Spin the Plate Short Story

by Donna Anastasi



  Spin the Plate Short Story

  By Donna Anastasi

  Cover Illustration by Janet Morrow

  Copyright 2011 Donna Anastasi

  Spin the Plate Short Story

  ***

  Jo boarded the 12:17 subway train at the third to the last stop. With the lunchtime rush seats were scarce. She spied the last available one and beat a man in a pressed suit to it by one step. He grabbed onto the strap above her head, stood facing her, and gazed out the window. The train lurched to a grinding start.

  “Dyke,” he muttered under his breath.

  In an instant she was up on her feet. She was 257 pounds and stood 5’ 11” in her Chippewa hikers. She wore a flannel shirt, this one burnt orange with black checkering, covered by denim overalls. Inside an inner pocket nestled in the dip at her right hipbone and easily accessible from the bib of her overalls, she carried a Berretta 9mm classic with 10 live rounds. The gun was always with her; she touched it now. She would not allow anyone to hurt her.

  “Screw you,” she said loudly and deliberately.

  She stared into the man’s widening eyes and watched him lower his gaze. He turned away, weaved through the crowd, and found another spot to stand at the far end of the car, not daring to utter another word in the closed compartment. Jo envisioned a mental grin slowly spreading across her face. Her smile, of course, was on the inside. She had long ago set her jaw to create an unchanging, distant look with a hint of menace.

  Settling back into her seat, she surveyed the fellow passengers in the train. She noted with satisfaction the bent heads and averted eyes, intent on newspapers or some crud worked into the floor. Across the aisle sat a wiry man in his 30s wearing scuffed sneakers and brown corduroys with the ridges on his pants mostly worn off. With an amused look, he searched her face. He seemed to cut straight through the façade, as if her broad smile was plain and he was sharing in the joke.

  She glared at him. “What is wrong with you?”

  His stare and his amusement were unchanged.

  “Jesus loves you,” he replied, sounding pleased with the news.

  The train groaned and settled to a halt. This was her stop.

  “He’s probably simple,” she thought as she exited the train.

  ***

  The walk from the station was the roughest stretch in her day. Normally she’d take the street with the distractions afforded by jostling crowds. Today she was late and cut through the park. It was empty except for a few pre-school children playing, their moms hovering near by, and an older man sitting on a bench nibbling on a bologna sandwich.

  Jo knew down time was dangerous. She focused on her power, weight, and regime: she maintained a layer of fat, for protection, around a muscular build. She ate and trained following the regimen of a Sumo wrestler−the result was the illusion of obesity though she was in top health and extremely strong. She liked using her power to hurt men who deserved it. She found the rush was all the better with an element of surprise. She never tired of seeing that look of bewilderment mixed with pain when she smashed her fist into a man’s face. He never saw it coming.

  As she walked, surrounded by the squeals of laughter from the children in an impromptu game of tag and the smell of turning leaves, Jo found herself relaxing in the warmth of the approaching afternoon. Her mind began to wander.

  She wondered desperately. “Why can’t I be like everyone else and be blessed with repressed memories?”

  The images, pain, every emotion was raw and fresh−time had done nothing to dull the wounds inflicted more than a dozen years ago. She still could replay each event as though it were a television series rerun. Today Episode 62 played in her head:

  “The Dollhouse.” This one starts out with a little girl sitting on her bed combing light caramel curls with a cherry wood handled brush and comb and mirror set her Daddy had given her last month. She pulls down a banana curl with the brush and watches it bounce back up in the hand mirror. She examines her face critically, looking hard into her chocolate brown eyes framed by long lashes. She glances up from the mirror as Daddy strolls into her bedroom with a huge and bright pink dollhouse stretched across his open arms. Turning to balance it on one arm and a knee, he locks the door behind him. A moment later, Mommy raps on the door, Julianna, are you in there? He bellows at the closed door, Do you want me to come out! And Mommy scurries away.

