Getting Out

            I don't know what it is about her that reminds me of a chicken.  Maybe her pointy little nose, or her beady eyes, or her hair all pinched up on top.  Also the way she fusses at me like I'm important, like I matter a lot.

            Which I don't.

            Luke's the one they ought to worry about.  He's down there in one of those rooms right now, probably wondering when they'll come and take the cuffs off.

            I ask her about him twice, and she changes the subject like a true chickenshit, so I guess that's another reason why.  Hell, she even looks like a liar in that tiny picture on the tag around her neck, big fakey smile like it's for the yearbook, Claudia Hall, Monmouth County Sexual Assault Unit, Most Likely to Bullshit and Mislead.

            "I want you to know you're not alone in this," she says.  Her breath stinks.  I want to move, but I'm at the end of the bench and the room is all on her side.  "Right now you're being brave, and that's okay, that's good," she says.  "You've been through one of the toughest things a woman can face, and every time I tell someone that I get a little angrier at all the violence in this nasty world."

I've been called a lot of things before, but never a woman.

We're at the police station, trying to reach my mother.  Only she, as my legal guardian, can get me out of here because I'm still a minor for another three and a half months.  My dad lost custody when they got divorced.  Not that he wanted it.  He's up in the city, living his new life, forgetting the old one fast.  Except when my mother calls up crying, Why did you leave me?  How could you leave me?  As if her mirror's gone blank.  He hangs up, changes his number.  She begs me for the new one, until she forgets why she wants it.  Sometimes she just whines.  This morning it was whining.

"Diane, dear," she says.  "Won't you bring me an aspirin and a cup of coffee?"  

"I'm late for school."

"I don't ask for much."  She lay there in that bed she hadn't made for about a year, with Kleenex and magazines tossed all around.  I walked away.

"You think you're too good for me," she called on my way out.  "That you can just live your life and not bother." 

If only I could.

"What are you thinking about?" asks Chicken Shit.

"Nothing."

She looks at me real close, like I'm an egg she wants to hatch.

"I'll just go try her again," she says.  She gets up and her skirt sticks to the back of her legs.

I move into the middle of the bench.  I touch the bandage on my neck.  It feels weird, so I pick it.

She comes back.  "No one there.  Are you sure I have the right number?"

"She's just out."  Out cold, that is.  It's after one o'clock.  She's had her afternoon six-pack and hit the couch for a nap.  She'll wake up when the sun goes down, and Six-Pack Number Two calls her name from the fridge.

I yank the bandage off.  On the gauze is a little dot of blood.  My blood.  Inside out, I think.  Blood is supposed to be inside.  So is what you feel.  Luke let them both out.

"Oh, don't do that!  You don't want it getting infected," says Chicken Shit.

You're infected, I think.

She plops down next to me and says, "Well, I guess there's nothing to do but go on waiting.  I'll just go over my report again, and see if there's anything missing."

Then she turns away and reads my version of what happened, which leaves me nothing to do but think about Luke. 

 

I worked part-time at the printing company every day after school.  I sat at a wobbly wooden table and proofed papers ready for binding - manuals, insurance booklets, really boring stuff.  I went through each page to make sure the lines were straight, and that they were all in order.  It sucked.  I did it though, every God damned afternoon.

After about a month the forklift guy quit, and they hired Luke to replace him.  Clancy, my boss, brought him around, with the usual crap about making him feel welcome, and how great it was to have him on our team.  I finished the page I was on, and looked up.  I didn't hear anything Clancy said after that, because Luke was the cutest guy I'd ever seen that wasn't in a movie, or on TV.  He had curly brown hair, blue eyes, and a beard only on his chin, one of those goatees all the guys wear now.  He had on a tight white tee shirt and new blue jeans.  His track shoes were new, too, with silver bands that reflected the light. 

Doris, the girl I worked with, watched him walk away with Clancy.  I made myself not look.  Later on, Norma, the fatty who ran the office, asked us if we'd ever seen a nicer fitting pair of jeans.  Doris grinned.  I shrugged.

"He's on parole," said Norma.

"Jesus, what did he do?" said Doris.

"Assaulted the last guy he worked for."

"Clancy must be nuts," I said.

"Clancy gets a big fat tax break for hiring an ex-con," said Norma.

That was a good thing, because Luke wasn't exactly the hardest worker.  He'd do his forklift thing for a while, then drink coffee and bug me.

"You look any more excited there, Diane, and you're gonna come in your pants," he said.

"Oh, get lost."

One day I went to the drinking fountain, and Luke followed me back there from the storeroom.

"Thirsty?" I said.

