PU[T]RIFICATION

                                                      Pu[t]rification
I found your body at the side of the road. Terror was streaked across your face, frozen there forever in the February morning. I wondered if this is where you fell, destroyed, or if someone put you there. Certainly something made you come out this far. The tree line is nearly a quarter mile back. You would have had to come through the open field. They took your jacket, shoes, and maybe your purse if you had one. Probably just what they needed. You had been gone two full days but your body was not cold enough for you to have been there, nested in that ditch for more than eight hours or so. Most of the snow had melted and the wet, brown-black leaves recently freed from their slushy tombs of autumn had yet to gather in the negative spaces of your body. I hesitated to touch you. I just kind of hovered. Your eyes were open. Your mouth was too, smeared with lipstick. There was no blood, though. I guessed you had not been stabbed. Or shot.  I wondered where you went. I wonder still where you might be now. You must have thought there was something out here. I knew there wasn’t.

Audrey wakes. Her eyes blink and she releases the grip she has on her pillow. She is still half dreaming. Seconds prior she was looking down at her empty bed from above. Now she is lying in it. The dream must be gone now and she can let go of her pillow entirely. She stretches and gets out of the warm confines of her covers. She pulls her wooden desk chair to the end of her bed and stands on it. Looking down at it now, as she had been only a few minutes ago in her dream, she decides that it was indeed her own bed she had witnessed. The pink pillows and covers are mussed and the outline of her body is still etched into the flannel sheet. Satisfied with this assessment, she can go downstairs. She picks through a pile of half clean clothes, which means they still had the smell of Tide on them, and chooses suitable Saturday morning breakfast clothes. She skips brushing her teeth (it does not go well with orange juice) and goes down to the kitchen where here dad still calls her “kiddo” and questions her coming home so late. She knows he is joking but she plays along anyway. He smiles a big, clean smile and scoops some eggs onto her plate. She says school is fine. She says she has a boyfriend. That he is good to her. That she thinks he is ready to propose.

The next day I knelt down and put my face close to yours. Breathed in the stale, moist death that permeated your skin. I remember you looked…wet. Kind of shiny. I peeled off some of the trash that had become stuck to your body overnight. There was a soft, dirty napkin stained with brown outlines of someone’s mouth cradling your ear and jawbone. I tugged it gently so it would not break. It felt like I was pulling it out of your head. I put it in my shirt pocket. And a small bit of clear cellophane, like from a bouquet of flowers, was tucked into your armpit. It crackled loudly and I pulled it out as quietly as I could. It was so windy that day. When I finally freed the thing from under you the greedy wind snatched it away. I watched it disappear into the sky. I imagined that it was you, and even though it was transparent it glinted every so often against the grey sky. Free of all the debris (I left the gathering leaves and twigs) your body looked so lonely there. I pressed the weight of my head against the soft triangle of your dislocated shoulder. Then I fit my body into the space between your arm and torso. The smell of laundry detergent still lingered on your clothes somewhere and the scent of what must have been home for you was not entirely gone. The sky had not taken you. Not yet.

After an entire day of Court TV and half of The English Patient Audrey decides that enough is enough. Dad has gone to work and the mall is calling her name. In the shower she lets the water hit her face and she swears she can feel every drop. She thinks about what she will buy at the mall. She needs new shoes to go out. Her old friends from high-school that still live here would expect at least another night out while she is home. She avoids her naked body in the full length and sits instead at her mother’s old vanity. She thinks she looks better naked when she sits. She likes the way the side of her body looks when she leans in to apply mascara. She sifts through her mother’s old jewelry drawer. Wonders where she is. What she is doing right now. She watches the icky grey clouds frothing outside the window above her reflection. She resists the urge to break the huge oval mirror with her hairbrush. Audrey wanders nude through her childhood home. She opens every closet and cabinet door. She slides every one of Dad’s shirts from one side of his closet to the other. She likes the click sound each white, plastic hanger makes as it crosses the threshold from one side to the other.

It had been three days. Your body was growing stiff and no one had come for you yet. Where could they be? I mean, it’s not like you were hidden very well. After just sitting with you for a while I thought I might like to know who you really were. I had to look away and close my eyes as I slipped my hand into your front pockets. I could barely get into your back pocket but I finally managed to pull out something. I held the contents of all your pockets in cupped hands. A tube of lipstick called pu[t]rification, a button that looked like a seashell and a fortune from a fortune cookie. I did not read the fortune. I thought it might be too personal. I dug out a small bit of ground with my hands near your feet placed the things into the hole and covered it up. I remember how cold it was for February. I remember the sun had not been out for days. Everything was grey. Even your skin, which was still kind of pink yesterday, had begun to turn green-grey at the fingertips. Your shirt had started to pull up, from the wind I guessed, and exposed your side. A purple-black bruise peeked out.  I tried to pull the cloth down over it but it resisted so I covered it with a bit of newspaper. I curled up next to you again. I put my arm over your stomach. But not too tight. You had begun to smell like dirty clothes and the pungent smell of over ripe fruit. I hoped nobody would come. I would have had a hard time explaining. I always do.  I wanted so badly for you to be OK. I wanted you to know that I was going to make sure nothing would happen to you. Not anymore.

