Rage ran high in parts like these, and sorrow seldom waned. Too much pain can activate the bestial side of humans. And here I felt it plenty. Reckless eyes combed the streets for scapegoats like me to receive the runoff of rage and sorrow that no human could withstand. Troublemakers exuded their neon intentions. Fear-disabled lurkers would not interfere should the scoundrels decide to feed. And carnivorous wannabe’s frothed satisfaction when the true carnivores slammed gold crowns of status off their victim’s heads, or when they slammed the heads off their victims.
Laughing at another’s plight somehow brought the wannabe's relief. The ‘another’ was sometimes me, and cruel laughter almost disturbed me more than any offending act. Overdramatic or not, I’d rather die.
I came to the next intersection, E. 8th St. I saw what looked like a public service building on the other side of the street. I contemplated dodging in there to call Randa, but then I noticed it was closed. It must be after 6:00 p.m. “Crosswalk signal turn green,” I whispered again, and again it did. If God was helping me, then I had nothing to fear, right?
I passed a string of eateries, and bars, and a little shop run by two sweet-looking Puerto-Rican ladies trying to survive. I almost turned in there to ask if I could use a phone, but the customers looked dodgy. I walked on by, acting natural, Oh Laura Vicuna, I prayed, Spare me my parents’ fate. Everyone else seemed to move along in an unthreatened manner. It seemed that only I was caught in some sort of time loop where all the dark things came out of the cracks and gravitated to me. Animalistic stares ate my thin veneer, exposing my tender insides, turtle without a shell.
I heard Red Hair coughing a little way behind me as I came to E. 7th St, hoping again that the crosswalk signal would turn green, and for the third time now, it did, with no waiting. I finally made it to E. 6th St.
A nice looking young woman hurried past me.
I blurted, “Which way to Avenue D?”
She pointed without saying a word.
“Thank you, miss.”
I hurried down East 6th St. I knew I was supposed to act casual, but a bad feeling was mounting inside me. There it was, Avenue D. johnny’s tenement was across the street somewhere. I just had to determine which corner was southeast. By the look of the buildings, it appeared he lived in public housing, another little gem Randa failed to mention. What else hadn’t she told me?
“Stay cool,” I whispered to myself, wiping the sweat from my brow, “God will protect me.”
And I thought He was, because again the crosswalk signal told me to go. But halfway across the road, a white low-rider Chevy blasted in front of me, nearly running me over. My hand flew to my mouth, corking my shriek. I stood there petrified, struggling to gather my wits.
An arm circled my shoulders. At first, I thought it was Red Hair, but it was a Puerto Rican lady with fuzzy short hair in a raggedy white shift, patterned with faded blue flowers. She sobbed in a drunken drawl about how she had no money, and that the social workers were going to take her children. I peered through her eyes, her brain on fire, survival weary, spiritually dehydrated, socially henpecked. I wanted to scream the pain of the ghetto mom, of all ghetto moms, of all moms. Their pain was mine.
My body felt surreal, not a thing of the earth, not a thing at all, not even there. A car horn blared, threatening to mow us down. I snapped back into myself so hard, I jolted with a gasp. We were standing in the middle of the street, motionless. I didn’t even remember stopping. I sprinted clumsily to the curb, weighted down by the Puerto Rican lady.
When we reached the sidewalk, I glanced back to see if Red Hair was still behind me. I didn’t see him. I turned forward and stared into the barrel chest of a man, he whom I labeled—Pot Belly, because his round protruding belly nearly kissed my stomach. His maroon tank top hid part of a snake tattoo. The rest of the snake tattoo wound up his neck. The drunken lady meandered away.
I tried to go around Pot Belly, but he stepped in front of me. My eyes rose to glimpse his dark Puerto Rican face, long wiry hair, and dandelion beard. I felt the probing eyes of two more men burrowing into me with sexual disrespect—his cohorts, I presumed. Their realities soaked into me: vulgarity, cruelty, dog-eat-dog energy, pornographic lust, and sadistic laughter. I was screaming hard inside, trying to drown the phantom laughter of these men in the horrid visions that played in my head.
My face went glacier cold. I would never move again, think again, feel again . . . be—again. I prayed. Oh Saint Leonard, guide me through this. Help me to . . .