  As he turns back around, a scowl melts into an excited grin. He sits on the floor and shows her all the features; see the closet door, and the little dresser drawers really open. She hopes faintly that he’s come to play dolls with her. Daddy has given you a wonderful gift and now its time for you to give him a little something. No Daddy, No Daddy. Come on darling, you know I’ll take it slow. I’m always gentle. I have some special oil and I’ll tickle you for a long time first. No, Daddy, she whispers. Fine! I don’t have time for this. He grabs her and tosses her over his lap face down, flips up her dress, jerking down white panties. He grabs the cherry wood handled brush lying on the bed and smacks her bare butt. She cries out and squeezes her eyes shut and tries to lie very still, but feels him fumbling for his fly. She starts to count focusing hard on each of the numbers, how the words sound: one, two, three, four, five… considering carefully the lines and shape of each number 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71…

  Two hundred eighty two, 282, so beautifully curved, like three swans gliding across a still pond. At 283, he stands abruptly and she falls, crumpling to the floor. His face red, he sputters, I work my ass off for this family, give them everything and ask for so little. And I get squat in return. He grabs up the dollhouse in one hand and stomps out of the room. She knows not to come out and hides under the bedcovers with a forefinger pressed into each ear.

  The next morning she feels stiff and sore. Her Mommy is cross with her jaw red and swelled up. She shakes the fruit loops into Julianna’s bowl and says why can’t you just cooperate and be a good girl? She chews on a fruit loop slowly, staring at the kitchen clock as the number flips from 8:12 to 8:13. She steals a sideways glance at the dollhouse in the corner of the kitchen. At 8:14 Mommy puts it outside on the curb. And, at 8:17 through the kitchen screen door she sees the dirty army-green trash truck pull up, and the trashman toss her lovely pink doll house into the back, and pull away.

  The ring of her cell phone shook her free. Jo looked down to see “Dad cell” on the screen. She answered it.

  “What do you want? You sick bastard.”

  He replied. “Come on now.”

  He paused, then continued. “Uncle is turning 80, and there’s a big ta-do over at Anthony’s.”

  Silence.

  “Your mother would like you to be there.”

  She snorted. “Not a chance in hell.”

  “Okay, well you remember where the restaurant is, right off Charles Street. It’s next Sunday at two.”

  She hung up.

  ***

  Jo arrived at work eight minutes late, but no one commented. She was afforded a little leeway as the most requested tattoo artist in the shop.

  Instead, her co-workers kidded her. “When are you getting some ink yourself?”

  She snapped back. “You know I don’t go for that sort of thing.”

  Tattoos revealed too much about a person’s past or passion or pain, exposing personal information right on one’s skin for anyone to see.

  Her talent was in free-style with a keen ability to decipher a vague notion and transform it into a work of art. People sought Jo out for her reputation of custom, one-of-a-kind, free-style designs. She used no sketches, no collaboration. Forgoing any small talk, Jo stared hard into the customer's eyes and noted whether they were bright, dull, scared, worried, d
esperate. She listened for a key event, a realization, a transformation, a longing, or a whim that drove the desire for body art. Once she knew the gist and as the person continued to speak, the words no longer registered, washing over her like the sound of a waterfall splashing and crashing down. Now she heard what was meant and images flowed through her mind.

  She would mumble. “I see a field of sunflowers bowing to the wind.” Or she would share a revelation. “There is a man in a top hat standing before a mirror with a grinning skeleton staring back, worms eating out his eye sockets.” Often at that moment tears would spring to the customer’s eyes or a smile would spread over the face. In any case, the person whose body was her canvas would fall silent and become very still. Jo would become lost in the imagery as it unfolded at her hands. She’d become absorbed in the work, a light sweat beading on her body with the concentration, hours, and the position she had to maintain. Afterward, the client always cried while studying her work as the shop’s owner snapped a Polaroid. Jo, as always, looked indifferent. But this was the one time where she held off on the menacing.

  ***

  It had been dark for hours by the time Jo arrived home to her basement apartment that night. She was welcomed first by Rufus−a Lab, Great Dane, and Rottweiler mix. He was black with tan eyebrows and enormous. Ben followed. He was all black with a small spot of white on his chest and a few stray white hairs on his front toes. Ben was a pit-bull, greyhound mix−tall and lean with a boxy skull and a powerful jaw.

