Tied Within

by Rasmenia Massoud

  Glass shattering. Wood snapping.

  My sister and I pulled each other tighter, closer, as though we might be protected if we could be absorbed by one another.

  Indra used to tell me that the silence of the closet was the worst part, aside from me wetting myself. When the hush came, it felt too abrupt, as though the absence of sound could only bring even greater horror, but we stayed in the closet because our mother hadn’t come for us.

  When the morning light found its way through the crack underneath the door, my sister defied our mother’s instructions and turned the knob. She took me by the hand and found me some dry pajamas. She took my hand again and together, we went downstairs.

  Our father’s body lay in front of the door, his chest blown out from a shotgun blast at close range.

  “Be thankful your memory didn't file that image away,” my sister said to me countless times. “It gets worse and worse every time it flashes through your brain. Each time you see it in your mind, the hole in his chest is bigger. The blood is redder. After a million times of seeing it played back to me, I swear his eyes could see me. It isn't fair the way memory twists up the things it shows you.”

  We waited on the porch steps for Mom to come home. She’d be upset that we didn't stay hidden in the closet, but we couldn't stay in there anymore. It was dark, wet, and too quiet.

  Whether we sat on those steps for minutes or hours, it doesn’t matter. A police car pulled up in front of our house some time after everything had ended. Indra always said the thing she had the most nightmares about was seeing that policeman, someone who was supposed to save the day and fix everything. Slogging up the little path to our house, his face a red, wet mess of tears that rolled down his cheeks and fell off his chin; he was nothing like a hero who could make it better.

  Until that day, we’d never heard of a social worker. After the weepy policeman called her, he said that she'd help us; would explain everything to us.

  The task that lay before her was next to impossible. Two kids as young as we were, we couldn’t yet imagine how cruel life can be.

  We had no concept of randomness.

  We’d never heard of serial killers.

  We didn’t fully comprehend bad luck.

  I think I understand now why my sister had those nightmares about that policeman. She saw too much truth on that poor bastard’s shiny, tear-streaked face. He’d already seen what was left of my mother in the woods on the way to our house. Even though neither one of us would find out for a very long time afterward what had happened to our mother, or the meaning of the word dismemberment, Indra took one look at that policeman and knew that after Hell, things could still get worse.

  When we grew old enough to learn about the man the entire country referred to as the Shotgun Ripper, it gave us no satisfaction to see him caught. When the news outlets explained his pattern of blasting a hole through fathers before raping and mutilating mothers, it made no difference to us that he always spared the children.

  Those weren't the details that haunted us.

  4. HALFWAY THERE

  I CAN’T BLAME all these people on the highway for not wanting to pick us up and give us a ride. Bronwyn has this walk; she sort of lumbers along as though she’s always dragging a heavy load behind her. At six feet, she’s the tallest of the three of us and has the worst posture. Her insecurity about her height burdens her; keeps her hunched over, making her chubby body even more chubby.

  “I’m too tall for my body. I’ll have that fixed eventually,” she told me once. “First, I’m gonna take care of the easy stuff like my teeth and eyes. I’ve already got a pair of colored contacts picked out. I just need to save up some more money. They’re violet. Totally unique. Then, my hair and skin. Some hair extensions, so you won’t see my scalp anymore and lots of chemical peels so I’ll have all new skin. Last thing is gonna be my body. I’ll get the fat sucked out of some places and have it injected into others. Fat from my gut and ass into my boobs. When my body’s fixed, I won’t look like a hunchback anymore.”

  I don’t know if she’ll end up looking like a Theresa or a Bronwyn, but I admire her ability to stick to a project. When I start something, I can never finish it. I just can’t dedicate myself to wanting or doing a thing for an extended period of time like that. I get started doing and before I reach the halfway mark, I’m wanting something else. But, really, it’s not me, it’s everything moving around me, changing and wreaking havoc on my wants. I decided it's easier to stop starting things because it’s impossible to keep up with the world, the way it constantly throws new stuff at you.

  Bronwyn doesn’t pay attention to those distractions. Her plans to burn away her outer layers of skin and relocate her fat keep her focused.