"Not for that." 

I had some water.  It felt funny, bending over while he watched me.  I stood up and pretended to read the bulletin board above the fountain. 

"Your boyfriend give you that?" said Luke, pointing at the turquoise stone hanging on the leather string around my neck.

"No."

I looked right into his not-so-innocent blue eyes and waited for him to follow up.  I was pretty enough.  I had red hair that I wore long, genuine green eyes, and a nice nose with a thin band of freckles across it.  I wondered what it would be like going out with a guy who'd been in jail.  He put one foot on the chair by the fountain and tied his shoe.  He looked at the bulletin board when he finished.  Maybe he thought I was too young for him.  He was twenty-two.  Doris had asked him one day how old he was.  She was about thirty-five, maybe more, but Luke flirted with her anyway, saying what was a few years between friends, which made Doris red.

Clancy went by and gave Luke a look that said he should get his ass back to work.

"My boyfriend never gave me anything but a load of shit," I said.

"Is that right?"

"Plus, he was a major bore."

I liked how that sounded, and it was true, in a way.

This time last year Aaron was helping me with my homework, because my grades were going down.  My dad had just left, and my mother was drinking herself to sleep every night after dinner.  That's when we closed the books and went upstairs.  He'd never had sex with anyone before, and couldn't get enough.  We could only do it at my place, though.  At Aaron's his mother was always there, watching me like I was about to lift the silver, or something.  If he called she was in the background, telling him to get off the phone.  It made sense that she hated me.  I mean, he was her precious baby and I was his first girlfriend. 

Then I found out the real reason.

She said I interfered with his studies.  She said if he didn't get into an Ivy League school she'd never talk to him again.  Aaron came to my house one night, had sex with me, then said we had to break up.  I thought he was kidding, until I saw his eyes.

"Look, Diane, I've thought this all out.  I'm not saying she's right.  She's not right.  But she's my mother, and well, what am I supposed to do?"

"Send me a postcard from Yale," I said.

At school the next day I got talking to this girl, Lisa, who was sort of a friend but not really. 

She said, "Hey, rumor is someone dumped you," and I said, "Maybe so, but that Aaron's in for a big surprise."

She said, "What do you mean by that?" and since I had my hand on my stomach for no particular reason, thinking about Aaron flunking out of his precious school, because I knew even then he didn't have it in him, she said, "What is it you're not telling?" and I said, "Nothing.  I'm just waiting on next year."

Well, Lisa's the kind of girl to add two and two and get five.  By fourth period it was all over school that I was pregnant.  At first I was freaked, then I thought, What the hell?  Kids are always talking about something, and it might as well be me.  Which meant, of course, that they were talking about Aaron, too.

He came up to me at my locker, looking like he just got a D on a math test.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he said.

"Why should I?"

"Don't you think I have the right to know?"

"Oh, you'd have found out sooner or later, Dad."

 I guess I just couldn't help saying that, and I have to admit that as the week went by I liked seeing him stare at the floor like his life was over.  Then I got to thinking that if he blabbed at home, his mother would call my mother, and while my mother would probably hang up on her, she might be only a couple of beers down and still halfway with it, and I might get a lot more hell than I needed to.

So, I called it quits.

"False alarm," I said to him the next day.  He stared at me.  "You know, I started.  This morning."  He was already walking away.

Luke was the kind of boyfriend I needed.  He wasn't a wimp, and didn't live with his mother.  He lived alone, in a studio apartment.  I liked how that sounded.  Efficient, independent.  No one bugging you with stupid problems.  Just doing what you wanted, like hang out and watch TV.  Every Friday when we punched out I made sure to catch his eye, but all he ever said was, "Have a good one."

Then one day it rained, one of those real heavy May rains you get in New Jersey, with far off thunder and a sharp smell in the air right before.  Luke offered me a ride home.  He had a van with no back seat, so there was room for my bike.  The van was old, a sixty-something he said he was trying to fix up.  It smelled damp, like mold and dirty socks, so I rolled the window down.  The rain came in.

"You like getting wet or something?" he said.  I rolled the window up.  He pulled out of the parking lot and onto the main road.  I watched him out of the corner of my eye.  The trees we drove under made the rain fall in big slow drops on the windshield.

"What time you have to be home?" he said.

"Doesn't matter."

"Your folks won't call the cops?"

"It's just my mother.  She never calls anyone.  Except the liquor store."

He laughed.  I liked that he understood.  I liked his hands on the steering wheel.

"I got a six-pack.  We can go somewhere for a while," he said.

"Okay."

