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Gypsy grinned a yellow grin
before inserting the last of the needles into her husband’s eyes. She rested splayed,
blood stained fingers on his chest when she did it. “That’s tha last one,”
she said.
“I can still see fine, Gypsy,” said Johnny, sitting up. His eyes looked like a couple of pin cushions. “Need another right here.” And he moved
a couple pins out of the way so she could see the spot.
“But that was tha last one Johnny.” And she started to cry. She moved her rail thin body against a nearby
wall and buried her face in her arms.
Johnny was alarmed by just how frail she had become.
He could see the silhouette of her naked body through the thin fabric of the
prairie dress she always wore, dirty feet and calves sticking out the bottom. She looked perfectly skeletal, just like one of
those holocaust victims. Her hair was falling
out too. She was completely bald in places. You’d think she was suffering from some
terrible disease but that just wasn’t true; not completely anyway. She was suffering, oh lordy yes, but it
wasn’t like that. “I’m trying my best,” he said, moving his hands down
the length of his body. He was much thinner
than he used to be too and he knew how much that pleased her.
Gypsy moved away from the wall. “I’m scared Johnny,” she said. “I don’t know what else to do.”
We could run away, he thought. Go
where no one can find us.
Gypsy left Johnny in that tiny room. She
stumbled down the narrow hallway nearly knocking a plastic impression of Jesus Christ off
the wall. Her bones made a dry sound when she
bent to pick the cross up off the floor. She
ran her fingers over the tiny, solemn head, the slight depressions for eyes, before
replacing it on the wall. “I love ye,” she said. She smiled a wilted smile
before continuing on her way.
She thought about all this before. The
implications rose out of her like crazy fire. Her
own fear might just fail her in the end. The
patterns, the juju of her thoughts, the sacrifices . . . They all pointed to one thing. But the good lord wasn’t letting her have it. Didn’t she love Him enough. It was the only thing she had to weigh against
everything else.
Gypsy found the door that would take her outside.
She had not been on the outside for days. She
took the door knob in her straw like fingers and turned it.
There was that same strange weight on her chest and she knew the cool air would do
her good. Besides, it was night time. Johnny had told her this before she’d started
with the needles.
Gypsy stepped outside the trailer. There
was a moment of relief as her hot, naked toes wiggled against the cool earth. And the night was so crisp against her face. It was the nearest thing she knew to feeling saved
and it frightened her badly. She knew that
she didn’t deserve it; not yet anyway; maybe never. “Oh daddy,” she said
into the darkness, into the sky, or wherever he might be hiding. A shiver ran down her spine. Yes, he was close.
She could feel him; could even smell him.
“I’m sorry daddy,” she said, forcing herself to remember his
face; his square, sweaty face and beady eyes; his thin lips and fuse box teeth.
Had she been
the one to twist that face up. It was all so
vague and dark in her mind. His eyes clouded
over and the smell of alcohol in the room; and sex. Blood
too. The smell of blood had been thick; and
the razor in her nimble, little girl fingers. They
had told her that she had done that to him. They
had even taken her away for it; locked her up good until they were willing to believe that
she had become up standing and God fearing. They
had stayed away so far.
The night
had become oppressive. Gypsy went back
inside.
“You
okay baby?” Johnny had all the needles
out of his eyes now. They leaked tears and
puss. “We’ll try it again
tomorrow,” he said, going to her.
Gypsy
wouldn’t let Johnny hold her. God did
not approve of such things. Instead, she took
one of his rough hands in her own. “That’s
right,” she said. “I’m so
tired now.”
“They
ain’t comin’,” he assured her. “Not
tonight anyway.”
Daddy might be coming though, she thought. He might be coming just the same.
Gypsy let
Johnny’s hand go.
Johnny
looked for some sign in his wife’s face; some symbol of what might come next. He searched in her eyeless sockets and among the
scars etched into her face. She had seen, and
felt, too much; all of it painful. But he knew that he loved her. He loved her almost as much as he loved Our
Savoir, The Lord Jesus Christ.
Johnny felt
for the stump between his legs and reminded himself that he would do anything for her;
anything.
He said it again:
“We’ll try again tomorrow. I
promise.”
And as
weightless as a scarecrow Gypsy slumped to the floor.
©2001 C. C. Parker |