We’re going to take off your clothes now. Do you understand?” “It’s just me and Rose. Hal’s got the men standing guard at the door. You’re safe. Stay calm.” Daylight enters from the open cabin door and cracked window. Two silhouettes border my body. I want to spell something, but I can’t conjure the alphabet. I hear the sound of water and pee myself. Warmth seeps under my bare ass. Ammonia stinks up the air. Gooseflesh dots my arms and I shiver.
“Fuck,” Tamara says. Then, “Don’t worry, Star. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about.” An enamel water basin sits beside me on the cot. Sprigs of rosemary float in the water, olive oil pools on the surface. A wet cloth dabs my back. Am I being anointed? Oh my god, am I dead? Can the dead wet themselves?
“Etta?” This might be the only word I still know how to say.
“No. No more Etta, not if we can help it.” My left arm is lifted. The wet cloth circles my armpit.
“Tamara picked this out. What a pretty dress.” Rose waves something magenta pink in front of me. Maybe I nod and try to raise my own arms over my head. My movements feel drugged, dreamlike.
Tamara brushes my hair as Rose wiggles flip-flops onto my feet. “One. Two. Three,” they count as they pull me to standing.
“How—” How long have I been out, I want to ask, but I can’t make an “l” sound. My tongue is swollen and the roof of my mouth numb. The day is too brilliant. Sun scours the horizon into harsh annihilation. Hal waits a few paces outside the cabin. Rose and Tamara pass me to him. Moustache and Chris Sakokete are here and maybe Rahn? Wendel and the Foster brothers close behind? Maybe the locket man and the peach farmer. Their arms are outstretched as if I’m about to be handed off again, like a sandbag passed from volunteer to volunteer along the Niagara River during a storm. This strikes me as funny, but the noises I make are not laughter.
I see it.
This is why the men are closing in, because they know I see it.
The shrine in a fallen pile.
Joe’s truck is backed into Rose’s driveway, and the old wheelhouse stands mostly intact in his flatbed. Dolores and her co-workers from the hospital laundry toss more busted wood from the pile into the truck. When they all stop to look at me is when I realize I am struggling, flailing my arms and kicking my feet. My forehead knocks against another head and I see blood. I bite someone’s hand hard enough for knucklebones to crunch under my teeth. Etta is not here to lift me, to float me up, up. The land feels so different without her. Gravity is insulting.
“We don’t wanna hurt you, Starla,” says Hal. It’s his meaty palm that holds my face down on the dry grass. Someone else pins my shoulders, someone else my feet, my arms. So much for my sponge bath. Tamara should have picked a black dress—the grass stains wouldn’t show so much.
“Okay,” I slur. I coax my thick tongue. “Yeah. Okay.”
Later, I sit at Rose’s kitchen table before a half-eaten plate of creamed polenta and garlic butter. It seems every very few seconds someone whispers a worry around me—“How’s she doing?” and “Give her time” and “Should we call a doctor?” I’m still wearing the magenta dress and, yes, it has an unfortunate grass stain across the boobs. Hal’s left hand is cleaned and bandaged now. A small dot of blood soaks through the gauze. It was him I bit, and hard.
He sees me looking. “You eats half as much as me and are twice as strong. Makes me miss the days when I could give ya a good lickin.’”
I laugh a real laugh that comes out both through my mouth and nose. Hal reaches his injured hand across the table to take mine. His calloused fingertips are warm and alive. “I can feel your warmth,” I say, astounded. “I can feel.” I put my own hand against my cheek. I’m still here, also warm and alive. I touch my forehead. My eyelids. Each earlobe. I touch my throat and suddenly it is too much feeling, like I might choke. Like I might choke to death.
Later, Lucky and I are tucked into Ricky’s old bed in Rose’s house. The sheets are Garfield and Odie print. Does anyone grow into adulthood while living in their parents’ house? I’m struck by the reminder that Ricky didn’t grow up. He must have been depressed in this bed. I want to grab Lucky’s tiny hand, pull us out of bed, and take us someplace that isn’t marked with sadness. But where?
Bobby enters the room with a copy of Where the Wild Things Are. “Your ma brought some kids’ books from the library,” she tells me. She sits on the edge of the bed and begins to read as if it’s any ordinary night and we are ordinary children. I am angry, at first. The simple story grates at me. Fuck Max’s room turning into a forest. Fuck the wild things for being so easy to tame.
I spoon Lucky, feel his little bare butt press against my stomach. He’s sleeping just in a T-shirt again. Here is a kid that’s never been molested, I think. I always wore underwear to bed. Double underwear. As soon as I think it, it becomes a wish: May Lucky never be molested.
And Barbara—my mother and lender of library books—I wish that she’ll never have to bury her child. That one day I’ll make her proud. Or at the very least, I’ll keep living. Those two wishes are enough. Right now, they have to be enough.
Later, the dead of night tells me that wishes are not nearly enough. The dead of night reminds me how worthless I am. My body tingles in sleepless mania. My head pounds Etta’s name. I’m up and out Rose’s front door without shoes or a flashlight. I drop to my knees in Rose’s driveway and nose through the gravel. There must be some splinter of boat or roller coaster wood left behind. A scrap of divinity. Of my sexuality. Of my self. Of Etta. Etta. Etta. E-T-T-A E-T-T-A E-T-T-A.
Etta is nowhere to be seen, but is that a rhythm ballad up ahead? A standup bass, a croon? Her signature song, “A flame in my heart.” The moon is a sliver and barely lights my path toward the fallen gazebo. My knees scuff on the ground. Dirt smears my palms as I go. There’s still wood there. Roller coaster track. I feel it.
A lighter flicks in my path. Hal and Moustache stand ready to ambush me. Their stupid man mouths say, “Go back to bed, Star.” I remember Hal telling me I’m twice as strong as him as I lunge at him.
More people arrive to yell nonsense at me. More and more hands try to pin me down. Hair is caught in my teeth, skin under my fingernails, feet connect with groins. My hands roughly meet throats and eye sockets. These are people I love. Why aren’t they stronger? Why can’t they stop me? Why won’t they just rip me limb from limb?
Why isn’t my love for them stronger?
Why can’t I stop myself?
What have we done to deserve this?