Chelsea thought training for the Violence Fighting Ring would be like a movie montage, but really it’s more like giving birth—long, grueling, sweaty, and painful. And that’s just the first full day. She didn’t know her body could push this hard, that her muscles could tremble and strain and not collapse. She didn’t know she could eat so much without feeling guilty. She didn’t know she could…do something. She’s so accustomed to busy nothings, to always feeling like she was behind even though she didn’t have a job. Life without David is a miracle.
They’re on break now after their grueling morning workout, drinking Gatorade mixed up weakly in a big orange canister to replenish their electrolytes. The weight training and cardio were brutal, and the wrestling practice was deeply uncomfortable. As an only child with a non-hugging single mother and no family outside of her own home, Chelsea has never really gotten the hang of non-sexual physical intimacy with strangers. Grabbing and fake-slapping and slamming these women around, having moments where their bodies are entwined or clasped or, her least favorite, crotch-to-face during a move, is just something she’s going to have to get used to. And she will, because she needs that vaccine.
“Ladies, with me,” Arlene says, and Chris follows it up with, “Guys, over here.” Everyone stoppers their new VFR water bottles, wipes their mouths, and moves to follow their teachers. Sienna and Indigo are out in their RV, sewing costumes. Harlan is probably in his own RV. Chelsea hasn’t seen him today, but she’s surprised he’s not here supervising like an owner watching his prized horses run from far away, judging their progress. Arlene told the girls he’s setting up their tour, fixing dates and places and marking them on a map and building the website. It’s odd to think that her entire future rests in his giant hands.
Arlene pulls the women over to a set of mats and tells them to sit in a circle. Chelsea goes on alert; this seems like it’s going to be touchy-feely, and she’s still on edge after her big Florida Woman outburst. She wasn’t the only person brought to tears when choosing a name and character, and she’s pretty sure now that Arlene worked in a rehab center or psych ward, running circle time there, too. She seems to have a gift for walking the fine line between truth and comfort.
Arlene stands as Chris leads the men out the door, and Chelsea breathes a small sigh of relief. The boys will be running outside in the ninety-degree weather, which sounds like her definition of hell. At least the women get air-conditioning. And privacy.
“Poor boys,” Amy says, sitting to Chelsea’s right.
Chelsea nods her agreement, but she’s not so sure the women will have an easier time of it.
Instead of sitting with them on the mat, Arlene paces around the outside of their circle, her thumb on her chin as she thinks.
“We’re going to play Duck Duck Goose, but when I tap you, I’ll give you an emotion or adjective, and I want you to embody it. Don’t get up and run, though—I know you’re still tired from cardio.” A chuckle goes up around the circle. “Just put everything into the emotion. Okay?”
Everyone nods. This is a new game, but it seems straightforward enough.
Arlene walks around the circle and touches Joy on the shoulder.
“Arrogance.”
This one comes naturally to Joy. She rolls her eyes and sneers, snorting as she crosses her arms and turns away.
“Good.” Arlene walks around the circle and taps Amy on the shoulder. “Pain. You just got slammed.”
Amy throws herself into the circle, rolling around and clutching at her arm like an invisible giant snapped it in two. Tears spring to her eyes, and she struggles to get up and fails. Amy is good at this; although she doesn’t speak of her past—no one does—she did admit to doing some improv as part of her business training.
“Good.” Arlene stops behind Chelsea and taps her shoulder. “Rage.”
Chelsea bares her teeth and roars, following it up with gnashed teeth and growling, but Arlene doesn’t move on.
“I don’t believe it, Chelsea. It feels more like you’re imitating a dog than channeling a hidden well of rage.”
Chelsea puts her mouth back in place and looks up. “I’m not really an angry person.”
Arlene steps through the circle and stands in front of Chelsea, arms crossed as she looks down, annoyed. “I don’t think that’s true. I see your face when we run out of coffee in the morning or Chris assigns extra laps because someone was lagging behind. Maybe you don’t express your anger, but it’s in there.”
