The Brand Ch. 11

Body Count

The chapter isn't sexy, but it is the next necessary step in the sequence. Again, thank you for reading.

*****

"I mean to split yourself in two is just the most radical thing you can do
Goddess forbid that little Adam should grow so jealous of eve
And in the face of the great farce of the nuclear age
Feminism ain't about equality, it's about reprieve."
-Ani DeFranco

6

By the time Yazmina had slipped back to the van, her empty pizza box was covered in half an inch of snow. She'd parked Hector's big Ford Transit near the bottom of the long drive way. Once she got the call, as the plan went, she'd drive it up to the front door. It was the guy the others were afraid of, the big white crazy man, whose idea it was to do the job in the middle of a blizzard. Their tracks would get covered, he'd said, and they would be long gone by the time they'd call the Westbrook Pd, so that they could go and untie the girls.

Yazmina had driven them to Victria's address. It was bad enough then, with what had started coming down. Driving back, she hoped to leave up to one of the guys. Hector, a tall, dark, sweet faced Mexican boy who'd worked and stole his way to New York, would do it. He'd been the dangerous living she'd fallen in love with in the very first place; he having taught her how to steal, and then how to get away with it; most of the time. But, it eventually got too hot for him to stay up north. Ultimately, time passed, most things changed while others stayed the same and there he was again, just a week ago; still handsome, dressed well with pockets full of money; asking around for her among their old Brooklyn haunts.

Yazmina climbed in the driver's side, tossed the box into the back and closed the door. She sat for a time, shivering though still in her three layers, her hat down over the short, bristly skin of hair she refused to talk to Hector about, her scarf wrapped tightly around her face and her gloved hands tucked between her legs. She waited, unable to shake the cold, the feeling, staring through the windshield, snow plummeting like just so many bags of flour being dumped from the sky.

Suddenly, she felt her phone vibrating in her winter jacket's front pocket. They were already ready to start loading the stuff? No, not this soon. Maybe they were changing their minds. But, it wasn't a call. Phantom vibrating, she realized; the latest phenomena to worm into our culture, according to those voices on the public broadcasts she'd gotten really sick of listening to on Geralynne's radio. I need culture? I need education? Fuck you bitch. I'm done. For real; I'm done. My Hector's back, so I'm going to get it good for a while.

Yazmina had stolen away, very late one evening, though leaving Geralynne's wallet and jewelry where they lay. She'd grown quite weary of the woman and her nearly constant summoning; calls, tweets, texts. Wasn't it true enough though? How many of us were now in a regular habit of waiting for a call even when we weren't expecting a call? Call histories, post histories, tweets, hits, tags; am I it? Who the Hell is calling me now? What was so God damn important? Why couldn't we wait? Because who likes waiting? Waiting was being alone, even in a crowd, with her friends in line for a movie, waiting was the reminder of her loneliness. Yazmina touched her phone again, through her gloved fingers. Was it another phantom ring? Maybe I should take them off.

Then she heard it; distant, muffled, a crack, like a hammer on hard wood. What's that? Seconds passed. Then a thunderous bang, a way bigger hammer. Oh shit! Oh no! Why? Why? They said they were just going to take her high priced stuff, her cards, tie them up, and then call the cops from a track phone they'd destroy and throw out the window on the way back down south. Oh my God, Yazmina thought, I'll have to go with them now. An adventure; that felt better, less lonely, maybe. It fell silent again, but for the falling static of the snow. Then her stomach roiled. Are they scaring Victria and her precious little Melody; or are they-

Bang, went another muted crack of thunder from inside the house. Oh my God, are they killing them? Yazmina didn't understand. What could have gone wrong? Victria was a feisty bitch, but three big guys with shot guns? And sure, now, Yazmina had firsthand experience that certainly bolstered her conviction that her former lover, drinking buddy and dome, also had the capacity to be a totally fucking crazy bitch. But still; three big, scary masked, guys with shot guns? What the Hell was happening in there? Going in masked meant you weren't planning on shooting anyone. It meant scare the Hell out of them and keep them cool while you took all their shit.

