**this is a work in progress i just started. its my first attempt ever writing anything and i just want to see if i'm any good at this. any feedback appreciated.**
Jen stepped out of the shower and reached for a towel that wasn't there. Another minor inconvenience that was nobody's fault but her own. A lot had happened; it was okay to forget. In the last few months things had rounded some sort of curve, started to make a little more sense. A year ago, when life's intricacies would slip her mind, she would yell obscenities to the world, or start to bully herself, and at the worst of it she would pull her kit out again. Now she'd learned to be more gentle with herself, to remind herself that she was more or less re-learning how to be a person. Plus on the bright side, she finally lived alone and could walk naked through this unfamiliar basement apartment.
A vinyl record, the first of a double LP called Radio Music Society by Esperanza Spalding was almost finished playing its "A side". She was trying to listen to "happier" music. "Crowned & Kissed" was just beginning to fade, the soundwaves clinging to life, when she opened the door to the at-home sauna. Steam was pleasing to her, the way it hung in the air, refracting light beams that suffused it. The way it tingled on her tongue when she took a cold breath in and the haze would condense. Jen loved that. She loved water. It was after all, the blood of Mother Earth.
The floor was cold, but the atmosphere in the apartment felt warm and inviting this morning and the sun was in that position where it perfectly hit the small window above the bookshelves. At this time of day the sun would light up the whole living room and kitchen. Not a huge accomplishment for the billions of neutrinos traveling from our star to our planet, considering the 2-in-1 room was only about 100 square feet. She thought about light, about the way the planet circled its personal star, perfectly placed. "Without light, would anything exist at all?"
Sometimes she liked to stand in that little patch of sun and feel the warmth on her feet. There was only a short window of time before the rotation of the earth inevitably made the angle of the sunlight too acute to reach past the edge of the bookshelf. So Jen had already named that window her "Window of Time".
Passing by her hallway mirror, a flimsy and distorting thing you could buy at one of the big corporate retail stores, she took a moment to admire her artwork. She had a framed piece, "SKY burial" by Arik Roper and a poster of her favorite metal band to either side of the vertical mirror. Carved jade statues and ornamental offerings from different countries sat on small, insecure shelves. She loved her books and their beautifully designed covers. A pencil sketch of a river running through trees was pinned to the wall.
But the art that Jen really loved was on her body.
The small cat silhouette on the inside of her right wrist, was a top contender. That one was a tribute to Missy. "You can't spell Missy without 'miss', 'y' did you leave me girl" she'd once thought up. It was clever enough to stick to her brain but not funny enough to make even so much as smirk when it spawned there each time. A tribute was necessary, of course. She didn't want to forget but she didn't exactly want to remember, either.
Missy wouldn't eat in the last day or two leading up to her passing. You could call it "passing", you could call it "put to sleep". Jen opted for "murdering" while her step-mother went for "putting her out of her misery". That's what it was though, misery.
She couldn't help feeling like they murdered her cat, even though Missy couldn't even seem to stand up on the last morning. Jen just… felt things. And she felt them hard, even before getting clean. The feelings always seemed to kind of rise up from the center of her body somewhere, come right up to the throat to greet her, and then overflow through her eyes when she couldn't contain the breach. So at nineteen, she got that tattooed.
Right there on the center of her throat was a red heart with a turquoise-blue eye, and a single tear wanting to drop from the center, but locked in place by the macrophages under her skin. Surrounding it were wings tied up in vines with small flowers budding from them. Small stars and stardust surrounded the whole piece. To her delight, this ink had held up particularly well and was still vibrant almost seven years later.
It better have stayed vibrant for what that one had cost. She would have gotten it sooner but as they say "A good tattoo isn't cheap and a cheap tattoo isn't good". She'd spent almost $900 on that one after the tip but it was worth it. The pain of it was just an added bonus. When you were in pain you stopped thinking about what was bothering you. For a little bit, pain could make you forget what was destroying you inside. But it all came back when you were lying in bed waiting for sleep to come, or in the morning before you started your day. Sometimes she would lie in bed for hours staring at her tattoos, trying to find the angel on her shoulder.
" … your mother should have aborted you when she had the chance …"
The thoughts always came like that. Jen was an average student in school, no thanks to the help of her father. Andy Myer could have been at the top of his field as a medical doctor, but had lost any chance of maintaining a reputable title when he hopped back off the wagon for the last time. Her step-mother Leanne had married Andrew before Jennifer had her first birthday, so they had all pretty much been a unit for the first decade and a half. As for Jen's biological mother… well she didn't really know. She'd died when Jen was born due to…bleeding.
