Safety

By Amethyst Turner

Be my blanket on cold nights

And I'll be your cabin in the woods

And we'll defeat the wilderness with

Our will to survive

XXX

Amethyst didn't know exactly when he found her, but she knew she couldn't have stopped it anyway. His rough hands yanked her out of a fitful sleep, fingers curled around the collar of her shirt. She blinked her blurry eyes, startled into tears. Sudden light seared her eyes, spots dancing.

Miss Briggs was gone, and she had been for hours now. She had left with hurried, clacking footsteps as her father's voice raised higher and higher, filling the room like a bad smell.

After that, her father had stomped around, calling her name in increasingly drunken tones. "Amethyst?" he shouted, then slurred. "Aimee? Come out, come out, wherever you are . . . I'll find you anyway. Just come out."

She didn't know how long she'd been asleep for, but now as she hung in the balance between his hands and the floor, she still felt almost leadenly exhausted.

Then wham, without a second in between she was no longer in the air but on the floor. The cold, hard wood stung her face and arms, her skin buzzing with agony. She cried out, trying not to let tears leak out.

"Get up," he growled. She tried, but her wrists shrieked in protest when she began to push onto her knees. "Get up!"

He didn't let her try again. A hand closed around her neck, squeezing. Amethyst gasped for air, feeling sick as the ground flew further away again. She squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for the impact again, but it didn't come. Instead, her stomach dropped as he lifted her higher, so close that she could smell the sourness of beer on his breath.

"What. Did. I. Tell you?" He grunted, each words coming out hard and drunkenly out of control, languid and lethal like snakes in the sun. "I said never to leave this house, did I not say that? Did you not hear me say that? You did, and you disobeyed me. You little sneak, you rat!"

Amethyst kept her eyes squeezed shut. "Put me down," she gasped. Her lungs scrambled frantically for air. "Please!"

Air whooshed through her ears, cold and whistling, then sharp pain and the world disappeared.

XXX

Melissa pressed her forehead to the window of the bus, watching the glass fog under her breath. She thought of Ashley, of the pictures that she must see in the condensation each day when she walked the length of her empty bus to check for sleeping children. What did kids draw in the windows? When they were children, it was hearts with initials in them, little stick families, and sometimes flowers or stars.

She dragged her finger through the mist, tracing out her own name in the round, low print that she used to write words on the board for the children. She could feel the woman next to her trying not to look. Melissa wiped the letters away with the sleeve of her jacket.

She felt so deflated, so useless. What now? She shuddered to recall the bleak, stone cold house, the heat in her face as his voice rose and hers was silenced.

With the condensation, Melissa watched the world scroll by like a sad, gray movie reel. Melissa sighed. How had she never noticed just how hopeless life looked in the winter?

XXX

After work, Owl stripped the beds and tried not to let the silence get to her.

She did her bed first, since it was easier. She threw the quilt and the sheets and the pillow cases in a melted pile on the floor, wrinkling her nose as the scents of mold and dust and her own hair passed through her nostrils. When she had finished, her fingers felt furry with dust and her nose twitched from it.

She sat down on the bare mattress and put her chin in her hands, looking across the room at Amaya's bed, blanket still cast haphazardly aside from the last time she had gotten out of bed. Owl thought that she could still see the indent where she used to sleep, but she knew that was just her imagination trying to comfort her.

Could she ever touch another woman again? Another man? Surely not, after all the blissful moments of sweet joy that had come to her in this warm, dusty twin bed. Surely not, after coming home to the sight of her lover on the couch and the scent of her soap and shampoo, after the feeling of her hands under Owl's sweaters, after the taste of her lips, coffee and cocoa and mint. Surely, after a taste of what love could be, Owl could not stand to thrust herself back into the imperfection of the world.

She sighed and went to Amaya's bed. She lifted up a pillow and held it to her face, sneezing from the dust. Then she breathed in, shivering at the familiarity of Amaya's scents. Maybe it hurt too much to move on now, but soon the pain would fade and she would go back into the world to seek that same perfection once again.

XXX

Richard couldn't stand himself. He wanted to crawl out of his skin, cast off his own thoughts, his own traitorous heart. He wanted nothing to do with the cowardly man that lived all around him, all within him, but there was no escape from him.