Yazmina took out her phone and checked for any missed calls. It hadn't been a phantom. It had been Geralynne, trying to get her to talk it out. Seriously woman? I've had it with psycho chicks! Should she go to the house, maybe peek through a window? Hell no! Maybe Victria gave them trouble. Of course she gave them trouble. Had she paid for it with her life? Did she deserve it? My burns, my scars, my fucking hair; fucking right she deserved something. Yeah but; getting killed? She heard a forth shot, a pause, then a fifth, sixth and a seventh. Yazmina's eyes went wide. She stared toward the lights of the house as she clumsily tucked her phone back into her jacket pocket. Something had gone very, very wrong. She groped for the door's handle, found it, and then burst from the Transit.

Leaving the big Ford's door open, she ran from the van to the road. Frantic and stumbling, Yazmina kept as close to the side of the road as the high snow banks would allow. Icy snow blasted her in the face, attacking her like swarms of crystal needles. On and on she ran; no street light, corner or end in sight because she couldn't see very much at all. Suddenly, she heard the wet, sticky sound of tires driving through slush. Yazmina stopped, felt for the snow bank that should have been on her left. Finding it, she started to wave. Squinting, she thought she saw the glare of oncoming lights. The car shot past her. Of course; why should they stop for someone just because they were waving franticly? It didn't matter if there was a blizzard going on, she was a perfect stranger after all, a lone hitcher in a world of potential criminals. Then she heard the big rig coming. A trucker; he'll pick me up, pick me up and take me away. Still squinting, Yazmina waved, stepping away from the snow bank, the icy snow coming down in great surging swirls. Oh please; you have to stop. You have to stop, please. But, he didn't stop either. She watched him pass, what she could see of his rig anyway. Behind him came the sound of bouncing scraping on asphalt. The plow truck didn't stop either. He shouldn't have been riding that close to the semi's rear, but he was; and, because he was, and because he was distracted by the sexy money shot his girlfriend had sent him by phone, the snow plow driver didn't see Yazmina as he scooped her up, tossed her under the semi's rear wheels, where she got caught between the right wheel and its mud flap, was bat around for half a minute until her body, spine snapped on the second bounce, was thrown into the road and finally slid across into the snow bank on the other side.

Yazmina had one working lung at that point. It hurt, so, so bad, but she could still draw some breath. Moving however, was not happening. Seeing was happening, but only as much as breathing, breathing with one lung, the other punctured by three of her ribs. A sudden jet of blood shot up from her mouth. Yazmina stared up into the white sky as it undulated like a writhing, infinite mass of coiling albino snakes. They were her crimes and her punishments, Victria's and Geralynne's having rightfully whipped the mare of her iniquities. Victria had likely died a good death. Melody may or may not had gotten to watch it. Geralynne would not be alone facing her own.

Yazmina's breaths began to shallow. The plow man would soon be coming from the other side of the road. Maybe he would be paying more attention this time. Her mind wandered through how much time she thought she had left; minutes, hours? One never knew for sure. She recalled the voices on public radio also informing her that scientists had discovered that the brain is conscious three minutes after death, and that twenty-three percent of all dyeing people studied described memories in explicit detail during that three minute span.

There was no one to speak to, yet Yazmina still made an effort to utter some confession or plea for mercy. But, she couldn't. No words would come. So, she thought and she imagined; the beautiful beaches of Puerto Rico, her mother, her sisters, the lovely church in San Juan, snapshot glimpses of Brooklyn, her in her Catholic school uniform, Victria's serious eyes and her lovely mouth. Then, Yazmina watched as the white snakes were parted, a circle, the night behind the storm, the white, gleaming razor edged, and feathers of her angel of retribution filling the gap in the storm. It was Victria, her hair down around her shoulders, her face its usual aloof solemnity, dressed in the Virgin Mary's blue tunic and flowing robes. It was so easy, she thought, to fuck everything up. She began to cry then, her tears melting the snow beneath her eyes as she listened to the bounding scrape of steel against frozen asphalt; getting closer and closer.

7

Never before had Victria rendered images with such brutal focus. Still propelled from the shattering events of two nights before, she was in momentum; alive after the psychological weight of her trauma, the shock, swallowed up in darkness, the sounds of men, flashes of light and touch, lightning strikes of pain as she was moved, and then suddenly awake again in a hospital room. Victria had locked her mind in a sort of linear retrospect. She'd restricted herself from the crime scene in her mind, staying outside the yellow tape, avoiding the peripheral reflection and the perceptual wandering beyond her meditations on Melody.

