-look-at-me-as-is entitled way. And based on the catch I hear in her throat, and the age weight she’s showing in the middle and her hips, I bet she neglects a disorder of the thyroid. Likely hypo.

  “Kent tried to help you before, with your stash of pento. I never knew where he got it, but I’ve figured it out now. When he told me last night that he was leaving me for you, that you’re opening up a clinic here, and that you’re pregnant, I figured it out.” She looks at my liquid legs, raises an eyebrow. “Were pregnant,” she adds on a chuckle and raises her never-plucked eyebrows at whatever she sees on my legs.

  I won’t look down. I won’t acknowledge her last line, her correction to the past tense about my present pregnancy. I stare at her, breathing fast inhales through my nose. I see three of her face. She’s still talking, three mouths talking, not entirely in sync, but saying the same words. Awful past-tense words.

  “I’m not an idiot, Lynette.”

  Johanna. Just be quiet. Listen, darling. Let her talk.

  Johanna is flagging. She’s no longer screaming or thrashing about. Her eyelids are falling. She may be blacking out from shock. Will she remember tonight? I hope she doesn’t remember tonight. I am a nurse. Traumatic experiences can cause a form of amnesia, selective, comprehensive, progressive, regressive—all kinds of amnesia.

  “I never knew who exactly Kent was fucking, or actually, what I mean is, who all he was fucking. You’re not his only whore, Lynette. Kent told me everything, then I came and ransacked your damn clinic, which is so fucking elitist and weird, and found your damn vials last night. He told me all about how you two were going to run a private clinic in your barn. He was very specific on how great your lives were going to be. So I didn’t need your stupid fucking note and hospital ID this morning, but hoo . . .” She pauses to exclaim a loud relief sigh. “Sure was entertaining! And leaving your ID in my house like that, hmm. Hilarious! Oh, I got your ID from my car all right, put it right on in my house. Tsk, tsk, you stalker. Might explain the blood in the tub, yeah? You did it, Lynette. That’s what the evidence says, at least.”

  She is framing me.

  She’s still talking. “And then what? While poor me worked all day, you dragged my husband’s dead body to your crazy lair in his Jeep? And then you went to work, like nothing happened? Wow!”

  She is framing me. She is framing you.

  “I know what you’re thinking. You have an alibi for this whole day—Johanna, your sister, right? Well, she won’t be around mu
ch longer, no worries. What a waste. Kent didn’t really love you. He loved what’s under your skirt, and what’s under your skirt is getting old.”

  No! He loved me. I loved him. But maybe you’re right, Cate Dranal. I’m listening, because listening is the logical thing to do to save my sister. This is the procedure I am to follow. It is the medical rationality we need. I am a nurse, so I am listening.

  Johanna, look, darling. Okay, don’t look. You black it out. I’ll take you away, love. My legs are bleeding, but it’s okay. Do not worry, love. The bees are still there, yes, but do not worry, I’m making them spin clockwise now, so it’s okay.

  Again, I tell myself my legs are not bleeding, but I am not accepting this. I remind myself that the bees are really my brain vessels screaming for air, literally, the vessels are screaming at me to give them air or else they’ll let the bees back in to fly daisy loops and with no organizing circular pattern. I stare at Cate Dranal. My eyelids are falling too. I force them open; I force a consciousness.

  “Oh, Lynette! I could think of you and me as two women betrayed by the same man, right? I could consider him the common problem, not us! But nope, you’re the problem. Whore. So here is what is going to happen. If anyone finds out about Kent and where his dead body is, the toxicity report will show pento, and homicide detectives would then see a very common pattern: jilted mistress, you killed him in my house, dragged him here, to your crazy lair. You’re basically fucked. It’s ironic, right? You kept your life so otherwise off-line—no electronic trail, nothing between you and Kent, which I know because I’m in all his accounts now. His password is so pathetic, it’s your fucking dumb name—LivViolaV33.”

  She’s still crouching when she scooches closer to me, so now her hips mirror mine and her dry face is in my face. Her feet must be stinging in restricted circulation below the knees. She continues. “Irony. Your electronic absence will make it easy for me to claim no connection or knowledge of you. I’ll just act, golly gee, shocked.” She snorts from her nose, and I notice she’s never plucked the hairs of her nostrils. She sucks in her cheeks and makes a fish face, contemplating me watching her, and then she jerks to standing, looking in the corners of my ceiling. She indicates she’s about to launch into a monologue—a villain, proud to unfurl her world-ending plot.