Tied Within

by Rasmenia Massoud

  We count up the few dollars we have between us. A feast under the golden arches is out of the question. We could go to the 29-cent hamburger stand, but Bronwyn says it made her sick once because it isn’t real meat and that’s why she’s probably going to stop eating both real and fake meat. She suggests Lou’s Hot Dog Stand, but me and Dom refuse. Lou scares the shit out of me with his creepy flirting and Old Spice pickle relish smell. Besides that, Dom owes him money for some shitty mushrooms he bought a few months ago.

  We decide to go to the 7-Eleven so Dom can five-finger discount some stuff to grub. We can hang out there for a while, maybe come up with a new plan for the rest of the night before morning arrives and forces us all back home.

  Watching Dominic do his thing is always something to see. He’s an artist. Whatever isn’t behind the counter, or locked up in a glass case, Dominic can walk out with it. He’s never been caught, either. Even when we were little kids, he’d saunter out of Safeway with sodas and big bags of chips or chocolate chip cookies. He doesn’t even try to hide anything. He just glides through the door carrying the shit like he owns it.

  A couple of months ago, he shoplifted a dozen boxes of caffeine pills. He and the twins were up for two whole days, playing Dungeons and Dragons and hanging around the 24-hour breakfast place, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee, making their caffeine buzz even worse.

  “Okay, so what do we want?”

  I shrug and light up a smoke. “I don't care. Whatever. Just something.”

  “No nasty marshmallow shit,” Bronwyn says.

  “Yeah, yeah... I know that.”

  We smoke cigarettes and watch Dom from outside. He nods at the guy working behind the counter, gets a soda from the fountain and starts playing a video game in the corner.

  These things take time. He’d told us that back when we were still in junior high and demanded to know why it took half an hour to yank a bag of chips.

  I walk over to the pay phones, check the coin return for forgotten quarters and find nothing. We sit on the curb, realizing we have a lengthy wait ahead of us.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “What?”

  “You think maybe he was right? I mean, what he said about my shrink and all that?”

  “I dunno. Maybe remembering all the gory details isn’t good, but maybe if you at could remember more stuff about your mom and dad, or understand what it did to Indra, it would be better. To move on, or whatever.”

  “Yeah. I just feel like everyone wants to dwell on that shit, you know? I get tired of my whole life being all about being the murdered people’s kid, or the little sister of the chick who became a total mess after her parents were killed.”

  “So, what should it be about instead?”

  “Whattaya mean?”

  “If your life isn’t about that, then what is it about? What would be better?”

  I think about that and wonder if I’d be angry and broken like Indra if I could remember the sight of my dead father, if I had the burden of memory to carry around all the time.

  Before she went away, my sister asked me if I’d ever heard of phantom limbs.

  “What? Like ghost arms and legs?”

  She shook her head. “Nah. Not really. It’s like, when someone gets a part of themselves amputated. After that limb is cut off, the person can still feel it there for a while. They get a leg chopped off for some reason, but that leg still feels pain. It still itches. Feels like it’s still hanging there, like their body is intact, but it isn’t. It’s a total mindfuck.”

  “That’s weird,” I said, imagining a leg in a jar somewhere, itching with no hands to scratch it.

  “What I’ve got, I think it’s phantom parent syndrome.”

  “Major mindfuck,” I said.

  “Don’t say ‘fuck.’ You’re little. But, yeah. It’s a major mindfuck.”

  Sitting there on the curb with Bronwyn — the new and improved Theresa — I think about how I never had phantom parent syndrome. No itching leg in a jar somewhere. No mindfuck. Just a blank space.

  I tell all this to Bronwyn. I ask her how I’m supposed to make peace with a blank space, with a thing I don’t know.

  She shrugs. “I dunno. I guess you have to imagine things. Or make shit up. You know, sort of fill it in. That’s all you can do with blank spaces.”

  We’re not even expecting it when Dom comes and plops down next to us. He’s holding a loaf of bread, a pack of smokes and a big bag of beef jerky.

  “What’s the bread for?” I poke the bread.

  “For the beef jerky.” He says this like it should have been obvious to me.

