The Desert Sky Before Us

by Anne Valente

  Not a chance.

  She feels him grin against her cheek and lets herself move with the guitar’s twang. Six years. She never let anyone touch her at Decatur. Tim enough for a lifetime, the black eye gone within a week but the cut down her face a ghosted scar for months. The skin of her left arm and left leg and abdomen grafted for a year beyond sentencing, hospital care the prison let her take. Transplanted skin. Peeling healthy layers from other parts of her body, transporting them to so many burns. Risk of nerve damage. Infection. The first months of prison a complete blur. She closes her eyes and the music pulses and for a moment the hands upon her are Tim’s hands. When they were tender. Nights in bed and the windows open and the sound of cicadas and a breeze blowing in and his arm thrown across her body, fingers skirting her stomach in his sleep. Jesse’s hands tighten around her waist and Billie thinks of Tim’s fingers clenching her arm, his right hand knuckling into a fist, what happened so fast that Billie only remembers being on the floor, her vision fuzzed to nothing but a dim view of the hardwood.

  He’d first shoved her against the wall in Jacksonville, elbow to her throat. Grabbed her arm too hard a few times when they still lived in Champaign, what she shouldn’t have ignored. She assumed every couple experienced rough patches, until they moved to Jacksonville. He’d worked late on campus so many nights, what he blamed on the responsibilities of a new faculty member, until he came home at three a.m. after drinking with colleagues and she asked why he didn’t call and he pushed her to the ground and kicked her stomach and made her first understand this wasn’t normal. He’d said he was drunk. Would never do it again. Then only weeks later: the library.

  He’d come in the front door well past dinner and she asked why he hadn’t called, the spaghetti she’d made already cold, and he threw down his bag and knocked her to the ground and walked back out as quickly as he’d come. Hardwood. Tim’s sneakers receding across the floor. Billie sitting up and holding her head and pulling herself up and out the door, the spaghetti still sticking to a pot on the burner. The first place she went: out to the backyard with a kitchen knife. Alabama in her weathering pen outside. Billie touching the side of her face knowing by its uneven shape that the brow bone was broken. She watched Alabama through the weathering pen’s chicken wire. Opened its door. Unhooked Alabama’s jesses. Took the knife and cut the line clean. She watched Alabama blink back at her for only a moment before stepping to the edge of the weathering pen and taking soundlessly to the night sky. Billie dropped the knife in the grass. Billie dropped the knife and headed toward the gas station and the library.

  Billie pulls her head from Jesse’s shoulder on the dance floor.

  What’s the matter? he shouts over the music.

  Nothing, she shouts back. I just need some air.

  He pulls her toward the back of the bar where a doorway leads from the bathrooms to a patio. Billie follows him outside and swallows the cool night air, the sun lost to the mountains beyond downtown. Stars salt the darkness above them. Arcturus twinkling just past the ladle of the Big Dipper. Summer stars she knows from the books of so many libraries. The moon climbs the tree line beyond the deserted patio and shimmers above the streetlights.

  Jesse pulls her toward him. You want another drink?

  No thanks. I just need to sit for a minute.

  How many drinks you had? Little Midwestern girl still adjusting to the altitude?

  Billie ignores his tone, the slow drawl. She sits at a table near the patio’s edge where the lights are low enough for her arm’s scars to stay hidden and Jesse pulls a chair up beside her, a hand on her leg.

  You want to get out of here? he says.

  The stars shimmer above them and Billie imagines Rhiannon alone on the brewery’s rooftop. She wonders if she’s still there. If she walked up and down Colorado Springs’s downtown streets growing more and more panicked. If she called the police, the last thing Billie realizes she wants.

  I should go, Billie says. I mean, get out of here on my own.

  Hey there, Betsy, he says. We were just getting to know each other.

  We’re heading out early tomorrow.

  We?

  My sister, Billie says, the first truth she’s told all night.

  So there are two of you. Jesse grins. Double the fun.

  All at once his smile loses its magnetism. Billie stands. It was nice to meet you.

  Jesse grabs the belt loop of her jeans and pulls her down and Billie scans the patio and realizes they are alone.

