Castles (17 page)

So I started to think along these lines, the lines that put Steve on the same cutting board as an expensive roast or a rib eye steak, primed for cutting and shaping and seasoning and cooking up into a tasty meal. Of course, every time my finger traced a Y-pattern on his chest like a pathologist might do to a nameless cadaver, I returned to the tongue. How would that cut, how pliable would it be under a knife, how tasty would it be if I sautéed it in garlic and rosemary and butter?

Like all men, Steve was oblivious to thoughts he didn't have and even if he asked me what I was thinking at any given time, he would be oblivious to its meaning. I'd come to realize by my twentieth birthday that men are led by their tongues and led poorly. Taste and word choice are hilariously wrong, and although they try to use their brains for good, they lack a clear picture of the whole. They can only see parts.

The other three boys were just like Steve in maturity—or the lack thereof—and in intellect. The giraffe boy and the hyena were potheads and often came over with a bag of weed to share amongst them. The third boy was quieter, but that didn't mean he wasn't also led by his tongue and incapable of doing good in the world. He was shaped like an exercise ball, round in the head with no neck to be sure of. His shoulders tapered out to his midsection where a heap of fat had congregated and forced him to waddle when he walked in the door. I really don't know if he was able to see his penis if he didn't stare in a mirror, and I made a mental note to show it to him after I cut it off, right before he died.

I often shot glances at them after reading a particular section of my book, and looked for whatever it was I felt like cutting in the folds of the boys. There were the obvious appendages—the penis, a finger or toe here, the tongue. Then there was the ear and what would happen if I pushed a barbeque skewer through the canal only an inch and a quarter versus three or four inches. I could puncture the eardrum and maybe lodge the needle of the skewer into the cochlea. If I used a knitting needle, however, I wondered if I could hook the snail-like feature and pull it out to examine. How neat would it be to show the hyena what his interior ear looked like if he couldn't hear himself scream?

I smiled at my desires. Never once did it occur to me my desires would become my obsession and I would be going above and beyond what Grandma and the dust eels asked of me.

They just wanted me to cut out the tongue.

I wanted to cut out so much more.

After the first month of random poker nights, I'd become numb to the idea. Steve hadn't cared that I initially complained, nor had he sought to lessen the burden of cleaning up by helping out around the house when the night was over and the morning sun shone through the kitchen window onto a mess of cups and chips and beer and bottles of liquor half-empty. It was always my responsibility, much like it had been when it was just Mama's mess. Steve's messes, however, were so much worse.

"Boys are coming over," Steve said from the front door as he walked in from work. "Clean up, will you?"

I didn't argue, but I guess my face did display a certain distaste for the idea.

"You got a problem?" he asked me. "This place is a pig sty. Clean it up."

"I could use a little help," I said.

The first time Steve hit me, I was already on the floor. This time, however, I had been walking past him on my way to the kitchen. I stumbled backward when his fist landed against my cheek. I tripped over the coffee table and crashed sideways into the couch. Something sharp lanced my shoulder.

I looked back at him, more surprised than angry. I think my thoughts at that moment in my life must have revolved around why I asked for help, not that I'd been hit. "I'm sorry," I muttered through the pain in my cheek.

"Now look what you made me do," Steve said. It was a matter-of-fact statement, not an apology of any sort. "And you're bleeding on the damn couch."

I grabbed my shoulder and saw the red stain on the cushion, like a flower painted in the fabric.

"Clean it up," he said again. There was another threat of violence in his voice. He stomped over to the couch. Reflexively, I shielded my face. Rather than hit me, though, he grabbed the back of my hair and pulled me to my knees. "Clean that up, too." He angled my head around and pushed my face in the wet cushion. "I don't need my friends seeing what a loser of a woman I have."

You might think I had the common sense to walk away from the situation, much like I walked away from other situations in the past where there was a certain threat of violence. But I found myself frozen, glued in place like a china doll that'd just been lobbed across the room and shattered. It wasn't that I didn't want to leave, I think. I
couldn't
leave. This was my house, where I'd grown up. This was home.

