Dari (Court) by Kama O'Connor - Writer in Residence at The Flagstaff City - Coconino County Public Library

 

Guilty. 

Guilty.

Guilty…

The echoes of the pronouncement reverberate down the long hall, culminating in a final, booming verdict. Guilty as sin. A whore. Worse than a whore—a homewrecker. 

The words they used to try, then convict her, settle heavy on her shoulders, small stones weighing her down. Slut. Easy. Wetback whore. Uniform chaser. Homewrecker. She carries each one with a memory attached. 

Sending a letter to Hank begging him to help Adam. He wasn’t the same after the explosion. Someone should see that, someone who was there with him, able to look into his eyes and see the pain. Fix it. Because she couldn’t. She could only read his letters and weep for the man she’d loved and lost. She felt the way his words changed from hopeful to resigned. His thoughts ranged from frantic to placid in the span of a paragraph. He was a storm unleashed and tamed by a gentle breeze. 

That’s all she wanted at first. Hank’s help. 

At first. Two words that offered a choice, a choice she made and made again. And again. And now paid for. 

Again and again and again.

She needs milk for Johnny, her son and his immediate needs the only element light enough to outweigh the guilt shame loss. It buoys her, floats her above her problems long enough to walk into the store, past prying eyes that know already.

How do they know already?

She gazes past the other shoppers with greedy stares, past that morning, past the door flinging open, past the hurt on the woman’s face as she witnessed her husband mid-thrust in their marriage bed, past the tears screaming rage rage rage thrown at her along with shoes shirt panties. She sees past the insults, into the opaque dairy aisle. 

Three percent milk. How is her son already three, able to drink and eat and exist apart from her? She wants him to be safe in her arms forever, but that can’t happen when he’s drinking milk—real milk, the same she puts in cereal—across the room while he builds a castle out of foam. He’s old enough for that, now. Soon enough, he’ll be old enough to understand the taunts teasing torture. 

Bastard. Mom’s a puta. Dad didn’t have the guts to live. 

If only she could nourish him through that. 

This time, she puts her head down. What she doesn’t see can’t try and kill her. Up the aisle all she sees are shoes, hers and others, and they don’t stare, don’t judge. Some she recognizes, but she doesn’t look up to match the eyes to the floral flip flops. Those belong to Mary Ann, the jilted woman’s best friend. She won’t be sympathetic, no. Her shoes are the safest bet. Another pair Sarah doesn’t recognize. Heels this time. Silver. Someone headed somewhere else, somewhere fancy, somewhere she is wanted and invited and cherished. That’s what those shoes say. Sarah doesn’t own any shoes like that. 

She walks quicker, nothing safe, not even footwear. Another memory surfaces. 

Running into Hank back on base for Adam’s service. The stubble lining his chin not within regulations. When he wrapped her in his arms, the coarse hairs scratched her cheek, leaving a mark in the shape of a diamond she’d find later, alone in her hotel room. The scratches made her smile; they were proof of the only time she’d been held in months. That smile led to a call, a short drive, an opened door that should have stayed closed. 

Scratches on her breasts, down her ribcage, just above her sex. Marks that made her smile again and again and again. 

She puts the milk down on the conveyor belt and looks up. A teenage girl at the register, her eyes stuck on the teenage boy bagging the groceries. Ripe pink cheeks and the corner of a smile turned up. She’s in love, Sarah thinks. 

So is Sarah, but her love doesn’t lead to flushed skin, goosepimples, flutters in her stomach as if her love is alive and growing inside her. No, her love hurts, scratches, claws at her heart, her chest, her smile, dragging it down. 

$3.86, please. The price of milk has gone up. The price of everything has gone up. Sarah understands why it was too expensive for Adam, why he couldn’t afford to do it anymore. But that isn’t an option for her. She has Johnny, and he is worth whatever cost. 

What are you doing here? This is for military personnel and their families only. You need to leave. The words come out a hiss, hot as if snaking out from under an overheated car engine. Sarah looks up, sees her, the woman whose bed she stole. Hank’s wife. 

A tremor begins in Sarah’s chest, radiates out to each of her limbs, spreads to her fingers, her toes until she is an earthquake, her ground unstable. There is no safe place for her to hide, to regain her footing. 

I was granted base privileges, she explains, her voice undulating as if it is being raked over the dirt road between base and Joshua Tree. Because of Johnny.

I don’t care if God himself gave you permission to shop here. I am taking that back. Your presence here is inappropriate, don’t you think?

Does she think so? If she thought at all about the crime that landed her there, judgement passed and sentencing handed down—exile, it appears—she wouldn’t have done it. But thinking didn’t factor in. Just feeling and wanting and desiring more than she had. 

So she leaves the milk on the belt and walks walks walks faster until she feels the desert sun on her face, harsh and too hot, but not as relentless as the woman’s stare. It isn’t that Sarah feels sorry for herself. She knows sleeping with a married man was wrong, knew it every time she let the scrape of hair and teeth down her skin mark her as tainted. Knew it every time she shed her clothes and worries at his feet. Knew it every time she spread her legs and future wide for him. 

Shame trickles down her cheeks in the form of saltwater, dampening her cheeks. The moisture reflects the afternoon light above as small flames licking at her bottom lashes. She’s Icarus, she’s flown too close to the sun. And been scarred for her efforts. 