I told him how to get to the canal.  It was one of my favorite places.  The willows bent down over the bank, and the water moved so slow you wondered if it moved at all.  I went there a lot after Aaron.

When we reached the end of the gravel road Luke turned off the engine, and brought the beer out from under his seat.  He tugged one free from its plastic band and gave it to me.

"Sorry it's not cold," he said. 

He took one for himself, opened it, and drank a lot down.  I opened mine.  I hated the taste, and made myself swallow.  Luke wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.  The windows fogged over from our breathing.  I drew a smiley face with my finger.

"That you?" said Luke.

"Right."

The rain went on falling.  Luke finished his beer, put the can on the dashboard, and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.  His hands were wide, with solid knuckles.  The fourth knuckle of his left hand had a scar across it.

"Can I ask you something?" I said.

"Sure."

"How come you hit that guy?"

"He had it coming."

I couldn't see through the window.  I cleared a space with my hand, and the condensation turned to little streams running down the glass, like the world was melting away.  The rain was hard.  Sometimes the road down here washed out, and you got cut off from town.

Luke nudged me with his elbow.  "Hey, want to see a trick?"  He took something small and black out of the pocket of his pants.  He pressed a little silver button at the bottom, and it went click.  It was a switchblade.

"What's that for?" I said.

"Come on."  He got out of the van.  I didn't move.  He leaned back inside.  "I suppose I ought to tell you, I actually got sent up for murder," he said, with a grin.

"Oh, shut up."  I went out.  The rain was warm, and lighter than it had sounded in the van.  I put my beer on the ground.  Luke held the knife with the blade aimed up at the sky, then threw it forward.  It spun end over end and stuck in the gravel.  He pulled it out and wiped the blade on his pants.

"Give me a quarter," he said.  I dug one out of the front pocket of my jeans.  He walked a few feet out and dropped it down.  "Watch this."  He tossed the knife and it hit the coin, making it skip up like a tidily-wink.  He went and got my quarter.  It had a big nick in it from the knife.

"You owe me twenty-five cents," I said, and held out my palm.  The way he was grinning I thought for a minute that he'd take my hand and spin me around, maybe even kiss me. 
            "All that'll get you is a handful of rain," he said, still grinning, and then we got back into the van, where we'd left the doors open for the wet to come in.  I sat on the edge of my seat.

"Aren't those things illegal?" I said.

"Only one who cares is my parole officer.  You won't tell him, will you?"  My face got hot.  He looked great sitting there with his damp hair and bright eyes.  He seemed newer, fresher, I guess, on account of the rain.

"Now I'll ask you something," he said.  "If you could have just one thing, what would it be?"

You, I thought.

"Shit, I don't know," I said.

"Tell you what I want.  Never to work for another jerk as long as I live."

"Really."  Touch me, I thought.  Why don't you touch me?  His hand was on the seat next to mine.  His fingernails were dirty.  I didn't care if they were dirty.  I slid my hand a little towards his, then a little more.  

"Yup.  Living jerk-free sounds real good," he said.

The rain slowed.  I wanted it to get hard again, wash out the road, and strand us.

He looked at his watch.

"Clancy's not bad," I said. 

"He's okay.  He doesn't put you down."

"Like that other one?  The one you hit?"

Luke turned towards me and rested his arm against the steering wheel.  "Know what that asshole said?  That I didn't have it in me."

"Have what?"

"Whatever it takes, I guess."

His eyes had black flecks around the pupil.  They all seemed to quiver when he said that.

"So, you hit him," I said.

"Broke his nose."
            "And went to jail."

"Prison."

"What was it like?"
            He chewed his thumb.  "Boring.  Except when you were scared shitless."  I nodded, but he'd stopped looking at me.  "The food sucks," he said.  "And so does the light.  It's always dark, even in the morning.  Which makes you wonder why they go and paint the doors black, and the tables, even the floor sometimes.  You don't notice right away, but after a while it's like you soak up the dark and carry it around, there's so much of it."

He stopped talking.  The rain had stopped, too, and it was quiet outside.

"Go on," I said. 

"Nothing more to say."

He started the van, and drove up the gravel road.  I talked about work and how much I hated it, then about school and how much I hated that.  Luke didn't say anything, except to ask which way to go.  The thick sky made it dark, and a lot of cars had their lights on.  Luke didn't turn his on. 

When we got to my house, Luke kept the engine running while he took my bike out of the van.  Then he did the oddest thing.  He kissed me on the cheek.  It kept me up all night, that little kiss.

