The Radius of Us

by Marie Marquardt

  “Be still,” he said. “Don’t make me hurt you.”

  I squirmed, feeling his hands there.

  “I don’t want to hurt you. I need money.”

  Could that be true? I wished I’d had a purse so he could just take it and go, but my money was shoved into my front pockets. Tips—ones and fives, split with the waitstaff. He pulled my phone from my pocket and threw it aside. He found the cash and pulled me to my feet.

  “Leave,” he said. “Run!”

  And then he was gone. Just like that. I watched him sprint away, a wad of my money in his hand.

  He told me to run. Why did he tell me to run? I could not run. Everything hurt. I wasn’t even sure I could stay on my feet. I reached for my phone.

  “Gretchen?” My father’s hand is on my knee now. I am back in the prosecutor’s office, staring out the window, onto the wasteland.

  My dad speaks my name again, softly. “Gretchen?” His arm wraps around my shoulders, and my mom leans toward me, holding a steaming cup of tea. The prosecutor looks down at her hands, waiting patiently. She must have poured the tea. The water must have boiled already. I still taste toffee in my mouth, stuck between my teeth. I think it’s coconut flavored. Yes, coconut. It smells like suntan lotion.

  “Is this too much, Gretchen?” my dad asks. He looks so tired and sad. It’s his eyes. I think maybe his eyes are telling me that it’s too much for him, that he can’t bear the thought of hearing it again.

  Karen gives me a cup of tea. I take it and wrap my hands around the mug. It feels warm but not hot. I’m not sure I can speak, but I do.

  “No,” I say quietly. “I’m fine.”

  My mother stands and walks toward the window. She looks out over the abandoned track and sips her tea.

  “He came up to you and what happened, Gretchen?” Karen asks.

  “He took my money,” I say. “I had cash in my pocket—tips—and he took them out and ran away. That’s all.”

  A lie. I lie to my mom, staring out the window. I lie to my dad, gripping my knee. I lie to the nice prosecutor, Karen, and to myself. I lie because there’s more. This isn’t even the most disturbing part, the part I’ve forbidden myself to think about or acknowledge. The part I can’t even tell myself.

  “What exactly do you need from my daughter, Ms. Wells?” my mom asks, her consonants clipped. She is still looking away from us.

  “I’d like for you to describe the man who attacked you,” Karen says. “Please know I wouldn’t do this without a very good reason.”

  I know his face so well. I’m not even sure the English language contains enough words to describe every little detail—all the things I see when I imagine him back into being. How sick is that?

  I sip my tea and begin. “He was Latino; I guess light to medium skinned. He looked pretty young. His face was against mine for a minute, and it was smooth.” God, that sounds messed up. “I mean, he didn’t have whiskers or any facial hair. His hair was cut really short, like a buzz cut, and it was dark. Black hair.”

  The tea is mint. It tastes good. I want to stop talking and drink the tea. I want to think about the other face I’ve memorized—Phoenix’s face. I want to remind myself how different it was from the face of that boy, of how stupid I was to think he might be that boy. I want to see Phoenix again, smiling, his finger touching the edge of his lip.

  Yes. I will think about this. I will breathe, and I will think about sitting on a pile of wood in that torn-up field that’s supposed to become a garden. I will think about leaning against his side and I will breathe.

  “Gretchen?”

  I look up.

  “This is good,” Karen says. “Can you tell me more?”

  “Like, what, exactly?”

  “What about his build?”

  I push away the image of Phoenix and return to the memory I so desperately want to avoid. “He was tall, about my height,” I say. “And thin but not skinny, you know, just sort of healthy looking, I guess. He was strong.”

  I think maybe I am starting to shiver. I try to feel the warmth of the tea, moving through my hands and into my body. I lift the cup to take a sip, but my hand is shaking so violently that I worry the tea will spill.

  My dad reaches over to steady my grip. “I think that’s enough,” he says to Karen.

  My face feels wet and cold. I think maybe I am crying.

