by Janissa Marie Analissia Martinez
Memory floating on the edge of a high, you watch as smoke wafts up into the once white exposed ceiling beams of the apartment. The smell of mint and skunk hangs in the air, floating, dancing to the beat of your breath and clinging to the drywall. The thin futon mattress laying on the floor serves as a catch all- dresser, bookcase, and chair, but when you want to lie down, like now, you lie on your back on the floor, the scratchy carpet brushing your bare back and arms. They are splayed like you are making a snow angel, and you picture yourself falling back into powdery whiteness that envelopes you in specks of cold and presses down, down, until you can’t breathe, and you need to bring the joint back to your mouth and drag down more numbness.
You love the look of the smoke in the half-light. That barely there but then suddenly opaque flash curling in the spotlight. Alluring. Like those girls who dance behind huge, feathered fans. Like Sally Rain used to.
***
You found her there among those flashes of skin, dark, light, and dusky in a dimly lit room, cigarette smoke coiling around the brightest of white feathers. The others knew you, your face scruffed with that dark stubble, the feel of your air brush tickling their bodies as you stroked on the silver used to cover their bodies. The way they looked at you, like you mother.
Their smiles and eyes gleamed, disjointed, and they fluttered their lashes, while you tried to focus only on the soft white and gray lines of your paint.
At least until you saw Sally, that gaze so blank and glazed over like she wasn’t even in her body anymore. You remember that look. So, as you brushed feathers onto her face, reaching to touch it over and over again even though it smudged some lines, you had her look you in the eye, and you smiled and asked, “Do you want to try the brush sometime?”
***
Do you remember the moment you gave up on her?
There used to be a bed where the mattress is now, a queen sized carved masterpiece you designed and created for her that first year. You used to meet there every night, and she would scream for you to stop tickling her, with that laugh, all infections and fleeting, as though it scared her to be happy for too long.
The one time you didn’t stop, she let go too much, too far and too fast. The sharp scent of urine struck you. When she shut down, her eyes averted, face hidden in shame, you didn’t let her hide. Instead, you kissed her soft and slow before drawing her a bath full of bubbles. You helped her strip off her clothes and settle into the suds. Her arms wrapped around her legs, and she just stared at the speckled subway tile on the walls.
You shampooed her hair, your fingers digging gently in to find all the sore spots in her mind, trying to tease her out once more. Stroking her neck and shoulders as the scent of strawberry filled the humid recess.
She still didn’t respond, so you went to get a marker for her to hold, something to anchor her to herself. When you returned her head was under the bubbles, knees sticking up like silken islands. The marker dropped sharply to the floor and when you pulled her out, she smiled through the suds spilling over her, hugging you close and laughing until your clothes were soaked through with her wetness.
***
You’d give anything to feel her soft and wet and warm against you again.
She drew whitecaps on the kitchen floor, painted it white and drew waves in black, white, and silvered blue, until you had to find your sea legs every time you crossed it.
You miss coming home to her drawing on the walls, the doors, the windows, permanently marking her presence all over your life. The cerulean waves on the kitchen floor, the silvery feathers falling across the bedside table, the yellow suns shining on the headboard of the bed, the stained-glass butterflies on the windows and doors. And the stark black of that rickety wooden roller coaster she’d drawn on the cupboards after that day at the fair.
It had drops like mountains that left you both breathless.
The first one tore joyous screams from her pink lips. It reminded you of your mother’s screams, the cacophony of violence pushing against a wall in your memory you never wanted to see the other side of. Your knuckles jutted as you gripped the bar the attendant had placed in front of you. As the cart slowly zippered up the wooden track, she turned to you in anticipation of exhilaration.
Then she saw the look in your eyes and cowered away from you. So, you pulled her near, wrapping your arms around her and burying your face in her hair. Whispered it’s okay. The strawberry smell of her shampoo masked the aroma of fear, pulling you back into her arms.
She could still smell it though, that acrid salt of vomit and shit and metal and wood.