  We were just getting started, he says. He begins to twist his fingers from the belt loops to the underside of her waistband.

  Billie pulls away but his hands are quick, too quick for her mouth to form words. He draws her back and his fingers find the button of her jeans, her zipper, the thin band of her underwear. His arms bind her shoulders and she kicks back swiftly before she grasps that this is happening, that a man is shoving his hand into her jeans. She kicks her legs back and her shoes find the bend of his knee and his hands lose their grip as she pulls away but not before he reaches out and grabs her hard by the left arm.

  Don’t fucking touch me, she screams.

  He grips her arm tight and then recoils.

  Jesus, what the fuck is wrong with you? he yells.

  Billie thinks he means her pulling away, as if all women want to be groped like this. But he just stands there staring at her arm beneath the patio’s dim light as she refastens her unbuckled jeans and she realizes he means the dimpled scars of her skin.

  Get the fuck away from me, she says, pushing her way toward the door.

  She hears him behind her. No one wants a gnarled-up cunt like you anyway.

  She is upon him before she can think to get herself to her sister and to the safety of another town. She feels her nails digging into his skin and her fist meeting his mouth and the rush of everything Tim kept her from doing for so many years, her mind a mess of believing a man’s words. She keeps punching until Jesse screams and she feels the sharp heave of someone pulling her from him, her left knuckle wet with the crawl of his blood, her arms pinned, her body dragged toward the exit.

  Her voice hoarse. Her vision dark. She feels herself shouting, so much louder than the weak trill of Jesse’s screams. She feels herself shouting it was him it was fucking him he’s the one who shoved his fucking hands down my pants and hears only the low boom of you best get the fuck out of here before he presses charges. And then there are hands on her shoulders, not a man’s hands or the thick weight of a bouncer’s arms. Something gentle. Her sister’s voice. It’s okay, Billie. Rhiannon’s voice taking charge, taking her away toward the empty streets.

  THE CAR IS a capsule, the windows closed. The moon pooling light beyond the windshield. Billie sits in the passenger seat, Rhiannon beside her in the driver’s seat, the engine off. Billie feels her body keeping itself locked tight, feels the pressure of her lungs trapping her breath.

  He tried to hurt me, she hears herself whisper.

  I know. Just tell me what happened.

  What do you think happened?

  Billie, what did he do?

  Nothing, Rhee. He didn’t do anything at all.

  But he tried to.

  And I stopped him. Billie turns to her sister. Jesus Christ, Rhee, I stopped him. Any way I could. What would you have done?

  The same thing. I would’ve done the same thing. I would’ve knifed him in the fucking throat. But, Billie, you just got out. You can’t start fights in bars. You’ll be right back in Decatur before you can blink.

  I didn’t start a fight. I didn’t start anything. It’s not a crime to have a drink.

  I know it’s not. Don’t misunderstand me. You didn’t do anything wrong. I just want to keep you here. Out here. Not in there, not locked up.

  Billie watches the moonlight glint down on the silhouettes of mountains. Pikes Peak: a tall slope she knows is just beyond Colorado Springs. A summit she’s never seen. So many things she’s never seen beyond the lined beds
of a prison dorm.

  He mocked my scars, she says.

  He’s an asshole.

  He called me a cunt. He put his hands down my fucking pants.

  Rhiannon stays silent and when Billie looks at her she’s staring straight ahead. One hand clenched around the gear-shift, tight enough to reveal the thin bones of her fingers in the moonlight.

  Did that ever happen to you? Billie says.

  Not like that. But racing wasn’t exactly friendly to women. I just wish you could press charges.

  I can’t prove anything. No one saw anything. And you heard the bouncer. That guy could press charges instead.

  Fuck that guy.

  We can go, Billie says. You wanted to get to the campsite by nightfall.

  Rhiannon watches Billie, her face a question, and Billie looks away.

  I’m sorry, Billie. I’m sorry I lied to you.

  The lie seems meaningless now to Billie, but she says nothing.

  I didn’t want you to think less of me, Rhiannon says. For quitting. And I wanted you to believe everything would be the same when you got out.

