by A.R. Rivera
23
-Avery
No one will ever sit me down and ask me questions the way they do with Angel. It's her accounting of that night that everyone cares about. Like she's the only one that can offer anything of substance.
I should be used to this by now. It shouldn't matter.
But see, this time we're serving has never been about just that one night. It's about everything: every single second that has been wrapped up into what is my whole life. The tragedy of each and every preceding night that led up to the only one the system cares about.
No. It shouldn't matter to me, but it does.
+++
"Just leave," I screamed, slamming the passenger door. There were people all up and down the sidewalk staring at me, but I didn't care.
"I don't think you're supposed to go alone." He ran a hand over his short blonde hair, staring at the rearview mirror.
"I don't need you, Troy." Screw him and his pity.
Angel didn't even get an invite. She was at home with a migraine and if I couldn't have her, then I sure as hell wasn't having Troy.
"I'm trying to take care of my responsibility, alright? How long is this gonna take?"
Shielding myself with my arms, I stepped away. "Rosa's waiting."
Ticking off the seconds in my head, I didn't even get to five before his posture relaxed. He stared out at the road as his furrowed brow smoothed out. I wanted to puke, seeing how glad he was. Not another second passed before his Honda pulled into traffic.
Troy never looked back. Not once.
Usually, night was when I had the toughest time. That was when the quiet world screamed, so loud I couldn't sleep. But watching him drive away, it was like everything that made me who I am faded a little more. Like, my very essence was no more than the dust behind his tires. I was an obligation, an afterthought, a miserable reflection in his rearview. Just a flat shape spread across the glass; not quite human. I was a passing deviant thought he'd already forgotten about. I was the snide remark he might think, but never say out loud because anyone within hearing distance would point. Surrounding conversations would be replaced with half-cocked eyebrows and whispers at my uttering.
Raw anger boiled in my stomach as images of that cocky bastard and all the ways I could make him sorry painted my thoughts. I was on the brink and it was only nine in the morning.
I took in a deep breath, curling my hands into fists. The only way to face what I had to do was to keep my head down and move. So that's what I did. I put one foot in front of the other until I made it through the line of picketers into the controversial downtown building. I signed in with her name and took a seat.
Barely ten minutes later, I was getting escorted to a changing room. After putting on the hospital gown, one scrub-clad worker directed me to follow the next scrub-clad worker to a desk sitting in an open hallway. I sat down and held my arm out, palm up, as directed by the next person in scrubs.
The nurse jerked the bend from my elbow, stretching it along the length of the half-desk as the hall behind me filled with passing patients. The tourniquet was too tight.
"Why are you taking my blood?"
"It's a standard check for disease. Make a fist."
I did. The needle plunged in, quick and stinging. I would have jerked away if I wasn't being held. The vial filled up quickly. Warm and red.
A string around the nurses' neck had a card with her picture beside the name of the clinic. I tried to read it, but she kept moving; withdrawing to cap the needle.
"Go on down the hall to room three. A technician will be with you in a few minutes." She didn't even try to look me in the eye. Not once. The nurse knew the crease of my elbow better than my face.
I grabbed my pile of clothes from the floor near my feet. It cost a dollar for a locker, but I only had one dollar and needed it for bus fare. "Can I put my sweater on?"
Now the nurse looked at the goose pimples running up and down my arms. Not my face. "After the ultrasound." The blades of her eyes cut back to the sticker on the side of the fresh tube of blood. "Angel, is there a last name?"
"No."
She pointed with her pen. "Down the hall, to the right. Room three."
The corridor was filling up with blank stares, waiting to get into the tiny lab chair to have their blood taken by a nurse who won't look at them. Half the towns' female populace must have been in there, but I did not recognize anyone, guessing that they came from another community. That was the smart thing to do if you wanted to make sure you didn't run into anyone that might recognize you. But I already knew what people thought of me and I didn't care.
At the other end of the hall, more girls walked with hunched postures. No one knew how difficult it was. No one wanted to. So, no one was asking, speaking softly, or even pretending to comfort us. We were cattle, lumbering through the course laid out for us; being herded from one station to another. And no one had sympathy for cows.
The hallway was covered in thin carpet, no padding. My socks, hanging loose over my feet, had slipped down during the herding. I stepped into them, shoving my cold toes a little further back in with each step on my way to the next room.