  “Beef jerky sandwiches?”

  “Well, why not? The beef jerky was easier to snag than the bologna. And it’s more delicious.”

  “You took the easy way out?” Bronwyn laughs. “You’re getting rusty.”

  “Hey, if you two don’t want any, I’ll eat all the beef jerky sandwiches.”

  “No!” I grab the loaf of bread. “We want, we want.”

  Hunched over and huddled together to hide the evidence of our crime from the night shift clerk inside, we sit there on the curb in front of the 7-Eleven eating beef jerky sandwiches. Aside from a short discussion about which condiment would make them even better, we chew in silence, absorbed in a brief moment of peace.

  11. MOOD FOR TROUBLE

  BRONWYN IS THE first to give voice to what we’re all thinking: that this is boring, our trip was a bust and we may as well head back home.

  “Yeah.” Dom lights a smoke. “Maybe we should’ve come down on a weekend. Weeknights are always sucky for trying to score or find a party.”

  I know it’s an excuse. Anyone could score acid in a college town full of hippies if they really wanted to. We didn’t try. We didn’t want it bad enough and didn’t care about wanting. We all knew it before we began walking down the highway earlier tonight, but no one was going to admit it. We just didn’t want to go home, where we would be surrounded by what we truly are and all that we pretended to be, facing what we might never reach.

  Home never has enough distractions, only walls and mirrors.

  I turn and look at the clock on the wall inside the store. “You think the buses are still running?”

  Bronwyn shakes her head. “Nah. They stopped like, an hour ago. I sure as fuck don’t want to hitchhike all the way back. All the crazies and rapists are out now.”

  I consider telling Bronwyn that the crazies and rapists are out all the time, but I don’t want to be a bummer for anyone right now.

  “We could walk to the bus station. They’ll let you sleep on the benches,” Dom says. “The hobos are cool. Then we can get the first bus in the morning.”

  “It’s kind of far,” Bronwyn yawns.

  “Well, let’s just start walking.” I’m tired of sitting in front of a convenience store. Every time I look inside, the guy behind the counter is staring at us. Or maybe he’s staring past us, into the night, but I feel like a blemish on his view of the parking lot and would rather be where no one will notice me.

  “Hold up.” Dominic reaches into his pocket. “Let’s count our cash again. Maybe we have enough for a taxi.”

  “Dude. Taxis are expensive. That’ll cost way too much.” Shaking her head, Bronwyn reaches into her pocket anyway.

  As we’re digging into our pockets, we’re thrown into a spotlight. Headlights glare in my peripheral vision. Bronwyn and Dom squint. A gleaming, dark blue Nova pulls up right where we’re standing, the front bumper almost touching Bronwyn’s legs.

  “Jesus,” she says in a low voice. “They can’t see us standing here, or what?”

  Two guys who look to be a few years older than the three of us step out. Both of them stare at us as they walk past. The expression on their faces, I’ve seen it before. It’s the same expression anyone gets on their face when someone else in the room farts and they’ve been hit by an unexpected foul stench.

  We add up what’s left of our dollars and coins.<
br />
  “Okay. That’s exactly jack shit.” Dom flicks his cigarette butt out into the parking lot. “But, maybe it’ll get us part of the way. We can just tell him to drive us until the money runs out.”

  I consider this, not totally opposed to it. “Well, do you think we’ll end up very far? Maybe it’s not worth it if we only get a mile up the highway and have to wander around in the dark until morning with all the crazies and rapists.”

  “I dunno.” Dom looks up, past me. The bell on the door behind me rings. I turn around and see the two guys with the Nova and bright headlights coming out of the store, opening the plastic twist caps on their bottles of soda.

  “Hey,” Dom says.

  “Hey.” The driver’s expression of contempt is replaced by amusement.

  “Hey, um… you guys wouldn’t happen to have a couple bucks? We’re trying to scrounge together enough to get a taxi back—”

  The passenger laughs.

  “Fuck off, loser,” Driver says. He flicks his bottle cap at us.

  “Jeez, we were just asking,” I say. “You don’t have to be a dick about it.”

  He shoves me. Not hard, but enough to make me stumble backward into Bronwyn and Dom.