  Dominic doesn’t project the kind of image that might inspire someone to pull over and pick us up, either. Poor Dom and his brand new Mohawk, surrounded by scabbed over bleach burns. He jumps and bounces around us as we amble along the highway, flapping his arms like some excited monkey. Dom never says anything using only his mouth.

  His attire looks as though he’s watched too many music videos. This is an appearance he’s cultivated from studying the hundreds of images of people stuck to his bedroom walls. He’s torn the sleeves from his shirts, the knees from his jeans. He shoplifted safety pins and hair dye. Dom looked good enough to get girls before he did all of that, but the only girls he’s ever let into his house are me and Bronwyn.

  He wanted to let other girls in. He would have, if not for the smell. That’s what bothers him most about his house. Sure, walking past his grandparents in the living room is always a creepy experience, the way they turn their heads in slow motion to see who’s entered their home, even though they can’t see anything with their cloudy white eyes. The way the heat is always too low and the volume of the TV too high; the disturbing way they grunt or moan instead of forming words.

  “It’s like living with zombies,” he’d said the last time we were there. “If my dad wasn’t such a cheap fuck, he might’ve put ‘em in a home. They should probably be in a home. For serious, they have a nurse who comes and it totally reeks in here. Doesn’t it smell like a hospital? It does, right? That’s the smell of rotting. Rotting people. It's almost like they’re already dead.”

  Looking at my two friends, I feel absurd. Inadequate. They’re not underweight. They have shoes on their goddamn feet. My clothes, I don’t know when they were in style. Paying attention to things like that is too difficult. Most of what I own either came from my aunt’s closet, or from the garage sales she goes to.

  Bronwyn tries to make them look better, to help me transform myself because I don’t know how to be any version of me, much less a new and improved me.

  Some fabric dye here. Some hair coloring there. The result: a bunch of outdated clothes with bad dye jobs and a head of hair with an even worse color that cannot be found in nature.

  The color on the box advertised a sexy red. The model on the box with teeth a startling shade of Airbrush White, she had sexy red.

  “That’s what I want,” I’d said to Bronwyn in the middle of the Walgreens. “I want that. Sexy Nympho Red.”

  What I have on my head isn’t so much Sexy Nympho Red as it is Ridiculous Jackass Puce. What I got is a weird shade of purply-brown that I sometimes see on old ladies at the drugstore downtown.

  I can imagine what kinds of things go through the minds of these people as they zoom right on past us. I would do the same thing if it were me behind the wheel.

  What I can’t imagine is what it might feel like to sit behind the wheel of my own car, to own a thing that big, or to take myself anywhere I want to go.

  “Wait you guys. I have an idea,” Dominic breaks me away from my thoughts about cars and purple hair.

  “Okay,” I say. “What is it?”

  “Hold up. Stop walking.” He starts to unbutton his flannel shirt. Bronwyn makes a crack about not wanting to see him naked. He ignores her and holds his shirt out to me. “Her
e.”

  “What the hell do you want me to do with that smelly thing? Aren’t you going to be cold in just that shitty, ripped-up t-shirt?”

  “No. I’m fine. Now stuff this up there under your sweatshirt. Barefoot and pregnant is sure to get us a ride.”

  Bronwyn looks impressed. “Diabolical.”

  “No fucking way.” I look at Bronwyn. “Why can’t you do it?”

  Dom rubs at one of the bleach scabs on his forehead. “You just look like more of the knocked up type, ya know?”

  “Oh. That’s awesome. At least I’ve got that going for me.”

  “Well, we could walk all the way to Boulder. I guess it’s not all that far.” Dominic shrugs and starts walking again. “Your feet can probably take it. They’ll start callusing up soon, I bet.”

  “Eat shit, Dom.” I stuff the shirt up inside my sweatshirt, folding the bottom of my shirt under, hoping that his flannel won’t fall out.

  “No, no.” Bronwyn shook her head and began patting and smoothing out my new false belly. “That looks like shit. Your baby’s gonna be some kind of lumpy mutant.”

