Suzie used to be this wonderful alcoholic. Cheaply buzzed, she’d sing, dance, tell silly jokes.
“Hey Opal,” Suzie said the night we met, “why’d the calamari offer the bartender ink for a drink?”
We met at a house party after she smiled at me with all those teeth, and the kind of warmth that makes your blood tickle.
“Squid pro quo,” she said.
We talked late into the night, touched knees and shoulders when we laughed, when we vibed, when we just wanted to.
She did a keg stand and said she wanted a warm body to celebrate with. Even in the summer heat she ran cold. Low rent came with too many roommates. So, a big trampoline in the backyard was the only soft place left for us when we wanted to lay down. She vomited over the rim. Her lips, slick with spit, touched my shoulder. She told me about how she became a supervisor at the tanning salon where she worked so they’d give her a set of keys. How she scheduled herself for only closing or opening shifts ever since, so the tanning beds could be her home away from hippie hive.
Suzie’s arm rested between my breasts. She dozed carefree, face nuzzled into my nook of throat and collarbone. Her drool soaked into my shirt. That ease at taking up space, even just mine, like there was no reason not to, felt like a sweet dream. Even the smell of her vomit wasn’t as ugly as most, its sour gummy tang rode on the breeze. Clouds drifted by and played peep show with the stars until the sun crept into view. When the sunrise touched her, and she didn’t burn, I slept.
#
When I was thirteen, Momma spent all day in bed. She’d been out all night. The next day after school, she got me food from the value menu. I ate everything I could, whenever I could, and everyone still called me a string bean. She looked like that too. But she didn’t order any dinner. Just asked for a bite of mine and ate a fry. When I offered her more, she put up a hand and said her stomach felt off.
When we got home, I tried to do a dance I’d seen the cheerleaders do at the spirit week assembly. I imagined Carla, the new girl on the squad, smiling at me with all those teeth, and asking if I wanted to join and go on dates and hold hands.
“Opal baby,” Momma said, “I’m going for a walk. Don’t wait up.”
I followed her: across town, under an overpass, to a driveway that was half pine needles and a house swallowed by woods.
The moon had gone from impatient, to fully expected, by the time the back door squealed open again. I’d already wandered around the property. There was a shed out back—which Momma and some guy ducked into. They were in there for so long I finally went home and waited for her.
I stayed up late, danced like—if I could get the moves right—life would get back to normal. I fell asleep on the couch before she came back, and she was still in bed when I got home from school again. It was as if days and nights had flipped on her. First, she left a note with two dollars, and then just a bit of cash on the same note.
Opal baby,
Momma’s not feelin well so Imma get some rest. Imma count on you to get yourself to school and some to eat after. Come give momma a kiss fore you head out.
Which I did, but it wasn’t the same, to have all my fries to myself.
My brain started to get muddy from how I waited up for her every night. But I got the dance down perfect, so I found Carla at lunch and showed her my moves and she said maybe I could help with choreography, but that there wasn’t room on the squad for someone that looked like me. I said I didn’t want to be a cheerleader, but could we eat lunch together sometime—since she bought school lunches and I got free lunches—but then her friend Bambi showed up. Bambi had a look on her face as if Carla had got lost in the woods and was trying to pet a racoon.
“Come on Carla,” she said, “We’re learning back handsprings and you wouldn’t want to catch rabies.”
She scowled at me so hard, I turned around to see if there was something behind me that upset her.
“You, Opal,” Bambi said. “You don’t fool anyone. More like Nope-al.”
Carla fake smiled at me, all those teeth looked wrong with her mouth stretched open and awkward. She followed Bambi.
I ran home. Where Momma wasn’t anywhere, not even in bed. Minutes later I stood outside that shed in the woods and peeked through the slats over the windows. In the darkness there were eyes that stared back. Momma’s. Others. They glinted in the dark with no light to reflect.
Momma came home when the sky was that blue that comes just before light does. She moved from window to window, lowered the blinds and closed our dusty curtains. I gave her a hug and she mumbled, “Hey baby, how was school—Momma’s just gonna nap for a bit.” She patted me once before she laid down on the couch, closed her eyes, and tucked into where I’d warmed it as I waited for her.
“Get up, Momma,” I said. But her breath was already like when you sleep. “No! You can’t sleep all day! Get up!” I kicked the couch, her little body swayed, but she didn’t respond. I shouted, “What’s wrong with you? Don’t you love me anymore?”
I ran to the window and tore down the curtains. Screws popped out of the thin wood paneling.
“How was school?” I yelled. “I danced for Carla, and Bambi treated me like trash!”
Some windows derailed as I forced them open—maybe if she got eaten up by mosquitos that’d teach her.
I walked to that shed just as someone pulled the door closed and latched it from the inside. The sun now poked over the horizon.
“I know you’re in there!” I said as I grabbed the busted door handle and tugged. I kicked the walls.