She still needs milk, could use time and space and a ticket to Spain as well, but she’ll settle for the milk. But where will she go that she won’t be seen and ridiculed? The gas station only sells one percent and her boy is growing, growing so fast she hopes he’ll outgrow the curse his father left him with when he put a bullet in his own head. The closest store that isn’t the Commissary is the Walmart in Yucca or the Vons in Palm Springs or the Dollar Store in between the three. Nothing is here. Nothing but her and a stunted future and a too-hot sun and women who hate her for wanting more. 

This town is too small, but so is the world when it comes to finding a place to start over, to swallow whole her grief. 

The gas station will have to do. One percent will have to do. Her meager excuses and apologies that never land where they’re supposed to will have to do. 

She lets another memory through, the past more welcome than the present or future without either of them. 

Hank at her door, crocodile tears falling heavy on his shirt, staining the robin’s egg blue cotton with pain and regret. Words that didn’t make sense but felt important to hear all the same. Miller. The Donkey. That damned boy. Alex. Divorce. She held him and rocked him like a baby, like her baby, while he let out years of hurt and disappointment and loss. One tear for each memory, thousands spilled over on her clothes, her shoulders, her fingertips. She licked her fingers clean of him, tasting the salt and man she loved. She kept the shirt with his tears on them hanging in her closet as a reminder of what they shared, that he’d picked her. Sure, he might lay down at night with Alex, but he chose Sarah to love, to confide in, to cry on. 

The gas station is busy. Every parking spot is taken, families pouring in and out of vehicles with smiles and slurpees and sandwiches in anticipation of a trip. People at each gas pump filling up to leave the desert, kayaks and boats and bikes pulled behind SUVs and campers. Everyone has an exit strategy when it gets too warm, but it’s scorching for Sarah and she has nowhere to go. She will dry out here, but her son will have milk. She’ll see to that, at least. 

The guy behind the counter has a USMC EGA tattoo on his shoulder, stretchmarks striating the wings of the eagle so that he looks misshapen. A former Marine, one who never made it out of the desert. That is a fate worse than death for her. Staying here forever, to bake under the sun with no shade or water or seasons. 

The half-gallon of milk is $3.57. It will last half the time and she’s spending almost the same amount. Her heart does the little shudder thing it does when she’s overwhelmed, but she breathes through it. What other choice does she have?

What are you doing here? It is the same question as before, but asked by a thicker voice, a different woman. A friend of the scorned wife, a fellow spouse. Sarah has never been a spouse. Only a girlfriend. Twice, she was almost a fiancé. Most recently she was the other woman but that wasn’t much different than all the other almosts. Adam didn’t want to get married, didn’t want to tie Sarah down while he was still in the Marines, but now she’s strapped down here with no end in sight and no scissors to slice through her binding.  

She pays for the milk, walks outside because the blinding light and crippling heat are more welcome than the voice behind her, following her and calling out her mistakes for all the tourists who only need road trip food—not gossip like they get for free—to hear. 

You thought you could see another man’s wife and still get to shop and live in OUR town? The woman is closer now; Sarah’s neck radiates the heat from her breath. Before she can react, think of an answer, because, again, she didn’t think at all when she started fucking Hank, she only acted, made herself stop hurting after Adam’s death, the woman’s hands are on Sarah’s back. 

The tremble comes back, because the last time anyone touched her that wasn’t her son, it was Hank, and his hands were strong, supportive, sensual. But soft, cradling, too. These are rough, scratchy like Hank’s chin after a long weekend without a shave. 

Sarah isn’t sure if she trips or if the woman shoves, but she is on the ground, on her knees, which sting and pulse with pain and pressure. Gasps from other shoppers around her fill her ears, whispers like earlier that day wrap around her chest and tighten, squeezing any breath from her lungs. Her hair is in her face, damp and matted to her cheeks. Her palms ache from the fall and only in looking at them both, pebbles imprinted on her exposed skin, does she realize the milk isn’t in either one. 

Get out of here, the woman shouts. You’ve done enough, haven’t you? 

Sarah shakes her head; she hasn’t done enough, because she hasn’t brought home the milk her son needs to grow. Grow like the beanstalk, she whispers to him each night as she kisses his big-kid forehead hiding big kid dreams. Grow so fast and so tall you can run away from this place before they get you, too. 

That is why the milk is so important, because how can he grow and leave and change the world if he doesn’t get his calcium? How can he possibly build up enough armor to combat the whispers and rumors that follow a boy whose dad killed himself if he doesn’t get his protein? How is he supposed to survive the stigma and genes he shares with his father who was sick if he doesn’t swallow down his vitamins and the love his mother pours into each glass?

The woman walks away, and Sarah notices her shoes. Gray trainers with dust on the soles as if the woman just got done with an adventure, or maybe she just walks along the dirt roads thinking of ways to hurt and maim. Either way, Sarah isn’t sad to see the shoes heading out of the parking lot towards a camper with a fishing boat and jet ski. The woman is leaving; she gets to drive away and not come back if she doesn’t want to. She gets to stop in a new town with grocery stores and bodies of water so big she can submerge herself in them and only come up for air when it’s safe. Sarah sees a small girl, perhaps just younger than Johnny, in the back seat of the truck beside the camper with the boat and jet ski. 

The girl’s eyes fall to the jug of milk, split and leaking on the pavement like Sarah is split and leaking on the pavement. Sarah picks up the broken plastic container, the bottom still filled with the precious liquid Johnny needs and only Sarah can give him. 

It’s enough, she thinks. Maybe not to help him forget his hunger and hers, but enough for today, for now. And that, the being enough for now, will have to do.