Ground Level

Laughter exploded from behind the door of Jake’s ground-level apartment. The hall, with more overhead bulbs burned out than functioning, was barely lit. Leo struggled to find her key. Jammed in her backpack was a letter she had just retrieved from their overflowing mail slot. The return address read: Dr. J. Baker. Leo was too tired to read and deal with the content. Later, I’ll respond tomorrow or sometime next week. For now, she needed all her strength just to get through the door. The lack of light made seeing the opening where the key fit difficult.

She was exhausted, having just finished her twelve-hour janitorial shift cleaning the toilets, sinks, halls, and classrooms of Lewis and Clark Elementary School. Jake couldn’t get her the job he promised; she did need a high school diploma to work in general production at the Bama Pie Factory. She sighed heavily. She didn’t have the energy to face what she knew waited for her inside, but she had no other option.

All six heads looked up from their remote video controllers as she entered the apartment. “That’s your old lady, Jake?” The living room looked like a bomb had been dropped on it. The air was thick with smoke. She could see Jake and his friends had inhaled more than cigarettes over the night. In discarded beer bottles, ash mixed with spit. Burn marks and soot ground into the carpet. A profusion of open pizza boxes, chip bags, and candy wrappers scattered around the sluggish human forms. There was a whiskey bottle lying at the base of the couch.

“You didn’t tell us she was hot.”

She didn’t recognize the fleshy man who spoke, his pudgy fingers mashing a remote. Before returning to the game, he wagged his tongue at her, which protruded from a round, scarlet face dotted with acne.

“Hot, all right,” Jake said as his fingers aggressively tapped the buttons of his control device. “Hot for me. You should have seen how she begged me to marry her after moving in. She can’t get enough of me.” He paused his gaming and ran his hands down his chest; after grabbing his crotch, he continued, “She wants it all.” The other five talking heads snickered at his comments, then roared as their soldiers on the Call of Duty video game fearlessly opened fire, resulting in a sudden and bloody death.

Leo reached into the sink full of dirty dishes and pulled out a cup that didn’t look too rank. Of course, she hadn’t begged Jake for marriage, but she had heard his version, this revised narrative so often that she was beginning to doubt herself. Remembering how she felt months ago when she’d agreed to marry Jake, weeks after moving in with him, was difficult.

He had worked his magic, telling her he loved her and would never lie to her as her father, uncle, therapist, and mother had. He told her how lucky she was to have this chance, that many women would want to be his wife, to be chosen. Besides, Leo had felt so utterly alone. There was nowhere else to go. The life she knew was shattered.

Even worse than a dead mother was one who turned her back on her toddler and walked away. Growing up imagining all the different ways her mother could have died was bad enough: a rare form of cancer, knocked off her bike in a horrific hit-and-run, or choking on a fish bone. But finding out she didn’t care enough to hang around while her daughter grew up took the term “motherless” to a new level.

Her life with her dad and Uncle Paul was history. Gone was the possibility of graduating, of going to college on a scholarship. Jake was the only one who seemed to want her. At least he was transparent, and he offered a place of shelter, a degree of familiarity. This was all she had, and she clung to it. Leo rinsed and then filled the mug with tepid tap water.

Leo remembered her wedding day, holding a single pale pink gas station rose she bought for herself while standing alone outside the courthouse in a simple white dress she had purchased from the Goodwill store. Jake, her new husband, and Eric, his buddy, their only witness, had left her to grab some beer to celebrate. Leo would not partake. She made that abundantly clear to Jake from the start, from the moment she climbed into his beat-up pickup after hastily packing a few things, including the protective eye necklace he’d given her. She was steadfast. While she didn’t care, well at least wouldn’t judge, what Jake did, he couldn’t expect her to participate in drinking or consuming drugs. He shrugged. “Suit yourself. Makes no difference to me.”

On her way to the bedroom, drink of water in hand, she ran into her husband, who was leaving the bathroom. He grabbed her by the shoulders and pressed his lips hard against hers with a little tongue. “You miss me?”

“Thought you had to work today.” Leo glanced at her watch. He was too drunk and high and already an hour late for the start of his shift. She knew what his retort would be. The response had become a pattern.

“I deserve a vacation day, don’t you think? You wouldn’t even have this apartment if I didn’t put down the security deposit. It’s your turn to pull some weight.” He slapped her on the bottom, a gesture that was no longer playful. Leo wordlessly turned and headed into the bedroom, closing the hollow core door behind her.

Sleep was elusive. Despite the fatigue, her mind would not still. On her side, knees drawn up to her chest, Leo curled, cocooning as if the physical reduction of strain on her veins and internal organs could transfer to sensation and reduce the aching pressure in her heart.

How had she gotten here? Where was the friendly, easy-going boy she met in her first year of high school? The one who had slowly, persistently, worked to gain her trust until her guard lowered, until she felt safe to share her innermost feelings. Where was the boy who argued with a series of feather-soft kisses about the absolute need for secrecy?

Those memories represented another lifetime. This was her new normal. Leo closed her eyes. The whir of the bedside fan shuffling hot, stagnant air did little to mitigate the raucous guffaws punctuated by loud moans, groans and yells as fictional warriors killed and were killed. Over and over again, in waves of auditory assault, the charged noise kept her wary and unable to unwind.

Why can't I sleep? She was despondent, frustrated with herself and the situation. In a few hours, she would have to get up and work her second job, cashiering at the local Quick Trip. And in that unbidden state where fatigue and anxiousness meet, control over thought and emotion diminish and unite in a point of convergence, yet another memory of her wedding day rose and slid into gauzy focus.

She saw herself quietly slipping out of the closed-in apartment, leaving Jake and Eric inside celebrating. She could see herself leaning against the side of the brick building, trying to make herself as small as possible, and with shaky hands, she called her father to tell him the news. She was hyperventilating as she talked, which left her lightheaded and with a tingling sensation in her lips. After she finished speaking, a prolonged pause ensued, then she heard a deep inhalation of air she knew her father always took when trying to get a handle on things. “Are you happy, Leotie?” was all he said.

“I think so,” she replied.

But after the phone call, after her father apologized again for withholding the truth about her mother after they both said they loved each other and planned a time when he would come to Tulsa to take them out for a belated celebratory dinner, she became aware of the silent tears which had soaked the satin piping around the collar of her bridal white cotton sheath. These tears had been falling all along.