Arizona

You are a monster. A living breathing monster. You are grotesque. I never want you to touch me again.

He was a new dog. He didn't know better.
She was standing with him on the subway platform at Columbus Circle. He was moving about, despite his harness, sniffing through her grocery packages and walking around within his limited range of motion.
"Down", she said in an authoritative timbre. The dog obeyed, placing its jaw on its paws and looking up at its mistress. Soon after, however, he was once again distracted, this time by a patch of chewed gum that was stuck to the yellow line on the platform.
When the train's headlight became visible in the tunnel, the dog stood up, alerting her of its impending arrival. She picked up her packages in her left hand and waited. She could hear the screech of its approach in her left ear, the slowing rumble of it, the sparked cry of the third rail.
There are support columns on the subway platforms in New York City. As the train approached, the dog stepped to one side of the column, eager to be on the subway car full of lights, people, smells. Still a novice at riding the subway, she was not aware of the column, which is how she lost hold of the dog's harness. She stepped on the other side of the column, the harness sliding from her already tenuous grasp. As she whirled around in confusion, she lost her footing and fell onto the track.
She pushed with her arms against the damp soil beneath the rails, and managed to get onto her feet. But, because of her blindness, it was impossible for her to even figure out which way she should move. She whirled around with a drunken disregard, weaving back and forth in an attempt to situate herself. Because of the echo, the train sounded as if it were coming from all sides. As she heard the train bearing down on her, large tears of fear welled up in her eyes. But her sobs quickly turned to hysterical giggles. She sat down on the rails and covered her ears with her hands and just laughed, even as the first steely wheels sucked in the hem of her skirt.
Had she been able to see, her last sight would have been of her dog looking down on her from the platform, barking frantically, pleadingly.
The 1 and 9 trains were re-routed for most of rush hour.
**
She was beautiful. They had pictures of her in the newspapers, her palest blue eyes almost coquettishly downcast, though it was probably just a reaction to the camera flash. On the news they showed her when she was only sixteen, blowing out the candles on her birthday cake. Her cheeks were rosy and her icy eyes were wide as she blew.
They didn't have video tape of her as she was before her death. They didn't have footage of her so hatefully blind that she lashed out at those that loved her most.
**
On the news, they said at first that she was just brain dead. They took her to the hospital where her lungs stopped working and, slowly, her heart stopped beating. In the newspaper, they had pictures of her dead body, twisted at an awkward angle. They said that her arm and parts of both of her legs were completely severed. She wore long, blood-covered sleeves in the photo. Her eyes were open, her wan irises barely discernible due to the poor contrast of newspaper copy. They said in Newsday that the shape of the subway bumper was dented in her chest.
The Times speculated that if she had been closer to the head of the platform rather than the other end, there might have been less damage to her gross anatomy. Her death may have been less painful had she simply fallen on the third rail, said another. As it was, almost the entire length of the train rolled over her, the rumbling noise masking her laughter.
The casket was closed at the wake.
**
The man had first seen her when he was cleaning the windows in a classroom at the school. The other blind girls were playing games and running around in circles. Their laughs and screams rose to the second floor window where he stood, watching. They fell this way and that, like rag dolls.
But she sat on the side, alone, her hands folded in her lap. She wore a blue dress and a ribbon in her hair. Her head was turned away from him. She sat, still like a statue, untouched by everything around her but the wind, which sent her ponytail over her shoulder, billowing like a sail.
She probably wanted to join in the games with the other girls, he thought. But she was a new girl and he knew how mean the blind girls could be to new people. So she sat alone, peacefully, as if she were carefully observing something in the distance.
He watched her until a teacher came into the room, followed by eight little blind girls, all on a string.
**
She liked to walk down the hallways alone, her hand sliding gently along the wall. The other girls held hands or were led on a rope like lambs.
And she went to the bathroom at eleven thirty every day. He knew because he would be in his custodial closet as she passed, about to start his rounds. Her hand would brush awkwardly past the open door, waiting for the next stretch of wall.
One day he took her open hand. She started, her eyes flying open. They were the most beautiful of blues, though they stared nowhere in particular. She gasped and her whole body shook slightly.
"Don't be scared." He said, holding the hand tighter.
As quickly as they had opened, her eyes closed and her face turned away from him.
"I wasn't." She replied. "Just startled."
That began their friendship. Each day she would walk by and wait for him to grab her hand. Each day he would grab it. She would smile and stop for a moment to talk to him about what was new with her. She was trying to convince her family to get her a seeing-eye dog.
"Then I could take the subway home instead of the school bus." She explained.
"Don't you like the school bus?" He asked, never letting go of her hand.
"No, I hate the school bus." She answered, casting her head downward. "I hate blind people."
**
He would sit in his room in the boarding home at night and think about her. She always had a kind word and a smile. But she was sad, deep down inside, just like him.