Chelsea looks away. “I mean, that’s like saying you want me to show you my liver. We both know it’s in there, but there’s no convenient way to make it visible.”
Arlene squats down and looks her in the eye. “Clever simile, but I think it’s more like you holding a marble in your mouth and telling me there’s no marble. You’ve just spent so much time pinning your lips and pretending there’s no marble that you’ve forgotten how to spit it out.”
Her eyes bore into Chelsea’s, and it’s all Chelsea can do not to look away. Because looking away would mean that Arlene is right, and Arlene is not right.
“I can see it in there,” Arlene muses with the tiniest quirk of her lips. “I can see that ol’ furious marble rolling around in there.”
She stands again, looming.
“There.”
Chelsea looks up. “What do you mean?”
“When I stood over you. You flinched. You made yourself small.” Arlene steps closer, somehow putting more weight and menace into her stance. “You’re still doing it.”
“Yes, well, you’re looming over me. What am I supposed to do?” Chelsea snaps.
“What you always wanted to do. Talk back. Feel something besides helpless. The more I loom, the smaller you make yourself, like you’re trying to disappear.” Standing directly over her, Arlene puts her hands on her hips. “Chelsea, who are you scared of?”
“C’mon, Arlene,” Joy says, squirming a little. “You’re freaking her out.”
“Chelsea can fight her own battles. So what is it, Chelsea? What do you want to do?”
Arlene is so close overhead, leaning down now, that Chelsea can smell her perfume, and Arlene nudges her with a foot, and there’s nowhere else to go, she’s trapped, she can’t get away, this is her boss, she can’t hit Arlene, she doesn’t want to hit Arlene, but God, you can only push someone so far—
Arlene nudges her shoulder with a knee, and Chelsea scrambles back, her blood singing, her head hot, her hands sizzling, her body telling her to shrink and freeze and to stand and fight, all at the same time, her muscles tense and quivering, an animal caught between a wall and a box.
“Chelsea!” Arlene barks, loud and harsh. “Are you gonna let me push you around like this?”
“No!” Chelsea shouts, scrambling to her feet, hands in fists and shaking. “No! You’re not my mother! You’re not my husband! You can’t make me do anything!”
“Let it all out, Chelsea. Scream!”
And Chelsea does. She fucking roars, all those years of rage bottled up and now unleashed on the world, an explosion that rattles her, inside and out.
The silence, after, is deafening. No one moves. Chelsea’s throat is sore, stripped.
Arlene goes quiet, the tension gone from her body. “What does it feel like in your arms, Chelsea?”
Chelsea looks down, surprised by the question. Her arms are up, palms open, defensive, like she’s pushing someone away.
Like she’s pushing David away.
“Tense. I want to push. I want to push so hard.”
“Go on and do it, then. Push him away.”
“He’s not here.”
“He doesn’t have to be. Push the air.”
Chelsea does, and it feels strange, but now it feels there’s a warm ball of sunshine in her stomach, like it’s okay.
“What do you feel now?”
“My arms stopped shaking. They feel lighter. Buzzing.”
“What else do you feel?”
“Just…light. Like when you tense up a muscle and release it. But everywhere.”
Her hands are by her sides now, and her cheeks feel warm. She looks to Arlene, questioning, amazed at how she feels twice as big as she did before but light as a feather.
“Was it your husband, Chelsea? Is he the one who hurt you?”
Chelsea nods. It’s all coming back. It never left. “He pushed and pushed and pushed.” She’s panting now, memories flapping past like her mind is flipping through a photo album, layers and layers of the same old thing. “Put me in a corner, sat me on a stool, cornered me against the counter. Bigger and more dangerous. His fingertips would bruise my chest when he’d poke me to make a point. I’d say the wrong thing, and his arm around my throat, choking…”
She trails off, one hand to her neck. Everyone in the circle is staring up at her, silent. Arlene is a few feet away, looking alert and open and smiling kindly, her eyes alight like Chelsea is a kid riding a bicycle without training wheels for the first time.
