He watched me open the door, and I noticed he was still sitting there after I looked back right before the door shut behind me. I knew he’d sit there until I texted him. That’s just how Briggs was. The eyes that kept me safe, Kean Briggs seemed to have my back even when I didn’t know about it. Broken by his past, just like me, we connected instantly the first time we met. It didn’t matter who we were, everyone at one point or another has been broken, and you could either sweep up the pieces and throw them away, or find some crazy glue. But through our unspoken words; his—the injustice of war and mine—the hidden marks of abusive parents, we found a safe haven in each other’s company. Briggs has never gone into detail about the war, or the appalling things he saw; maybe he didn’t because he wanted to protect me. Maybe someday he’d open up about it. All I knew at that moment was I couldn’t have been happier to have him in my corner.
The common entry of the building looked the same as my eyes scanned the carpet leading to the stairway. I shuffled toward the elevator, but then decided to climb the stairs. By the second flight my heart began to thrash in my chest. I didn’t want to go into my apartment alone, not because I thought someone could be there, but because I didn’t want to see all the blood, and leftover mess from what happened just three days ago. I pulled my key out from my purse, slipped it into my lock and twisted. It was the longest fifteen seconds in my entire life. Longer than the disgusting fucks I took when I was just seventeen years old and started selling my body. Longer than the Greyhound bus ride I had to take home from Sonora when I was fifteen because my parents got super wasted and kicked me out of our cabin for not eating all of my dinner. When I pushed my apartment door open it was like cracking the doors to Hell and waiting for the devil himself to invite me in. I squeezed my eyes shut with an extended blink before I opened them and stepped inside my postage-stamp-studio apartment.
I peered around the room, no blood on the hardwood floors; the broken table next to my bed was gone and replaced by another table half its size. Both, Sybil’s and my beds were made and covered with new bedspreads. Any evidence that a crime had been committed here didn’t exist. Even the tinge of blood I had smelled days ago was gone.
My phone chimed with a message from Briggs, pulling my attention from the room.
BRIGGS: HEY, U OK? U DIDN’T MESSAGE ME!
ME: Sorry. I’m fine. Hey, did you clean up my apartment?
BRIGGS: MAYBE.
ME: Come on . . .
BRIGGS: I HAVE MY WAYS. I DIDN’T WANT YOU TO COME HOME TO THAT MESS.
ME: Thanks Briggs. I really appreciate it. Thank you for making me feel safe.
BRIGGS: GLAD YOU’RE SAFE. SLEEP TIGHT, I’LL CALL IN THE MORNING.
ME: Thanks
Briggs wasn’t one to message emoticons in texts but he always used shouty caps. He claimed his phone was stuck on caps lock, but I think it was the only way he believed he could be heard over the noise in his head. I looked around, knowing he came back to my apartment and took care of everything—made me feel like I wasn’t so empty or alone in this world.
But even with Briggs making my apartment comfortable again, every time I closed my eyes some nightmare would take over. If it wasn’t Sybil’s sister, Martie, who told me how she loved Shane, and how she’d never lose him to a whore like me, or the visions of Dax beating the shit out of Sybil, it was the reality of my life before meeting Shane tainting my mind. It was my fucked up life that I so desperately hated, but tightly clung to for refuge. Insecurity once again wrapped its gnarled hand around my thoughts and made sure my sleep wasn’t peaceful.
“Well, I like the way the mud feels squishing through my fingers,” I say as I push my hands back into the cold wet mud, and pull out a glob I roll between my palms.
“Well, then I’ll be the salesman and you be the baking lady,” Billy says looking at the dry mud pies we left out from the day before. “Because my momma doesn’t want me dirty before church.”
I think about the word church, something my parents really never talk about. I wonder if Billy likes going, because every time he talks about it he scrunches up his freckly nose. I wonder if God lives in his church, but I never ask because I don’t want Billy to know we aren’t “God people” like he and his family are. It makes me feel lonely and that makes my tummy ache.
I scoop up a clump of mud, before I pat it into a round flat pancake, I guess I’m the only one making the mud pies today. I don’t care, I like playing with Billy, he makes me feel special.
“Look at all these pies!” I sing, hoping to erase the God fear in my belly.
“They are so pretty, just like you Rosalie,” Billy answers before he leans over and kisses my cheek.
My tummy does somersaults.
It scares me.
I don’t understand why he kisses me.
It confuses me.
I drop the mud pie and I run all the way home.
My Mary Janes are caked with dirt, I flip them off at the front porch, and hurry into the kitchen. I don’t want any reason to make mom mad and I hope I catch her before she swallows the devil’s poison.
“Mom, mom, Billy and I were making mud pies and he kissed me, right here!” I cry, pointing to my left cheek. Swirly feelings are rumbling around in my belly.
Worrying about boy germs making me sick, when I look up at her and notice her blood-red eyes, and then see the devil’s poison behind her and on the counter, half empty . . . I’m too late.