By morning the rain had stopped and the sky was the color of chrome.  I wondered what Luke was doing, and if he were still in bed.  I wondered what he ate for breakfast.  All I ever had was black coffee.  My mother used to tell me I had to eat something solid, before she started sleeping in, that is.  Only today she got up just after I did, which surprised the hell out of me.  She looked all ruffled and mashed, and leaned on the doorway as she walked through it.  She reached for a chair, sat down, and lit a cigarette.

"How are things?" she said.

"Fine."

"Good."

The day was already hot and close.  Soon I'd have to drag my mattress onto the back porch, since my room had no air conditioner.

"Only a few more weeks," she said.

"Until what?"

"You graduate."

I finished my coffee.

"Then comes summer," she said.

"Uh, huh."

"Will you work at the printing company full time?"

"I haven't thought about it.  Why?"

She put out her cigarette.  "Listen, Diane, I've been thinking.  Maybe I'll sell this house and move away from here."

I stared at her.  "What are you talking about?"

"My sister says I can stay with her for a while.  You know, she has that big place."  My mother's sister lived in Iowa, way out in the country.  They didn't like each other much.  I didn't know they even talked anymore.

"What about me?" I said.

"Well, I thought maybe you could live with your father until you turn eighteen.  Then it's pretty much up to you."

"Wait a minute."

"Your father said it's fine.  You can get a job, and maybe go to night school."  My father lived in an apartment in New York City.  His wife, Beverly, didn't think too much of me.  Neither did her two kids from her first marriage.  They were ten and eight, and spoiled as hell.  I'd get stuck babysitting them, because Beverly always complained about finding someone reliable, someone who could put up with their crap, in other words.

"You gotta be kidding," I said.

She looked me right in the eye.  "I'm trying to do what's best.  For everyone."

"Bullshit."

She tapped another cigarette out of the pack.  "We don't always get good choices to make, Diane.  Only ones that are less bad.  You'll see that when you're older."

I got up, put my cup in the sink, and left.

The day got hotter, which made my head hurt.  The stink of my mother's cigarettes hung in my clothes, my hair, and even inside my mouth so that when I breathed out I thought I could taste smoke.

Then it occurred to me during math class that the way out of this whole mess was Luke.  I could move in with him.  We'd both work at the printing company.  We'd share expenses.  Maybe he'd even fall in love with me.  It wasn't impossible.  That kind of thing happened all the time. 

I didn't see Luke when I got to work.  Doris was on vacation, and I had a shitload of pages to proof.  I sat down and went through a couple of them.  Then Jerry, the printer, came and told me to go see if the paper he needed had come in.

"Why can't you?" I said.

"Hey, I'm behind as it is."

"Ask Luke.  Where is he, anyway?"

Jerry leaned down by my ear.  "Don't tell anyone," he said.  "Clancy's canning him today."

"Shit.  Why?"

"You've seen him."

"Man."

I went into the storeroom.  Sunlight slanted down from the high windows.  New paper was all the way at the back, by the delivery door.  The door was closed, which made it hotter than hell in there.

Luke sat on a box up against the wall.  He was tossing his switchblade into the side of another box across from him.  He'd put about ten holes in the damn thing, so I knew he'd heard about getting fired.

"Hey," I said.

"Hey."

I was sweating, it was so hot.

"Let's get out of here," I said. 

"And go where?"

"I don't know.  Back to the canal."

He pulled his knife out of the box, snapped it shut, and slipped it in the pocket of his jeans.  "You'll get fired," he said.

"I don't care."

"You would." 

I really wanted him to come with me.  I couldn't think straight in there.  My face was damp, and sweat rolled down between my breasts.

"What is it?" he said.

My kisses on his face were fast and hard, and my hands tugged at his hair.

He shoved me away.  "Take it easy." 

"I love you." 

"No, you don't."

"Luke, I - "

"You don't know shit about love.  And you don't know shit about me."

We stepped back and watched each other.  His eyes were narrow and hot.  He went around behind me, and laid his arm over my chest.  He kissed my neck, right on that little spot where you can take your own pulse, and must have felt my heart racing.  My breath wouldn't come, and then it did all at once without feeling good, because it caught hard again, and then again after that.  I needed to say his name.  I moved and the knife clicked.  The blade was below my ear, and just above that Luke's words were soft and slow.  "I'll give it to you, Baby, if that's what you really want.  But don't try to call the shots.  Just stay real still."

I jerked my head and the knife hurt.  He let me go, and I turned around.

"You don't scare me," I said.

"Really.  That's too bad."

I looked at him again, but not for long.  I grabbed him around the waist and kissed him on the mouth.  His one arm reached around me.  His tongue was soft and sweet.  I went after it like it was my only source of air.

