Naked, on the Edge (22 page)

Carol didn’t ride the school bus. Since moving to Parkersburg three months earlier to live in an apartment on Franklin Alley with Mrs. Jones, her new foster mother, Carol had become the target of every joke imaginable to the middle school mind. Of course, it was no surprise. No matter where she’d lived, she’d been the brunt of ridicule. She was homely to most people and hesitant in her speech. She had no sense of fashion. She was painfully shy. No, she was never surprised others taunted her, but was always disappointed. So to avoid some of the pain, she told Mrs. Jones she would rather walk to school than ride. Mrs. Jones didn’t care. She had three other foster kids to tend to.

Then two days ago, Rachel and Philly pulled Carol aside at lunch and told her they’d be her friend if she played Truth or Dare with them.

In the corner of the cafeteria, Rachel said, “So, what is it? Truth or dare?”

Carol hesitated. “Truth.”

Rachel grinned. “Okay. Why’re you in foster care?”

Carol’s eyes went wide. “No, wait. I meant dare.”

“You can’t change your mind like that.”

“Really, I meant dare. I…I just said it wrong.”

Rachel looked at Philly. Philly looked at Rachel.

“Well, okay,” Rachel grumbled. “Here’s the dare. We want you to break into a house for us.”

Carol frowned. She’d never done anything really bad before. Her grandmother and mother would be horrified. They always told her she was special, that people would not understand her, and so she would have to be very, very careful throughout her life.

But here was a chance for friends.

“Okay.”

“Okay, then what house?” asked Philly.

“There’s one on Ann Street.”

The decision was made.

And now she had broken into the house, broken the law, and broken her thumbnail, but she still had no friends.

She closed her eyes, and thought of her grandmother. All the woman had done was help a detective find the body of a murdered man after the case had gone cold, but knowing where the body was lead to suspicion, planted evidence, and conviction. Then Carol’s mother, who’d left her cruel husband when Carol was six, was declared insane and placed in an institution. Carol’s father actually had evidence – recordings of Carol’s mother screaming in the voices of those who had passed on, recorded videos of her in trances on the floor. Her institutionalization was to be intensive though not necessarily permanent, but she lost custody of Carol to the father, who, in a matter of weeks decided he didn’t want her. This landed Carol in one foster home after another. She bounced around the state, kicked out time and again because her foster families found her extremely unsettling, overly sensitive.

Peculiar.

Carol sighed. A song she’d heard and liked long ago came back to mind. It made her happy and sad at the same time, the music at once hopeful and resigned.

“You got to have friends, the feeling’s oh, so strong,” Carol sang softly off-key into her knees. “I had some friends but they’re all gone….someone came and took them away.”

“Hello.”

Carol’s head snapped up. She looked around. She didn’t know who had spoken. Rachel and Philly were still upstairs.

“Hello there,” came the voice again.

Carol stood, shakily, and walked around the corner to the other section of the cellar. She stopped and stared. A young girl was in the middle of the floor. She wore a long pink nightgown. Her long dark hair was parted in the center; her skin was brutally pale.

“Did my mother say you could come down here?” asked the girl softly.

Carol’s brows furrowed. “Your mother?”

“No one comes down here but her. Not even my father.” The girl took in a long, silent breath then let it out. One hand moved to her hair. The arm trailed a strange, ethereal blue light. “He doesn’t want to catch the fever. He works to support our family.”

“Oh.”

The girl’s face lit up with a pained smile. “I’ve been lonely for ever so long. Mother has let you come visit! I am so glad to have a friend!”

Carol glanced over at the wooden steps. She angled her head to listen. There was a laughing upstairs, a crash, and a door slamming. Rachel and Philly could be heard running off across the yard.

Carol looked back at the pale girl. “Who are you?”

“Bessie, silly,” said the girl. “Will you play with me? I was so very sick but am much better now.”

“It was
you
, wasn’t it?” asked Carol.

“Me?”

“I felt you in here when I was out on the sidewalk.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

But Carol did.
   

Her grandmother and mother had told her she was like them, carrying in her blood and bones their own their own unique abilities, passed down, though Carol often tried to pretend it wasn’t true. She
was
special. She
was
different. Tuned in to what others weren’t. Things beyond the physical. Things of other dimensions.

Carol took several steps toward Bessie, staring at her in wonder. Bessie was not of this time. She was not flesh and blood. Something sad, something terrible, had happened to her long, long ago.

But she wanted a friend as much as Carol did.

And so they played.

Each day after school, under pretense of staying late for choral practice, Carol slipped down through the cellar window and visited Bessie. They ran about the chilly rooms for hide and seek. They skipped rope. They made up songs and riddles. Never did they touch, though. This was something Carol’s mother had told her. The two dimensions could never connect in that way. It would only lead to disaster.

For the first time in Carol’s life, she was happy. She caught herself smiling, at times even laughing. Carol drew pictures of herself and her new friend, though always tore them up so no one else would see them.

On the seventh day, when Carol and Bessie were in the middle of a game of hopscotch, they heard footsteps upstairs, and deep voices.

“Shh,” said Carol.

“Who is that?” asked Bessie.

“I don’t know.”

The girls stood and listened. A man’s voice. A woman’s. Little girl’s voices. The man said, “I’d love to buy this old place. It’s fantastic.”

The woman replied, “Let’s take some photos.”

Carol backed toward the window, her eyes locked on the wooden steps. “I have to go,” she whispered.

Bessie shook her head. “No! Don’t go away. Stay here with me.”

“I can’t.”

“But you can! If you hold my hand you can stay here forever! Those people up there will never know. We’ll play oh, so quietly!”

Bessie extended one pale, thin arm toward Carol. Carol gazed at her only friend. Bessie was right, of course. If Carol touched her she would be changed; she would be like Bessie.