  Jo approached Rufus with arms outstretched. He greeted her back by launching his 120 pounds into them, with his wagging extending from the tail to the second half of body. After pounding on Rufus to his delight and scratching Ben in his favorite spot behind his left ear, she quickly checked on a small menagerie. Four rats were permanent residents; the rest were an ever changing assortment of temporary inhabitants.

  These were animals she picked up off the street or from shelters or received from people who brought them to her at the shop. Such an animal she would keep until it was de-wormed, parasite free, restored to full health, and trusting enough to respond to another person. Then tucking the animal inside the bib of her overalls or allowing it to follow at her heels, she would bring the creature to work with her. It was not uncommon to see Jo prepping a customer with a small head peering out from her midsection. Whether stroked by the customer beforehand or simply providing distraction with its antics from within its cage during the procedure, the animal was a comfort and an initial bond was forged. More often than not the creature was adopted afterwards. Jo’s meaning was clear, as she gave a farewell tickle under the furred, or occasionally scaly, chin and looked the new caretaker straight in the eye.

  “He can always come back to me, no questions asked. I don’t want to see this animal back on the street.”

  As Jo walked into the spare bedroom, her four permanent rattie boys stood up on hind legs all in a row. They clutched the bars of the cage with tiny fists, like four prisoners hoping for early parole. When Jo opened the top of the pen, Sammy, Muzzy, Jessie, and Jimbo came streaming over the sides. Like most nights, tonight Ben and Rufus would accompany Jo as she traversed the city streets. As she snapped on the dogs’ leashes, she admonished the rats.

  “Behave yourselves, use the litter box, and don’t chew on the molding.”

  Turning back to the dogs, she called out to them by their street names “Titan! Cain!” which she used when they were out at night to intimidate strangers. Rufus wriggled with sheer joy and Ben waved his powerful thin tail in the air. They knew they were going into the city for the evening.

  She scowled at them and said. “Hey, toughen up!”

  Titan’s lip curled into a smile exposing his long white canine teeth, and Cain burst into an explosive series of barks.

  “Okay, that’s a little better,” she conceded, though the tails were still beating the air.

  “Let’s go.”

  ***

  When she roamed the streets, Jo was always careful to avoid areas where the street kids hung out. She quickly took a detoured path if she unexpectedly spied a cluster up ahead. Whether they attempted to make friends or talked tough, she felt that same longing to gather them up, like a litter of hungry puppies without a mother, and bring them into her home. Seeing a young girl alone invoked an almost insatiable, protective urge, a physical sensation that twisted and tore at her gut and made her heart throb painfully. She felt if she got too close, looked into her eyes, she would not be able to turn away. So she gave a wide berth to anyone out alone on the streets and short in statue.

  Ben was the tracker and always the first to find an animal, having both the superior nose and concentration over the adolescent Rufus. He was indiscriminate, seeming to be able to search and rescue any living creature, whether it was a cat, a dog, or even a pigeon with a broken wing. Tonight, after hours of seeking without a find, the night shifted from pitch black to deep charcoal. A glimmer of peach rays peeked through the buildings. Jo headed back for her apartment.

  ***

  There, the rattie boys sleepy from night at play had holed up finding places to nap. They were nowhere in sight. Jo toasted bread and smeared on some peanut butter.

  “Come-come-come,” she called.

  One by one, rat heads emerged out of hiding, from behind a book shelf or under a clothes pile. The rats stretched and yawned exposing long incisors that they tucked away as they scampered towards her, crawling up the denim on her legs. Each grabbed greedily for the rat delicacy. She slipped them back into their pen. Each boy raced to private spot to gulp down and protect his morsel.

  Jo slipped off her overalls and exchanged her flannel day shirt for an oversized flannel night shirt. “Around and around we go” was her final thought. Today, tonight, tomorrow, and yesterday all merged into one predictable, comfortable routine. She fell into a dreamless, exhausted sleep and hardly stirred until the alarm blasted four and a half hours later.