“Go on.”
“He…he would never let me talk back. Or fight back.”
“He made you small.”
“He…wanted me small. Smaller and smaller every year.”
“He silenced you.”
“He hated everything I said. Didn’t want to talk about feelings unless he was drunk, and then it was only his feelings.” Chelsea’s throat hurts in a different way, like the words are clawing their way out; she’s never spoken about this before. It’s like she’s been under some sort of magic spell and talking about it now is painful. Her mouth is dry, her eyes wet and burning. “I couldn’t tell anyone.”
Arlene nods knowingly, as do several women in the circle. “That’s a common tactic of abusers. They gaslight you, convince you you’re remembering it wrong or that if you told someone else they wouldn’t believe you. They want you to think you’re crazy, irrational, helpless. They want you cut off from your support, to have no one to tell. They want you silent.”
Chelsea nods; God, it makes her feel stupid, that she let it happen. Here on the outside, it’s ridiculous, it’s obvious, it’s clumsy. But on the inside—
“It happened for so long. I forgot what normal was.”
Arlene steps forward, hands up, careful, watching Chelsea like she’s a skittish cat that might run or lash out.
“It’s okay. It’s not your fault.”
Chelsea hangs her head. “It was my fault. I let it happen.”
Arlene shakes her head, eyes smiling and yet sad, and Chelsea wonders if maybe something similar happened to her, too. “It’s not your fault. It’s something that happened to you, not something you let happen. That’s like saying you let a boulder fall on you. You didn’t ask for it. If abusers telegraphed their playbook, there would be no victims.” She puts her hands on Chelsea’s arms and squeezes gently, and Chelsea feels a rush of warmth. “You aren’t small. You don’t have to make yourself small. You are allowed to have feelings. You are allowed to experience rage. You are allowed to take up space. You are allowed to be irrational and loud and ugly. You don’t have to make yourself less. Not ever again. You don’t have to play by those rules anymore.”
An odd, gulping laugh escapes, and Chelsea rides it out. “Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“No, it’s not easy. It’s hard work. Building yourself back up from nothing is always hard work. But it’s worthwhile. And you have support.” Arlene smiles at the other people in the circle.
Amy stands up and walks over to put a hand on Chelsea’s back. Joy stands, and the other women stand, and they all put a hand on her somewhere. Chelsea wonders, for a moment, if this is what it feels like to have a big family, to be connected to other people who come from the same place, whose hearts know the same jagged landscape. It feels good—but it also feels awkward. She’s not used to everything being about her.
“Are we doing trust falls next?” Chelsea asks jokingly.
“More like trust body slams,” Arlene offers to get a laugh. “Now back to our game. Let’s try something a little less complex. If y’all will sit back down?” They all do, including Chelsea, who has a feeling she won’t be called on again today, like a kid who already turned in their big project and is now off the hook. Amy shoots her a friendly smile and a nod, but Chelsea isn’t sure if it’s just supportive or if the quiet woman has a similar history.
Next the bodybuilder, Maryellen, has to act insane. And then Leah has to act devastated. Amy has to act disgusted. Paz has to act elated. No one gets rage again. Chelsea gets skipped. Things happen, and she’s there, but she’s also inside her head. It feels like walking around a house after you’ve moved, after all your belongings are out and you’re just cleaning up the remaining mess. There’s a brightness, a cleanness, a welcome emptiness. Whatever Arlene did—therapy, whatever—it helped. It worked. She feels more relaxed, more free, less tense. It’s a miracle, it really is.
For a moment, she forgets that David is still out there.
And then she remembers.
With her phone gone, there’s no way to get in touch with anyone—not Ella, not her mom, and not David. She has no idea if he’s out of quarantine, although last night she read on her phone—well, Amy’s phone—that Florida wasn’t doing much to clear out their holding centers, probably because they’re acting as private prisons and there’s a lot of money in keeping them running. Then again, Huntley said Brian was working on it, which means David is probably out, because Brian tends to get what he wants.