Pot Belly’s voice broke into my prayer, “Got any change, lady?”
“Any drugs?” asked another, laughing, I think because he knew the answer.
“Any condoms?” asked the third man.
I swallowed hard and forced my head up, raising my eyes to Pot Belly. When I first spoke, only a whisper emerged. I tried again, and managed sound. I realized I was barely breathing. To speak was like flinging a ton of bricks off my chest. “Please, let me go.”
His malignant smile bore a gold front tooth, glaringly shiny and big. I stared at the silly pretentious thing as if it were a weapon out of some horror comic strip growing humongous in front of my eyes. I know I see things that aren’t really happening. I know I have a strong imagination. I know.
Pot Belly said, “She got no condoms. She got no drugs. But I bet she got change.” His hands split in two directions; one touched my fanny pack, the other circled my neck.
A lengthy knife blade whisked past my face. A hand slammed my shoulder, propelling me backward, almost into the street. Red Hair stood in front of me, waving his blade maniacally at the trio, hailing them with insidious curses, and mumbling something in Spanish with a crazed expression on his face. He seemed to be protecting me. Was this God’s doing? The trio parted, faces imprinted with cautious disgust.
Red Hair reached back, took my wrist, and pulled me toward a tenement, saving me the trouble of determining which corner was southeast. He was being helpful. Had I misjudged him?
The maroon brick building was defaced with what looked like fresh graffiti. Shards of glass and empty vials littered the ground.
“Here it is—” he said. He coughed again for a long minute, “—the place you wanted to find. I got a friend who lives here. We could use his room for a while.”
“What?” I strained my eyes, trying to understand.
He looked me up and down. “You owe me.”
No. I hadn’t misjudged him.
“Well,” I said nervously, pretending I didn’t know what he was after. I touched my silk fanny pack. “I can pay you.”
He shoved me against the brick wall near the entrance, pinning me there with a bony-fingered iron grip on my upper arms. “That’s not what I mean, bitch.”
I knew what he meant. I’d been raped once when I was fifteen and again when I was eighteen. I vowed that if it ever happened again, I would end my life. A person can endure only so much degradation. AIDS wasn’t a pleasant prospect either.
I wanted to heave, but a sob came out instead. “Please, please, please let me go!”
“When I’m finished with you, bitch.”
I closed my eyes. Oh Saint Maria, Saint Maria, I need you!
He pressed his body hard against me. I felt of him what I least wanted to feel stirring against my abdomen. I dodged a kiss by turning my head. I trembled violently, chilled to the bone, despite the heat. His wretched reality filled me. Again, I felt surreal, on the verge of blacking out. A glob of sweat sank into my eye, stinging. Everything had gone to pot. Randa had been so wrong.
I heard the entrance door swing open. A well-muscled Puerto Rican man walked out in a white tank top and black boxing shorts. He had a healthy look, clean curly hair, white socks, and black satiny sneakers. He looked straight at us. I stared hard at him, my eyes pleading for help.
“Hey dude,” he said, approaching, “leave that girl alone.”
Oh thank you, God. This man was going to help me, he whom I labeled—My Hero.
My Hero shoved Red Hair from me and said, “No, fuck you.”
Red Hair whipped out his knife waving it in front of My Hero. My Hero snatched Red Hair’s wrist and made him drop the knife.
My Hero said, “Take off, lady,”
And I did. I yearned to say, thank you, but fear ate my words. Even so, I think he knew how I felt. I raced into the apartment building onto a dingy yellow floor stained with grease and blood. The discolored ceiling was lined with bug covered florescent lights that hummed with a drone of flies. I dreaded flies. I searched for an elevator, but found only a stairway. Oh well, it was better than a poke in the eye. Or . . . anywhere else.
Hearing the entrance door swing open, I glanced to see who was there. Red Hair was glaring at me with clenched teeth. Foam actually edged his mouth. Blood streaked his face. What had happened to My Hero?
I had no time to ponder. I raced up the stairway, my shoes smacking the steps. I panted breathlessly, passing open side windows caked with loitering flies. Several buzzed around my head as I ran, trying to land. Like men, they disregarded the control tower, me, and tried to land anyway. I made it to the second floor. Four more floors to go.
