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writegirl@altavista.com
Jesus
The horse-headed woman arrived at my door every day on the third week of March. Early, 9 a.m.
“Can I get a ride uptown?” her whiskey-scented breath blew me backwards. “I need to pick up medicine at Doc’s.”
“Sure.” I wasn’t about to say no to a desperate woman who needed her medication.
I was dumb at first. Medicine comes in liters for some people. So I started to say, “no.” Other neighbors mentioned her fragrant-ride requests. One, a woman who tells me that after 9 p.m. a six-pack is always at the foot of her rose-flowered recliner, often gave the woman rides. Cece, she is a good person. I am not.
The other one, her name…Beryl, the same as rubies and emeralds. She and her boyfriend bought a lovely brownstone in the neighborhood two years ago. Stash is a big hunk of a man, 40ish, he works at the airport, management. Berry is big too, dishwater blond, late 30s I think. They work in a proportional way when walking down the street. I thought they were made for each other. They must have thought so too since they married just months after arriving. They reminded me of that John Prine song…”a big old goofy girl dancing with a big old goofy boy/ oh oh it’s a big old goofy world…” a smiley song full of love. Lovebirds, newlyweds, cozied up to one another whenever they passed by in their fully restored turquoise and white ‘57 Chevy.
Neighborhoods are grimy little-minded places. Before long I knew the entire Beryl and Stash story. A tale of bad marriages, heartbreak, lost children and a glimmering hope for something fresh and new…salvation. Two upended people had found each other. They had much in common, the same war stories just with different names on the characters. And perhaps they knew of each others deep need…peace and love in a bottle of potato juice. They didn’t bother to throw out the evidence; instead they just kept a black plastic garbage bag lined trashcan in the living room. Or so I heard from the neighbor boy who deweeded their pink-plastic-flamingo-enhanced flower gardens.
A few weeks fresh from the first connubial bliss Stash was carried away in a screaming ambulance. Stroke. He returned in a few months with a cane. It became his weapon.
Berry struggled through her last DUI, taking the train to Bristol for the behavior-mod classes imposed by the state, little jobs…deliperson, cashier, food demonstrator, cashier…never lasting more than a month.
The interior of that brownstone must have been hellish at night, a nightmare of screaming and hitting and bottles being thrown. On summer nights, windows open, flare-ups brought the police.
They had met their match, but it wasn’t about love. They beat the hell out of one another both physically and verbally.
The only time it became quiet was when the ambulance took one of them away.
In the final moments of the year Beryl wandered the neighborhood. I asked if she wanted to go to The Home Of The Sparrow, an abused-woman shelter. She refused.
The last time I saw her just before she left for a Christmas visit with a sister in Idaho, Beryl no longer knew my name.
Sometimes the shadows are so dark and deep that one can’t find any light. She bought a ticket to paradise on the 26th of December. No room left. Full exit.
Stash flew to pick her up four days later. He plans to cremate her and place her on the mantle in a cut-glass dolphin urn.
Peace.
Whap! "You went and died just to fuck me over."