Castles: A Fictional Memoir of a Girl with Scissors

by Benjamin X. Wretlind

  "Cut out his tongue and that of any man who wrongs you." It was Grandma's voice, and it came from the dust eel in front of me.

  I didn't know what to say. These creatures—thousands of them—swam in such a turbulent and dirty ocean. They knew me and talked to me as they must have talked to Grandma. It was then I saw the castle that waited for me. It was then I saw Grandma on her cedar chair, an afghan wrapped around her frail body. She smiled as the dust eel in front of me smiled back, its gaping mouth and tapered tail such a beautiful sight to see.

  Grandma was right.

  The wind died down seconds after and the vision of the storm creatures faded just as suddenly. I sat in the rocking chair and cried. They were tears of joy, however, and I felt a change within me.

  I was not, however, going to cut out Michael's tongue.

  3

  When my period didn't come on time, I knew Michael's seed had found a home. Grandma had known all along, and it took a vision to let me know. Her stern warnings—once in Michael's home, again when I laid with him—passed through me. I ignored the advice of a woman I used to look to for comfort and advice. The price of that ignorance was an unwanted child inside of me.

  I had to tell Mama, but didn't know what to say.

  I sat on the couch when Mama came home from work. It was late, but there was no school the following day, and she really never cared when I went to sleep. It was almost like her life was returning to normal. She'd rescued her daughter, made amends the best she could and finally turned back to alcohol to ease her own pain. She wasn't as angry as before, and she had made great strides to act more like a mother, but she wasn't my best friend. How could I ever tell her the truth?

  She took her coat off and fetched a beer from the kitchen. My leg nervously twitched up and down as I sat up straight. I was sure she was going to beat me, bring out that wooden spoon and make sure there were splinters left in my face.

  "What's wrong with you?" Mama took her place on a recliner. The television set was off and the silence in the room felt like an omen.

  "Mama?" What was I doing? It's not like I ever confided in her my feelings about love or sex. If I had at that age, I'm sure I would have been dealt a lecture or two early on. "I haven't seen Michael in about a week."

  "Why should I care?" She took a long drink from her bottle. I watched her rest it on her knee and prayed she wouldn't throw it. "You know I don't think you should date. You're too young."

  "I'm twelve years old, Mama. I'm almost a woman."

  "Ha! You're almost a teenager. That doesn't make you a woman."

  "I have breasts. I bleed. What more is there to being a woman?"

  Mama licked her lips, and I watched the bottle return to her mouth. "For one thing, Maggie," she said, "you need to grow up. You don't know what a man is capable of, right now. He wants nothing more than what's between your legs. Michael is no different."

  "How do you know? You hardly talked to him."

  "He's a man, Maggie. Men are all the same."

  "So why do you date? What is it that makes you different from me?"

  Mama finished the beer and stood up. I knew her reaction to my argument would be to either ignore the question or yell at me. There would be nothing in between. Whatever I hoped to accomplish that evening wasn't going to happen until I blurted out my secret. Stepping around the issue was bound to make things worse than they already were.

  I sat back against the couch and took my eyes off her. I didn't want to see her face anymore.

  "I'm pregnant, Mama."

  I heard the bottle drop on the carpet first. It reverberated through the trailer like a bomb and I'd lit the fuse. I refused to look up. I knew she stood in the middle of the room shaking. I could hear her breath increase with each second. I'm sure her hands clenched together into fists, her teeth grinded and her eyes widened. I imaged for a moment that same demon I'd seen in the room when I six, her barbed tail poised to strike me down for the last time.

  I waited for the end.

  "Get out." It was a whisper and nothing more. I turned my face up only slightly. She held her arm out and pointed at the door. On her face, I saw shock painted red with pain.

  I slowly stood up and walked to the door, tears streaming down my face. I wanted to run to her, to wrap my arms around my mother and cry until my tear ducts dried and my stomach hurt. She was my protector and the only person I had left. If she kicked me out, I had nowhere to go. I knew, though, that getting near her would invite her wrath into my life.

