Not Us, Not Plant or Animal 

I am in the front seat. I am always in someone’s front seat. But I’ve been in his front seat a lot. I am 19 years old. If I keep it up I will be dead within the year. We’re driving somewhere and he’s mad as hell. Mad as hell at me and I think I know the reason but I’m telling him to just get it over with. Just get it over with and yell at me. Make me walk the rest of the way and never call me to see if I made it. Forget about me entirely and tell me you’re going to do it. He doesn’t. 

I will never forget the way this feels. Being somebody’s bitch with Rihanna’s album ANTI as the soundtrack. I am an ugly girl now. My nails are growing long and caked with paint or dirt or tobacco, like how a dead person’s nails continue to grow, but mine keep the life under them. He keeps shaving my head no matter how much it scares me. I am getting skinnier. He gets mad that I won’t eat. I puke up dinner and he says, “That’s not very economical.” Yeah, right. He’s mad and it has nothing to do with my illness which is disappointing because if the world can’t be about me maybe it can be about losing so much weight I can wear the mint green striped pinafore in the little kids section. He buys me the pinafore because I like it. 

He tells me I should get a gun. I should be able to defend myself so it doesn’t happen again. I chose to waste away instead. For me, it’s like the big evil man that hurt me was giving me the death tap. I was chosen to go. My time was almost up. But goddamn, did it have to be so brutal? I don’t get his logic. I don’t get how bad things happen and I’m just supposed to know to get a gun. I’m just supposed to know that I am allowed to keep on living after this. Fuck him. Fuck him for trying to teach it to me now. 

We drive up to Oak Creek Canyon. We hike about a mile in towards a crack in the rock formed by a waterfall. We sit on the edge and I roll a cigarette. In his backpack he has a tomahawk, a glock 48, and a .38 revolver. That one’s for me. I reach for the knife but he won’t let me near it. I take the gun and point it at the water. This whole thing feels stupid. It feels stupid that I have to learn what to do. What to do if it ever happens again. Is it so bad to be just fine with being marked? To say, Dang maybe I wasn’t meant to be here at all and this proved it. I’m outtie! It is bad to think that, obviously, because he’s pinned me down on the rock face by the shoulders. His silver chain dangling in my face turns me on. He’s pinning me by the shoulders to make me understand how serious this is. It’s so serious that I know what to do the next time someone wants to hurt me, because there will be a next time. 

He pulls out the rubber bullets so I can learn. I don’t know how to learn anymore. It feels like I am no longer capable of understanding. He stands behind me and adjusts my legs, my hips, my shoulders. His hands enclose around my hands. From this position I can see where I put out my cigarette on his knuckle because he asked me to. It hasn’t closed up. They take forever to heal. 

We’re aiming at a tree, he and I together. I have never fired a gun before. He tells me not to hold my breath so I don’t shake. I know I will regret this. It won’t make me feel powerful. In my head I’m singing “James Joint.” I am going to fire as many times as he tells me to. I am going to pretend to be the man that does the hurting for as long as I have this gun in my hand. 

I don’t know why we were given feelings. Not us, not plant or animal or sky or God. If I accept things as they are hat means something always has to hurt, because it feels like something always does. What he’s doing, though, he’s trying to make me one of the hurters. Someone who hurts someone else. 

Why not? I’ve already done the other thing.