  ***

  At the station the next day, even though she was late, again, she allowed the 12:17 train to come and go and waited on the 12:24. She never took same train or same car two days in a row, preferring instead the increased chance of conflict with fresh meat. She half noticed the scrawny man from yesterday, absorbed in a newspaper. He too, sat through the pulling in and pulling out of the first train and boarded the second, walking the length of cars and trailing her onto the second to the last one. She found a seat, and he settled directly across from her. She scanned the car alert and, as always, eager for any potential trouble. She relaxed in disappointment as it seemed everyone was preoccupied in his own little world or was staring blankly out a train window.

  Her gaze focused straight ahead. She briefly studied the vaguely familiar face of the man seated across from her. He looked youthful, but not young. She was caught off guard to see the little man staring intently into her eyes.

  “Jesus knows all you are doing.”

  She shook her head back and forth slowly a few times eyeing him and made no reply.

  When she emerged from the train, the man followed. He scampered at her heels, taking three steps to her two. She headed for the park. Jo, not at all sure she could handle another episode today, was secretly thankful for the distraction provided by his rapid fire questions.

  “Where do you work? How long have you lived in the city? Do you like empanadas?”

  She mostly ignored him and occasionally punctuated the conversation with, “You are a crazy little freak.”

  Arriving at the shop she grasped the door handle.

  “Oh, you work here,” he commented then practically shouted. “Wait!”

  She hesitated, just long enough for him to blurt out. “Can I take you to dinner?”

  In the pause that followed he interjected. “You gotta eat.”

  The intensity in his eyes and the sincerity in his slowly spreading smile compelled her to reply. “What the…okay… meet me outside after work on Saturday.” />
  She disappeared through the door before saying a time. Francis thought better of pursuing her into her sanctuary. Instead, before she had the chance to renege, he melted into the sidewalk traffic and was gone.

  ***

  He returned late Saturday afternoon at 4:45. He leaned against the brick wall several feet from the front door of the shop and scanned the face of each exiting person. At 6:35, he pulled on the hood of his sweatshirt and slid down the wall hugging his knees, with his head tilted to the right, eyeing the door. A long while later, he lay down in a ball, his back resting against the wall, and closed his eyes. At 10:12 pm, Jo nudged him awake with her foot.

  “Ready?”

  He leapt to his feet and glancing down noticed a partially crumbled dollar bill and some change on the ground. Jo noted the adroitness with which he flipped up the coins and guessed that this was likely the source of his livelihood.

  He smiled and said. “Oh good, the tip.”

  Jo informed him. “There’s a place near my house that’s open until one in the morning.”

  They took a bus a few streets from the shop, then walked 10 blocks. Jo disappeared into her basement apartment and reemerged led by one large and one enormous black dog.

  “Hey Buddies,” Francis said to them.

  They briefly greeted him and then got right to business marking favorite sign posts and relieving themselves. The dogs strained to continue down the street, but Jo pulled them back into the apartment and told them sternly to wait a while. Then, she and Francis headed for a small Ristorante on the corner.

  As soon as they ordered, Francis prattled, “Let me tell you about my parents. I never got to know them, not really. They died when I was three.”

  “They were on their way to a Christmas party, when a newly licensed 16 year old girl, heavily pieced and with a car full or friends, didn’t realize her road came to the end at the T and hit my parents’ car nearly head on and into a stone wall. The car spun out, releasing its fluids and airbags. My parents were okay though. They had just stepped out of the car to phone from a nearby house when a flatbed truck coming around the curve in the other direction plowed into them both.”

  The waitress brought a basket of scali bread slices and their beverages: water with lemon for Francis and a coke for Jo. Francis selected a bread slice and tore off the top crust with the sesame seeds. He pulled out a covered plastic condiment cup of peanut butter from his sweatshirt front pocket and smeared peanut butter on the white bread, placing two peanut butter bread slices on his bread plate. He mixed seven packs of sugar into the lemon water. When their meals arrived, Francis pushed his aside and started in on the peanut butter bread. His entree lay untouched as he continued chronicling in detail his childhood years being raised by his two aunts.