  “I understand that this is difficult, Mr. Ashland. If Gretchen could just tell me what she recalls about his clothing—”

  “That’s easy,” I say, determined to go on. “He was wearing a bright-blue football jersey, with a number on it. Someone had drawn on the shirt with a marker. Black letters. And I think I told the police this, but he had a homemade tattoo on his finger. It was a four-leaf clover.” I actually thought about that—how he had an unlucky number on his jersey and a symbol of luck tattooed on his hand. It’s so messed up, that I thought all of these things. That I still think of all these things, all the time.

  Karen nods while I wipe my eyes. I can’t even look at my dad. His pain is washing toward me in waves. I think he feels like he should have been able to protect me, like it’s all his fault.

  “We may have a match,” she says. “But we need to be certain.”

  The prosecutor stands and walks toward her computer. She clicks around for a bit, and then she turns to look at me.

  “I’m going to show you a photograph, Gretchen. I want to warn you that this may be disturbing. I need for you to tell me whether this is the man who assaulted you.”

  And then he is there, on the screen in front of me, his eyes wide open and lifeless, his blue football jersey pushed up around his neck and the skin of his chest marked with a black tattoo—an ugly, gnarled hand, ring finger curled in toward the palm. Thumb tucked. Two fingers stretch out like horns, long sharp fingernails at their tip. The nails are black.

  The tattoo is riddled with tiny bullet holes.

  “It’s a gang sign.” Karen is pointing at the tattoo. She keeps talking, naming some combination of letters and numbers, but I’m not really hearing her anymore. “This particular gang was founded in Los Angeles by immigrants from El Salvador. It’s everywhere now—all over the United States and Central America.”

  I’m trying so hard to focus on her words.

  “They’re notoriously brutal, but they usually only target members of other gangs—or deserters. The young man in this photo, he was seventeen—a Salvadoran immigrant. He came to Atlanta as a young child. He didn’t have a criminal record—”

  I close my eyes, wanting to push away the image. Her words are faraway, so faraway.

  “Which is why your case is baffling us a little. I mean—”

  “Oh God,” I finally say, feeling my body start to shiver again. “They killed him.”

  My mom lurches toward the computer. “This is enough—this is too much,” she says, planting her body between me and that terrible image. “Gretchen needs to leave now.”

  “Who killed him?” the prosecutor asks.

  I can’t speak. My legs curl into my chest and I close my eyes. Even with my eyes closed, though, I am still staring at the bullet-riddled chest of my attacker. Why isn’t there blood? And the holes, they are so small, scattered across his bare chest, across the gruesome hand tattooed there. Long, gnarled fingers. Sharp nails.

  He is dead. How did I not know this? Except I think I did know this. Oh God. I knew this. I know this.

  “What do you mean, Gretchen?” Karen says. “Who killed him?”

  “Those people,” I say. “They shot him.”

  I feel my dad’s hand on my back, rubbing in small circles. I try to imagine it—the look of my father’s hand on my back. But all I see is his hand, his face, his chest. And then I remember the sounds.

  Pop. Pop. Pop. So loud.

  I can’t breathe.

  “My daughter has nothing to do with this,” I hear my mom say loudly.

  Pop. Pop. Pop. Ringing in my ears. I hear those sounds
, like they’re happening here and now. But I know this isn’t happening. None of it is happening. It is six months later. But those tiny black holes across his chest. Those lifeless eyes. That terrible, awful tattoo. I see them now. I can’t not see them.

  “She has been through enough already,” my mom whispers.

  And then I am gasping for air, and my dad is lifting me from the chair, cradling me in his arms like I’m a child, rocking me back and forth, heading quickly for the door.

  I have not turned a corner.

  CHAPTER TEN

  PHOENIX

  AMANDA IS IN THE KITCHEN. I can hear her moving around, opening and closing cabinets. It smells pretty good, too, like she’s baking. I come up the basement stairs and watch her pull two eggs from the refrigerator. She’s wearing a fitted shirt and the same faded-out jeans she wears almost every day. Her bright-red clogs make loud thuds across the floor. Those shoes are weird—huge and chunky. I only know they’re called clogs because Amanda’s always calling out to Sally, “Sweetums, have you seen my clogs?”