Red Hair’s footsteps thundered behind me, closing in fast. He coughed every minute or so. Lucky for me. It bought me seconds. And I was only seconds ahead of him. I shoved my aching legs one in front of the other, up the numerous steps that would lead me to the sixth floor.
I hadn’t the musculature or lungs for such a workout. I was slowing down, but I forced myself upward stair after stair, summoning energy I didn’t know I possessed. A fly shot in from the open side window on the fifth flight of stairs and smacked into my cheek. Would Red Hair get me too?
I made it to the third floor. I couldn’t stop thinking about flies. Guess it was easier than admitting it was really men I feared. Fly experiences flashed through my mind with each thud of my foot. I’m four, watching a black and white horror movie, The Fly. I’m five, sitting with dangling legs on a stilled swing eating a piece of my birthday cake. A fly lands on the fluffy white frosting. I scream and fling my cake away from me, losing my balance. I topple backward off the swing, my pink pinafore over my head, cake splattered on the ground. My head hits a metal toy truck and I’m knocked out. Flashes . . . nightmares, for years. The flies are going to get me. The flies are going to get me. The men are going to get me. The man is going to get me. Funny what you think of with death at your door. Yes, a fly’s a fly, but fear is fear, and flies and men are all the same to me.
I made it to the fourth floor. My lungs burned. My legs felt like lead. I heard Red Hair wheezing not far behind me. I made it to the fifth floor, and then the sixth floor. I burst into the hallway stretching long ahead of me. I stumbled onto flat ground, pulling myself forward against the corridor wall, my hands crawling fast. “johnny!” I was gasping for air and could barely eek out his name. “johnny . . . johnny!”
Red Hair shot onto flat ground and bolted toward me. I could go no faster. My legs weren’t capable. Red Hair ate my short lead, snapped his arm around my chest, and lifted my feet off the floor.
I shrieked, too breathless to scream.
He ran sideways, hauling me back down the hall, probably toward his friend’s apartment. I tried again to scream, but his hand clamped over my mouth and nose. Forget screaming, I couldn’t breathe.
My lungs were going to burst. Dizzy, I felt dizzy. I thought God had forsaken me until Red Hair tripped over a cardboard box by an apartment door. He fell. I landed on his bony chest. He moaned and then coughed on my head. Roaches sprayed out on the floor around us, running for new cover. A long brown rat grazed my knee and scampered down the hall.
Red Hair’s arms had loosened, so I vaulted clumsily from his grasp. He swiped at me, barely missing my arm. I ran. He bumbled to his feet and chased me.
I ran down the corridor letting loose a full lunged high-pitched holler, “j . . o . . h . . n . . n . . y!” I turned back to view the status of Red Hair. He had broken into a high-speed run, closing in fast. I screamed hysterically, “johnny! johnny! johnny!” passing doors in such a helter-skelter fashion, the numbers blurred.
I thought a door slammed shut behind me, I mean directly behind me in the middle of the corridor. I heard Red Hair’s footsteps no more. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw a man’s back about twenty feet away. He seemed to be blocking Red Hair from me. I stopped and turned fully toward the scene with ragged breath and burning throat. My heartbeat thumped in my ears, distorting my hearing. I wiped off the sweat globs dripping from my eyelids to better view the scene.
The man had lengthy black hair and black attire: dress shirt, jeans, boots.
The merest sliver of Red Hair’s shoulder shadowed the man in black, bobbing a bit as he wheezed. The man in black had a medieval air about him. I half expected him to draw a sword. Instead, he drew back his elbow. And then it flew forward. Red Hair fell.
I’d never really seen a man punched before. Why wasn’t I feeling Red Hair’s pain? Why wasn’t I gasping in shock? I had no stomach for violence, not even on television, not even for cuts, bruises, or bug bites. Maybe I didn't feel Red Hair's pain because I only saw part of the punch, mostly blocked by the man in black. Maybe the man in black's energy was like a wall somehow, obstructing my empathic curse. Red Hair’s legs were sprawled on the floor, but I could see nothing else as the man in black shrouded my view.