She would have gone to college this year, had she not gone blind. She still wanted to go, one day. "Once I know this Braille stuff, I'm going to college. I don't care." She would say, her brow furrowing in emphasis. She hated being who she was, the blind girl, the new girl. She hated it.
He wished that he could help her, somehow. He wished that he could make her happy the way that she made him happy, with her smile, with her gently outstretched hand. He wished that he could make her understand what she meant to him.
He wished that she knew how beautiful she was.
**
He gave her the money that he had hidden in a coffee can underneath his bed. He had been saving up to buy a motorcycle so that he could go down to Arizona. A guy that used to work with him in construction said that Arizona was gorgeous. He had never been anyplace gorgeous. So he wanted to buy a motorcycle and go there. Just to see it.
He placed it in her outstretched hand one day.
Her face inclined in his direction. "What's this?" She asked. She was so pretty.
"It's some money that I had. I thought you could use it to get a seeing-eye dog..."
She thrust the money back toward him. "I couldn't. You probably need it."
"No. Take it. I wasn't going to use it for anything, really."
**
She walked by, her hand reaching toward him. He grabbed it and covered her mouth. Her body went stiff as he pulled her into the custodial closet and shut the door.
"Don't be scared." He said, touching her hair as he had so often wanted to do. Her body was so frail under his hands. The smell of ammonia filled the room, but when he put his mouth against her neck, she smelled faintly of perfumed soap.
She cried out as he moved his hands down her body. Her rib cage was small, her hips only slightly bigger.
"Don't be scared. Don't be scared." He kept repeating it as he pulled up her skirt and unzipped his pants.
He had wanted this so much. He wanted her to know that she was beautiful. He wanted to make her so happy. He wanted her to know how much she meant to him.
She was just so frail, held there against the concrete wall by his hands. He could break her with only his hands, she was so fragile. But he would never do that. He only wanted to make her happy.
With the first thrust she gasped. Her pale eyes flew open, looking nowhere in particular.
**
She walked by the next day, her hand reaching out to him. He took it and pulled her into his closet again. He buried his head in her chest and closed his eyes. Her hand rhythmically stroked his hair.
"You came back."
"Yes."
"You're not scared."
"No. Take me again."
"I love you, you know."
"I know."
"I-- I hope I didn't hurt you. Did it hurt?"
"Yes."
He flinched. "I'm sorry. I only wanted to make you happy."
"I know. Take me again."
"You want me to?"
"More than anything." She said sadly. "It was the first time since I was blinded that I knew that I was alive."
**
Her hands were small like the rest of her.
"I got my dog." She said, smiling.
"Where is it?" He asked.
"In the kennel room, with the others." Her hand held his tightly. "And I took the subway today."
"How was it?"
"Wonderful." She gushed, her face flushing with the words. "My mom brought me here, but I'm going home by myself."
She looked so happy. He was glad that he had done something to help her. Arizona was probably not gorgeous anyway. The guy from the construction site used to make up stories all the time.
"I named the dog after you." She said. "Want to go see him?"
"Sure." He said, pulling the door shut behind him.
"Wait." She commanded. "I want you to take me first. Please."
**
He waited for her outside after work. As she walked by, he called her name. They sat and talked while the dog ran around the bushes in circles.
"Hey, have you ever been to Arizona?" He asked her.
She turned her face toward his. Her hair fell over her closed eyes.
"Yeah, I went when I was a kid. Why?"
"What was it like?" He asked sheepishly.
"It was fun. I went with my parents and my brother. It was a vacation, you know-"
"No." He interrupted, shaking his head as if she could see. "I mean, what did it look like?" He implored.
"Oh, it was really beautiful. The landscape was amazing. It's a really pretty place. You should go someday."
He replied, but his face was turned away, his words lost in the breeze.
**
"Hey, can I feel your face?" she asked a few moments later.
"Why?" he replied, knowing the reason, but trying to delay the moment.
Her head tilted to one side, toward the sun. "So I can imagine what you look like. I'm so curious..." She smiled and reached her hands toward his face. He closed his eyes so that he couldn't see hers when they flew open.
**
His story was followed by the papers and the T.V. news for months. The press loves a tragic hero, a victim. He was only eleven at the time and, though part of him was embarrassed about the whole thing, he thought it was kind of cool to see his picture in the Times, to hear his name on NBC news. His nurses started clipping the articles and taping the news shows for him, which they would present to him at the start of their shift.
The attention became annoying, however. All the well-intentioned cards, flowers, and letters piled up in the drawers of his bedstand. He hated the way that the people who wrote him would put down his mother, say she deserved whatever she got. He couldn't understand how these people could castigate her when they didn't even know her. When he was especially angry, he would write back in his best print and explain that his mother loved him and that she was a very good mother and that it was he, not she, who had been bad.
