by Debra Busman
“You like this hippie food, too?” Taylor asked real soft, slowly reaching for the grain. She pulled out a handful and let out a small sigh at the feel of horse lips soft against her palm. Taylor raised her other hand up and began to gently rub the filly’s neck. It felt warm and solid. “Girl, this might just work,” she sighed, moving her hand up, stroking the crest of Fancy Dancer’s mane.
Taylor moved away a few more times, letting the horse come to her, giving her grain, stroking her head and neck. Keeping her voice low and easy, Taylor picked up the halter and began to rub it against the filly’s neck, letting her smell it, nuzzle it, mouth it.
“That’s it, girl. Easy now. I’m just gonna slip this on over your head. We gonna be friends. You gonna help me keep my job and I’m gonna make sure nobody else messes with you. Easy, girl.” Taylor slipped the halter on Fancy Dancer, buckling it quickly under her neck, still rubbing her head, talking easy.
Taylor began walking toward the house, the young horse following close behind, nuzzling her right shoulder. When they got close to the paddock area, Taylor clipped the lead rope on, again letting Fancy Dancer smell and mouth it first. The horse stayed close, the lead rope slack. Taylor saw Dutch standing on the front porch, pointing her out to Mr. and Mrs. Gordon. She tried not to limp as she walked the last few hundred feet up to the fence.
The Gordons came up to the corral, looking in awe at their transformed horse, the filly tucking her head into Taylor’s back, nuzzling her shoulder. “How did you ever do that?” Mrs. Gordon asked. “That horse has been wild since the day we got her. No one has been able to even get a halter on her. She just about killed Carl, you know.”
Taylor looked down. “Aw, I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Just something I was born with, I guess. Yeah, I got me a pretty special way with animals. We speak the same language. Maybe it’s some thing I picked up from my daddy. He was real good with horses, too, you know. He had him a bunch of ’em back home. Yeah, guess I just got me a natural gift.”
Taylor noticed Dutch sitting on the porch rail, laughing, shaking his head, shuffling some cards, catching her eye.
of species, class & gender
a neighbor called today. she said she’ d seen tracks. she said a rancher across the valley had seen two mountain lions mating. she said she’d called in her cats, her child, her dog, and that we should do the same. i watch as her dog, a large, standard-bred poodle, dances away from her call. white, ethereal, absurd against the chaparral, he floats off into the hills. down the road mr. decker tells how a lion killed a doe right out in his apple orchard. “i didn’t know a deer could scream so loud,” he said, shuffling out some hay to the two spotted fawns standing wobbly legged under the trees, nibbling on fallen fruit. refusing to leave the place they last received their mother’s nuzzle.
across the canyon the lioness lies down with her mate. tawny coats sprawled into the dried brown bed of grass, still hot and wet from their lovemaking. the lioness stretches and begins to lick her paws her face her belly. now, leisurely licking her sex off her lover’s face, she pauses, catching strange scent. lip curled, smelling flea powder, smelling flesh, she listens as breaking twigs announce arrival. soon a floating white apparition trots stupidly into the clearing. coifed and clipped, balls cut and brains bred out, stomach filled with kibbles and bits of horsemeat, chicken, lamb. the neighbor dog blinks, and thinks about barking. in the split second between lick and leap the lioness gives thanks this day for being twice blessed.
Connections
Limekiln Creek, Big Sur: I get picked up hitchhiking by a slick silver-haired TV exec in a bronze Mercedes convertible. He pulls over, top down, flashes his perfect teeth L.A. producer smile, and asks if I need a lift. His wraparound shades prevent me from seeing his eyes, but I know who he is. Golfer, tennis tan, two kids, trophy wife, probably fucks his maid. I get in, tilt the heated leather seat back as far as it goes, and gaze up at the towering redwoods, arcing sunlit patterns against the bright August sky. I breathe deep, lungs happy to be free of L.A. smog, taking in the rich scent of warmed redwood duff and salt sea air. He doesn’t bother to make conversation, but somewhere past Garrapata Beach says, “I’m stopping at the Highlands Inn. Would you like to stay with me tonight?”