The mall is a madhouse. Audrey stays only a little while. She has a latte. She cannot find jeans that fit her right anywhere. She does, however, find shoes. And lipstick. And a new shirt. She agrees to meet Dad for an early dinner on the way home. Twin Sky Buffet. Her favorite Chinese restaurant. She waits for him in the foyer. The painting above the cheap little fountain hasn’t changed since she was little. A beautiful blue sky with pink clouds and mountains hovered over a valley lake that mirrors the sky. She imagines herself on the shore of the lake. Looking onto the surface at the reflection of the actual sky. She remembers seeing the clouds in the mirror earlier. How the sky in the painting is so different. Twin Sky. She finally gets it. It never made sense when she was a kid. She always thought that a twin was absolutely not a reflection. But now she can see. A beautiful blue sky’s twin was a grey cloudy one. But the actual sky doesn’t change. Before she can confuse herself further Dad startles her out of contemplation. They eat crab Rangoon and drink too much pop. Free refills. They get fortune cookies. Her fortune is weird. “Oops…Wrong cookie!” Dad’s says “Soon life will become more interesting.”

Your body began to swell. Your lips were black. The terror on you face had turned to rigor. And the smell…But I had no choice. I sat with you as long as I could. After a while I stood at your feet and looked down on your decomposing body. I wondered what your voice sounded like. If you liked to sing. You looked like you might. Your hair had begun to stick to the mud, weaving into it. Soon all of you would be. I was tempted to dig up your fortune. I resisted. I hoped you were where you should be. I hoped the grey sky had not followed you.

Audrey has been waiting for her friends for over an hour. She hates this place. Hates the name. “PostOp”. It was supposed to be clever. She thinks there is absolutely nothing clever about this bar. Any bar. A man approaches her. The guy is her father’s age. She obliges him and his gimlet. Yes she’s in school. North Carolina. No, not pre-med. No she does not, absolutely not want to go outside to “check out your Maserati”. Yes she believes you have one. She’s waiting for friends. A drink would be fine, just fine. Absolut cranberry please. She knows he’s an asshole. She’s practically engaged. The drink is cold and wet. Just like this old fogy. She laughs out loud. It’s awful smoky for a doctor bar. A plastic surgeon? Really? She likes her nose the way it is, thank you. No, she’s never driven two hundred and seven miles per hour. Where are Lucy and Jen? Sure, but that’s the last one…Brice. Brice slow down. One ninety eight? Go! Go! Go! Two-Oh-Eight? Really? A record huh? Let me help with that. Oh, Brian… Huh? Oh, right. Brice. Oh Brice. Ow. Ouch. No. No. No. Brice that hurts Audrey.

When I went to see you on the last day there were police there. I hid just inside the tree line. I had a clear view from the forest. They moved so slowly. Some of them not at all. Like they were waiting for something. A snake grew in the pit of my stomach and wriggled there as they lifted you into a black body bag. Steam churned from the ground where you were. I could feel the cold metal zipper as closed you in. They had some trouble with your arm. They were there for hours. They put little plastic numbers all over the ground. They took photos. Their flashes lit up the ground. I was sure they would see me there in the trees. They never did, though. They were so clinical with you. The wind didn’t seem to bother them. They were navy blue obelisks on the side of a deserted road. It was black night when they finally left. And cold. February is a fickle month. Once the coast was clear and I was sure the last car had zoomed past I came out from the forest. Every breath was a ghost. I knelt down and pressed my palm into the cold void where your body was. I ran my fingers along the bent blades of grass pretending it was your hair. The moon was a giant, white eyeball. I knew I would miss you now that you were really gone. Who knows where they took you. It’s been years now, since that night.

Audrey is screaming. She wriggles out of her jacket. Brice has her hair. His cologne is in her mouth. He elbows her side over and over. She throws up. In his Maserati. Slams her head against the dash. Audrey goes limp against him. The Maserati jerks hard to the left. Brice jams on the brakes. He gets out of the car. Lights a cigarette. Nips his flask. Stumbles to the side of the road. Takes out his dick. Pee squirts out into the night. Get. Up. Audrey. Run. Run. Run. She does. She is still so drunk. She is in the woods. She cannot tell he is behind her until she pops out from the tree line into the February night. She looks up at the half moon. A white pushpin in a cloudless night. She stops. He grabs her arm and yanks it. Hard. Again. Again. Oops…Wrong cookie. She releases a scream into the sky. She feels his hand in her hair. Like it came out of her own head. Each pull yields a white flash. The last one is a snap. Then nothing.

I try to get back there when I can. It’s just so far from home for me. They never found the stuff from your pockets buried in the dirt. I remember about a year ago I was there. Just lying in the ditch in the cold. It was early on a December morning. A cop nudged me with his pointy shoe. I told him I was confused. He ran my name. It came back clean. Of course. But he took me in anyway. They questioned me for three hours straight. Asked me about you. They said you had been killed. Murdered. Pushed out of a car or some damned thing. I told them I never owned a car. I told them that I saw you there. In that ditch. That I watched them take you. I demanded to know where they took you. They did not oblige. They made me come back a week later for some kind of evaluation. Hooked a machine up to my temples. Asked me weird questions. Questions I thought might be about you, but not really. I know your name now, anyway. On my way out a man, a very clean man, yelled at me from across the room. He grabbed my shirt and ripped it. Smacked my face. Asked me what I did to you. I told you it was hard for me to explain things. But I tried anyway. I told him I made sure no one took you before you went up to the sky. That I stayed with you. I don’t think they ever really figured me for the crime. How could they?