***
She took you home to her parents. That one summer’s day when she showed you, her scars. They had a house in a cozy little cul-de-sac, and you were the first person Sally had brought home since him. They left to buy dinner from the only restaurant in town and she took you to the room where she lives again now.
The sun was streaming into her the room through dusty glass panes, and you thought the room smelled musty and stale, so you opened the windows. A glint of silver fell down: a razor from where it was hidden between window and frame.
That’s when she exposed them to you, pulling back the thin dark fabric of her long sleeves. Tiny shimmering white crescents spread all over her arms. At first you thought they’d come from her fingernails. You pictured her grabbing her arms, nails biting in until she bled, eyes wide with fear as he stood over her. Instead, you watched as she took the razor from the floor, wiped it on her shirt, and cut into her skin with the point. She licked up the blood and then when she caught you staring, she said, “I just like the taste,” and mouthed a red smile.
You knew it wasn’t true, but you just pulled her arm from her bitten pink lips and kissed her hard, pushing on the half inch crescent with your thumb to stop the bleeding. You didn’t stop holding her until her parents came back with bags full of burgers and stale fries that dripped grease, and she pulled her sleeves back down. You licked your thumb to get the blood off, and her copper coated the back of your throat throughout the meal.
You should have said something. She was waiting for you to, and you never did.
***
Do you remember when she fell apart?
Her hand slipped as she grabbed a glass coated with condensation on the outside. It crashed onto the floor, washing water over her toes. You looked up and she was frozen, watching the water spread, and then, as you shouted No! she stepped carefully into the shards, grinding her feet on the glass, and slashing her soft skin.
She wasn’t gone this time as you scooped her up off the floor, laid her on the bed, blood running down and wetting the black sheets. Instead, she cried, huge heaving sobs, clutching her chest and trying to hold you to her.
You didn’t let her.
Hands and knees shaking, you scrambled to grab everything you could think of. Tweezers and a bowl to catch the glass out, cotton balls to clean the cuts. Gauze and antibacterial cream and duct tape from the emergency kit. You bent over her feet and got to work, holding her steady and yelling “Sally, please sit still!” And she did. The blood was on your hands now, silver stained nails coated copper. You let her feet bleed out what glass you couldn’t grasp, cleared her skin with soap and warm water. Gently, softly. Applied the cream over her torn feet and covered with layers of soft linen folds. Ripped a piece of tape to close it. Held her feet in your hands and pushed back the tears.
She told you she was fine when you carried her to the bed, and again when you pulled the covers up over her shoulders. She fell asleep with you holding her, brushing her hair softly away from her face. You fell asleep smelling her strawberry shampoo.
When you woke up, there was a phoenix on the wall, in reds and oranges, like fire crawling up the flat white.
And Sally Rain was gone.
***
You waited for her to come home, but she never did. They found her washed up later on the shore of the reservoir.
Her parents came, broke down when they looked at the drawings crawling over every inch. You gave them the sunny bed, and the feathered table. Couldn’t bear to remember, so you scrubbed and painted until now all that’s left is the phoenix on the wall. You lay alone, in this skunk and mint scented room, watching the smoke thicken and swirl in front of the yellows and reds. Surrounded by the memories of who you wanted her to be.
And you can’t just lay here anymore, thinking about everything you should have done differently.
So instead, you grab a large tub of white body paint from under the sink and open it, mixing the silky slime slightly with two fingers. Your breath comes heavy as you work, dragging the paint over the wall in huge arcs of your arms.
When you finish, there are white wings adorning the fiery bird. And you weep because it’s all you have left.
Janissa Marie Analissia Martinez is from Glendo, Wyoming. She loves to write quiet, visceral, character driven fiction about the rural spaces where she grew up. She writes from perspectives that try to change our understanding of Wyoming and what it means to live in rural spaces. She is currently pursuing her BSB in Accounting part time at the University of Wyoming, working full time as an office associate, and finding time to spend with her husband and daughter.