He held Amethyst's small, bony body in his arms, holding her as tightly as he dared. She felt fragile, like she had in her the hollow bones of birds. Richard stroked the side of her face with his thumb, thinking to himself that he didn't deserve to touch her. "I'm sorry," he muttered again. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

Her soft eyelashes brushed over his knuckles gentle and sweet as butterfly wings. She sighed through her nose, hot breath reaching Richard's neck. He kissed her forehead, apologizing again when she winced. He had forgotten the bruise.

"I love you," he told her. "Please forgive me, Amethyst. Please."

His tears dripped onto her cheeks, but she said nothing. Amethyst pressed herself against his chest, arms wrapped tightly around herself. She whimpered, pulling in closer to him, but she would not say that she forgave him.

"It's okay," he said. He touched the curve of her ankle, feeling the bone there that he had fractured. "You don't have to forgive me. I don't deserve it, anyway."

Amethyst's eyes opened, clear blue and watery. "No," she said.

"No what?"

"I want to forgive you. It's okay."

Richard let out a long, shuddering sob, holding his daughter to his skin. How could he have hurt such a perfect little angel? How could he have created one? "It's not okay," he told her. "I can't believe I hurt you."

"It's okay," she repeated. Aimee sat up, putting her soft hand on his cheek. Richard laid as still as he could, afraid he might scare her away. "I think you're two different people," she said after a moment.

"Two different people?"

"Mhm. This is one of you. You're the one that makes dinner and kisses me goodnight and reads me books."

Richard sighed. He hadn't read her a book in a long, long time. "So, who's the other one?"

She pointed to the purple bruise blooming over the face. "The one that does this."

XXX

"Liss? Can we talk?"

Ashley sank down onto her sister's bed with a grunt. Melissa had a featherbed that sank down too far when you tried to sit. Her walls were a sunny yellow and her bedspread filled with pink paisley.

Melissa looked up and took her glasses off, eyes on fire. "Ever heard of knocking?" she said.

"Are you serious right now? You never knock."

"Get off my bed," Melissa snapped. She slid her glasses back onto her face and looked back down on her book. The cover said Creative Ideas For Developing Minds. Those were the only books Melissa read: teaching books, craft books, brain theories.

Ashley frowned at her. "What?"

"I didn't say you could sit there."

"Liss, why are you being like this? Did I miss something? Are we fighting?"

Melissa didn't look at her. "I never said we were fighting."

"Then why can't I sit down?"

"Can you blame me for not wanting a lesbian in my bed?"

The words hit Ashley's heart like flaming arrows, so unexpected that they made her faint. "What?" she said. "I can't believe you just said that."

Melissa didn't look up and when she spoke, there was no hint of remorse in her voice. "Please leave me alone," she said. "I'm having a bad day."

A bad day. Ashley pulled the door shut behind her, heart pounding with anger, and hoped that was all it was.

XXX

Libby watched the child's chest rise and fall, lips parted. She could hear her trying to snort in air through her blocked nose, breath shuddering out of her mouth. The girl shivered beneath her thin blanket, shaking with such violence that the frame of her bed shook with her. Libby wondered how she could sleep through her own racket.

Her breast felt heavy and tender beneath her nightgown, weighed down with streams of useless milk. She remembered the first time she had felt this, back when Amethyst was a baby. That time, she had let her milk exhaust itself out of anger. This time, she was doing it because she had no other choice.

Libby felt her hands begin to tremble. Why did this ugly, awful creation get to walk the earth while her sweet baby boy would only ever see the lid of his coffin? Why did Amethyst get life and joy when Joseph received only death and punishment?

The cigarette lighter felt suddenly weighted in her pocket. Libby lifted it out, rolling the spark wheel under her thumb. How easy it would be to send this sad excuse for a life up in flames, how easy it would be to end everything for all of them.

She didn't. Instead, she held her hand over the flame and guided it toward the little girl, leading it onto the soft, supple flesh of her arm, white and innocent as fresh snow. She placed the flame there and held it until she began to smell burning flesh. She escaped up the dark staircase just before the girl awoke, screaming and doubled over with dry sobs.

XXX

When I was a child
They'd ask me where it hurt
And wipe the tears from my eyes

Sure embraces,
Gentle forehead kisses
Making sure that I was alright

As I grew older and the nights grew shorter
I no longer cared where it hurt

-Whisky Lullabies by Janet Devlin