  Billie doesn’t look at her. Doesn’t see how anything is the same at all now that she’s out. She nods, the only forgiveness she can give. The place on her arm where Jesse grabbed her still smarting as Rhiannon turns the key in the ignition, the highway waiting for them to leave downtown.

  Skylite Campground: tents only. No hookups for RVs. No water, no electricity. Just an outhouse and a shower on an unlit path through the woods. Billie leaves Rhiannon at the campsite to use the restroom and ignores the bruise on her arm beneath the outhouse’s lone lightbulb, the skin already purpling, and in the single stall considers her period for the first time since Rhiannon picked her up. She counts backward. Nine days. She can expect her period in nine days. What required such exact planning in Decatur, each inmate allotted a limited number of tampons. One of the male guards, a burly asshole named Dan, punishing certain women by withholding their monthly allotment. Billie one of those women. Taunting her daily push-ups, telling her they wouldn’t get her anywhere. You think little biceps like those will save you in here? He withheld every tampon she needed so she confiscated toilet paper rolls instead. Every woman did who didn’t have enough pads each month, the cardboard a substitution. Billie knows there are no tampons in her daypack. Nine days. They might be back in Illinois by then but she grabs a toilet paper roll from the outhouse just in case. When she returns to the campsite, Rhiannon is staking the two-person tent swiftly in the dark, a small flashlight clenched between her teeth. Billie pulls their bags from the Mustang’s trunk and helps Rhiannon toe the stakes into dew-softened ground. Rhiannon unzips the door flap and climbs inside and Billie follows her, the roof’s gauze meshed in moon glow.

  Think we’ll need a rain cover? Billie says.

  The forecast is clear. And look at those stars.

  Billie looks up and finds Ursa Minor. The tent’s dome an open mouth of darkness, nothing like the rectangle of sky from her prison bunk.

  What do you see? Rhiannon says.

  Little Dipper. Polaris. Common June constellations.

  Think we’ll see the Milky Way out here?

  Maybe. Though it might be easier in Utah. Fewer people. Fewer lights.

  Billie watches her sister pull a pair of sweatpants from her bag, the night cool beyond the day’s heat. Rhiannon unrolls her sleeping bag and the spare for Billie. She grabs her toiletry bag. A small electric lamp. A can of beer she throws to Billie.

  Here, she says. I bet you could use this about now.

  Billie pops the tab, a craft beer from DeKalb that Rhiannon has stored in her bag all the way from Illinois. The beer warm but welcome, the whiskey’s buzz long gone. Billie takes a drink. Hears Rhiannon snap open a can beside her.

  Rhiannon climbs out of the tent and sits in the grass, knees pulled to her chest. The sky is dark but Billie can tell from the incline of the ground that they’re on some kind of ridge, its height unclear until she crouches beside her sister and sees the lighted valley of Cañon City below them, the faint silhouette of the Rockies in the distance.

  Nice pick for a campsite, she says.

  I told you camping wasn’t all bad.

  It’s hard to believe how dry it is out here after so much rain at home.

  Rhiannon nods. I barely want to listen to the news tomorrow.

  I watched the news in Decatur. It was hard to tell from there just how scary this is. All those airports shutting down.

  It’s a good thing we’re driving. Aside from the boxes we’re supposed to find, I think Mom planned it this way. To keep us on the ground.

  Billie keeps her eyes on the mountains. I’m sorry I left you at the restaurant. I’m sorry I got so angry. You lied. But I shouldn’t have stormed out.

  Yeah, you shouldn’t have. Especially not right now.

  Billie looks at her through the dark. Why did you really quit?

  Rhiannon sighs. It’s not your fault that I quit. My concentration was just shot after you left. Racing suddenly seemed so stupid. So selfish. I started losing. I wasn’t making money. I met Beth soon after that.

  Was she a reason you quit?

  No. But life with her was so much easier than being on the road.

  So you made safe moves.

  That makes it sound like a cop-out.

  But that’s what you mean.

  Rhiannon takes a sip of beer. I don’t know if that’s what I mean.