Forever.

Carol looked up at the sunlit sky outside the cellar window. A ladybug landed on the pane, crawled about then took off again. Carol looked back at Bessie in the dim light of the cellar, at the low ceiling and filthy, uneven floor covered in broken glass and old papers.

Then she scrambled up and out through the window. On her hands and knees she turned to peer once more into the cellar. Bessie had backed up against the cold brick wall, her hands folded, her head down. A sparkling tear trickled down her cheek.

“I’m sorry, Bessie. I’m so sorry.”

She raced around to the front yard, down to the street, and home.

T
he moon is a chalk rock, hanging in the sky in the black of the night and the blue of the day. It is there because it has room there; it is comfortable there. The moon is not its light, though some would say it is. The moon is a big round body with a purpose which I don't understand but don't need to understand.

I am a woman with a bad foot. My foot was crushed last month by a passing car on Ocean Front Boulevard. I didn't get out of the way fast enough and it was run over and now my foot is dying. It is purple and fat and aches when I move it. I have washed it in the salty surf when no one else was around. I have pressed on it to pass the pus but it is still dying.

The boardwalk along the beach is where I live. I scour the rusted barrels in the sand in the blue of the day and curl up under the lip of the walkway in the black of the night. I have room here, but I am not comfortable. My swollen and pounding foot smells very bad. My body is covered with old sweat from my arm pits to my ankles and new sweat from each new day, but I am not my smell. Some think I am. I am a body with a purpose which I just now understand.

Last week I found two wonderful things. One was a brand new tee-shirt in the trash outside Surf Side Souvenirs. I clawed it out before the manager chased me away and threatened to call the police. It was tight but I ripped it up the sides and pulled it on over my sleeveless blouse. The other treasure was a dog. I named him Sunshine.

A dog has never been a treasure to me before. In fact, when I first found Sunshine, I thought he was ugly and gaunt. He growled at me and snapped, but I offered him some French fries I'd found in the dumpster behind Dairy Queen, and he calmed down. And then he sniffed at a small gash in my bad foot and began to lick. This amused him, or pacified him, I'm not sure which. His ears went up and his tail began to wag. It didn't hurt me at all. I shut my eyes, sitting there behind a beach bench on the boardwalk, and let Sunshine lick my swollen, dying foot. I squeezed on the foot, letting it drain for him. Sunshine licked. I pretended I was having a massage from the Man I Love.

As I sat, not bothering any of the vacationers, a child with a red ball cap leaned over the back of the bench and said "Mom, look. That's gross !"

The mother, face all painted and plucked, also looked over the bench seat. Her face registered my smell and then my foot. She contorted. "Disgusting."

I said, "In the Bible, Lazarus let the dogs at the gate lick his sores." But the mother and child were gone already, off in a hurry down the sandy walk and they didn't hear what I had to say.

Sunshine nipped my foot then, a love bite like cats give to their owners, and licked some more.

The dog had bonded with me, and we stayed together. I had little to feed him; I barely can keep up with the demands of my own growling belly. But we slept together and he would lick my foot and ease the heaviest of the throbbing. His hair was warmer than the grit of the ground under the boardwalk lip. He smelled, too, but a dog is not his smell. Even the richest of people know that. They laugh at a smelly dog and excuse him because they love him and because he is not his smell. He is a body with a purpose and they understand.

The Man I Love came out to the beach several days after I found Sunshine. The Man wore his yellow swim trunks and an unbuttoned red shirt that billowed in the breeze and let me see his tanned chest and black chest hair and little pink nipples. He comes to the beach once a week, on Saturdays. Therefore, I know he is a working Man. A good Man who is a sane Man. A sane man can hold a job.

I haven't held a job for two years, since I was twenty three. Am I insane? I don't understand insanity, or if I am insane. But I know now that I have a purpose. If sanity is purpose, then I'm sane. My purpose is dreadful, but it is as sure as the beauty of the Man I Love.

The Man I Love is sane and good. He walks with his chin up and he stretches out to the sun and sea before settling down on the rolls of beach sand. He smiles even when no one is looking at him.

I watched him from my shadows under the boardwalk, but Sunshine trotted across the hot sand and sniffed at the Man's crotch. The Man laughed and pushed Sunshine back a little, then petted him on the head.

"What a good dog," he said.

Sunshine wagged his tail and didn't growl.

"If you were a little healthier," said the Man. "I'd take you home with me. Go on, now, boy." He petted the dog again, and Sunshine just stood and wagged his tail until the Man shed his shirt and went for a swim in the waves.

Sunshine came back to me. I sat in the shadows, my bloated foot resting on a mound of sand I'd made, and rubbed the dog's head. The dog's nose was wet and probing, first on my hand and then back to my foot. What a wonder to pet something the Man had pet.

As I ran my rough fingers through the dog's fur, I began to understand my purpose. I began to realize why I existed.

My heart hammered, and the painful rhythm echoed in my foot.

I slept restlessly and feverishly that night. A barb was in my chest, cutting with each breath and making it feel as though blood were seeping out to my stomach. I was nauseous, but swallowed it down as I stroked Sunshine.

The next day was Sunday. A lot of people come out on Sunday, even more than Saturday. The sun, in its purpose, was bright and hot. The moon held its position at a distance. It was white and faint.

I moved along the boardwalk. My good foot was bare. My bad foot was wrapped in a rag that had once been a beach towel left behind on the sand by a careless family. Pain sang with each step, hitting high notes when the weight was on the ball of my bad foot. I sweated hard, as the heat of the infection climbed around inside me. Sunshine trotted along, hoping, I suppose, to be given more french fries or to have the chance at my foot again.