  “Shut up, skank.”

  Passenger laughs and opens his door. He pulls a bottle of something from his pocket and pours some of it into his bottle of soda. “You know, if you little pieces of shit got off your loser asses and got some fucking jobs, you wouldn’t have to bother people with your begging.”

  Driver mumbles, “Fucking losers.”

  “Hey! Punks don’t work!” Dom is shouting, but his tone is all amusement.

  They slam their doors and drive out of the lot, making sure to screech the tires and spray us with tiny bits of parking lot, because there’s really no other way for them to punctuate their statement than by showing off.

  Bronwyn shakes her head. “Idiots. I have a job. Do they think bagging groceries can buy cars like that?”

  “They don’t think,” Dom says. “They don’t have to.”

  Bronwyn looks at him, squints and jerks her head back. “Punks don't work?”

  “What?” Dom shrugs. “I thought it was funny.”

  12. RUSTY CAGE

  WE HADN’T CONSIDERED our collective laziness and fatigue before we left the 7-Eleven for the bus station. Maybe it’s only a couple of miles away, but it might as well be on an island sitting in the middle of some far off planet I’ve never imagined.

  Dominic’s step has lost its bounce. Bronwyn’s lumbering has devolved to full-on foot dragging, every step grinding road gravel between her shoes and blacktop.

  I look down at my own stupid shoes that I dug from a box in a detox closet earlier and think about my shitty boots, lying on the floor of the twins’ basement. Maybe the screeching bird woman has calmed down enough to spot them there, the puta’s cheap pieces of imitation suede and hard plastic. Maybe she’s already carried them out to the green poly cart in front of their house where they’ll remain until trash pickup.

  “What the fuck is that?” Dom’s pointing at an old, rusted out bus. Someone—or a few someones— has spray painted various religious and sexual sentiments all over the bus’s exterior. One artist wants us to be aware that Jesus will be back any minute, now. Another proudly announces, “If it smells like pee, it’s good enough for me!”.

  “Some shitty old bus,” I say.

  “Well, maybe we can go crash in it for a little while.”

  Bronwyn, looking very much like a Theresa right now, is looking at the bus like it’s the place where the monster that lived under her bed is currently shacking up. “I dunno, you guys. Maybe there’s crazy hobos or some shit living in there. Or rats. Or spiders. Probably spiders for sure.”

  “Okay,” Dom says. “I’ll go peek in the windows first.”

  We stand there watching while Dom walks over to the bus and steps up on the rear bumper. He puts his face up to the glass and curves his hands around his eyes. He steps down, shaking his head. “It’s cool. Let’s just lay low in there. At least until the buses get going again.”

  “If the door opens,” I say.

  “The door’ll open. Probably.”

  Inside the bus, I expect it to smell like hobo shit and vomit, but instead, it smells like dust and rotted fabric. Most of the seats have been removed, so we lay our sweatshirts and the flannel shirt baby out on the floor and lay down shoulder-to-shoulder with Dom sandwiched in the middle.

  “Hey, Dom.” Bronwyn, she even sounds like a Theresa right now.

  “Yeah?”

  “You gonna call that Sparrow chick?”

  “Yeah. I think so. I’ll probably try tomorrow. Maybe she won’t be home yet, but she can’t stay in detox for more than a few days at a time.”

  “Right on.”

  The way Bronwyn says this makes me think that nothing is right on for her inside, but I don’t know if she’s jealous of Sparrow, wishing she was in a bed somewhere instead of in the middle of another one of our shit-brained adventures, or preoccupied with thoughts of how to get her lipstick just right, the way that little Sparrow does.

  I begin to drowse off wondering about Bronwyn, realizing that I kind of miss the days when she was just plain old Theresa. Then Dominic, who must be drowse-wondering too, snaps me awake when he starts wondering out-loud.

  “Now that we’ve finally finished high school, don’t you think about the version of you that exists like, ten years from now? Don’t you wonder what they do and what they’re like and stuff?”