  Billie imagines her sister in Champaign all those years while Billie took communal showers, ate stale bread, rationed toilet paper, circulated books in a prison library so far from the college institution where she once worked. The visiting center. Every month Rhiannon came to visit. Her face a shield revealing nothing.

  What have you been doing all this time? If not racing?

  I sell textbooks.

  Billie laughs. Are you serious?

  Billie hears Rhiannon laugh too in the dark. Can you imagine a life more boring?

  I’m sorry, Rhee. It’s not boring. It’s just so different from racing, but I wouldn’t say it’s boring.

  Come on, Billie.

  What? Some people are very passionate about books.

  Rhiannon laughs again. Like you?

  What, you mean working with books, or burning down a fucking library?

  I guess Mom made book lovers out of both of us. Even if you explicitly chose them and I just worked my way back to them.

  Billie says nothing. Their mother, nothing she wants to discuss tonight.

  It’s a job, Rhiannon says. It’s fine. But I miss the road.

  Well, you’re out here now.

  Crickets trill in the far-off grass. A barn owl screeches softly from the trees, a sound Billie can distinguish even still from great-horned and barred owls. Alabama. A cord she cut in desperation. Tim coming home and finding her gone and harming her hawk a risk too great to take. Or else him sending Alabama to some kind of facility that wouldn’t take proper care of her. No. Billie set her free. Rhiannon breathes beside her and the pain in Billie’s arm dulls to a quiet ache.

  I lied too, Billie says before she can stop herself. The night wide open, the valley puddled before them. She throws it from her mouth before she can keep it inside of herself forever.

  Rhiannon glances over. What did you lie about?

  Billie feels her hand tremble holding the can’s aluminum. About Tim.

  What about Tim?

  About what he did. About why I did it.

  Billie, what? What did he do?

  Billie turns toward Rhiannon and skates a finger down the right side of her face in the moonlight. He broke my brow bone, she says. Right before I went to the library. He broke open my eye and knocked me to the floor.

  Rhiannon watches her. Rhiannon says nothing. Rhiannon reaches out and runs her hand over the scar’s ridge, just below the bone.

  Jesus Christ, Billie.

  I couldn’t take it anymore.

  Why d
idn’t you tell me?

  I didn’t tell anyone. The police never caught it. They assumed it was an injury from the library.

  I don’t care about the police. Why didn’t you tell me?

  Because it’s not about you.

  Of course it’s not. Goddammit, Billie. That’s not what I’m saying.

  Then what are you saying?

  I could’ve helped you.

  Helped me do what? You were on the road. And Mom and Dad? I couldn’t tell them. No fucking way. I was already a fuckup to them before I moved to Jacksonville.

  You weren’t a fuckup.

  No? It was obvious. They always wanted so much more for me.

  Someone hitting you isn’t fucking up. Someone hitting you isn’t your fault.

  But I chose him. I let him do it.

  Don’t fucking say that. Please.

  Well, it’s true, isn’t it?

  Rhiannon looks at her. Was that the first time he hit you?

  Billie says nothing.

  Was that the first time? Rhiannon shouts through the dark.

  No, Billie says softly. That asshole tonight calling me a cunt was nothing compared to the things Tim said and did.

  What did he do? Billie, what the fuck else did he do?

  I don’t want to talk about this. Not tonight.

  Well, you brought it up. You should have said something. You could have shortened your prison sentence. You might not have gone to prison at all.

  Are you kidding? None of those men in that courtroom would have believed me. And it’s not like I fought back in self-defense. I tried to burn down a goddamn library. And are you saying this is my fault?

  Rhiannon rubs her hands across her face. No, Billie. Jesus. None of this is your fault. But I wish you would have said something. There was a reason for what you did. The courts should have known the reason.

  Well, it’s real fucking helpful to hear what I should’ve done.

  I’m just talking out loud. I can’t believe he did that to you.

  You can’t change it. You couldn’t have protected me.

  I could have if I’d have known.

  You can’t control everything. You think you can, but you can’t.

  Rhiannon is silent and Billie wishes she could take the words back.