The Phoenix Compound
November 18
I see him standing in the open doorway, long after his wife and his child are asleep, his face intently staring at something neither of us can see. I cross the room, bare feet padding without sound on concrete, and stand beside him. A night breeze pushes hot air through the weave of my t-shirt.
"Too hot to sleep," he says.
"Is that all?"
"No, not really."
"What did you say to him?"
"Nothing important."
"What'd he say to you?"
"That he was sorry."
"I've always known that."
The wind stirs the silence; hot and dry and empty.
"Did you see his nose?"
"It was bleeding. Good."
"It didn't stop."
"Maybe it was too soon."
"It always stopped before."
"What are you saying?"
"He said he let them do things to him so he could get across the border."
"You don't owe him, Marie. He made his choice."
"I know."
"And?"
"It should have stopped bleeding."
Fog: Marie
You're not naked; there is a cotton t-shirt and panties between you and the water, and there's no one in the room to see you even if you were, but you don't want to take that chance. The shower room is dirty: black mold in the creases of the broken tiles, brick red rust on the showerhead, a drowned roach in the corner of the stall. You wear your socks to prevent fungus between your toes, but you can't help feeling pretentious. Who are you to judge the building when you're just as filthy? More filthy.
Black mold bruises on your arms (wrists and elbows and Random spaces in between), on your legs (ankles and kneecaps and higher), on your neck, spreading along the side of your jaw. Rust brown streaks of dried blood. More blood than you want to think about, in more places than you want to see. Some of it you can only feel, like the patch of matted hair at the back of your head. It's swollen; maybe even a concussion. Drowning roaches crawl in your mind, climbing over one another in waterlogged desperation to escape the chaos.
You are a victim; you are a killer. You are defenseless, you are deadly. Either way, you've lost something. You're just not sure what.
The water is ice cold, death on the skin in January, but it's okay. It hurts, at first, but it turns numb quicker than expected, and Soon you don't even notice it. This reminds you of losing him. Pain, then unexpected numbness, and then nothing. They say you are in greatest danger of losing limbs to frostbite if you can no longer feel anything. You wonder if this applies to him. If his memories will turn black, wither, and then fall from your mind into the snow, hard frozen nubs.
No; it won't be that easy. Because you didn't lose him after all. He left. You want to say you are abandoned; forsaken, but you don't like the sound of those words. One is too helpless, the other too dramatic for this. This is too real for drama and emotion. It just happens, one awful event at a time, and you've survived it for five days now. Days or years? Time has always been relative for you; too long when it should be short and too short when it mattered the most.
You turn off the shower, watch the last bit of blood swirl down The sink with the soapsuds. You shiver uncontrollably as you dry the beads of water from your skin, but at least it's movement. Part of you just wants to sink to the floor, in the corner, and never move again. Maybe the shiver is an involuntary protection against that.
There is no way to dry your hair; you try with paper towels and an electric hand-drier, but it is too long and too thick. Outside it is winter; pneumonia will most likely set in. You think of it as an abstract: sickness is a plant shriveling up by a windowpane, coughing is the rattling of the frame when a train passes by, fever is the hot, moist air beneath a radiator that looses all its heat into the floor.
You dress at your normal rate even though it hurts; no point in indulging in unnecessary attention to weakness. The gloves go on last; they are all you have managed to salvage. They tore the cloak down the middle, they took his scarf. Protest was futile, then, and when it came time to leave, you didn't have the chance to look for it.
The door to the truck stop swings shut behind you; an old man is waiting for you outside, holding out a doughnut and a cup of coffee.
(What's this?)
You eye the food with suspicion and craving, then direct the scrutiny to his face. He found you on the road, you agreed to get into his truck because you saw the rosary hanging from his rear view mirror and the picture of the Virgin tucked against his dashboard. He is old enough to be your grandfather; this does not mean it is safe but it does mean you will take the chance. You have to get away, and this is your only option. If worse comes to worse, you still have the knife.
(Breakfast. You look like you haven't seen food in a while.
Yeah. A while.)
It's been five days; you don't tell him that.
(Then what are you waitin' fer? Eat.
I don't have any money to pay you for it.
I wasn't askin' for cash. You're too skinny as it is...go on, take it.
Thank you.)
You remember to smile when you take the food from him, remember to resist the urge to stuff the entire doughnut into your mouth at once.
(Where did you say you were going again?
Detroit. Does that matter?
No, not really. Anywhere is good.
You sure you're not in any trouble?
I'm sure.
Family problems? Boyfriend?
Boyfriend.)
Only a partial lie. He looks at the bruises on your jaw and doesn't ask again. His truck is just across the parking lot, but you can barely see it through the early morning fog. You follow him slowly, cautiously, checking behind and before at all times. A car door slams. You jump. It is the little things that will scare you now: bumps on the wall and footsteps outside the door, darkness without a nightlight. What else is there to frighten you? The big things have come and gone.
You are half inside the door, sitting on the step and drinking your coffee as the old man checks his cargo, when you see the other car pull up. It's a truck --faded green and beat up-- but the vehicle isn't so important. It's the man you see getting out of the passenger side, nodding in curt thanks to the driver.
Maybe it's the fog; maybe you're dreaming. He can't be who he looks like, but the details are there and they are concrete. A blue flannel shirt (just like the last time you saw him, only stained, you ignore the fact that it could be blood), sideburns, a scowl across his mouth. And beneath the scowl, fear. Or hope. Or both. You can hear it in his voice when he starts to shout.
"Marie!"
The sound is picked up and echoed by the fog, stretched out, lingering. You freeze at first, terrified he has seen you, but then you realize that his voice is not a statement but a question. He doesn't see you. He is searching for you.
"Marie, are you here? Marie!"
He is alive; this is a brightness, a flicker of a match, though not enough to light any candles or start any fires.
You watch your spirit run to him, flying across the snowy parking lot, arms outstretched. He catches you and hugs you so hard he lifts your feet off the ground. He cries into your hair; you cry onto his shirt collar. There is an inadvertent brush of a bruise; you will wince; the entire story comes out in bits and pieces later that evening, in a cheap hotel room. It is hard but you get through it without crying. He touches you and heals you, puts himself inside your head to drown out the other voices.
But this is not the truth; it is another dream, and you know it is because nothing is that easy anymore. You ache for him. You ache for your silence, but you do not say a word. What would you say? I'm here, come get me. Come find out everything that they did to me, everything that broke me. Come be with me so you can leave me again.
"You ready to go, miss?" The old man is back; he climbs into his seat and holds out his hand to help you into the cab.
You drop your empty coffee cup to the ground; crush the plastic beneath your heel. You don't dare look over your shoulder; you will lose your nerve and run back to the man calling your name.
This isn't me abandoning him, you say to yourself. He left me first.v
"Yes." You climb into the cab and shut the door. "I'm ready."
As the truck's engines roar to life, you risk one last glance out the window. He is moving inside now, no doubt to check the bathrooms and question the cashier. Maybe he'll find you later on down the road. Maybe by then you will be able to let yourself be found.
Your last glimpse of the man who said he loved you is of his back as he walks away.
He is surreal in the mist, a disembodied spirit, a lost prayer.
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