  Maybe I grew up one year or two at that point. I slipped by her without saying a word and headed for the door. Grandma would never have let me leave. I'm sure I would have experienced her wrath, but it was one that was always pulled from the bowels of love, never hate.

  Mama, on the other hand, couldn't love me the same.

  Certainly not now. Certainly not after what I told her.

  I put my hand on the door and turned to look. Her arm was still stretched out, her expression one of emptiness. Her eyes seemed full of tears, but she stared at the far wall, more afraid to look at me, I think, than I was to look at her.

  "Mama, please," I whispered.

  She stood like a statue, unable to move and probably unable to accept the truths that lay before her gutted life. When I think back, I'm sure there was more pain than I imagined. After Grandma left and she kicked Alfie out of the house, I was the only thing she had left. I was her blood, and even if I wasn't the person she wanted me to be, I was her reason for existence. I took that reason, and with three words, shoved it down her throat like an ungrateful child.

  I pushed the door open and slipped outside to a cold night full of stars. When I reached the edge of the patio and stood next to Grandma's cedar chair, I heard the door shut behind me. I cringed as the deadbolt engaged and the chain was applied.

  I knew I was alone in the world.

  Alone and afraid.

  I walked through the trailer park, hoping to find some place to stay. Michael wasn't going to come to the window even if I broke into it with a rock. I didn't really know anyone else well enough to ask for help. I had distanced myself from the other kids in the park—from Cade and Justin, from the girls that sat next to me in class. They didn't matter once I'd become a woman and let Michael inside.

  How could I have done such a thing? I was twelve, damn it. I had just learned to use a pad less than a year before. A year before that, I was playing with Barbie dolls and toy horses. Responsibility was a word I couldn't spell and a concept I couldn't grasp. Had I forced myself to grow up, just to be with Michael?

  Mama was wrong, though. A woman isn't made by the choices time makes. A woman is made by the choices she herself makes. She moves the clock forward a day or a month at a time. She decides when she's ready to accept a love presented to her, and she decides when she's ready to put away the dolls. A woman is made by the environment she's in, by the friends she keeps, and by the lessons she allows the world to teach her.

  I leaned against the side of the maintenance shed and cried. I wrapped myself with my arms, oblivious to the cold outside but quite aware of the cold within me. I wanted to die, to crawl into the grave I'd already dug and disappear forever.

  I looked out at the desert beyond the fence. I couldn't see the Bus, but I knew it was there. I'd been inside enough times to be able to walk the mile or so in the darkness and find shelter. Maybe Mama needed time to accept what had happened. Maybe if she got herself drunk enough she would pass out on the couch and forget I said anything at all.

  I crawled through the fence and headed toward the Bus, crying. Inside of me, I knew there was a life—a tiny version of myself created no more than three weeks ago. In a fit of passion and a sudden urge to grow up, I'd made a mess of everything. I didn't know what I was going to do to make things better, but as I walked around cactus and sage bushes, I could hear Grandma's voice offer her advice.

  "God is always aware of what people do, what they leave behind for others to
step on. Storms are His way of making sure the messes don't hurt anyone else."

  I stopped and looked up. If storms were God's way of making sure messes don't hurt anyone else, where were the clouds now? Were they building in the distance, waiting for the right moment? I couldn't see that far, but the season was ripe for it.

  I shuddered at the thought of the dust eels inside the wind and wiped the tears from my face. I didn't need that right now.

  When I finally reached the Bus, I'd stopped crying.

  It wasn't long before I fell asleep in the passenger seat.

  4

  I dreamed of the carousel of singing men that night. I hadn't dreamed of them since I was ten, and I'm sure I tried to push those memories back. Like most memories, they had found a crack in the weather-stripping and seeped out of that closet where I thought I kept everything safe.