There is nothing else, Victria mused; no recent past, no distant past; just Melody. She was somewhere else in the hospital, the nurses kept telling her, but no one would take her to see Melody or bring her up. In fact, no one was saying anything, nothing significant, nurses or the lab coated specters that waltzed quickly in and out of her room, perpetuating the mystery of Melody's whereabouts and having nothing definitive to say about her own condition. She should be with me, thought Victria. She's mine. I need- I can take care of her. She drew Melody standing in nude profile in the snowy back yard, Melody in portrait; collared, Melody's bright, soulful eyes staring back at her from behind the chrome finished rods of the dog crate and Melody standing at the top of the stairs; dressed in the folk inspired gown she'd worn those two evenings before.

When she'd asked for drawing materials, all the nurses could give her were a few sheets of printer paper, a few # 2 pencils and a plastic sharpener. She'd created photorealistic drawings, wearing the pencils down to inch long nubs. Her work was so uncannily photographic, she'd had to make sure staff wouldn't look at them anymore because they just wouldn't shut up about them. If they wouldn't bring her to Melody, then all she wanted was to be left alone to draw, to narrow her thought to a thread, guiding it with Melody as the point of her needle; weaving it through a museum of memory, all of the other exhibits closed until further notice.

I don't understand, she thought. Why can't anybody tell me how she is? It occurred to Victria to ring for the nurse, but she changed her mind. The flat chested one in the purple polka dot scrubs, with the big butt and the fake smile had told her the pencils were scarce around here since they'd switched to typing everything into a data base. Bull shit. They must have more pencils somewhere. Duh, there's like multiple floors with nurse's stations, a gift shop downstairs. I'll call Pam again. And where the fuck is Vance? It shouldn't take him this long to get here.

But, it should, she knew, take him this long. Victria hadn't known about the severe weather warnings and the ultimate blizzard that had barged its way through the state, devastating it while her home was being invaded. She had been informed by her nurses that, during the storm and into its aftermath, they were still plowing through and removing two feet of snow, still clearing what was left of the over thirty-two accidents that occurred on the state's major highways and still trying to restore power to nearly eighty-six thousand households.

Given the weather, it had taken the police and the paramedics some time to get to the house. As the fire of her pain burned, Victria had held on to Melody -who had been bound by the big Arian to one of the kitchen chairs, her eyes open yet wholly unresponsive- and stroked and kissed her foot until she could no longer resist slipping away into whatever darkness awaited her. She remembered having dreamt of being pulled away from Melody, fighting helplessly, naked, bloodied, people handling her, resisting, and the pain so bad she could only scream her way back into darkness.

Then the sight of a hospital room materialized before her: a single, white walled, beige wanes coated, an empty blue cushioned chair in the corner by the window, the curtain partially drawn around the right side of the bed, the black TV anchored high on the wall across the room, machines, lights, clear plastic hoses and tubes, her legs covered with course white sheets: snow drifts and ripples across the cemetery of her legs and the twin tombstones of her feet. Her second night in the hospital, she willed herself to watch a dressing change; fragmented pink lightening branches of skin sown back shut, patches of chunky red salsa looking flesh, random black stains, little craters in the middle of flower petals of shredded muscle; and that was enough. She'd made it. She'd survived. How many lives, Victria mused, did I have left? I would give them to Melody; give them to her inside our kisses. She could swallow them up, hold them inside her, keep them safe and use them to live to a ripe old age, eighty-nine, ninety-four, maybe even a hundred and two. I want my Melody. Give me back my Melody; please, please give me back my Melody.

There was suddenly a knock upon her door. Before she could say go away, the resident was there at the foot of the bed: a short, thin, Indian man, lab coat over an old blue suit, stethoscope hanging from around his neck, smooth red face, warm brown eyes, dimples and a broad white toothy smile.

"Ms. Charpentier," he said as he reached down to take her chart, "I am Dr. Gupta. How are you feeling?"

