The Door to Dawn

Over the years, to suit a mood, my memory of the man became a conflicting kaleidoscope of regret, guilt, pleasure, and pain. He’s a punk. All pimples and smoke. Also a mountain wrapped in clouds. He’s a pervert. Rotten teeth hang from his mouth. His fingers, you can tell, want to inappropriately touch. And he’s a drifter with skin so dirty it will never come clean. His heavy work boots covered in clay leave a trail of red across the floor. The tips of his boots are silver, the leather worn away revealing steel toes. Sometimes I feel that I am all these men—somehow still reflected in the shine of that exposed toe.

“I knew you’d come back.”

He inspects the apple for worms. He cups it in his palms and blows hard, as if warming his hands on a cold winter day.

“I bet you’re afraid. Well, don’t be.”

He buffs the apple on his dirty t-shirt till it shines.

“I’m not gonna hurt you.”

His mouth opens wide, like some deep-sea creature’s gaping maw, then with one bite he consumes half the apple.

“I know you didn’t tell anyone because you’re here.”

Apple juice drools down his chin and drips on the floor. He’s not looking at me. He’s looking at her.

“Beautiful, isn’t she?”

I quickly glance over at the woman, but I’m afraid to take my eyes off of him. He waits for me to agree, but my words are locked away in a safe and I’ve forgotten the combination.

Crossing the room, he plops down next to the woman. He puts his arm around her to keep her from falling over. I pull back from him until I bump up against the fireplace. My path to the door is blocked.

Wiping his chin with the back of his hand, he leans over and kisses the woman on the cheek.

“You know, I was kinda pissed at you yesterday. You interrupted me in the middle of some very important business. I had big plans and you ruined them. This pretty woman and I were gonna cozy up for a few days, and I guess I can say you killed all that. I mean, I don’t wanna lay a guilt trip on you, but your timing was really shitty. And I thought to myself, what’s to do about you?”

Was it my fault that she was dead?

He takes another juicy bite of the apple.

“Bitches are one thing, but kids? …Guess what though?” I assume he doesn’t want a response, but he does—he waits.

“Wha—what?” I manage.

“You surprised me. There was such beauty in your actions…I was so…touched. She was dead as a doornail and if you didn’t go and bring her back to life. I was gonna dump her in the well out back and be done with her. Now we can have some fun. You’re a special kid…you know what I mean?”

I have no idea what he means. His voice is coming through a wall of fear that would take years to filter through. He tosses the apple core across the room. It bounces off the wall and joins a small pile littering a corner of the floor.

“First things first. A proper introduction. What’s your name?”

I can’t speak.

“I don’t think mine is important. But if we’re gonna be friends, I need to know yours.”

I can’t speak. I’ve forgotten my name. Lamp, bed, chair, fireplace... I repeat in my mind the objects in the room. It’s easier to remember the names of objects than my own—easier to remember what these objects are than who I am.

“Okay, if you don’t wanna tell me. Tell her. You like her so much.”

Gripping the back of the neck, he operates her like a ventriloquist’s dummy. He speaks with a mocking female voice.

“What’s your name little boy?”

I can’t say my name.

“Don’t hurt her feelings. She would have liked you. She doesn’t care that it was your fault she died. She was a mother, she’s gotta love kids.”

I gasp for air. My feet do a pee dance as if I were seven years younger. I haven’t had this feeling since I was hanging from the top of a Ferris Wheel for the first time.

The man releases the woman and, continuing to crouch, places his elbows on his knees.

“This isn’t gonna work if you don’t participate.” He releases a long sigh and speaks in a calm voice.

“Let me tell you why you’re here. It’s the same reason why I am here. Life and death. I have power over life. You have power over death. I saw the way you cared for her. You’re a kind kid. Special. You didn’t run, you hung in there. Look at her,” he says, reaching over and patting the top of her head without taking his eyes off of me. “She’s alive because of you. Do you want to do that again? You can bring her back over and over. So, tell me your name.”

His words are a blur of a language I don’t understand, but finally I speak.

“Eric,” I say, without realizing I still have a mouth.

“I like that name, Eric. Okay, my friend Eric. Kind Eric. You cannot have life without death. You brought her back to life, but here’s the question. Do you want me to kill her for you? She cannot live unless she dies. Can I kill her for you, Eric?”

I have an answer, but I can’t allow myself to say it.

“You can’t bring her back unless you let me kill her. How should I do it? Choke her? Take my trusty knife and stab her. Waddya say, buddy?” His boot taps the floor impatiently.

I choose a single word.

“Yes.”

The man jumps up and puts out his hand. “Put her there,” he offers.

I reach out to shake his hand as if I’m my father meeting one of his colleagues at a party. I also feel like a snake has consumed my hand and is now is the process of swallowing me whole.

“Tighten up that handshake, boy. Let’s have some fun, partner. What’s mine is yours.” With the grace of a magician he waves his hand over the woman’s body. She promptly rolls off the couch and plops to the floor like a cartoon pig in a puddle of mud.

“Get her feet.”

We drag her over to the carpet. Cold and stiff, her body is frozen in a sitting position. Her feet stick up in the air awkwardly.

“Rigor mortis has set in. Watch, you gotta work it out.”

The man grabs her arm and bends it up. The motion causes the arm to snap & crackle. He pumps it like a water pump beside and old well. Up and down. Up and down.

“Grab a leg, bend it down.”