Postpartum hemorrhage her father had said once, but at the time she didn't hear him. She'd solidified that information when it was in the days lesson in her freshman year health class. She asked her father and Leanne on more than one occasion but they never seemed to have an answer for her. At least not a satisfactory one.
Her father would usually say that he "loved her, but she was not for this world" when talking about her which really didn't mean much to Jen, but still upset her, and she chalked it up to her father's sometimes quirky way of speaking. Her name was Daisy, so at the age of twenty-one, the age her mother was when she gave birth, Jen got that tattooed on her left forearm.
These tattoos helped her remember. Wouldn't let her forget. They were a testament, a journal, a gallery and sometimes a road map. She loved to look at the sailor dust in between the moments of her life. She loved to look at the cracks in her skin that stood out so much better amongst the roses on the tops of her hands. And she loved the pain.
It really was like therapy and she understood why people said that. Sometimes after a month or two, all of those little thoughts that hid in the back of her mind started to creep forward again and she would find herself at a shop that took walk-ins. That's where all the small ones came from, some people called them bangers, but she never did. If she was being honest she wasn't all that enthralled with most of the tattoos she got in those sessions. For one, they always reminded her of whatever it was that eventually made her want to get another tattoo in the first place. She mostly didn't like them as much because they didn't usually mean anything.
"Oh I like your little turtle!"
She didn't like it, but at least she had thought of a meaning for that one. She liked to hide in her shell too. No, she didn't like the ones that she had gotten on a whim, she liked the ones that she put thought into.
"... she died for your sins…"
Jennifer Myer stood at 5' 10", not terribly tall, but too tall to wear heels around the boys. She smiled because even if she'd had the chance to wear heels around the boys she wouldn't have wanted to. Heels were just too uncomfortable, besides, boys were icky and always had been. Women weren't much better really. People were icky. Bodily functions were icky.
So the apartment was empty, she was alone and that was just the way she liked it. Still dripping in front of her mirror and creating a small ocean for the dust mites, she broke her gaze and continued to the closet near the kitchen to grab a towel. It was mid January and her apartment was a bit on the cold side because that's how she liked it when she slept, but it was always too cold in the morning after the shower. She turned the thermostat up as she walked past it. Her nipples would be happy to know she'd set it back to a comfortable 74 degrees, and that they could soon relax. She wrapped the towel around her body, now starting to gain its curves back, and walked toward her room to get dressed and start her day.
Leanne had invited her over for lunch like she always did on Saturday since they had moved. It was as much for Leanne's sanity as it was to make sure Jennifer was okay. Clean, of course, but okay too. Even if she was just the step-mother, she treated Jennifer like her own daughter. Leanne wasn't mad when she found the needle in the front seat of her gold 2004 Camry with the missing door handle. When Leanne found the needle she was heartbroken and knew immediately what it was. She'd noticed Jennifer becoming more distant than usual and when her dad started drinking again she'd almost changed completely. Jennifer went from asking questions and being interested in new topics and ideas, to giving one word answers and getting angry at the smallest inconvenience. One morning she had screamed at Leanne to go "pleasure herself" after waking her up for school.
Like all teenage girls, Jennifer could cock an attitude that would make your average story-book witch seem like a damsel. But it was almost always when she was in a fight with her father about something, never at Leanne or a stranger. Besides, this felt different. Jennifer had always respected Leanne and it didn't even have to be instilled in her. Leanne never had to buy her love or go out of her way to gain it. Jennifer had simply been attached to her when she joined their household and up until the last few years they had been best friends. Jennifer was a smart and empathetic girl and even in her worst tantrums didn't seem to take her misguided frustrations out on other people. Something was wrong and was getting worse. Things like Andy's drinking were easy to spot (even if Andy didn't think they were). Other things, like what was going on her step-daughter's head, were not.
—
Sometimes things just don't make sense. Sometimes people believe liars and condemn the innocent. Sometimes the truth is taken to a person's grave, worse it can be taken to many peoples graves. The strangest is when the truth is taken by nobody at all.
At 3:06 a.m. on Saturday January 10th, just outside the city limits of Chicago, Andy shot awake standing in his kitchen, and realized his shirt was wet and cold. He started to lean back and then overcorrected his stance and fell forward smacking his face into the refrigerator. A magnet scraped his cheek as he slid down and caught himself on a hand and knee. He got up quickly and hazily thought "I've been sleepwalking again" and cautiously made his way back to his bedroom. The bedroom contained one mattress, one or two piles of clothing, a 55" TCL TV, two dirty plates with accompanying silverware, and a total of five plastic bottles.