"I can't feel my legs from the knees down," Victria answered as she tucked her drawings and pencils under her blanket, "Although, I can kind of feel something, I think, in the left."

"You have some nerve damage," the doctor replied; glancing up from her chart.

He slowly flipped through its pages, his smile still strong but faded somewhat.

"You have extensive gas and powder burns," the doctor continued, "You have annular abrasions and bruising. We were able to clean out the soot soiling in your wounds. It was fortunate that you were not clothed because such material would have interposed into your flesh. There was some degree of powder tattooing, which you may be able to eliminate through plastic surgery. You have nine elliptical wounds that are between two and four centimeters in diameter. It appears that the pellets lost velocity as they careened off the floor before entering your legs, which was fortunate because if concentrated-"

"Where's Melody?"

"I'm sorry?" he said; looking back up at her, "Melody?"

"The woman who was with me in my house when they took me away from it. Where; is Melody?"

"I'm sorry, but I was not aware of another-"

"She's safe; in another part of the hospital."

Both the doctor and Victria turned to watch a fairly tall and lanky woman enter the room. She was dark blue eyed, wave black haired and smartly dressed under her worn grey trench coat.

"Ms. Charpentier?" she said; having withdrawn her wallet and flashing a badge and photo ID, "I'm Detective Cassie Powers; Westbrook PD. We can discuss Melody after your doctor is finished."

"Yes, well," Gupta continued, "There was some wadding from the shot gun shells that required removal from the depth of your wounds. And, there was significant carboxyhaemoglobin formation, which I believe had lent a great deal in the complication of the damage to your nerves."

"Will I be able to walk?"

Gupta glanced quickly between Victria and the detective. Powers turned her back and stepped back out of the room. Then, looking at Victria squarely, his smile, warm but small, he said:

"If you continue to have no sensation in three months, we will have to perform a second surgery. We were able to perform vascular reconstruction and it was good that your femurs hadn't been cracked or shattered by the pellets. However, your nerve ends required suturing to the underlying muscle fascia in order to prevent retraction. At this point, we need to keep you under close observation and, if all continues to go well, we will reevaluate your condition at a later date."

Gumpta paused. Victria looked down at her shrouded extremities, also taking in the doctor's hands as they hung the clipboard back onto its hook.

"Your nervous system," Ms. Charpentier," Gupta resumed; uttering his words more slowly, "Needs to encourage the endings in your lower legs to communicate with the muscles to which they have been reattached. So, your physical fitness will depend on your mental; fitness. If you have more feeling in three months' time, you may begin physical therapy."

Again, Gupta paused. Victria turned away to peer soberly at the cold blue sky beyond her room's window.

"How is your; pain right now Ms. Charpentier?" Gupta asked softly.

Victria shrugged.

"It's at a seven I guess," Victria answered with disinterest, "Maybe eight."

"I'll increase the dosage to your pain medication." Said Gupta, starting to move toward the door.

"No," Victria intoned; turning to face the man, "Don't. It's just; pain. I'm fine. Doctor? Who can I talk to about being moved into a double, so that they can bring Melody up here?"

Gumpta looked suddenly perplexed. He looked toward Powers. Victria hadn't been aware of her return until then; leaning her left shoulder against the corner of the wall, her sober expression lit in a dim twilight, just out of the window's reach and the lights shining in the hallway cast against her back.

"I'll take it from here doctor," she said while meeting his gaze, "Thank you."

Gupta nodded, acknowledged Powers with a somewhat lesser smile then the one he'd entered with, and then left the room. The woman detective lingered her gaze at Victria for a few seconds before taking up the doctor's former position at the foot of the bed.

"What is your friend's full name, Ms. Charpentier?" she asked.

"Melody Eunice May. How is she?"

"She's catatonic," Powers resumed as she reached into her inside coat pocket and withdrew a note pad and a pen, "on-responsive; speechless, motionless, in a total, depressed, stupor."

Powers inscribed something at the top of the pad's first page, and then paused, like Mangiafico had paused; waiting her out, gauging her. Had they spoken, Victria wondered as she assessed the woman assessing her. Why would her being a woman make her any different? Depression; Melody could survive depression. Victria looked away, her face darkened, her pain, real but even, her heart aching. Go on Powers, she thought. What else?