  It’s weird, how Sally always knows where to find those shoes.

  Amanda cracks an egg into a bowl. Then she turns to look at me though her red-rimmed glasses. Who knows? Maybe she bought them to match the clogs.

  “I’m going out for a little while,” I tell her.

  She looks at me all funny—probably because she doesn’t think I’m capable of going anywhere on my own. But I start to worry that maybe she sees right through me—that she can tell I don’t want her to know what I’m up to.

  “Where?”

  “I just thought I’d wander around a little,” I say, looking away from her quickly. I suck at lying. That’s why I stay so quiet most of the time.

  I grab a piece of paper from the printer. “I found a bus schedule.”

  “Do you want some company?” she asks. “I’m just finishing up in here.”

  Yeah, I want company. But I was thinking maybe a girl with everything eyes and orange-yellow hair, not my fifty-year-old guardian in red clogs. I really wish I could get Gretchen out of my head. It’s not like I’m thinking of her in a dirty way, or anything. But I can’t stop thinking about her—how her hair smelled like soap and honey and almost-too-ripe pineapple, and how her skin felt so warm through that enormous sweater.

  “Thanks, but, uh, I—”

  “I understand,” Amanda says. “Do you need some money?”

  Mierda. How did I not even think about that?

  “Yeah.” I nod. “I guess I do. I mean, for the bus and all.”

  Amanda walks over to her purse, which is sitting on the counter by her car keys, and pulls a twenty-dollar bill from her wallet. Seeing her with that twenty makes me think of my grandmother. I wonder what Abuela would think now. Of me, taking a twenty from a lady I barely even know, living in her house, eating her food, not doing a thing to repay her.

  I take the twenty.

  “Thanks,” I say. “I’m gonna pay you back for all of this.”

  “Please don’t worry, Phoenix,” she says, looking at me with gentle eyes. “It’s nothing. Really.”

  And maybe for her it’s nothing. But to me, it’s everything.

  * * *

  Riding the bus is crazy. The routes are really complicated, and I have to change three times. It takes, like, an hour and a half to get to where I’m going, even though it’s only a few kilometers away from Amanda and Sally’s house. I walk a couple of blocks through this town called Acworth, looking for a place called Georgia Boyz.

  I learned about Georgia Boyz from the Internet. It was easy—I just searched “tattoo removal in Atlanta” and this YouTube video popped up. It was like a news show, or something, and the reporter was interviewing this big white guy who looked like he was in a motorcycle gang. The guy said he had a free tattoo-removal program for ex-convicts who want to start over.

  “Because of the road I traveled, I want to help them out. I just want to give people a second chance.” That’s what he said on the news show. I’m not a convict—not exactly—but right about now, starting my life over sounds pretty damn good.

  * * *

  The streets here are empty, and the sidewalks are all busted up. Still, the neighborhood doesn’t look so bad, not compared to what I’ve seen. I mean, a few of the stores could use a fresh coat of paint, but at least it doesn’t smell like piss.

  Then I see the sign: GEORGIA BOYZ. Next to the words is the shape of a naked woman, kinda like the ones you see on all those eighteen-wheel trucks on the Pan-American Highway. I’m feeling glad that Amanda didn’t come along. I’m pretty sure this place wouldn’t go over well with her.

  I stand there for a minute, looking at the sign. A rough-looking white guy with a shaved head comes out of the place with a bleach-blond woman. She probably isn’t much older than I am, but she looks a little spent. I’m starting to wonder whether people like this are gonna help a brown-skinned guy from El Salvador. I mean, I don’t wanna judge, but they look like the type of people who join those crazy-ass white supremacy groups.

  But what the hell? I have to try. So I head through the door before I lose my nerve.

  The room is small, and it smells like rubbing alcohol. The walls are painted in bright colors that don’t really seem to go together. The big guy from the YouTube video is standing over a woman with a needle in his hand.

  “Shut the fuckin’ door,” he says. “It’s cold out there.”

  It’s not all that cold, but I turn around and shut the door.

  Nobody says anything. He goes back to inking the woman’s arm.