The clothing pile or piles were kind of starting to piss Andy off. He grabbed a shirt and exchanged his wet one, to discard to the pile. He wasn't totally sure which ones were clean and which ones were dirty, even though he was the one who did the fucking laundry. He did his own laundry now, and that was okay because he always did it right. Except for when he took it out of the dryer and put it in his room in a separate pile, the clean pile, and then a few days went by. Then he needed to go out to buy another bottle of cheap vodka, the big one, and he couldn't tell which clothes were really clean and which were dirty and they are all pretty much wrinkled anyway. Did it even really matter? Nobody to keep tabs on him or his drinking now. Nobody to impress, that's for damn sure, and he just needed to find a dresser on the side of the road that someone didn't want and he could solve this whole problem.
Andy had a truck and Dave had a coke problem and neither had anything better to do, so he'd call Dave up in the morning and they'd go cruise around town and look for a dresser. Maybe a table too. He crawled back into his bed on the floor and pushed some of the empty bottles and trash aside to make a better path for the bottle with vodka in it, its destination the glass, a foot away. He poured for about four seconds and grabbed the bottle of whatever chaser he picked this time and drank what was left of both. It was a strawberry kiwi flavor and he was tired of it and tomorrow he'd get a lemonade or something and another bottle of vodka. The big one. He'd grab another pack of cigarettes because he was almost out then he'd pick up Dave and go look for a dresser. And a table. Then they could break up a few lines on it if Dave had coke. Who was he kidding? Dave always had it, and it was always good. He didn't know where he even got it from or how he paid for it but it didn't matter. He would probably have to get some chairs too he supposed and he closed his eyes to sleep.
Andy had nightmares that he didn't remember for the remaining hours of the night and woke up in the morning to find his shirt was wet and cold.
—
The area outside of St. Louis was not the best place Jen had lived. There hadn't been a whole lot of places that she felt that she could call home, and if she was being honest, this one was actually the worst. The weather was bad. The roads were bad. The people? Bad. The music scene was bad. The music wasn't so bad but the people behind it were most of the time. That was her experience at least. So she had withdrawn from her "friends" and started to leave all of that behind. She worked in a small coffee shop and the tips were okay and her apartment was cheap at least. It was gross but it was cheap. $550 a month all utilities included. So yeah, it was a shit hole and it was scary sometimes, but hey, it was home. Home sweet home. Jen was tough though. She knew it. She knew it more now. She wasn't afraid to die, not anymore really. She certainly wasn't afraid of pain. She didn't know how to describe it. She didn't want to be stabbed to death, she didn't want to get in a car crash and become a flesh and bone soup on the pavement. But she was lying if she said those thoughts didn't play hide-and-seek with her. After numbing herself to the point of becoming a zombie-person for a while, she'd somehow fought that off too. Addiction is a monster unlike so many others. For Jen, it was the scariest monster she had faced personally, and that was really saying a lot. When you find out your "friends" are monsters, you can at least get away from them. Sometimes. So she had come to (this town) to get away from the monsters and now this area was the scariest thing in her life and she thought she could deal with that. She thought maybe she would get stabbed here.
Leanne lived almost exactly a mile down the road with one turn into a neighborhood and she paid more than double the amount of rent that Jennifer did. She really didn't mind because her job paid an okay amount and it was remote so she didn't ever need to go into those less favorable areas that were only a few blocks from her quaint little house. She liked it here. She would start a garden in a few months and maybe even grow enough food to notice a difference in her grocery bill. Surely she would, especially since she planned on eating a completely vegetarian diet from now on. She'd eaten meat every so often but now out of principle she was going to go all in this time. She meant it.
The animals didn't need to suffer or be killed to feed her. Animals suffering was her greatest weakness when it came to her heartstrings. When she saw an animal hurt on TV or heaven forbid on the side of the road, she felt like a small devil in her chest was tightening those sacred strings. Like the tuning pegs on an antique violin no longer playable, things would start to turn over and there would be some creaking, not too much tension would build before the string would pop with a springing kind of sound. She had seen a hurt fox on the side of the road as a teenager and she thought about that fox far too often. It really didn't take much to over-tune her heartstrings when it came to animals or small children because they were innocent, rather defenseless creatures of God. It seemed like just about everything was defenseless against Man. Sometimes Leanne felt like even God was helpless against the wrath of Man and she felt guilty. She prayed that Jennifer would be safe from the wrath of man again.