The door didn’t budge. The shed was silent.
My eyes squinted against the sunrise as I stomped home.
When I opened the door the living room was covered in ash and the air smelled like summer rain on concrete. The couch was singed. Little strands of leather tassels littered the carpet beside it. What was left of Momma’s clothes looked like a cocoon if a butterfly was born on fire. I didn’t know what to do, but that wasn’t the same as nothing. I wanted to weep, and vomit, but the angry part of me took over.
I dug into her purse, took out her cigarette lighter and returned to the shed.
They would come out, one way or another.
I snuck into a neighbor’s yard, undid their garden hose, carried it back and stuck one end in the gas tank of a truck parked in the driveway, and spooled it down to the shed. Gas flowed after I sucked on the other end like Momma showed me last time she was in-between jobs. I dropped the hose just as gasoline poured out, so it trickled along the wooden slats.
“You smell that!” I shouted. “You better come out now! I’m not playing!”
They didn’t.
As it burned, I watched through a blur of tears. Nobody rushed out or screamed as the roof caved in. Those daydreamers had stolen Momma. I just wanted her back. How was I supposed to know the dark was all she had left?
Soon there were sirens, police, a lot of people told me everything would be okay. They locked me up with criminal kids, then with foster kids. When I ran away, didn’t seem anyone came to look for me.
I’ve barely slept since the day my mother died. To close my eyes at night meant daydreamers might be watching and waiting to claim me, make me hide from the sunlight and ignore the people I love. My body aches constantly. My brain loses threads, jumps tracks, stalls. My eyes feel dry, my fingers, wrists, knees, and ankles are always inflamed, as if I bent them the wrong way and they can’t forget it.
The first time I saw a daydreamer in the wild was when I lived outside. My feet in pain from walking—but to sit down made my body want so badly to sleep. I climbed that diagonal wall under an overpass, until I could hear cars roar up and down 405 just a few feet above my head. Squatted there as night truckers, street racers, and drunks with their fingers crossed thundered and swerved above.
On the sidewalk along the street below, a small lady rolled out a sleeping bag and slid into it. She covered herself with a tarp, after she set a pair of big beat-up hiking boots nearby, the kind of shoes that threaten a thumping. Nearby, in a community garden surrounded by a tall chain link fence, someone rolled over, asleep in one of the trails between vegetable beds.
I blinked too long. Swayed.
The clap of eighteen wheels slapped the ground above me, brought me back into my body, my eyelids dragged open. Inside the chain link fence below, someone stood, stared into my dark corner, their eyes reflecting more light then seemed possible. Pocketknife now in my grip, I squeezed it until my joints hurt. But the daydreamer didn’t hiss or show fangs. That night I learned: they don’t fight. They don’t have to. Everything sleeps eventually. It turned around, crept through the garden rows, and teeth to throat, fed quietly on the sleeping body.
The next day, I stole my first car. The key was to blend in with the Powerade and hot dog posters that slathered the windows of gas stations, or bulletin boards and plastic newspaper boxes outside of grocery stores, anywhere you’d just pop into real-quick, sometimes with the engine still on. You’ve got to get your head straight that what’s theirs is yours for as long as you’re in it, so you don’t look weird walking up to other people’s property and throwing it into gear. Probably helps to have a face that people forget. I don’t look like anyone you know, in that even if I do, it’s someone else with a greased-up place in your life. Or maybe some of us just get forgotten. Feels that way. Maybe that’s why, a few years later, I was surprised when Suzie stuck around. It felt good to be remembered.
#
I tore up delivery boxes on a street lined with recycling bins left out for garbage day. Rolled and stuffed them wherever I could under a boarded-up house so messed up, the vines that hung off one side of it looked dead. Daydreamers were probably asleep inside. I couldn’t walk by and do nothing, feeling their eyes on me. A cardboard corner lit, my feet took me to the sidewalk and calmly past the neighbors, like I was on a walk for my health and knew nothing about that smoke behind me. At the corner, I glanced back. The flames had caught on like gossip. I hoped not so hot that they’d eat up the whole block. I was gone before I knew for sure.
Past a bus line, I found train tracks and followed them to a station. I hopped on and rode the train to its edge, a shore where the priced-out wash up. Where people are poor enough to think they have nothing worth stealing, so car keys don’t always leave ignitions.
I picked her up in my new old lavender Nova with a blanket over the backseat. She was at a freeway entrance, in a jacket meant for someone a foot taller. In one hand a cardboard sign reading, “help me help you.” As she got in, her other sleeve pulled up to reveal an open can of Steel Reserve. She rattled and finished it.
“Hey Opal,” Suzie said, in that tone of hers, “did you know what they said when Schrodinger’s cat tried out for the WNBA?”
She laid across the bench seat and rested her head on my lap while I drove.
“She’s got a 50/50 shot. Meow,” Suzie said.
