Sky Bridge

by Laura Pritchett

  “She and I will work it out.”

  “Please don’t be mad.” When he doesn’t say anything, I add, “Listen, Clark. Please. Do you want money? Because I can get some. I know you’re pissed. I can see it.”

  He looks past me. “Libby, I’m probably fucking pissed off that she didn’t love me. I’m probably fucking pissed off that your sister led me on and then laughed me off. I’m pissed off because of our arrangement. But none of this is your business.” He walks off with just enough speed that I know he wants to be left alone.

  Flies are following me and some are the biting kind, so I keep slapping at them, and rubbing the sweat at my neck. I’m too tired to walk so I sit down and stare at the cows and windmill.

  If I was brave enough to speak to Clark, this is what I’d tell him: Tess is good at making people love her and then not loving them back. She flirts until she’s got them to move from Not Interested to Interested, and then turns her back. Maybe it’s her way of getting back at the world.

  And maybe I’d even say: I’m the opposite. Or at least I want to be. Seems to me that, given a chance, I love like crazy. Or I used to, at least. I loved Shawny. I loved Tess. I want to fall in love with Amber. And if I couldn’t love Derek more, it wasn’t neither of our faults. At least I’m open to the possibility of love. It’s my way of getting back at the world, to love stronger than ever, to love the way I wish somebody loved me.

  When I look up, Clark is staring at me with a face that’s blank, or gone somewhere else. I jerk a little, because I didn’t know he was there—either I must have been zoning out or else he’s pretty quiet.

  I’m sitting on the ground and he’s standing to my side, holding out his hand. “Here you go,” he says, opening his palm. Inside his cupped palm is a perfect arrowhead and one tiny, thin rock. “Nice arrowhead here. And a chip. Chips are mostly what I find. It’s a fragment from the process of making an arrowhead. It’s just trash, really. Somebody else’s trash.”

  He puts them in my hand. “See this arrowhead? It’s got a scarring pattern there. Indians used two types of striking, not that you care. Percussion flaking and pressure flaking. Probably you could care less about this shit.”

  “I care.”

  “This is percussion.”

  “Who made it?”

  “Arapahoe, I bet. It’s probably a couple hundred years old.”

  “They’re pretty.”

  “They’re for you.”

  “I can have them?” I look at him because he’s acting weird and I don’t want him to be angry. I want to say something about how nice that is, but he’s already talking.

  “This might have killed something. Who knows what. Human, deer. Maybe this little rock ended a life. I love thinking about that.”

  “Hey, Clark? I’m getting really burned. Maybe we could get in the car, or find some shade?” What I want to do is go home, but I don’t say it. What I want to do is bring up Tess again, and make him not mad at her, but I don’t know how to say that either. I don’t want to push too hard. So I look up at him to see where he’s at inside.

  His eyes are holding onto mine. There’s a heartbeat of a moment when I know what’s coming, and wobble, wobble, I can’t decide. “Let’s go to the car,” he says, and he takes my hand and leads me off.

  Clark has a different kind of kiss than Derek—harder, with less give and more force. He bites my lip a little, and I sit up in the back seat of the car and he pushes me back down and he says, “Shhh. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Come on now.” He’s saying this to my shorts, which are stuck on my hips. He pushes me backward so he can slide them off, and then he pushes my shirt up and pushes my jogging bra up and leans down.

  If I lift my head, I can see Amber’s car seat over his shoulder. He unbuckled it and threw it out of the car so there’d be room for us. Next to it is the picnic basket I’d put in the back. My glasses are still on, which is why I can see them. Unlike Derek, who takes my glasses off, Clark is just kissing around them, nudging them up with his forehead so that they’re crooked and pressing against one side of my face.

  “Hey, Clark?”

  “I don’t have AIDS or none of that shit. Do you?”

  “No. But Clark—”

  “Birth control?”

  “What? Yeah, but Clark—”

  “Okay, okay. Shhh.”

  My mind races around, trying to catch onto a daydream of a moment like this. I want to feel what I feel in the daydream. I picture me in a blue dress, a man watching me, that feeling rising in my chest, that crazy feeling down low, my body waking up.