I awaited to see the man in black's eyes, for they would reveal if he was like My Hero, or just another predacious competitor. He turned around. Before I could analyze his eyes, they captured mine. Fiery. Mesmerizing. His pupils seemed to whirl like vortexes, inviting me into the unknown. Not physical whirling really, more surreal, like a sensation. I could imagine that he was no other than the infamous johnny.
Chapter Three
Time vanished. Space vanished. For one perfect moment that held forever, I experienced rapture in the eyes of this man, this stranger, johnny . . . or whoever he might be. Fire burned in forbidden places, eating my morals alive, unnerving me—this feeling, stretching so far, yet staying so now. Pray he be my angel, my savior, my saint. But no, for anything this pleasant was surely sinful. I feared it was. Feared he was. I closed my eyes to break the cursed-blessed spell.
Preparing to be freed from my ecstatic capture, I restored my vision. However, the spell was not broken. Only my eyes were free to roam. The details of his form seemed magicked, shimmering and twinkling against black velvet infinity. He was in the most literal sense, breathtaking. My lungs were empty of air. After three jagged endeavors, I managed to inhale once.
He didn’t move or speak; he seemed equally entranced in this long and pregnant pause. He wore no mask, no polite demure, no machismo persona, though ever so manly he was. There was a charismatic realness to him that I’d never before witnessed in a human being. Was this love at first sight? Did everyone view him this way? Did Randa? How could she not have told me how beautiful he was.
His cinnamon-colored face held exotic allure. Hawaiian? Tahitian? Spanish? As an artist, I studied the shades and contours of his features, which even from a distance seemed clear. His deep-set amber eyes lurked under sharp mystical brows. His jaw struck me as the progeny of maleness and ageless strength, like a flamenco dancer stomping feet with prowess and might. I couldn’t imagine him dancing though, maybe being a firework in the sky. Yes, that was more him.
A black chain necklace vanished under the vee opening of his silk shirt. What symbol hung on it? Religious? Long hair garnished his chest, black tresses on black silk. Ebony fingerless gloves revealed smooth long fingers, implying protection from work and weather, yet seemingly impervious to the pain that punching might cause. His legs were positioned in so virile a stance, my breath froze on the climactic moment. I was in love.
In love, sweaty, dirty, and maybe stinky. Maybe I even smelled like mucus and alcohol. I sucked in a jagged breath of air and said, “j
. . . johnny?”
“That’s me,” he answered casually, in a tone so rich and deep, my knees weakened.
“I’m Jenséa,” I said softly.
He walked toward me in a velvety glide, exuding a kind of mystical confidence. My heart beat for him. Gorgeous him. I was startled to see that his amber eyes were actually a fiery orange. Who had orange eyes? He exuded more warrior finesse than I could assimilate. He didn’t belong here. Stallions didn’t live in the ghetto. They ran wild and free in wide-open places untainted by the ills of man.
When he was halfway to me, he said cynically, “I see you have survived.”
His cynicism alerted my caution. Other men who had hurt me also spoke in cruel tones disguised under charming veneers that harbored rapists and murderers. Randa knew him, yes, but that didn’t make him harmless. And yes, he’d saved me, but so did Red Hair before claiming I owed him.
I thrust out my hand. “Wait.”
He didn’t wait. He slowed like a stalking cat, but toward me—he came.
I stepped backwards, my wariness rising.
“You are safe,” he said, advancing smoothly, slowly.
My other palm shot up to join the first one, gesturing, ‘wait, wait, double wait.’ My breath audibly quivered. My clumsy backward retreat left me unbalanced. “I’m . . .” I swallowed hard, “—not sure about you.”
“I won’t harm you,” he said warmly.
“They all say that,” I said. “And then they do.”
As he glided toward me, his head cocked slightly, almost coyly. His eyes seemed to probe my subconscious.
Even as my tongue rattled ‘go away’ words, I fought an enormous urge to kiss him, and then cry out, save me! After all, isn't that why Randa sent me to him? But he wouldn't save me, couldn't save me—not me. This I knew.
He reached me, even as I was backing up. “There is much you don't know about yourself.”
I furrowed my brows suspiciously, hands out, as the ‘wait’ message was partially for me to gain control of this sinful desire for a man of probable badness. Perhaps God had given me to the Devil as punishment for painting horror.
The Mark of Chaos Page 3
