I woke up more than once last night to consider who was speaking inside me. Three men had been walking out along a point of land, toward a drop-off. It is rainy and cold. The men wear jackets. Two of them hold a woman between them. She is dressed in a long T-shirt—nothing more. Her hair falls across her face. She stumbles, barefoot, over things that hurt.
It is a garbage dump, at night, perhaps an hour before dawn . Depending on your understanding of the world, at some point you realize they are going to execute her. She is slender and young and at a time in her life when she could, if she wanted to, start a family. She has already suffered. I am wondering how long it will be before a she realizes what they are going to do. Her two escorts release her arms and drop back away from her. She picks her way forward, unsteady, docile. She reaches the edge of the place where trucks, by daylight, puffing diesel, stop backing up and dump the city’s waste.
I want her to jump, dive over the edge, take her chances, roll, fall, plunge this way and that, down, down, head over heels, too far down, behind too much debris, maybe buried by a wall of rot, old beer and diaper shit, and out of sight.
And she lies still, and the three men—with skin brown like hers and speaking the same language—decide, “Fuck it, we’re not going to ruin our clothes going down there.” And so they fire a few bursts with their AK 47s at the spot they figure she is, then walk back to their pickup, vowing to do it differently next time.
“Arrodíllate,” says the one man coming along behind her—almost gently. Kneel. But she turns around instead and faces him. The T-shirt clings to her body, to her private breasts and a her private belly. She pushes the hair out of her face. She is already half destroyed. “Okay,” says the man, “it’s alright”—and stands sideways, as if it’s Saturday morning and he’s at the shooting range. Except that he’s standing six feet away from her and lifts a .45, .38, .32, .22 or 9mm, pointing over her head, then brings it down, starting to pull the trigger just as the Sig Sauer, Smith & Wesson, Beretta, Colt, Glock, Springfield, Remington, Mauser, Browning, Walter, Ruger, or Luger is almost level with the top of her head.
Nothing happens. Perhaps he is reconsidering, reading her blood- and snot-smeared, non-reacting face. She reaches up to wipe her mouth. Her hand trembles too much. She brings it down. Maybe he tells her to jump backward over the edge of the garbage drop-off. Save yourself, girl.
The gun jumps instead, there is a black hole in her forehead like blackberry crushed flat, without juice. She leans backward, a gymnast starting a backward flip. The man lowers the .45, .38, .32, .22, or 9mm. She arches—a summer girl letting herself fall backward off a warm rock into a clear river pool.
She lies on her back, floating on garbage. The shirt no longer covers the dark hair where her legs meet. I know if I walk closer, after the men leave, I will see they have destroyed her twice-over.
I roll over and rest my leg on the woman I live with and love. She sleeps deeply, floating on her back. The weight of my leg does not interrupt her sleep. She is warm, and smooth, and as troubled as the rest of us. If I try to switch positions and move my leg away, she reaches up out of her sleep and holds my knee where it is—above the dark hair where her legs meet.
I try again—having the young woman awaken from her stupor and leap over the edge. She tumbles down through the shredded plastic and soggy cardboard and pig shit, down through the fleeing rats and styrofoam and rotten vegetables, that have not yet been found and eaten. The bullet sends her reeling backward, and I turn, carefully, so that I don’t pull the covers, and lay my leg over my love. The pigs listen. There may be more to eat.
The horror is deep, my love is warm. I almost fall asleep. He still hasn’t reached her. I urge her to save herself, but when they have you, there is seldom any escape. “Wake up,” she mumbles, as if she has rocks in her mouth, weeping. “See the moment of my extinction, see the dark stump of the tongue they have cut from me…and the mouth below—made for love of my choosing—ripped by their anger and triumph. Watch how they raise the gun, bring it down, and take my summers away from me forever.”