  Clark twists himself out of his jeans and throws his ball cap to the side. I try to sit up, he pushes me down, turns himself toward me and pushes himself in me, and it hurts because I’m not wet yet and it hurts because he’s not gentle.

  “Please,” I say. “Wait.”

  “Shhh,” he says.

  “Don’t,” I say.

  “Shhh.”

  “Clark! Fuck, that hurts!”

  “Libby,” he says, leaning back so he can look me in the eye, “I said to shut up.”

  And that’s when I know. That this is going to happen.

  My mind races for a new daydream, because there have been dreams of a man who has power, and in my mind it felt good, but it didn’t feel like this. In my dreams, it didn’t feel like the man was angry. It didn’t feel like he hated me. It didn’t feel like he wanted to hurt me so much.

  “Clark, I’m asking please.”

  He turns me over. One side of my face is against the seat and it smells like dirt and fabric and maybe even I can smell the tears that are just starting to fall.

  “Mmmm,” he says. “Good. Oh that’s good. You fucking bitch.”

  Past the water in my eyes is a pebble resting on the seat, and as my body rocks back and forth, the pebble falls to the floor. I watch where it disappeared over the edge, the little patch of fabric where it once was, and if I stare at it long enough, then this will be over.

  In dreams the only hurt I feel is in my heart. I didn’t know how the body could hold so much hurt. I didn’t know. I didn’t know it could hurt like this. I forgot to know this about life.

  I beg my mind to help me. I close my eyes and concentrate, hard. And I’m searching for a dream, and searching, and finally I catch on to one. There’s me and a little girl, playing in a yard. Me and a little girl, and she’s got blond braids, and we’re reaching out to each other, and there’s green grass and blue sky, and we’re laughing. Me and a blond girl, coming together, arms all tangled up in a hug. I can hold her inside me. I can.

  My clothes get tossed on top of me. I pull them on and climb in the passenger seat. I stare ahead as Clark throws the car seat and picnic basket in behind me. I stare ahead while Clark drives us back, across the fields, through the gate, down the highway.

  I keep my eyes on my daydream, so that it can grow and shoot out everywhere: me and a blond girl, we’re coloring together, on our tummies on a wooden floor, crayons scattered in a slant of sunlight. We’re walking down a road and laughing and jumping on each other’s shadow. There are tears I can wipe away and sadness that I can soften. There are dangers to protect her from. I can hold her in my lap. I can hold her in my heart. I can love her a million different ways.

  The car door slams and Clark is walking from the car to Sammy’s, and the keys are dangling in the ignition and all I need to do is drive home. I’m teaching her to fly a kite and the string gets tangled and the kite crashes in a field and I know enough to laugh at this, and bend down so that I am at her level, and I hug her. On the way home, when I lose the dream I just speak out loud: “Girl, blond braids, we’re laughing together,” and when I say this, a new image rises in my head and I hold very, very still so that I can listen to the story unfold.

  A buzz roars in my ears, a buzz like the land, a buzz from nothing.

  I’m showered, changed, cried out. I’m standing in the kitchen doorway, smoking and looking out at the alfalfa.


  Had it coming, my brain tells me.

  Didn’t want it.

  Didn’t say no.

  That’s not what I wanted.

  Had it coming.

  Did not.

  Did too.

  Kay is back. She must have come home from Pueblo in the middle of the night. I didn’t even hear her come in. But this morning I heard her moving in my room. In an act of mercy, I think, she took Amber, came right in at five-thirty when Amber started crying, picked her up, fumbled in the drawers for a diaper and a change of clothes, and walked out of the room. I was too tired to ask when she got home or where she was going or how Baxter was. I think I whispered a thank you that she didn’t hear and I fell back asleep. The note on the kitchen table said they’d gone to do chores together, and then to the store.

  I watch Kay pull in the driveway, lug the car seat up and put it at my feet, start unloading groceries.

  “Thanks for your help,” she says.

  I follow her and unload plastic bags from the car.