  I found myself outside the Bus, leaning against the front bumper, naked and cold. The men circled the Bus, looking at me and smiling. There were faces I thought I recognized, but most were foreign to me. The one that looked so familiar the first few times I dreamed of the carousel when I was nine, stood apart from the others.

  Michael held his hand. I felt my nakedness then more than ever.

  Michael let go of the other man's hand and stepped forward. He wore pajamas I'd seen more than once, pajamas I'd removed from his body more than once. He slipped though the other men and stood in front of me, his hands opening and closing much the way they did the first time we made love. Was he nervous about something?

  I'm never sure of what dreams are supposed to tell us. They come at the worst of times, more likely than not the result of our subconscious mind attempting to resolve the events of the day. At other times, though, they reach into our past and pull out bits and pieces of memory, mix them together with sour milk and acrid fluid, then pour it out like a soothsayer might pour out tea from a cup. What we are left with is a message to read in the rotten chunks of our lives.

  I looked up at Michael and watched his mouth move. He spoke words in a language I thought I understood, but nothing seemed to make sense. He was animated, his arms moving in response to whatever he said, his expression one of fear and condemnation. I wrapped my arms around my naked self and pushed my back against the Bus, afraid of what he was going to do.

  The Bus shook and I woke up to screams from the back. I remember vividly looking out at the dust blowing by the windshield and knowing—without any doubt—what made the noise behind me. I was afraid to look, to confirm my belief in something I'd only recently come to accept.

  I turned slowly. The screams mixed together with sounds of sucking and biting and chewing, at the same time in unison and apart. My heart beat rapidly, my breath ragged.

  The dust outside created a veil over the Bus. So little light penetrated the windows and those that were broken only invited the dust inside. I choked and covered my face as the Bus rocked in the ensuing chaos outside. Despite the dim light, however, I could see them: thousands of eels swarmed over something on the middle of the floor. The eels writhed together, and their long tails whipped back and forth, as they bit into whatever it was they ate. And ate they did, ripping off bits of . . . of . . .

  It wasn't there before I fell asleep; I'd checked once for sanity's sake. The back of the Bus was free of any body, animal or otherwise. Had someone come inside while I was passed out in the front seat? Did the storm leave a meal for the creatures?

  I reached for the door handle and stopped. There is a need for us to gaze on death so that we may, in retrospect, feel better about our own mortality. Even if that death is as gruesome as what plays on the television set or is dramatized in the movies, it's the message it imparts we must understand.

  I needed to see that death for myself.

  I turned back. Some of the eels moved around a piece of flesh. I could see the dark blood, hear the sucking, smell sulfur within the dust. There, attached to the mouth of one of the eels, was the fabric of Michael's pajamas.

  I screamed and sat petrified at the sight. One of the eels slipped off the body and floated in the air in front of me. It looked at me with translucent teeth spotted with blood. It's empty sockets bore into me.

  "I told you to cut out his tongue, Maggie." Grandma's voice, sharp and clear, punctured the howl of the wind. "You let God clean up the mess."

  I pushed on the door and fell out of the Bus. Grains of sand filled my mouth as I righted myself and stood up. I had to get out of there.

  I ran, but I'm not sure if I ever looked back.

  5

  The dust storm passed, and I stood outside the fence to the trailer park. Mama didn't want me back in the house, and I refused to return to the Bus for shelter. I knew once the wind died down, the dust eels would go away. Still, I wasn't ready to face Michael's body, ripped apart by something I didn't understand.

  Was this what happened to the body we found in the Bus years ago? Did the wind come and clean up the mess?

  If that was the case, whose body was it?

  The night sky was streaked with clouds left over from the thunderstorms, and stars poked through. Grandma told me once that stars were holes in the black blanket of sin that covered the world. The light we see is what comes from Heaven, reminding us of our destination. I often wondered if my castle in the sky was bathed in that same light—a shelter from the storms bathed in eternal sunshine.