A smell of lavender filled the small house on the corner, and the mailman dropped his daily deliverance in the mailbox by the door. Leanne retrieved the mail, mostly advertisements and flyers addressed to "Current Resident" and "Postal Customer" and set it on the small round three-legged table inside. There was nothing of interest in the very small stack of mail from the last week, because nobody really knew where she lived yet. They had left Chicago just last week, and they had left in a hurry, keeping the secret between "the girls". They didn't talk about it when Jennifer came over for lunch, although Leanne wished they could have.
Jennifer just wasn't as easy to talk to anymore. It was a slow disintegration, she didn't change all at once, but once that needle had been found it sped up. The ball of yarn that was the relationship between her and her step-daughter fell out of the car door and started rolling down the streets of Chicago when that needle had been found. Jennifer was angry with her at first, which was so unlike the girl who had adolescent hugs to give away in droves. It was so unlike the girl who had once said "Thank you for being my mommy when I needed one", after she had been informed about why Leanne's last name was Norris and hers was Myer. The last few months had been a little easier and things were getting better between them. She was pretty confident that if she could just help Jen stay away from heroin, that she could find her friend again, somewhere in that dark pit.
She twisted up the Bimbo white bread and placed it back into the breadbox she had found at a small thrift store the day after they got here. The thrift store was one of those that helped abused mothers and women and she thought about the irony of spending her money there. But she didn't need charity; she had a job, thankfully, and she thought God put a pretty good head on her shoulders. She was able to count her blessings in the morning and when things were hard, she included them in her nightly prayers. She was a godly woman now, maybe not always, but eventually, everything found its way to God. She was pretty confident about that as well. She was confident that eventually, everything finds its way to God, and that if she could just keep Jennifer away from heroin…
Cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches and tea were on the menu for lunch today and she didn't really think Jennifer would care for that, but knew she wouldn't object either. If anything she would kindly decline and would probably just walk to the store just beyond the half-real, half-imagined border separating her neighborhood, from the paved urban sprawl. Jennifer was always walking somewhere back in Chicago, and it scared her to her wits end. Jennifer always reassured her that she would be okay, she had pepper-spray and she had taken self defense classes, and of course, Matthais could protect her. Jennifer probably knew that was a lie, and Leanne certainly knew that was a lie, but neither of them admitted it to each other and it went unspoken. She wished it hadn't and she thought that she would probably never forgive herself for not speaking her truth about what she thought of that boy. She thought, despite all the reasoning, it was nothing but ominous that a boy, so young and at one time presumably innocent, would carry a gun.
It was around 11:30 a.m. when there was a quick tap on the screen door, the squeak of the hinges, and then a rattling slam of metal and plastic.
"Helloo" came a mellow and sweet voice from the living room.
"Hi honey! You're just in time!" Leanne responded with a raised voice from the kitchen.
Jen stepped through the welcoming doorway and smelled the lavender scent from the bush growing near the porch as the screen door closed behind her, sending a woosh of cold air past her. Leanne was always on time and that's something Jen had admired about her growing up, even if it did come with some nagging.
Somewhere around 8th grade Jen had understood the value in being on time. She understood it when she arrived at her classes on time that year because she was always at school on time thanks to Leanne. First classes of the day? No problem! The classes after lunch? Well that wasn't a problem either because she usually spent lunch in the science class she had afterward. It was just easier than finding a spot somewhere in the grass or sitting on a bench or planter ledge by yourself. Because then you stood out and people could see you sitting alone. No, it was better in the science room, it was climate controlled, quiet, and it was nice to eat with a chair that had a back rest. So that class she was always on time to, and for the other classes with just 5 minutes in between? She was on time to those too because she never stopped to talk to anybody on her way to them.
Once she'd received a letter of recognition from the school for perfect attendance, and her science teacher always seemed to treat her much nicer than some of the other girls. Especially the ones who came in late so often and were always chatting. That was around the time that Jen understood the value of being on time, it was easy and being late made you look so… disorganized… like you didn't know what you were doing in life.
"I have cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches and ice tea for lunch, is that okay?"
That didn't sound very appealing to Jen, but she didn't vocalize it. She was an unhealthy eater, but thank the Lord, or whoever, she never put on too much weight. She never over ate, though, it made her feel gross and sluggish. She loved fast food, she loved Cheetos, and she didn't feel right without a boost of caffeine from an energy drink. She especially wanted the caffeine now, but she knew that would probably have to go soon too.
"That sounds fine, I'm not starving anyway."
With that, Leanne knew she didn't want them but would probably have one anyway just because that was the polite thing to do. She set the platter on the coffee table in front of where Jen was now sitting and sat herself in the armchair across the room.