Last time I was in the county jail they only let us see visitors through a video app, even though Suzie sat on the other side of the wall, fallen asleep during our call. I couldn’t even pound on the glass to wake her up. I shouted into headphones as they fell out of her ears.
That night we parked along a neighborhood road smattered on each side with gravel and burst of creeping buttercup.
We snuck behind a strip mall nearby. With nobody around, Suzie unlocked the back door of the tanning salon. When we started seeing each other, she made copies of the keys and quit to join me as a full-time arsonist.
In those plexiglass coffins, with my hand draped over the ON switch, I could feel safe enough to sleep. A truck dunked in a pothole, the blare of a horn or emergency vehicles, woke me often, caused me to blind us with light. My reflexes probably sent daydreamers scurrying, but I only ever found Suzie dazed, as she stroked my back until I hit the off switch. The hum of the bulbs would again go quiet and we’d drifted until another sound bled through the walls.
Suzie crawled into the largest tanning bed with me. I held her, counted her fermented breaths, and nodded off.
The tanning bed lights sliced into my dreams. Suzie squinted at me, startled.
“Sorry, Suz. I thought I heard something,” I said, then pulled her closer. She let out a wheeze and relaxed onto me. She put her hand in one of mine. But she also slipped her fingers through the other. She pulled it away from the ON switch. While I fell back into the dream of our first sunrise.
#
After waking up alone to enough sun to feel busted, I whispered Suzie’s name and peeked around corners, trying to avoid being caught by the opening crew. No Suzie, so I left through the back. The car was still where I parked it, though it had probably been reported by now. I drove, circling the lot and working my way out a couple blocks every which way, and then another.
I drove past a frowning dilapidated house and pulled off into its overgrown driveway. I could practically hear the daydreamers snoring inside. It was leaning and encircled by gutted cars like skins left after their occupants had slithered away. The grass growing through their wheel wells, dry with the summer drought, was a perfect fire starter. I tore it out in bunches, placed piles around the barely standing home, and lit it.
It burned too well. Within seconds fire swallowed the field. I sprinted as it chased me toward the road. Smoke billowed. Flames raced down to the roots of the standing grass. The fire reached the Nova before I could. The smoke hung too low. I had to lay in the street to keep breathing. The heat lifted burning grass seeds and sent them dancing into the field on the other side of the road, where they planted more fire.
When sirens cried in the distance, I tried to run, but to run was to sprint along a narrow bridge between seas of heat.
Police and firetrucks came from both directions. Or maybe I saw double as I collapsed from the smoke.
#
Repeat offenders find themselves with plenty of time to reflect. I wished I had a chance to warn Suzie that I was going away again.
#
One of two guards told me to dress for company, baton resting in her palm. It was 4a.m. Nearly time for my morning shift working in the kitchen. I raised my chin to ask who I was going to see, the grip on a baton tightened, so I said nothing—reaching for a button-down shirt with my prisoner number on it. Then the guards mouth shape bringing back old memories, I looked at her chest.
BAMBI
“Bam—Boss Bambi,” I almost bowed, nervous, “did you go to my school?”
She grinned, mean. “No, you got kicked out of mine.” She nodded at a hallway. “You should have stuck with dancing.”
We were halfway to the next door by the time the lights kicked on above us, just for the next door to be opened and entered blind. The last door was propped half open like a mousetrap. I shuffled into the dark.
A bulb flickered on at the end of a room lined with phones, along a glass wall. After a jab in the ribs, I moved toward the light.
On the other side of the glass, dozens of eyes deep in the shadows reflected more light than the flimsy bulb provided.
The bulb shone down on Suzie’s dirty blonde hair. The dark circles under her eyes were gone. Like she’d learned to sleep without me.
Sitting down, I raised the receiver to my ear.
“Did you stop drinking?” I said, bad at hiding the hurt in my voice. Wishing I’d said something else.
She laughed. “Not quite,” she said.
“Where’d you go that day at the salon?” I asked sliding my other hand toward the glass, to be closer to her again. “Why’d you leave without waking me up?”
She walked a hand toward the glass as well, fingers dancing. “I’m glad you held my hand,” she said. “That you let go of that button. Let go of your fear.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“I didn’t even notice when they lifted me from the sun bed.” Suzie said. “You were so tired you didn’t feel me go.”
Phone mashed against my ear, I could hear my pulse rising.
“Now I’m never not dreaming,” she said, and smiled with all those teeth. “Do you know what the moth told the falling leaf?”
She glanced toward the door where I’d entered.
“We’ve got to stop running into each other like this,” she said, placing her hands flat, palm to palm, and tilting her head to rest against them. The gesture, an invitation to sleep.
The single light clicked off as Bambi and the other guard left, locking the door behind them.
A crowd of eyes, glinted on the other side of the glass, watched me from behind Suzie. Hers shining in the same way.