It’s a comfort, at least, that her mother’s home is currently the safest place possible for her girls—even David wouldn’t be able to get into the Fort Knox of Patricia’s neighborhood. And there’s really no safer place for Chelsea herself than here. She doesn’t have her van or phone, there’s no way to track her, and she’d love to see David try to hurt her while she’s under the care of Mr. Harlan Payne. He’d split David in half like a log.
The rest of the day passes, and Sienna takes Chelsea and the other folks who came here with nothing to the nearest Target. Armed guards prowl the aisles as people shop, and Chelsea is given two hundred dollars against her first paycheck to get what she needs to function. Considering the heat and what’s expected of her, she goes for the sale racks and buys three-dollar tank tops, T-shirts with stupid sayings that no one wants, ugly leggings, shorts, cheap white socks. She finds undies and hideous bras on clearance. And she’s grateful to find sneakers in her size for seven dollars. Once she adds toiletries and moisturizer with SPF, she’s pretty much maxed out. She looks longingly at phone cards, but it would take at the very least eighty dollars to make George’s phone work. It’s kind of scary, how two hundred dollars doesn’t go particularly far when you’re starting with nothing. Considering she’s been borrowing Sienna’s old sneakers and washing her undies in the tour bus sink every night and hanging them to dry from the ceiling of her bunk, she can’t complain.
That night, it’s raining, hard, and they eat in the interview room, barbecue that’s better than it should be with big, industrial aluminum vats of green beans and mashed potatoes. As they eat, Arlene tells them that Sienna and Indigo make up the menus, Harlan okays them, and then Indigo cooks all day long or helms the grills at night, for which she’s paid like an adult. Chelsea almost wishes that were her job, but then she realizes that she’d actually rather train and get stronger than get herself locked into another kitchen, taking care of people.
It’s…God, it’s a new kind of joy, not taking care of anyone. She went straight from living with her mother to taking care of David to taking care of David and the girls, in that order. There hasn’t been a single time in her life when she wasn’t technically a child or caring for someone else. It’s nice, not having to cook or do dishes, and her old kitchen table in its sunbeam seems like something that belonged to another person in another world. To think: Just a few months ago, her biggest worry was a letter from the bank. Now she has no money whatsoever, only what Harlan chooses to pay her. The next time he does, her first purchase will be a sim card and plan for George’s phone, as she misses having control over her connection to the world—and there’s so much she needs to know.
She doesn’t miss checking the flatlined Dream Vitality sales numbers, and she doesn’t miss the beauty pageant of Facebook, but she does miss being able to look up that movie she forgot or whether the price of the Violence vaccine has gone down at all. The vaccine was created by some grad student and snapped up by a private company, and that means supply and demand are in full effect. The government is working on their own vaccines but say it will take several more months of testing. The CDC has firmly stated that the privately owned vaccine hasn’t met their requirements, but that hasn’t stopped anyone who can afford it from getting it, and data suggests those who have it are suffering no ill effects—and no cases of the Violence. It’s a therapeutic vaccine, meaning it cures those already infected and prevents further infection, and like most of America, Chelsea isn’t holding her breath on a free government shot. After the president fumbled the initial Covid response and vaccine so badly, no one trusts him this time around. If the pandemic had started before he was reelected, there’s no way he’d still be in charge.
Chelsea knows all this from scrolling through Amy’s phone to check the news and search for the names of her family members to see if anything bad has happened to them. And she checks her own name for updates in her news story, but nothing new ever pops up. Keeping track of current events just now would be a full-time job, considering the huge differences in the quality of life in hot places compared with cold places. In frigid climes, life is totally normal, and everyone benefits from the huge uptick in long-term tourists grateful to be alive. Hotels are packed and business is booming, everyone fiddling in their puffer coats as the southern areas burn.