  I put my hand on my stomach, so very aware of the life growing inside me. What was I going to do? I honestly thought Mama would be with me, help me through this time in my life. While I stood at the fence and looked over at the darkened trailer, I still had hope that she wouldn't leave me alone. I was her child, after all.

  "You should have let me teach you." The voice behind me was gruff, raspy and very slurred. I turned slowly from the trailer park.

  Alfie stood silhouetted against the night sky. He took a drink from a bottle inside a brown paper bag then threw it into the desert. "Had to do it on your own."

  I held my breath and silently prayed he would go away. There was no escape save the desert beyond. If I tried to hop over the fence, I would never make it. If I screamed, no one was going to hear me. If I ran, he would catch me.

  Alfie took a step toward me and unbuckled his belt. I knew that look in his eye; I'd seen it so many times before. He was too drunk to understand what he was doing but not drunk enough to lose consciousness. It was a dangerous time, one that often led to beatings Mama had to suffer at Alfie's hand. It was also tainted with the sick look I remembered so vividly from the living room the last time I saw him take his belt off.

  "Mama ain't coming home to save you this time, Maggie." He took another step toward me and unbuttoned his pants. "Why don't you just give in and have some fun?"

  I looked to my left and ran. If I followed the fence far enough, I would find the road and safety. If only I hadn't believed my only shelter was in the Bus, I wouldn't have been in that situation.

  Alfie quickly caught up to me and grabbed my arm. I felt pain shoot through me as he pushed his fingers between my muscles and yanked me to the ground. I brushed against a barrel cactus and cut my face.

  I screamed, not so much at the situation but at the pain exploding from my cheeks. I knew the people in the nearby trailers heard me, and if I thought they would have lifted a finger to help me, I would have screamed again. Alfie, however, knew better. He punched me in my face, against the cuts, and pushed my head into the hard dirt.

  He was on top of me by then. It hadn't taken long: three seconds, maybe four. My attempted escape, his lightning reflexes despite being drunk, the permanent marring on my face that I still wear to this day—all of it ran together right then, and only through reflection could I ever sort out the events.

  I've had a lot of time to think about that moment, and wonder if there was anything I could have done to prevent it.

  There are brushes with death we all have, and they come at us without warning. There is the accident at an
intersection when you have the right of way. There is the misstep at the top of the stairs, avoiding the fall by reacting quickly. There are faces in the crowd who would do you harm in a second, regardless of whether or not you know them. There is, on top of that, rape.

  We have to deal with these brushes any way we can. We sometimes hide them from others, wearing our shame but never explaining the change that's come over us. We sometimes wish them away, or deny they ever happened. We sometimes accept our fate, learn our lesson, move on with life.

  As I cried that night, feeling the weight of Alfie over me as he thrust inside, I knew this was a brush with death I could never hide. There is a reason for everything that happens, and even if something is tragic, painful or full of rage, it is part of a larger whole.

  I looked up through my tears at the blurry stars above. Heaven's light shone on me, and even though I knew life was never going to be the same, it wasn't over. My castle in the sky waited for me, and I was going to make it larger than anyone could have imagined. I wanted to hear Grandma's voice again, to know everything was all right. It didn't even matter at that point if the voice was disembodied; it would have been my most solemn comfort.

  Instead of Grandma, I was left with Alfie's last words as he stood up and buttoned his pants. "That's what good girls like you get," he said. He put his foot on my stomach and pushed as hard as he could. "You can clean up your own mess, now."

  Alfie left me that night sobbing on the desert floor. I curled into myself with my knees to my chest and pants around my ankles.

  I started to bleed.

  A CLEARING PICTURE

  1

  I didn't tell anyone what I saw in the Bus. I couldn't, however, hide what happened later. I finally pulled myself together, climbed over the fence and sat on the rocking chair by the front door, life pouring from me as I cried. Mama would have to come out in the morning, and then she would know.