  “Hilarious. You and Dom make quite a pair. The two of you should think about making real babies.”

  “Damn, Ivy. Now you’re just being unfriendly. Must be those pregnancy hormones.”

  Up ahead, Dominic stops and waits for us to catch up. He gasps and puts a hand over his mouth. “My God, Ivy. You are absolutely glowing.”

  “She is.” Bronwyn throws me a smug look. “She sure is getting bitchy, though.”

  “Oh, yeah. Hormones.” He nods in a serious, sage-like manner.

  “When we get a ride, I’m gonna jump in and leave both of you fuck faces here. Me and flannel baby don’t need either one of you shits.”

  “C’mon, Ivy.” Dom moves toward me, arms stretched as though he intends to wrap them around me. “That’s my baby, too.”

  I move to reach up under my sweatshirt and yank Dominic’s shirt baby out, but the sight of a small green pickup pulling over a few yards ahead changes my mind.

  Dom runs ahead. Bronwyn and I keep silent, letting Dom do all the talking. The driver nods, then motions to the bed of the truck with his hand. Dom gives us the “let’s go” signal and lowers the tailgate to let us in.

  The last of the day begins to disappear behind the mountains. To the west, the sun setting behind the Rockies creates an illusion of a great love-colored inferno that threatens to incinerate us all if not for the great, jagged wall of rock protecting us. We pass the IBM building and the Broken Arrow greeting card company. I try to picture the people working inside those places; to imagine what it feels like to experience the satisfaction of collecting a paycheck. The relief of a lunch break with coworkers. I wonder what lunchtime conversations might be like, or the cheerful small-talk in the parking lot at the end of the day.

  How nice that must be, to blend in with unexceptional people in that banal, work-a-day banter. Like regular people. With shoes.

  “Oh, shit! Ivy! Catch that!” The sound of Bronwyn’s voice makes me jump.

  I turn to look at Bronwyn and see that I’ve given birth to my shirt baby, which is now flapping in the wind, about to take flight. All three of us scramble for it. Our mess of flailing arms and legs all knock into one another for a few seconds before Dom gets a good grip on it and begins stuffing it back under my sweatshirt.

  “Oh, fuck,” he says.

  The truck pulls over. The driver’s eyes bore straight into mine in the rearview mirror during that small fragment of time before we come to a stop that slams the three of us into one another. We’re already hurrying over the sides of the pickup bed when the driver steps out.

  He can’t be much older than any of us, nineteen or twenty at the most.

  “What the fuck is going on here?” His hands shake the way furious people quake just before they lose it and hit someone. “What kind of sick fucks are you?”

  “We’re going,” Dom holds his hands up in front of him. “Sorry, man. Thanks for the ride.”

  The guy gives Dominic a shove, knocking him back a few steps.

  “Hey, c’mon,” Bronwyn takes a step forward. “He told you, we’re going.”

  The driver turns and looks at me, standing there like an idiot with the sleeve of Dominic’s flannel shirt hanging down from my sweatshirt and dangling between my legs. He runs his hands through his hair and shakes his head.

  “Do you think about what you’re doing to other people?” He fixes his eyes on mine and I feel like he’s boring straight through my brain, dissecting me, removing small pieces of me and replacing them with regret. For a second, Dom and Bronwyn aren’t there, it’s just my shame and this stranger’s clear gray eyes.

  He jumps back into his truck. He takes his time reentering traffic and leaves me a little surprised that he doesn’t peel out as he drives away.

  “Dammit,” I say. “Now what?”

  “Don’t worry.” Dom takes out three cigarettes, lights them and hands one to each of us. “We’re not too far away from the detox center.”

  “Okay, uh… why do we want to go there?”

  “I’m friends with a couple of the nurses there.” Dominic had been in the county detox center and the juvenile detention center a few times already. Each time he got locked up in a place for a few days, he returned with a new batch of stories about all the interesting friends and acquaintances he’d made. To hear Dom tell it, these places were constantly populated with some of the most colorful and fascinating people in all of Colorado.

  “Okay,” I say. “Would one of them give us a ride downtown?”