But in the South, and especially in the poor countries around the equator, life has become brutal and unruly. The governments, unable to protect or help anyone, basically gave up. Charities popped up to help the unfortunate, their coffers drained by the unrepentant. Any aid money disappears before it can do any good. Just like with Covid, the essential workers who have no choice but to go to work must go to work, wondering all day long whether their next customer might be the one who kills them before the heavily armed security guard can pull his weapon. Online ordering is through the roof, and delivery driving is considered the best and safest job available, meaning the competition for gigs is fierce.
Yes, Chelsea is very glad to be where she is, right now. It could be a lot worse.
She also noticed today that George’s pickup truck disappeared. She suspects that Harlan arranged to have it found somewhere far away, but he certainly doesn’t share his plans with his employees.
Back in the tour bus, they all take their turn in the tiny bathroom, brushing teeth and getting ready for bed. Chelsea is grateful for the little jar of Cetaphil; her face feels cleaner and softer than it has in weeks. The rain pelts down hard on the bus roof as she snuggles into her bunk, and she smiles, thinking she might actually sleep well tonight, considering the tough workout this morning followed by emotional catharsis. At the front of the bus, Arlene sets up her phone to play classical music, both to signal bedtime and help cover up the sounds of bodies rustling around. It’s unusually soothing, the same soft lullabies Chelsea used to play when her girls were babies.
She’s just drifting off when the curtains on her bunk brush aside.
“You awake?” Amy asks, leaning in.
“Sure.” Because Chelsea is a mom, and it doesn’t matter that she was falling asleep; it only matters that she’s awake now.
“Can I—I mean…” Amy trails off. “Can we talk?”
Chelsea scoots back toward the wall. The bunk isn’t very big, even smaller than a twin bed, but both of them will fit, if awkwardly. Chelsea wishes she knew what was going on; Amy is so serious and private that she can’t imagine what it’ll be like, sharing this intimate space with her. Arlene’s therapy this morning may have helped Chelsea, but it didn’t magically give her the ability to say no when someone needs her help, even when she’d like to roll over and go back to sleep in privacy.
The curtains part, and Amy slithers in. Her pajamas are almost comical—those old-timey man pajamas that button up the front. Her glasses are off, her hair back in a silk bandanna. That’s all Chelsea can see before the curtain falls back into place and they’re in darkness again. For a moment—just a moment—Chelsea panics. Does Amy want to kiss her, something like that? Because she’s so close Chelsea can smell the minty mouthwash on her breath. But then Amy shudders with an intake of breath bordering on a sob, and Chelsea goes very still.
“You okay?” she asks.
Amy clears her throat softly, and her voice is a husky whisper, barely loud enough for Chelsea to hear. Surely everyone else is listening in now, although Amy is trying to keep it private.
“So that was pretty heavy, today,” she whispers.
Chelsea is wary. She’d hoped she wouldn’t have to talk about it again.
“Yeah.”
Amy pauses, considering.
“It sounds like you had a hard time, back home. I was just wondering if you—” She clears her throat again. “Are your kids okay?”
Chelsea blinks in the darkness. “My kids? I hope so. I mean, there’s no way to know, but they’re with my rich mom, and she’s a narcissistic asshole, but she lives behind a guardhouse with huge walls. So yeah, I hope so. Why?”
She can barely see Amy, just a shape and the gleam of light on her eyes, but she senses her deflate. “I was just…I just wondered if you…never mind.” The bed rustles as she rolls to leave.
Chelsea puts a hand out. It lands on Amy’s shoulder, and she stills. “Hey, you know my darkest secrets now,” Chelsea muses, keeping her voice low. “I’m a human punching bag. Can’t get any lower than that. So you can tell me what’s on your mind, if you want.” After a moment of silence, she adds, “It feels better, having it out in the world like that. I feel better now.”
Amy resettles, sniffles, clears her throat, sighs. Chelsea’s hand doesn’t move, but Amy seems to soften a little, to relax. Chelsea isn’t the sort of person to just reach out and touch another person, but it’s more natural, in the near-dark. It’s easier, knowing this woman has watched the most painful, embarrassing splinter removal of her life and still wants to be friends. It’s a tender sort of exchange, a scary one, but Chelsea would rather ride it out now than ignore Amy’s obvious need and know her new friend is in pain.