"Well, how is your decorating coming along?" Leanne asked.
"Fine, I have most of my boxes unpacked" Jen replied, and she grabbed one of the fourths of sandwich.
Leanne's house looked like she had lived there her whole life. Rugs were on the floor, pillows were on the furniture, the walls were all filled up with her paintings and photos already. Leanne loved to decorate more than Jen did, but Jen thought she didn't exactly care about the art. Once shed asked about a painting in the hallway of their house in Chicago. It was a painting of (figure out what this painting is, it should be symbolic. jen really sees the painting but leanne never really thought about it much). Leanne had simply said she found it at an estate sale about 10 years ago and that she thought it was "kinda cute". That painting was now in Jen's apartment. She asked for it when they were unpacking because she didn't think Leanna fully appreciate it. She didn't really see it.
The house was decorated because thats what you were supposed to do to a house. That was what a woman was supposed to do. Make things pretty. Keep the house nice, take care of the children, and make cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches. Leanne was just… fulfilling her place in the universe.
But who had told Leanne what her place was? She was like this for as long as Jen could remember, and her father, Andrew, hadn't made her this way. He certainly grew used to it and reinforced it in the last few years though, Jen thought. Maybe Leanne's father? She didn't know, but maybe now that it was just them, in a safe new place, she could ask her more about her past, about her vulnerabilities.
"How about this new job? Same as the last?"
"It's the same, new faces, same job though really"
Jen worked as a coffee barista ever since her senior year of high school. She enjoyed it. Most of the time people were nice, or they were too tired to give you any trouble. She worked the morning drive-thru, and as long as the coffee came out right, and in a timely manner, her customers were almost always happy, or at least too tired to say otherwise. "My biggest contribution to workplace safety is having a cup of coffee in the morning" a bumper sticker on a work truck had read once. She understood, she needed her morning coffee too. Her coffee was about the same color, but she had to take hers intravenously.
She did it behind her knee. She heard that's where the classy people do it. Politicians, movie stars, rich people. You didn't want anyone seeing the track marks and besides she didn't want to mess up that piece of prime real-estate.
Jen wasn't the type that nodded out at work, though. She was one of the classy people. She always did just enough or less than she really wanted before work. The nods were for later, in private or with Matt. She wished shed never met the motherfucker.
"Has he been calling you still?"
Jen slightly jumped at this because it was almost as if Leanne had heard her thinking about Matt, or at the very least had seen it on her face. Matt had called her a total of 23 times between Sunday and Thursday and send just as many texts. The texts were usually "I'm sorry", "Hello?", or just a question mark, sometimes two. Just one call had come on Thursday, no text. Most of the calls or texts happened on Sunday or Monday when Matt had learned they had left. Jen didn't know why she didn't block the number. It honestly scared her when he reached out now, but at least she knew he was still alive. Scary but alive.
"No, he stopped." Jen replied in a small voice.
"Well that's good at least," said Leanne. "I was thinking we could do a little shopping today, my treat, we could look for some more things to decorate your apartment with"
"That sounds fine." Jen wished she could reply with more words.
Leanne wished she could too, it felt like it had been years since they had a conversation. She sipped her tea and let the silence decide what they should talk about next. She listened to a bird chirp next to the kitchen door that led to a small unfinished deck. She thought sometimes the birds were easier to talk to. She couldn't understand what they said but at least she felt like she could be honest with them. It was vice-versa with Jen these days. Even if she understood the words they shared, there was something dishonest floating in the silences between them.
"Are you okay?" Leanne finally asked as Jen sat picking at the bread of her finger sandwich.
"Im fine." Jen started, and then added "Im just a little tired I guess. Maybe we could stop for coffee?"
Leanne was happy to get anything more than "fine" and said that sounded lovely. She took the platter with only three corners of one sandwich gone and brought it back into the kitchen to put the sandwiches in baggies and save them for later. She cleaned up what mess she had made in the kitchen while Jen sat in the living room, on her phone, looking up every once in a while to see what the answer on the jeopardy card was. Sometimes seeing which contestant had guessed the question right the most based on the amount of points displayed on their podiums.
Leanne used the restroom, wandered the house to check that windows and doors were shut and locked, and took her purse and keys off the hook near the front door.
"Ready?"
Jen clicked the screen off on her phone, stood up and gave a big stretch that made her vision go dark for a split second. Low blood pressure, and sometimes she stood up too fast. She stepped out on the the front porch, smelling the lavender again, and Leanne locked the door behind them.