  “Look at Amber,” Kay says. “Look at her look at you. Her eyes are following you now. Her eyes are changing color. Turning brown. Take her inside, it’s too hot out here.”

  I move Amber, still in her car seat, to my bed. She’s still looking at me and, yes, her gray-blue eyes have speckles of brown near the center.

  Before I leave my room, I pull at my shirt and look at my breast, my shoulder. It seems like there should be blood, but there isn’t, just the circles of bruised skin. There’s fingernail scrapes down my stomach, and my anus hurts where he put in his fingers.

  I look at Amber. Kid, I’m a piece of shit and I can’t take care of you because I can’t take care of myself. It was wrong and I went along with it. I’m my mom all over again, and you deserve better. I tried, and look what happened. It’s not what I wanted, but maybe it’s what I had coming. I can’t rise to the occasion of you. You’re going to be so beautiful, though. So beautiful.

  I leave her sitting there and walk out to the kitchen. Keep the words inside, I tell myself, keep them inside. Because Kay won’t treat my words right, but still they want out, these words, so I keep my hand over my mouth.

  “The police call?”

  “What?”

  “Did the police call?”

  “No.”

  “No word from Tess?”

  “No word from Tess.”

  “Nice of you to ask about Baxter. He’s not doing so great.”

  I put milk in the refrigerator, apples in a bowl, formula in the cupboard.

  Kay says, “He’ll be back in a few days. This formula is so damn expensive. I don’t know why they take the thing that’s most important to an infant and kill us with the price.”

  “Who?”

  “Them,” she says, her hand flying around to the outside world. “Hand me a knife, will you? Can you get the margarine from the fridge? I’m making me a sandwich, you want one?”

  I nod, hand her a knife, get out two plates and two glasses of water. My hands put away the groceries until the bags are empty. I sit down in front of the grilled cheese sandwich, put the sandwich to my mouth, take a bite, chew.

  Kay slides into the seat across from me. “Baxter’s fine and he’s not fine. They took all kinds of pictures of his brain, gave him all kinds of drugs. He seems fine now. Except that he’s scared.” Her mouth has bits of toast falling from it. “He’s emptied out a little. Have you ever noticed that sometimes in your life you’re willing to die? I hope that for Baxter. That he’s willing to and able to at the same time. It’s not so easy, getting to the end of your life. When the end is in sight. You’ll be there someday. So will I. It’s a hard thing to stare down. Where’s Amber?”

  “In my room.”

  “Sleeping in her car seat?”

  “I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  “Yes. She fell asleep.”

  She brushes a strand of gray hair behind her ear. “You did the chores like I said?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you incapable of speaking more than two words, or what is your problem?”

  “I did the chores. I did them Saturday morning and afternoon and night and yesterday morning and afternoon and Miguel did them last night. I went on a picnic. An arrowhead hunt.”

  She looks at me. “With who?”

  “You don’t know him.” I stare at my sandwich.

  “Don’t know why you wanted to waste an afternoon looking at the ground, but whatever.” She rubs at her nose and sighs. “You girls have always specialized in dumb ways to use your time.”

  I put a bite of grilled cheese in my mouth. My plastic plate has a ring of black on it from where it got burned by something, and scratch marks from a hundred forks and knives eating on it. I remember eating from this plate when I was a little girl but I don’t remember when that mark appeared.

  “Baxter says I just got to let you girls go. Step in as a guardian angel when necessary. That’s not my job though. I’m not a damn angel.”

  She looks tired, but even so her green eyes seem calm enough. She’s in one of her good moods. She says, “I tell him: ‘Baxter, these girls, they don’t need help.’ And you know what he says? He says, ‘Cream does indeed rise to the top. But not if it’s always being shaken up. And anyway, a lot of milk can go sour in the meantime.’ And so we gotta find Tess.”

  I look at her. I feel dead. I don’t think I care about finding Tess anymore. I think, I tried, and it didn’t work, and maybe that’s good—that I got to a place where I don’t care anymore.

  “What’s the matter with you? You gotta wake up,” she says, standing up and batting me on the side of the head.