“I’m not infected. I have—” Amy clears her throat again. “I had a son. Joshua. He was four. We lived just outside of Miami. He was at home with the nanny while I was at work. Big, important account. Deadlines. All that.” She goes quiet, and Chelsea rubs her arm a little, like she would for Brooklyn after a bad dream. “I came home late that night, and…the nanny…she was nice. An older lady. Great references. She loved Josh. But she had the Violence, and…”
Her voice breaks, and her sobs are silent but take up all the room in the little bunk. Chelsea squeezes her shoulder gently, holding the connection, tears silently spilling out onto her cheeks.
“It was early, in the spring. We didn’t really know yet, what it was. Didn’t know it was mosquitoes. Didn’t know Miami was going to be a hotbed. It was so early, before it was even in the news much. I came home and she had—he was—I can’t—” A sigh. “I was in shock. My husband came home from work and found me there, holding him. Pieces of him. The nanny had run off. She was gone. My hands were shaking too hard to try calling her. Now we all know that when it hits you, you don’t know what you’re doing, it doesn’t matter how good of a person you are or how much you care about the person you’re with. You just…do what you do. But then, we called the police, there was a manhunt. They caught her, put her behind bars. We wanted the electric chair. My husband…we didn’t do so well without Josh. We fought over whether he should’ve ever been alone with someone besides his parents. John said I should’ve been home. That if I’d been home…” She takes a shuddering breath. “It was a quick, messy divorce. He took everything. I still don’t understand how.”
She breaks down into sobs, and Chelsea can feel echoes of heartbreak in her own chest. She reaches for Amy and pulls her into a hug. It’s awkward, as they’re both on their sides in a tiny bunk, and they can’t see anything, but this is how people deal with the Violence. They hug, they press, they wait patiently to ride it out. Amy cries against her shoulder as if she’s been holding this torrent in all along with that same gut-deep rage that Chelsea roared earlier when Arlene prodded her.
They both contain these deep wells of pain, these dammed-up rivers that need to run.
“It’s not your fault,” Chelsea whispers. “You couldn’t have known. It was just bad luck. He shouldn’t have said that to you.”
“It was a dick move,” Joy growls from the bunk overhead. “Fuck that guy.”
“Who could know?” Maryellen adds. “If he was at work, too, it was equally his fault. Fuckin’ patriarchy.”
Hearing their voices, Amy ducks her head into Chelsea’s shoulder, and Chelsea can feel a hot flush of embarrassment surge up her body.
“I stomped the dog to death,” she says to the darkness behind Amy. “And then I beat my only friend to death with her water bottle trying to get here. She had it, too.”
“I killed my neighbor with a shovel,” someone else says from the darkness.
“I was taking care of my mom. She was in hospice. Afterward, I was almost relieved,” says someone else. “And I hate myself for thinking that.”
“It was my boss,” someone else says. “That pedophile deserved it.”
“I was a teacher,” someone else says, voice breaking. “One of my kids. I fucking loved my kids.”
One by one, the voices ring out in the darkness.
Everyone has killed someone.
Everyone but Amy, but Amy feels as if she did.
Neighbors, friends, baristas. Amy is the only one who lost a kid. And maybe she didn’t do it with her own hands, but that just means she was there for every moment of it, didn’t even have the mercy of lost memories.
Chelsea wants to ask Amy why she would come here, why she would put herself in such proximity to the very thing that killed her son.
But she thinks she knows.
Because, like her, Amy has nothing, and she needs that vaccine because it’s only a matter of time before she’ll get infected and hurt someone herself.
And if Amy were to die by the Violence here, then that would make things even.
Holding Amy like this, her shoulder soaked with tears, Chelsea is almost grateful.
At least she still has her girls to go home to.
At least her girls are safe.