Then he dropped his arm and stepped back.  He still had the knife in his other hand.  "It's no good, Babe.  Not with a guy who can't stick around," he said.

Something inside me started to push itself out, something I didn't know what to call.

"Oh, I get it.  You're too good for me," I said.

"Don't be stupid."

"Sure.  You're too good for anyone."  He went on watching me.  "Any girl, that is.  Guys are better, right?  Especially after you've been inside for a while.  Why don't you go back there, then?  Why don't you get the fuck back where you belong?"

I realized I was shouting, and that he was reaching for me with his free hand.

"Get away from me, you son of a bitch!"

I screamed.  The sound broke through every part of me, my stomach, fists, feet, even my eyes, echoing in the storeroom, rising all the way to the highest window where the sun streamed in.  It felt great.  I stopped and the silence was amazing too, because it was even bigger than the noise had been.

Jerry and Clancy came running.  Clancy's short-sleeved shirt made him look like a little boy, and Jerry just looked mean.

"What the hell's all the racket back here?" Jerry said.  They stopped a few feet from us and looked at me, then at Luke's knife, then at me again.

I felt something on my neck, so I touched it and my fingers came back with a tiny drop of blood.

"Get on the phone," said Jerry to Norma, who I didn't even know was there.

"Lord have mercy," she said, and scurried out.

I looked at Luke and he looked at me.  Jerry and Clancy stood back from him, but their bodies were tight, like boxers in a ring before the bell goes off.

"I'm sorry," said Luke.

"What were you trying to do, for Christ's sake?" said Jerry.  There was sweat under the arms of his tee shirt.  Clancy still hadn't said anything.  All four of us stood there, not moving, not talking, everyone looking at Luke, and Luke not looking at anything, until the flashing lights came through the windows above us.

They want to charge Luke with attempted rape. 

It was that stupid cut on my neck, even though the ambulance guy said it was real little and that if I used vitamin E cream I wouldn't even scar.  They brought out this instamatic camera and took pictures of it.  Then they wanted to know if Luke said anything when he had the knife on me, so I told them. 

That shut them up, for a few seconds anyway.

They took more pictures, of my face and arms this time, and when I asked why, they said it was to find evidence of a further struggle.  They asked if Luke touched me inside my clothes.  They made Jerry and Clancy come in, and asked them twice if I was fully dressed when they arrived on the scene, and if Luke was, too.  I mean, God, how did they think I'd miss a thing like being raped?

I even said, "He didn't rape me," and one of them said, "Only because you yelled your head off."

What made up their mind was Luke's prior, so I had to wonder if they would have jumped to conclusions that fast if he hadn't had one.  I hadn't really thought about how a thing like that can follow you around, and hit you when you're not looking.  Luke should have kept that in mind, and put the stupid knife away before Jerry and Clancy got there.  Of course, he shouldn't have been fooling with it in the first place.  He acted like a dumbshit, and now he'll get what a dumbshit deserves.

Then Chicken Shit tells me Luke's looking at about eight years.

"Just for trying to rape me?"

"Second assault doesn't look good, especially when you're still on parole." 

"Wait a minute.  Wait a minute."  She looks at me like I'm a moron, which is exactly how I feel, all of a sudden.  In eight years Luke will be thirty.  He'll spend the rest of his twenties in prison.

"He didn't do it," I say.

"What are you talking about?"

"He wasn't going to rape me."

"You don't know what he'd have done, given the chance."

"Well, neither do you." 

She puts the report on the bench beside her, looks at her fingernails, and bites one.

"You're protecting him," she says.  "Why?"

"I'm telling the truth."

"You lied to the police."

"No.  It all happened like I said, only he was just trying to scare me off."

"And just why was he trying to do that?"

My throat's on fire.  "Because I kissed him.  And he didn't want me to."

"What about the knife?" she says, pointing at my neck.

"He showed it to me before, and I wanted to see it again."

"No one will believe that."

"I'll say we were messing around.  That I wanted him to pretend to use it, like in a movie, or something, and that's why I screamed."

Things look weird, like they have a clean, sharp edge.
            "Now listen to me," she says, in a low, mean voice.  "If you take back anything on this report, you'll sink the whole damn thing."

"Tough."

She leans back and shuts her eyes a minute.  There's a little scar below one of them.  I hadn't seen that before.  "You have exactly one day to think this over, Diane.  They have to hold him that long, at least."  Then she looks at me, straight on like my mother did this morning, and says, "And when tomorrow comes, you better know what the hell you're doing."

 I do. For the first time in my life.