I note his silk shirt, Rolex, khaki slacks, Italian loafers. He seems relatively clean and I’m pretty sure will have something worthwhile in his wallet. “Do they have a restaurant?” I ask.
Months later, turns out I’d be living with two feral dogs in a small cabin up behind the Highlands Inn, paying $35 a month rent. I get a job as a maid at the Inn, making $3.75 an hour. After watching me for a week, Pilar, the head of housekeeping, pulls me aside.
“Taylor,” she says. “You are a good worker. Strong. No mess around. Soon, the boss, he will tell you he wants you to do ‘something extra’ sometimes for the guests. When he say that he means nasty things.” Pilar makes the same disgusted tsking sound Enrique’s abuelita used to make at the TV when she watched her telenovelas. “Look at me,” she says, taking my face in her hands. “You are a pretty girl. A good girl. I strongly suggest you try to tell him no.”
Later, vacuuming the east wing rooms, I still feel the warmth of her kind hands on my cheek and I wonder what she sees in me. Girl. Good. Pretty. Two weeks later, when old man Hambley comes to me, I politely decline his offer, mostly because I know I can make way more hustling on my own. Still, Pilar’s words hover around, haunting me. And of course, I lose my job. But I don’t mind. I tuck her words into my heart’s pocket and take a job delivering newspapers out in Carmel Valley.
Perfect
It has been a perfect night out, and when she asks if I’d like to come home with her I say, “Oh yeah.” We barely make it through the door before clothes start coming off. Her boots. My shirt. I fumble with her bra, pants slide down, and then there we are pressed up all hot and heavy against each other and I blessedly leave my mind behind and fully inhabit my body, breast to breast, belly to belly, my heart exploding with the relief of being called home.
Then she reaches for my ass to pull me in even closer and suddenly I feel her body stiffen, hands frozen, touching but no longer really touching me at all. I fly back into my head and think, Oh shit! My ass. I fuckin’ forgot to warn her about my ass.
Ever since I was a toddler my butt has been deformed, mostly on the right cheek, but a little too on the left which only has a few scar lines and dimpled pockets of hardened tissue. That left cheek can sometimes pass, but the right is the game stopper, a mass of inch-deep scar tissue, hard as an old baseball, such a major lump of unyielding mass there is no way it’s gonna get by as simply a nice, firm, Buns of Steel kind of ass.
No. It stops lovers in their tracks and then, more often than not, the night is shot. “What the fuck!” some say. “Honey?” others ask, trying to sound caring and not freaked out. “What happened?” The pity is always worse than the disgust, which I can handle with a laugh and a joke and then we can still get back to fucking. But pity blows the whole thing. True tenderness can sometimes work, but it will still be a long path between first discovery and down-the-road lovemaking. If we are both drunk enough, we can sometimes get by with the “Let’s just pretend she didn’t notice my mutant butt and I didn’t notice her noticing.” The worst is when she asks, “Baby, what happened?” and then I tell myself I really have to get my story down because the shame of not even knowing what happened to my own damn ass is way worse than whatever story I would or would not share.
One girlfriend who sticks around encourages me to get it checked out. “Does it hurt at all?” she asks. I like that she’s not afraid to really feel around the scars. I tell her no, that it’s mostly dead inside, but that lately it’s started to really ache way deep down. “I wonder if it’s that thing they call body memory,” I suggest. “You know, trying to surface.”
“Body memory,” she scoffs, laughing. “It’s probably fucking cancer. Honey, you should get that shit checked out.”
; The doctors aren’t any help. “I don’t know,” one says, feeling around on my butt. “Could be the result of repeated blunt force trauma, but it would take months, even years to build up such deep scar tissue. My best guess is this started when you were two or three.” Another thinks the scars are from repeated burns. The attending nurse says, “Doctor, do you think this could be from hot oil? There appears to be an almost splashing pattern to the scars.” He prods around. “Yes, I see,” he says. “But that wouldn’t account for the depth of the central scar mass. See this major site? It has to be at least a solid inch deep.” He takes a biopsy, suggests I get an MRI to rule out a tumor. Mostly, he just shakes his head, says, “Damn, I just don’t know. I can’t even imagine who or what could have done this to a child.”