I did as I was told. I bandaged my shoulder, cleaned the kitchen, washed the blood out of the couch the best I could with a cold washcloth and finally draped Grandma's afghan over it. Steve remained in the bedroom most of the time, likely napping or mentally preparing himself for another fun-filled night of friends.

I fumed, of course. Who wouldn't? In that fuming, I thought of more things I could do to Steve and his friends, more ways I could hurt them. I'm pretty sure that hatred fueled me; I could have easily been on empty and simply put a knife to my wrists that night. The thought certainly crossed my mind.

"Are you done?" Steve asked from the hallway. He looked groggy.

I didn't say anything. I was done, and he knew it. The trailer had never been this clean since Grandma was alive. I'd even laid a bowl of chips on the table, although I had wished they were poisoned.

I pushed past Steve and went to my room—my old room. I hadn't done much with it since Mama died and Steve moved in with me. The bed was made, done up with an old quilt Grandma had made for me when I was a baby. The Barbie nightlight still shone in the corner. My dresser still had clothes I hadn't fit into since I was six or seven.

Flopping on the bed in an exhausted and angry huff, I closed my eyes and shut out the world.

When I opened them again, the sun had set and the noise of raucous laughter echoed through the trailer. The boys were over and they were already drunk. I didn't know how long I'd been asleep, but I hoped it was long enough that the party would be wrapping up soon and I wouldn't have to deal with anyone. My cheek still ached and a quick glance in the mirror over my dresser confirmed that I did, indeed, wear my shame that night.

"You want to fuck her, don't you?" I heard Steve say through a drunken slur.

"She's all used up," another boy said. I thought it might be the hyena, but I couldn't be sure.

The exchange continued for several minutes. Something about a whore, a piece of trash that deserves a big piece of meat. I didn't think it was me until I heard Steve say: "She's in her old room. You want me to get her?"

My heart pounded in my chest and I took in a sharp breath. If I had been groggily listening to the first part of the exchange, I was awake now. The days of inappropriate teasing and pulling up my nightgown, patting my butt and ogling my boobs had just ended. They may have been drunk, but I heard conviction in their voices.

I also realized Steve wasn't going to stop them.

A quick flash of memory hit me. I was in the desert, scratched up and crying. A man stood over me as he stuffed his penis back in his pants. My thighs ached. My stomach felt like it had been hit with a baseball bat. Tears stung my eyes as I looked up at him, at the man Mama brought home, at the man who took a piece of me away.

"
That's what good girls like you get
," I heard Alfie say through my fear-induced hallucination.

No matter how hard I prayed it would never happen to me again, no matter what I did to protect myself from people like him, no matter how many nights I dreamed of what I would do if ever put in that situation . . . it was about to happen again.

I pushed up from my bed and unlatched the window.

Not this time, damn it.

I didn't sleep at all that night. I had run through the desert in my nightgown and climbed inside the Bus. I hid in the back where Michael had been, where Dusty had been, where all the bricks to Grandma's castle had been laid out and prepared for the eels. I wasn't afraid of them, though. I wasn't even mortified at the idea that an unknown number of storms had come to this spot and swept out an unknown number of messes.

Didn't they all deserve it?

The night seemed to last forever. I was cold in my nightgown and curled myself into a fetal position on the floor of the Bus. I couldn't sleep but I could dream. I prayed for Grandma, for Mama, for anyone to come and talk to me. I didn't want them to tell me it would be okay or that castles in the sky took patience to build. I wanted them to tell me what to do next and when to do it. The mess I was in with Steve was too large, too dangerous. It needed a divine broom to clean up and the longer I waited or let it get worse, the more ferocious the storm would have to be.

Guidance. That's all I wanted.

I heard Mama in the darkness of the Bus. She whispered something about how she wasn't strong enough. It was a memory, one from the day she was killed. I had hoped for more. I hadn't seen Grandma in a while and there had been no storms of note since the night the windows shattered in the trailer. It was as if I had been abandoned, left without a broom in the mess I had created.

A wave of sadness flushed over me, replacing the fear that had driven me to the Bus. I was alone, more so than ever before, and I felt God had turned His back on me. The castle I was supposed to build could not have been any more distant from possibility.