  “Mom? I’m glad about you and Baxter.”

  She scowls at me and then looks away, and then looks at me again. She starts in on the dishes and while she rinses them off she says, “That was nice, thank you.” After a minute, she adds, “When your father left, so did my dreams about my own land. This job saved my life, because at least it gave me something real to do meanwhile. While I shifted from one dream to another. Which is a hard thing to do. As you know. I always cared for Baxter. I always thought a good deal about Adeline, too, but she died. She died. And one day Baxter leans over and kisses me. Surprised the hell out of me. You were surprised, too?”

  “Yeah.”

  She smiles. “I figured.”

  “It’s nice, though. It’s nice to find someone.”

  “I think so too.” Now she’s looking at her feet, smiling. “I’m heading over to Baxter’s. I’ll see you tomorrow. Adiós, Lib.”

  As she steps out, she’s framed for an instant in the kitchen door and there’s a huge field of dark green behind her and I say, “It’s not dumb, Kay. It’s not dumb spending time finding someone to love.”

  I take a breath before I pick Amber up again. “Come on, Amber, quit crying.” I put her on my bed and rub her tummy. I whisper, “Amber, shhhh, my name is Libby and you are Amber I am Libby and you are Amber. We’ll be okay. Neither of us feels so great right now. Libby, Amber, Libby, Amber. We’ll be okay.”

  It’s been two hours straight. That’s how long it takes me to try everything I know: a bath, holding her in front of the TV, pacing inside, walking outside, a short drive but not too long because I’m low on gas. “Oh god, no more, shhh little baby, ay, mi amor, tranquilo! Híjole! Qué tienes? It hurt so much and I didn’t stop him. Please kid I’m asking you to shut the fuck up.”

  I get out the little bottle of medicine for gas and I try to put a dropperful in her mouth. Most of it comes running out her lips. I give her some Tylenol and she chokes on the dropper and starts hollering again.

  I change her diaper, but it’s not that wet. I put her sleeper back on, zip it up over her tiny red stomach. She’s so tense, her little fists clenched in the air, her legs flying around like they’re trying to kick out some pain. I put a pacifier in her mouth and she spits it out and so I pick it up and do it again. But it doesn’t work, so I walk with
her and I trip over Ringo and I fall forward into the counter and knock over the new can of formula and crack my wrist against the edge, which makes me want to kick Ringo but I don’t, I kick the bottom cupboard instead and fuck, fuck, fuck, why won’t anyone help and shutupshutupshutup!

  I can’t do it anymore. That’s all I know. Tomorrow I’ll take her to the hospital so they can get her spit. Tomorrow, I’ll call the lawyer and social services. I don’t deserve this kid. She doesn’t deserve me. But right now I can’t take it anymore. And right then her eyes close, open, close, open, and then close for good. The both of us sink into bed, worn out from crying and each other, and I drift into the deep, dark place of sleep and the minute I get there Amber’s wail shoots into my face.

  My body does this: my hands push her hard, hard, too hard into the car seat. My hands pick the car seat up. My feet step, step, outside, out to the car. I open the car door, and shove that car seat inside, hard, and slam the car door shut. I open the car door, slam it shut again, harder.

  I go inside, to my bed. I sleep. I sleep until I can open an eye to see the red numbers on the clock. It’s 5:12, they tell me, and with 5:13 comes an understanding. Amber’s not in the room with me. She’s in the car. There’s no space inside me to care. I sleep again. My eyes come back open and see that it’s 6:00. I start to drift off again, but this time I keep them open. “Please,” I say. “Please keep them open.” The red numbers of the clock fade in and out and I start to see their pattern, blotches of red that really don’t exist, all around my room. I look at them and listen to how quiet it is—so quiet that it seems like nothing’s alive and maybe never was.

  Ringo follows me when I get up, her feet padding on the carpet. She whines and touches her nose to the door.

  Outside, the sky looks dark wet, and a mist is rising from earth to sky. Maybe I should be flying apart from feeling, but the fact is I’m not. I’m nothing inside.