The MRI and biopsy reveal that there is no tumor, only the suspected deep mass of layered scar tissue. The lab technician says, “I’ve never seen anything like this. Do you know what caused it?” I do not. I know most of my body’s scar stories, but this one has remained staunchly mute all these years. Not a word.
My memories are sketchy. I know I was hurt. I know there was terror involved. I know it was my mom. I do have fleeting images of a blood-slippery bathtub, me scrambling like a terrified animal, futile, mad with fear, but it’s possible that memory comes from another time.
Once I ask my mom’s old boyfriend what he knew about my butt. He remembers the scars, so I feel hopeful. “I know your mom said it happened when you were really little,” he says. “I remember taking you to Dr. Rubell, and I remember your butt’s been like that ever since.” He pauses. “You know, I don’t think we ever really knew what happened.”
A year before she died, I asked my mom what she remembered about my ass.
“Was I born like that, or did something happen?” I ask.
“Oh no,” she says. “No. You were born absolutely perfect. A perfect little baby.”
“Well, then, what happened?” I ask, not believing I’m really going to enter this territory with her.
She looks away for a long while and then softly says, “Oh, the shame. I didn’t think I would ever learn to live with the shame.”
My heart stops and I think Can this really be happening? Can we really be in a moment when truth is going to be spoken in this damn family? Is my mom really going to admit that she knows how bad she hurt me? And that she feels remorse? My heart starts up again, excited, and I force myself to breathe. Then I see her light a cigarette and take a deep drag. She strikes a pose, cigarette in her right hand, the back of her left dramatically pressed against her brow, and I know she’s flipped into some Hollywood actress and I might as well just walk away right then and there. But I don’t.
She continues. “Never have I felt such shame and never will I forgive myself for what was done.” I rack my brain. Who is she? Joan Crawford? Deborah Kerr? “It was that day I took you and your friend to May Company and you two just wouldn’t stop acting up.” She shakes her head. “You were normally such a good little girl, so happy, always smiling, never any trouble at all, but this day for some reason you just kept acting up. And so I didn’t want to, but I just trotted you two out of the store, went to the car, pulled off my shoe and paddled your little fanny with the soft flat part of the slipper.” She took another drag on the cigarette and looked off into the distance. “The shame,” she says. “I didn’t think I would ever learn to live with the shame.”
This time I do walk away, angry that once more I’ve let myself get played for a chump. “Fanny,” I mutter. “Who the fuck says shit like ‘fanny’ anyway?”
Gettin’ Schooled
After three tiring weeks of having the small-town cops harass me and roust my van each night at three a.m. after my night shift at the Seaside Jack in the Box, I paid a local lawyer two hundred bucks to walk down the street and have a neighborly chat with the Carmel police chief. They spoke for about five minutes, gave each other a good-ol’-boy clap on the back, and told me I had a choice of county jail or community college. They knew I wasn’t guilty but were trying to get me to roll on the small-town rich boy junkies who were, but that wasn’t going to happen. I told them I thought you had to be eighteen to go to college and they laughed and said, “So, tell ’em you are,” and then they clapped backs some more and I took their deal and walked out thinking about the only other profession I knew where you could make two hundred bucks in less than ten minutes’ time.
So I went to the Monterey Peninsula Junior College, and signed up for an Abnormal Psych class taught by a wannabe charmer named Jim Lafayette who would gain world renown for killing his pretty young wife and leaving their toddler wandering alone through the Oakland airport as his coward daddy fled to France. But that was years later. For now, Dr. Lafayette was just a bright, tousled-hair young therapist who taught night classes on the side and fucked his female students whenever he could.
But I didn’t know that then, and so I sat in class, totally engaged and lively minded, wondering why so many students would rather sleep than listen to this world full of incredible ideas being tossed out like candy, almost for free. Like a thief, I’d gather these bright morsels from the air and take them home like tender, stolen bones to gnaw on at my leisure. And I’d feel my mind working overtime, curious and sparkling, and wonder if maybe Jackson had been right all along when she said I was smart enough to go to college.