  “Nope.” Bronwyn yawns. “I know what future me is doing. She’s living in a cool studio apartment in Manhattan. She’s got a man who’s tall and buff who wears suits, looking all fucking sharp and shit. A Samoan dude with nice facial hair. Or a black businessman dude. I’m gonna have an office in some classy high-rise. Wall-to-wall windows and a nice view of the city. No Theresa. No small town bullshit. Fuck yeah.”

  I try to imagine future Bronwyn and wonder what her name will be. Whose face she’ll have. I see her in my mind’s eye, staring back at her reflection in her high-rise window, but it’s all just blurry city lights twinkling where a face should be.

  “What about you?” She asks Dom.

  “Ah, I dunno. Something real basic, ya know? Like something where I work hard all day. A mechanic, or city worker… or like those construction guys. I come home and I gotta wash my hands first thing, 'cause they’re all grubby from working all day and my wife wants me to clean up to eat dinner. Then we hang out. We laugh and pay bills. We tuck in the kids and maybe sometimes one of them has a nightmare, or gets in a fight at school, so we both sit there on the side of his bed and talk to him, being really cool parents, teaching him stuff.”

  I laugh. “So, you wanna be that show Roseanne when you grow up.”

  “Yeah, I guess. But you know, with a nice wife, not a loud one who’s always yelling at everybody.”

  Bronwyn bursts out laughing so abruptly that at first, I think she’s choking.

  Dom laughs, too. “Aw, fuck you guys.”

  After the giggling dies down, Bronwyn nails me. “What about you, Ivy?”

  I consider for a moment. I try to find something appealing about each of their scenarios, but I can’t. I search to come up with one of my own, but come up with nothing. All I can think about is my lost shoes and the lost hamster scratching from inside the bathroom wall.

  “I dunno. I never really thought much about it. Is that kind of fucked up?”

  Dom turns his head and looks me in the eye. “Never? Not even once?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Well, I don’t know if it’s fucked up, but you’re gonna have to start thinking about it sooner or later. The future catches up with you. You don’t want to be standing there like a chump with nothing to do when it shows up. Not saying you have to plan out college and every little detail, but you know… maybe think about stuff you want. Stuff you dream about that you can’t have now.” />
  “I guess I’ve been busy dreaming about stuff that already happened instead of stuff that might happen, or that I want to happen.”

  “That’s the cool thing about the past,” Bronwyn says, “It’s temporary. If you don’t like the one you have, you can just keep making new ones until you find one that’s a good fit.”

  I don’t know how to find the future, or where to start looking for it. I close my eyes and wish I could be as strong as Bronwyn; strong enough to look at the prototype of me and shove her down in a hole where no one can see her anymore.

  13. MIND RIOT

  FINDING COMFORT ON the floor of a strange, abandoned bus is easier than I thought it might be, but the three of us had slept crammed together in stranger, darker places. When Bronwyn was still a Theresa who had no big city plans for Bronwyn, we used to sit in a big drainage pipe that we believed was a mysterious tunnel that led to other worlds. Every time, we’d come out of our magical tunnel stinking and smeared with ditch slime. Until Theresa’s dad found us in there one day and grounded her for two weeks. He told Aunt Stacey, who completely flipped, crying and shouting at me about how we could have drowned in there.

  Then Dom and the Zombies moved in next door, Theresa’s dad split for good and Dominic took us on an expedition past the field at the end of our street. Underneath a big cottonwood tree, there was a hole in the ground and a ladder. We climbed down there and found nothing but a big, empty concrete room.

  “Some old fallout shelter,” he’d told us. “But now there’s no house or anything around here, so it’s just an underground room without a door.”

  It was dirty, damp and full of spiders, but it was our place. When Indra and Aunt Stacey screamed at one another, when Theresa ran out of the house during another one of her mom’s drunken tirades, and when Dom could no longer tolerate the hospital smell of his home, we went underground.

  We protected ourselves and each other from the fallout.

  The bus is uncomfortable. Unfamiliar. A part of me wants us to be back in our hole in the ground, but somehow, being squished together on the floor, combined with my fatigue and gravel-bruised face makes me tired enough to feel like I’m floating. I know Aunt Stacey will make me feel terrible when I get back home in the morning, but for now, it doesn’t matter.