I do as I am instructed. Consciously or unconsciously, I’ve taken on the role of a student to his teacher. I push down with all my weight and her leg snaps like a tree branch.

The man chuckles. “There you go!”

I smile as if I’ve done something special.

“Get me her purse.”

It seems like a simple task, but my feet resist moving. As if my sneakers have sunk into a floor of quicksand. I don’t want to see what’s in the purse. I don’t want to see her driver’s license, to know her name, to know the day she was born. I don’t want to see family photos of children and birthdays and vacations. But maybe this is what it really means to bring her back.

He grabs the purse and dumps the contents out. The woman’s life spills out across the floor. This is all she is now—a collection of objects to be picked over.

A small piece of paper flutters down and lands at my feet. Her last grocery list. I shouldn’t read it, but I do. I know what we are doing is wrong. Milk. Eggs. Bread. Butter. Apples. I translate the mundane words into a language that makes sense. Guilt. Shame. Failure. Despair. Fear.

Rubbing his hands together, the man surveys the contents of the purse.

“Let’s see, what do we need first? Something sexy.” He picks up a tube of lipstick and screws it open.

“Now that’s a shade of red. Perfect.”

The man smears it on. In kindergarten we were told never color outside the lines. But he’s botched the job. The lipstick is a big red bull’s eye around her lips.

“Get me some eye shadow.”

He roughly brushes it on. Tom Sawyer could do a better job painting a fence.

“You’re making her look like a clown!” I howl with frustration.

“Excuse me. You do it then, little man,” he says, both of surprised at my sudden protest.

I wipe away his mistakes with my shirt.

“Careful.”

“I know what I’m doing,” I sigh. “I’ve watched my mother enough times to know how to do this.”

“Ain’t you the fancy boy?”

Falling into a deep concentration, I tune the man out. My tongue slides to the corner of my mouth. I am meticulous in her resurrection. Soft pastels of peach, rose and sky blue mask her death. Her skin shimmers with life. Then, awkwardly, I attempt to brush her hair. It’s difficult to untangle the matted cobwebs.

A splash of a sweet smelling perfume masks her unspoken reality.

“I think you’ve done it,” the man says, slapping me on the back. I bite down on my tongue so hard I taste blood.

We kneel back in unison. He is right. She is a sleeping beauty. At this moment I truly believe I have rescued her from death. I am her hero.

I am reminded of when dad is away for a long week, when mom plans a dinner for just the two of us so she can wear her special dress. I dress in a black suit worn only for church and funerals. She calls me into the bedroom. She is sitting at her vanity.

“Can you help me with my necklace?” she always asks.

I clasp it around her neck and look in the mirror.

“Thanks. Are you hungry?” she always asks.

I rarely see mom like this. Briefly escaping sadness, her beauty radiating a rainbow of colors to match her special dress.

She smiles and kisses my hand.

“Yeah, let’s eat,” I always say, wishing we could always be this way.

I see this beauty now in the woman. She breathes.

“My turn now!” the man demands.

Pulling up his pant leg, the man removes a long bowie knife from his boot. Sunlight spilling through the bare window bounces off the sharp silver blade. A glint of reflected light travels across a wall. He reaches into his pants pocket and pulls out a round flat stone. Raising the stone to his lips, he spits.

“This is how you do it right.”

He places the spit-covered stone on his knee and drags the long blade across it. It screams with metallic anger. The process is repeated over and over.

“Not sharp enough. Not sharp enough. Not sharp enough.”

He drags it harder and harder. The blade cuts across his thumb.

Sucking his blood, he grunts, “Sharp enough.”

The man flips the knife in the air and the point of the blade lands with a thunk in the wooden floor, its handle sticking straight up.

“Take it.”

“Really?”

“You’ve earned it.”

I wipe my sweaty palms on my pants. I’m the future King Arthur drawing forth the sword set in stone. What I will be King of, I can’t imagine.

My fingers curl around the handle like a vine in the forest encircling a branch. The blade is heavy, might as well be a sword in my hand. A lightning bolt of energy flows from the darkest part of my soul and travels to the tip of the blade.

The man leans in. He is so close his bottom lip brushes against my earlobe. His breath smells like the black mold hiding in a damp basement where a body has been left to rot.

“Eric, do you know what all reptiles have in common?”

He wraps his hands around mine and the blade slithers towards the woman. His grip is a bear trap I cannot escape. The blade cuts across the woman’s leg. The hose splits and curls like the waves under the bow of a speedboat.

“They have to shed their skin to be reborn. Have you ever found a discarded snake skin in the forest?”

“No,” I lie, remembering the one curled up on my desk at home.

“That old viperous, poisonous serpentine rubs its nose back and forth against a rock until that skin starts peeling off. The snake wants out of that transparent shell of its former self. It rolls and twists until that skin peels inside out and behold, you’ve got a brand new big fat snake. And just so you know, this is the best time to kill them—when they’re all naked and exposed. This woman, who you have so graciously brought back to life, needs to shed that skin, Eric. Then I can kill her for you.”

The fabric of the woman’s dress peels away under the blade of his knife, exposing her skin. My own skin seems to peel off in the very air. I can almost see it float away to join all the decay of the house.

“I think it’s time for you to leave.”

The man pulls the knife out of my hand. His eyes are hypnotic, his cheeks flushed. The only time I’ve seen this look is when my dad tells my mother he’s not drunk.

“You can come back tomorrow, bring her back again. You’ve done your part, Eric,” he says, slurring his words.

I leave. I understand. Three’s a crowd.