But I was just a chump who didn’t recognize the age-old hustle in its dressed-up academic form, and so when the teacher handed me back my first paper, told me how impressed he was with my brilliant analysis and how he wanted to hear more about my unique perspective and innovative theorizing, I actually thought he meant it. And I felt so special when he invited me over to his apartment for a study session with other “bright-minded students” to talk more about these concepts. Yeah, I thought, feeling shy and a little smug. Maybe Jackson and C.N were right after all. Maybe I am kinda smart.
And so I went to his apartment that night feeling all giddy and nervous and excited and I didn’t even catch on when I walked in and saw that there were no other “bright-minded students” there, just low lights and easy jazz playing soft in the background. And then he offered me a glass of wine and told me how he loved my long hair and it all became suddenly, sickeningly clear. And then, when he showed me his gun, lovingly stroking it and setting it down on the credenza for show, I almost laughed out loud. Ha! You motherfucker! I thought. You goddamn motherfucking rapist trickster son of a bitch. You really had me going there. And I thought you were a person! Ha! You ain’t nothin’ but a motherfucking trick without a car.
I looked at him standing there in his tan corduroy trousers and beige velour shirt, open at the neck, and saw how weak he was, how easy he’d be to take out. I saw the soft belly, how easy it would be to bring him down with a quick knee to the groin, how fast his own knee would give way with a simple cow kick from the side, how his nose would gush blood just like any other asshole’s with a good palm crush, not even a fist. And then, when I saw how easy the fool let me get between him and his gun, I did laugh out loud. You’re on my turf now, motherfucker, I thought, feeling suddenly calm, happy and home. There’s no way in hell this night is going down like you think it is.
I don’t remember what I actually said that night, but I do remember that no physical violence was necessary, that my scorn and derision were palpable enough to leave him cowering against the wall as I walked past him and out the door. Still, it would be years before I set foot in a college classroom again, and when I read decades later about the young woman’s murder and the toddler left wandering the airport terminals, I questioned my decision to walk away that night, and thought about how easy it would have been to just pick up the gun and do the world a favor.
PART FIVE
Secondary drowning
Secondary drowning
I
Every night the dreams come. The drowning dreams. The getting shot dreams. I feel like I am dying. The physical world taunts me. My we
akness catches in my heart. I don’t know who I am anymore, I tell anyone who will listen. But no one can. Stories crawl out from underneath one another, push apart sentences, balloon out of air, floating. But these are the stories they do not want to hear. Tell us how you met, they say. First date. Second date. Third date. Linear. Contained. Tell us about the ocean. Tell me again how you pulled Luna from the sea. I cannot breathe. I’m turning underwater. Where is the light? The bullet rips through my shoulder and I crash to the ground.
II
“Let’s go camping,” Leah says. “I want to be outside. I want to move my body. I want an adventure.” In two weeks she will return to graduate school. My boss has given me a few days off, so we load up my truck with sleeping bags, a tent and camp stove, firewood and groceries, leaving a spot for Leah’s dog Luna to curl up in the back. Shen, my white-faced Golden Retriever, will stay behind, too old for an adventure. She lies down by the barn, indignant but resigned, her head resting on crossed paws, waiting for the truck to pull away without her. My cat sits on the fence post, cleaning herself, waiting for the mourning doves that come each day to steal the horses’ grain. The sun warms the horses’ backs as they finish their morning hay. Their breath, like the sun, warms the cool winter air.
Driving down the Big Sur coast, I watch carefully for animals darting across the road, deer, cottontails, skunks, quail, possum, red squirrels, looking for food, looking for water. After two dates in the city, I’m happy to show off the ranch, the coast, this part of Northern California land I now call home. I point out a red-tailed hawk circling the hillside to our left, the Odello artichoke fields on the right, Cooper’s old barn. But Leah’s not even looking out the window. She’s reading out loud from a book she says is haunting her so bad she can’t put it down.