**
He had been very bad. He tried to be good, but somehow he always did something horrible. He was a bad seed.
He had made soup for snack when he got home from school. It was pretty easy to make, just add three cans of water to the soup stuff and stir. He had ladled the soup into a bowl, put the rest of the soup into a Tupperware container, and washed the pot and ladle that he had been using. He was in a hurry because his favorite cartoon show was about to begin and the first scenes always featured his favorite character. He raced into the living room, taking care to not spill his soup on the way. After the show, he took his bowl and spoon back to the kitchen, washed them, and put all the dishes away before he returned to the living room to take a nap.
The first sensation he remembered was that of a presence over him as he awakened. He opened his eyes and smiled up at his mother. Her face was beet red and she looked ruefully at him.
Haven't I taught you anything? Why can't you do anything right? Do you do it to hurt me? You must hate me to be such a fucking awful child. Are you fucking trying to kill us both? Don't you know how hard I work just so we can stay here in this fucking apartment? Look at what you did!
She had grabbed him by the throat and lifted him to his feet. She pulled him into the kitchen and flung him on the linoleum tile. He curled up in a ball and kept crying the same two phrases over and over, gasping for air between them.
I'm so sorry, Mommy.
What did I do wrong?
The first thing that hit him was a folding chair. It slammed on his body with what felt like the weight of a person. His torso started to writhe and the words came faster, his lips wet with tears and saliva.
I'm so sorry, mommy, what did I do wrong, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, what did I do? I'm sorry, mommy, what did I do?
A jar of jelly hit him in the lower back, but didn't break. She grabbed him by the arm and yanked him to his feet. The chair clattered as it fell from on top of him.
WhadidIdo? WhadidIdo? WhadidIdo, mommy?
She led him over to the electric stove. The dial on the burner he had used was still set on medium high. The coil glowed red hot. He had forgotten to turn it off when he made his snack. Sorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorry!
She pushed the back of his head and his face bounced off the burner. He screamed and his head started tingling, his hands waving frantically, uncontrollably, at his sides. His mouth was moving, but he couldn't form words. He could only scream while his jaw moved, uncontrollably, up and down.
She held him by one ear and pressed his profile against the coil. His wail grew fainter and fainter until he fell silent. In his last few moments of consciousness, he could hear his mother's voice and the sizzle of his drool and skin against the burner.
**
He never saw his mother again. She was convicted before he was released from the hospital. He spent the better part of a year in there, while doctors tried to reconstruct his face through various grafting procedures.
He wrote, but she never replied. He even visited once, despite the disapproval of his foster family. His foster mother finally allowed him to go, accompanied by the next-door neighbor.
She refused to see him. He waited in the lobby, his legs dangling a few inches above the floor, his hands folded in his lap. He kept his eyes on the floor. He hated the looks of pity that strangers gave him. His face was almost normal on one side, but the other side resembled a poorly crafted patchwork quilt. The skin was taut in places, loose in places, scarred virtually everywhere. So he kept his head down and slightly angled so that the ugly side would face the floor, a posture that became as much a part of him as his smile.
As he walked back to the fenced-in parking lot, the tears welled up in his eyes. His neighbor took his hand and put her other hand on his shoulder. The tears burned as they rolled down some parts of his face, still raw and unhealed.
He hadn't loved another woman besides his mother, until now.
**
Her fingers traced the scarred side of his face. He tried to explain what had happened, but the words didn't sound right.
"I love you." he said, reaching up to take the roving hand.
She recoiled, pulling her hand back as if from a flame.
**
He waited for her in his custodial closet. He could hear the distinct click of her heels as she neared. He checked his watch. Eleven-thirty, on the dot.
But when she appeared, she was on the other side of the hallway, gripping the far wall. She didn't even turn her head his way.
He walked down the hallway after her. She kept walking. He grabbed her shoulder and turned her around.
"What do you want?" she said in a low tone.
"I...I just wanted to say hi." He looked at her entreatingly, searching her face for its usual warmth.
"Oh. Hi." she replied and turned around. She started to walk away, but he grabbed her shoulder again, more firmly this time, and held her there.
"Do you want to go out and get some food or a drink or something tonight?"
"I can't..." her hand flew to her throat, as if realizing that a precious locket was missing.
"What about tomorrow?" he asked hopefully.
"I don't think so."
"Friday? Saturday? Sun-"
"Look," she said, "I don't think that we should be... seeing that much of each other,"
"Why?" he asked, his words almost a cry.
"Why?" She laughed at his question then paused. "Because you are a monster. A living breathing monster. You are grotesque. I never want you to touch me again. If I could see, this never would have happened. You took advantage of me because I'm blind and I can't see how ugly you are."
