When the Lights Go Out(82)

“Wait for me,” he said.

Standing on the street corner in the dark autumn night, I leaned against a streetlamp that didn’t give off an ounce of light. Getting absorbed by blackness until even I wasn’t sure if I was still there. It was raining still, a fine mist in the air, one which seemed to levitate and not fall.

And then suddenly there were lips on my neck, hands kneading my skin, though who they belonged to, I couldn’t see. It was far too dark to see, but it didn’t matter to me. I knew only that my extremities were numb from the alcohol, and it was cathartic to me, strange hands wandering along the landscape of my skin, exploring the valleys and hills with a certain vehemence I’d never felt before. A body pressed against mine, pinning me to the streetlamp, whispering breathless words into the lobe of an ear.

“Where’s your car? I’ll drive.”

I heard the sound of an engine gunning, the stars coming at me at a dizzying speed before the world turned black again, and then the scratch of facial hair on my cheek, a hand groping at my chest with the impatience of a sixteen-year-old boy. A hasty man pawed at me, tearing at my blouse. What buttons remained clung to the fabric by strings, as he pushed me into the back seat of the car, moving with the deftness and agility of someone who knew what they were doing, of someone who had a history of strange women in the back seats of cars.

I felt the force of my skirt getting thrust clear up to my rib cage. The scratch of a fingernail as he tore at my panties, pushing them aside. The sound of a moan, my own forced moan tolling through the airless space because, even with the continuous thrust of his hips into me, I felt nothing and I wanted more than anything to feel something, to feel anything, because feeling something was far better than feeling nothing, and in that moment all I felt was nothing. Nothing that mattered anyway.

Instead, hot breath on the lobe of my ear. Handfuls of hair being clenched between hands, tugged consciously or unconsciously, I didn’t know. Reggae music on a car stereo.

He panted out a name in rhythm, “Anna, Anna.” Did he think that that was my name, Anna, or was there another woman in his life, a woman named Anna, and he was only pretending that I was her? I replied with “Yes, yes!” deciding that I would be his Anna if that’s who he wanted me to be. A seat belt buckle drilled a hole into the small of my back, plastic plunging itself into me with every thrust of his hips, leaving its mark, though still I felt nothing, nothing at all, not until finally a spasm tore through him like a lightning strike and he collapsed against me, and then there was the weight of him, no longer supported by his own hands.

The weight of him. That I felt.

And then weightlessness.

A car door opened and closed and then there was silence.

He was gone.

I woke up in the morning in the back seat of my car, parked at the far edge of a public playground parking lot, beneath the shadow of a tree, my skirt still thrust clear up to my rib cage, the rest of me exposed, hidden only by the dewdrops that had settled on the windows overnight.





jessie

My heart beats inside me like a cheetah. I’m screaming.

“Psst. Hey you, hey, Jessie.”

There’s a hand at my shoulder, rattling me. It’s gentle, but insistent. I jerk away from the hand, arms flailing. I’m no longer falling.

A mouth presses closely to my ear, speaks in a breathy voice. A stage whisper. “Earth to Jessie,” she says, and it’s a numbing voice. A hypnotic voice. The perfect opiate.

I imagine where I am. On the grass. Body in bits on the ground, bleeding and broken, hardly able to move. In the distance, the sound of an ambulance’s wailing siren as my father walks away from the scene unscathed.

The voice says it’s okay, it’s okay, three times or more while stroking my hair. I can’t open my eyes. And yet I see her, a woman hunched over me on the lawn, while others crowd around her. She’s gawking, her eyes fixated on the most gruesome parts of my battered body. A leg that bends backward, organs that protrude from the skin.

I know the voice. I’ve heard it before. But I can’t place it.

I’m swimming beneath water. Sounds are muffled above my head. The dropping of a needle onto an old vintage vinyl record. Voices talking. A measured, high-pitched ping. Ping, and then nothing. Ping, and then nothing. Ping, ping. Voices in the background. Talking. Saying things like morphine and slipper socks and ice chips.

When I go to open my eyes, they’re sealed shut. Taped down. Impossible to open.

My hands rise and I’m surprised to find that I can still move them, my arms and hands. That they’re not broken after all. Not shattered into a million pieces across the concrete.

I press the heels of my hands against my eyes and rub hard, wiping the crusty discharge. Inside, my heart pounds hard. A song begins to play. Quietly. Background music. It’s a song I know well because it’s Mom’s favorite song.

When I finally get my eyelids to lift, all I see is yellow. A blinding yellow light.

And that’s when I know that I’m dead. That’s the first clue.

The yellow light charges my eyes. It stuns and overpowers them, making them close again because I can’t stand to keep them open; it hurts too much. I blink repeatedly, trying to adapt to the light. To orient myself, to find a reference point, to figure out where I am.

The second clue that I have that I’m dead is Mom. Because Mom is also dead. And yet, as I open my eyes, she’s here, sitting five or six feet from me. She sits upright, on some sort of reclining armchair with castors on its feet, her gaunt legs propped on the chair’s footrest. She’s dressed in a roomy gown that slips carelessly from a shoulder, the hair on her head merely fuzz, as it was the last time I laid eyes on her alive. Which is why I know this is some sort of afterlife we’re stuck in. Mom and me.