  I watch him work, his tattooed arm moving the needle across her skin. I’m sorry, but the dude has about ten more piercings on his face than anyone should have. There’s a shelf behind the big black chair where she’s sitting. It has a jar of candy on it. Lollipops, I think. I wonder about those lollipops—does he give them to his clients when he’s finished, like the nurse used to do for kids at the free clinic in Ilopango?

  After a long time he stops and glances up at me. “Well?” he asks. He has a really strange accent. “What do you want, boy?”

  I feel like a boy, suddenly—like I’m back in my abuela’s house and she’s giving me shit for forgetting to feed the chickens.

  “Um, I heard that you remove tattoos.”

  “Yeah, okay,” he says. “You heard right. But for ex-cons. You’re not an ex-con.”

  “Uh—I—” I stare past them, at that jar of lollipops.

  “Check him out, Barbie,” he says to the woman in the chair.

  She turns and looks at me. “Nah, Bo,” she says. “Too sweet.” That woman is big. Aside from her face, most of her body is covered in ink.

  “Barbie and me,” he says, “we know what being behind bars does to a person.”

  I shrug, feeling like an idiot.

  “You ain’t been behind bars, kid.” He looks down at her and smiles. “Ain’t that right, sweetie?”

  Barbie nods and smiles at him, all gooey. I take two slow steps toward them, my arms still crossed.

  “Detention. I was in detention,” I say, wishing I didn’t have to prove to this guy that I deserve to get my tattoo removed.

  He squints his already squinty eyes. “Where you from?”

  “El Salvador,” I say.

  “Figured.” He puts the needle back into its cradle. “Either that or Honduras.” He says Honduras really weird. Like Hon-duuurrrus. He stands up and wipes one hand on his grungy jeans. “I’ve heard some messed-up stories ’bout those places.”

  I sort of want to stand up for my country, to tell him about the old colonial towns beside big blue volcanic lakes, about the beautiful beaches and rain forests, about all the cool birds. Or maybe I could tell him about all the brave people who fought during our civil wars, the martyrs and stuff. But I don’t say anything. Because, puta madre, look where all their sacrifice got me.

  “I need this,” I whisper. I hate the way my voice sounds, scared and weak.


  “I already said it, El Salvador. If you ain’t served time, I don’t take off the tat.”

  I’m not sure how being in that hellhole of a detention facility doesn’t count as serving time, but I don’t want to talk about all of that. “Look,” I say. “I want to pay you, but I don’t have any money.”

  “Sucks for you.” He goes over to an ink-stained sink and washes his hands.

  “Yeah, okay.”

  I turn around and open the door to leave. But then I feel my eyes begin to water. A hot lump tightens in my throat. It might seem stupid, to cry over a tattoo, but this isn’t some lame-ass heart with an old girlfriend’s name in it or something. It’s way more complicated than that. Coño, how is it possible that some black ink on brown skin makes me part of a group? It doesn’t make me a part of anything.

  I’ll never forget how it felt, when we all showed up at the hellhole. The guards at that detention facility made all two hundred of us take off our clothes, down to our boxers, and then they sorted us. They looked at the marks on our bodies and they sorted us into groups, like a bunch of cows, or something. Not a single one of those guards spoke Spanish, so they made me translate for them—they made me tell all those guys that they were doing it to keep people safe, to keep the gangs from fighting inside.

  Those guards—they thought they knew who I was, because of a stupid tattoo. But a few lines carved into some skin will never, never be enough to send me back into that brutal world. I will die before I go back. I am more sure of that than I have ever been of anything. But until I get this thing removed from my body, anyone who sees it will think I’m one of them. They’ll think they know me, but they don’t.

  I am nothing like those people. I am covered in skin.

  I swipe my hands across my eyes, suck in a deep breath, and turn around.

  “Maybe I can help out around here. I mean, sweep and stuff.” I look right at him, watching his pierced eyebrows arch high. “And I’m good at building things. Fixing things.”

  He chuckles. “You lookin’ for a job, boy? Cuz I ain’t hirin’.”

  The big woman in the chair laughs too. “Damn straight he’s not hiring. We’re flat broke already.”