  “I dunno.” He shrugs and flicks an ash. “But, I do know they have a lost and found. Maybe there’s a pair of shoes in there that’ll fit you.”

  5. SWEET EUPHORIA

  AT FIRST, I think the odor of menthol cigarettes and designer impostor body spray is the result of being trapped in a closet stuffed with the discarded and forgotten fragments and garments of countless drunks, derelicts and drifters. After a few moments, I realize it’s the result of being shut in a closet with Glenda.

  I look down at the top of Glenda’s grey frizz-covered head as she digs around in a big cardboard box filled with shoes. I have a pink canvas sneaker with no laces on my right foot. If it wasn’t the size of my own big foot, I’d think this sneaker came from Glenda’s personal shoe collection.

  “The left one’s got to be in here somewhere.” She leans farther down into the box.

  “Anything in a left that I can get my foot into is good enough for me.”

  “What?” She looks up at me, scrunching her nose and squinting. A tiny blind mole rat with a face made of parchment.

  “Maybe I can take a gander.” I’m trying to sound affable and helpful instead of impatient.

  “Have at it. I gotta go out for a smoke. You kids holler if you need me.”

  “Will do. Thanks.”

  I dig into the box and within seconds, I’m holding the ugly pink sneaker’s mate, which is also missing a shoelace. When I emerge from the closet, I see Dominic and Bronwyn standing at the front desk of the detox center.

  Beyond the desk, there’s some kind of lounge or rec room where a droopy-faced bald man and a blond man with an unflattering bowl haircut are sitting at a table. At first, it looks like they’re playing checkers, until I notice there’s no pieces on the board other than a couple of Styrofoam coffee cups.

  Behind the counter is a bottle blond wearing thick black eyeliner. Her lips and eyelids are painted the same shade of purple as the streaks in her hair. A big silver hoop glimmers from one nostril. I try to picture what she might look like underneath all the paint and purple, but it’s impossible. It doesn’t matter. Even with all the shit on her face, she might be the most stunning girl I’ve ever seen.

  Both of my friends gawk at her in fascination. Theresa is studying this girl. Taking a few notes for her Bronwyn building project, I guess.

  I have no doubt that I’m watching D
om fall in love. He manages to take his eyes away from the girl as I approach the counter.

  “Damn, Ivy. Those hooves are the bee's knees.” He gives me an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

  “Fuck you, Dom.”

  “I expected someone in dainty pink slippers to be more of a lady.” Bronwyn just has to chime in.

  I turn to the purple painted blonde. “You busy right now? I need a new best friend. These two are defective.”

  She giggles in that “I’m so cute and shy” sort of way that lets cute girls get away with not having to use any words.

  I introduce myself.

  “I’m Sparrow.” She tilts her head and smiles.

  “We should go,” Bronwyn says, keeping her eyes locked on Sparrow.

  I ask Sparrow if she wants to come with us. Just as she opens her purple lips to respond, Glenda comes back inside, bringing the fresh smell of burned menthol with her.

  “Dammit, girl,” she barks. “I told you to stop sitting at the desk. Get yourself back to the patient lounge.”

  “Maybe next time.” Her tiny hand with its purple nails waves a cute little Sparrow wave. “Bye.”

  We all mumble a goodbye, then I thank Glenda for the shoes and we leave.

  “That was weird,” Bronwyn says as we make our way toward Pearl Street.

  “Yeah it was,” I say. “Sorry you struck out, Dom. I tried to help.”

  He laughs. “S’okay.” He holds up a crumpled piece of paper. “I got her number.”

  “What difference does it make?” Bronwyn jerks her head back, and looks at Dom from the corner of her eyes. “It’s not like you’ll ever invite her over to your house or anything.”

  I nudge her arm. “That’s cold, dude.” I point at the paper. “Why’s it already all crumpled up?”

  “I dunno. From being in my pocket probably.”

  I don’t believe him. He’s been walking with his hand in his pocket, holding tight to that little piece of paper since Sparrow gave it to him. He doesn’t have to say it, I know for right now, that scrap of paper is everything to Dom.