"What did I do wrong? Why are you being like this?" he asked, the words constricting in his throat.
She paused and sighed. "If you were me, would you be embarrassed to walk down the streets with you?"
"Yes." he replied, ashamed.
"Would you take someone like you home to meet my parents, if you were me?"
"No." he said, turning his face from scrutiny.
"So what would you do if you were me?" She turned and fled the corridor, occasionally tripping over her own feet.
**
grotesque: odd and unnatural in shape, appearance, or character; fantastically ugly or absurd; bizarre. Her sadness was grotesque.
**
He had imagined that she would take him in her arms and hold him there. He had imagined that she would cry for him. He imagined that she would kiss all of his scars and tell him that he had been very brave. He imagined that she would help him erase the past, through love.
How a blind girl could be so vain as to reject him because of his looks, something intangible to her, was beyond him. Still, he loved her.
**
He sat at home that night, thinking. The T.V. was the only light, blue and electric against the walls of the room.
He wasn't going to let her go that easily.
He was going to follow her home, take her in the twilight behind a building, in an alley. He would do it forcefully at first, then gently, once she realized that it was him.
Then she would know that he loved her more than he had ever loved anyone else, even his mother.
The guys at the construction site used to joke that he had a face that only a mother could love. They hadn't known that he had never even had that.
He fell asleep with the T.V. on.
**
He walked a good distance behind her. He was afraid that she would smell him, sense him somehow, and run away. He was very careful to cross the streets only after she had reached the other curb. He waited patiently outside the stores as she ran her errands.
He went in the other entrance to the subway station. He stood by the booth to buy a token, watching her all the while. She went through the handicapped gate and walked a few paces down the unoccupied platform, out of view.
He put his token in the slot and stood two columns away from her. She was having problems controlling her dog. He was jumping about, looking this way and that.
"Down." she said intermittently, pulling back on his harness.
He was concentrating on what he would do once they reached their destination. He would posses her in the twilight, behind a building, in an alley. He would do it forcefully at first, then gently, once she realized that it was him.
He saw the light in the tunnel as the train approached. He would get on through a different door and sit at the far end of the car.
The dog stood and started to move forward.
He watched until the train came to a stop on top of her body. As the crowd began to gather, the transit authorities muscling through to the scene of the accident, he shook. For about five minutes he stood and shook and shook and shook, his arms across his rocking body, his head twisted to an awkward angle. The sunnier side, though contorted with its trembling, was up.
He then noticed the hysterical dog, his namesake, frozen in his place on the crowded platform, below which his master's dead body lay. Wordlessly, he took hold of his harness and hurried him toward the exit.
**
The man lay on his bed, watching video tapes of the T.V. news.
The anchor woman cut to the birthday scene. Her face was rosy and virginal. As she leaned over her cake, the boy next to her must have said something. She mocked surprise and pouted at him. They all laughed and the boy gave her a hug.
She placed her puckered lips on his cheek. Her eyelashes fluttered, making shadows.
The man rewound the tape and watched it frame by frame.
She appeared to be in complete rapture, her eyes rolling up into her head as she inhaled and leaned forward, her breast rising slightly. Her lips pressed against his cheek as if they were her whole body, thrusting slightly upward upon contact. Her hair swung forward too, brushing the young man's cheek with a quiet sensuality.
The T.V. was muted. The only sounds in the room were the breathing of the man and the gentle sound of his hand moving.
**
The man wore his brown suit to the funeral. It was the only suit he owned. He didn't own any dress shoes, so he wore his work boots. He was sorry that he didn't have a black suit and nice shoes. He was sorry that the only flowers he had to toss on the grave were some that he had picked from in front of the public library.
He was the only mourner in brown. He stood on the periphery, close enough to hear the priest and the sobs of the mother, but far enough away to go almost unnoticed. It was a hot day and he wished that his suit weren't made of wool. He could feel the beads of sweat as they dripped a constant stream down his back, slowly saturating the waistband of his trousers. The damp fabric under his arms would occasionally cling to his armpits. His face was sweating profusely. He felt very ill at ease, like he shouldn't have been there.
He fell into line with the others to pay their last respects. As he neared the coffin, he could feel the perspiration dripping from his face. His breath quickened with each step. He could feel the slightest hint of pressure against the zipper of his pants, hot and muffled by the wool. He held fast to his bunch of flowers and focused on the grave that was in front of him. He was second in line. He could only hear the sound of his heart beating like a drum and the sobs of the mother.
He was before the coffin. He could imagine her laying there, her eyes closed as they usually were. He bent over the coffin and for a moment thought that he could smell the corpse rotting in the sun. He placed his bunch of flowers on top of it. His open hand felt cool as he released them.
A drop of sweat fell from his face and rolled onto the shiny black surface, like a tear.
The mother's swollen eyes followed him as he walked away.