The term 'family planning' seemed ironic. Most the girls looked school age. Maybe some were drop-outs, but all of us were there. Together and alone. There were a couple of boyfriends in the waiting room, a mom or two, but none of them were in the back to witness the herding. They didn't want to know how the meat got to the market.
I wondered what it was like to work in a place like that. To be that woman, the one who took the blood. She probably hit the snooze on her alarm a few times every morning because she didn't want to get up-probably because she didn't like her job.
I didn't like her job, either.
I'd bet good money that Blood Lady would've preferred working in a cancer clinic-a 'health planning' clinic. I knew that the nurses in a place like that would be nicer than the ones I was seeing. The doctors, too. That's why no one was smiling: none of us had cancer. We were going to keep living, wondering how we became the confused little shits who didn't know we were choosing to be there the second we said yes to the Troy Bleechers' of the world.
Such an asshole.
When I woke up afterward, I felt sick-misshapen-like they gave me the flu by tearing my insides out. The nearest nurse assured me that it was normal. She told me not to sit up, that I had to wait for at least twenty minutes. But that was not going to happen. I had to get up. I had to leave.
I made the nurse carry my clothes while I hung onto the wall, steadying myself along the corridor that led back to the dressing rooms, ignoring her protests. Once I was there, an old lady with an icy gaze handed me a huge pad: a giant diaper to catch the rest of my insides.
"Second stall," the icy nurse pointed towards a swinging door.
It reminded me of the dressing areas they had in the shops at the mall. There were no mirrors like a department store, though. It was probably a good thing: I wasn't ready to look myself in the eye.
On the other side of the door, I heard the voices of the icy old lady and another girl. They were arguing. I listened and surmised that the other girl had dropped her diaper when she was putting her underwear on and now she needed another one.
"You get one. That's it."
"But it was on the floor. What if I get an infection?"
Cancer patients had to worry about infections, too, didn't they?
The mean old lady huffed. "Don't drop this one."
When I was almost done dressing in my sweat pants and flannel shirt, the stall door flew open. Ice Lady was staring at me. "Are you finished?"
I grabbed my shoes from the lonely chair in the back corner, ignoring the pleasured thought of smashing that chair over her head. Passing through the door, I locked my eyes on the old woman.
"You're a bitch."
I used to wonder if I belonged in the general population. Not the depressive wondering in the abstract, like I was curious about my plac
e in this great big world. No. I've always known there is no place for me. My wonderment was relegated to the safety of the general population, if I were a part of it.
If they were exposed to me, was it safe for them?
Chewing over that question, I shoved my way through the crowd that was content to ignore me the second time around. They only bothered with the girls on the way in because once we're done in there, they were done with us.
The inter-city bus passed right by the clinic. The receptionist inside said it was ten 'til one. That meant the bus would be there any minute. Walking the fifty feet from the door to the bus stop was exhausting. I thought for sure that I would fall apart before I got there.
The bus bench was hard and warm to touch even though it was shaded from the beating sun by an overhang. I welcomed the heat. Pulling the flannel tight around my empty stomach, the hot Arizona weather was not enough to chase away the cold I felt. It seemed to radiate from within.
"Hey, are you okay?"
I opened my eyes to find a girl with two blond braids and a baseball cap. She was resting a sign at her feet. It was a good one. Must have taken her hours to mutilate and paint a naked baby doll before tacking it to poster board.
"Aren't you supposed to have someone drive you home?" She sat on the bench beside me, tucking her sign away behind her. "My dad makes me come to these things. He doesn't know, but I had to have one last year." She almost smiled, like revealing this secret gave her so much pleasure.
"Guess you really showed him." I rolled my eyes as they filled with cool moisture.
"I have my license. I could take you, if you don't live far. The car's just around the corner. My dad won't even know I'm gone."
"Go away."
"But, you look green."
I needed to go home. I had to disappear into the feathery goodness of my pillow for at least forty-eight hours. Inhaling deep, I let out a long, relaxing breath. That damned water pricked at my eyes, but I clamped them closed and turned away from the girl. "Why are you here? Fuck off, already."
Glimpsing back at the street, I found myself alone and let out a breath.
It was a pure, self-centered tragedy the way I reached for things I'd never have. Sometimes, when the void was gaping and clawing, it was tempting to forget that no one like me should ever be around children. My leeching would drain them. Any family I created would end up hollowed out-peeled like old paint from dead wood. Bleached bone and ash. Whenever I forgot to remember that, I ended up making things worse.
+ + +