I cried until the sun crested the mountains in the distance. I cried until it had crawled patiently into the sky and hung over the Bus, baking the desert floor and the inside of the Bus. I cried until the sweat on my body stopped beading up and I felt thirsty, hungry, anxious.

I left the Bus when the sun was still high and crossed the desert floor in my slippers. In the distance, I saw a billow of clouds, white against the sun-bleached horizon. It wasn't big enough to carry the eels, to carry God's broom and sweep clean my mess, and this saddened me. As I walked, I began to see the whole. My brain just couldn't see the parts any more.

Grandma and Mama
had
been talking to me. If I was to clean up the mess, I had to do it on my own.

I stepped up on the porch of the trailer, relieved the boys had gone home. Steve would be at work and I could shower and clean up their mess before he got home. Maybe I would even make him a nice dinner before I cut out his heart with some cutting shears.

It was not to be so simple.

The boys were laid out on the floor of the trailer. They must have stayed up all night, indulging in anything they could find. Pot roaches littered an ashtray on the coffee table, liquor bottles were turned over empty, beer cans were tossed in the corner of the kitchen as if they had made only the weakest attempt at getting them in the trash can.

Steve was awake. He sat on the couch and stared at me. His hands rested on his thighs, the index finger of his right hand tapping away a pattern of impatience and anger. His eyes were bloodshot, black irises floating in pools of red. His lips were pursed so tightly, I thought he might break a blood vessel.

"Where were you?" he asked. His tone was not calm, not menacing, not anything remotely . . . human.

I swallowed, still in shock at finding the boys in the trailer and Steve on the couch. They were supposed to be gone.

"I missed you," he said in that same inhuman voice. There was no flicker in the eyes, though. No sign of the devil. They were simply red and piercing.

The other boys stirred. The hyena sat up slowly and grabbed his head. The giraffe boy was next. The fat lard snored in front of the television.

"We wanted you to play with us," Steve said. He stood up, his frame no longer soft and supple, but riddled with tension. He took a step toward me as I took a step back. The door was still open, but in my slippers I knew I couldn't run very far before he'd catch me.

The hyena stopped rubbing his head and stood up. He was larger than I thought originally. The two of them stood side by side, one the man I'd foolishly given my heart to, the other a sick bastard without morals.

"I . . . I was out," I said. The words caught up in my throat and I could hear the fear in them. "I needed fresh air."

Steve took another step forward, followed by the hyena. The giraffe boy stood as well, although I couldn't see any hate in his face. He looked more like he was about to throw up on my carpet.

"I don't remember telling you that you could leave," Steve said. It was strange to hear him talk this way, but as I sit here now and write it all down, I can see he was no better than Alfie, no better than Mr. Pulman, no better than the lowest piece of shit in the lowest level of Hell. He was manipulative, angry, vile, mean and abusive. I don't know why I loved him so much.

The slam of the door behind me was the first time I noticed the fat boy had moved. He pushed me from behind toward the approach of Steve and the hyena. It was the hyena who caught my fall in an odd embrace, and I felt his hands shift from my back to my breasts. He squeezed tightly.

Steve turned away and returned to the couch. "Have your fun," he said. "She deserves it."

As I was pushed to the floor, Grandma's nightgown torn from my body in a painful rip, I heard Steve laugh and I imagined his tongue in my clenched fist.

Steve had the nerve to beat me up later that night and accuse me of sleeping with his friends. He threatened me with each slap to my face or each kick to my ribs as I bled on the living room carpet. The other boys had left in a rush and I was alone with Steve.

I don't remember any of the words he said to me that night. I've said it before and I'll say it again: there are moments in my life that stick to my memory. There are snippets of life that get pasted in a scrapbook for you to look over every once in a while. You relive an event, a smell or a sight. You catalog these things in your head. But no matter how hard you try, you will never remember everything. There will be gaps, there will be distortions, there will be things that interfere with your vision of what was until that vision becomes so clouded you don't know if it really happened. I long ago accepted that I wouldn't remember everything. If I tried, my vision would cloud as my mind tried to fill in the pieces. So what I relate to you, what I tell you, is what I decided to keep.