The Door to Dawn

Standing in line waiting for the bus I feel my dad’s eyes burning on the back of my neck. He hovers in his gray office suit watching me from the porch. He sips a cup of coffee and pretends to read a folded newspaper. Replace the paper with a shotgun and he could be a prison guard in a tower. There is no sneaking away today.

I stand between the before and the after. I am a petrified department store mannequin in a storefront window. A boy dressed for school. Denim and flannel, backpack hanging over a shoulder, books in hand. On the inside I’m nothing. A hollow cavity. I cannot speak. I cannot hear. Through blank white eyes I watch my classmates revel in horseplay. Life goes on for them.

The dying yellow beast of the bus squeaks to a stop. White exhaust billows from the muffler in the cool morning air and engulfs me. Above, window by window, I see childish faces press against the bus windows. Small circles of condensation hide their flapping mouths. The show’s about to begin. The door flips open, beckoning me to my executioner.

As I step up on the bus I feel weightless. Like an astronaut in space. I hold tight to the rail or I will float away.

“Missed you!”

“What?” I look up to the bus driver. But it’s not the bus driver. The woman from the house sits in the driver seat facing ahead, her eyes closed. My mother’s rainbow dress hangs in shreds from her pale nude body. Pulled by the strings of an unseen puppet master, her right arm jerks up and turns backwards. Her index finger, the one missing the yellow press-on nail, uncurls knuckle by knuckle and points.

Deep at the end of a black tunnel, Nelson sits slouched in his seat with his legs spread wide. He is real, color and flesh, full of cockiness. My seat waits by him.

The bus doors slam shut, like the echo of a tomb door closing. I look back at the woman and she is gone, replaced by the bus driver’s smiling face.

“Welcome aboard.”

The bus rolls forward. Gripping the edge of the seats for support I make my way to the back. All heads turn to the passing horse.

Nelson motions to me. “I saved you a seat.”

I slide in the seat in front of him. Just like any other day he is breathing down my neck.

“I missed you yesterday. It’s no fun when you’re not here. I have no one to play with. But it gave me a lotta time to think.”

I know what’s coming.

“What’s your name today?” A high-pitched cackle of birds erupts across the bus. Through a window behind Nelson’s head I watch us pass the woman, her elbow propped up casually against a mailbox. Her eyes are shut, but I know she sees me. She raises her hand to wave. It flops like a fish cast ashore from the depths of a black sea.

It’s difficult to describe the smell of death. The rotting flesh of a dead animal by the side of the road? The sweet perfume of lilies at a funeral? The antiseptic tartness of formaldehyde in embalming fluid?

The death of Nelson’s bullying, its violence, its tyranny, its pointlessness—smells to me of cinnamon.

Out of the corner of my eye his head hovers like a buzzing mosquito next to mine. Flames shoot out of his mouth.

“What’s your name today?”

The flames wrap around my head—burn with the smell of a cinnamon Christmas candle freshly lit.

Nelson’s hand lands on my shoulder. The untrimmed fingernails dig in like the black claw of a vulture ready to tear my flesh away. My hands curl into tight fists. They are hammers looking for nails. For a moment I have a premonition of what’s going to happen next. A decision I’ve made. An action I’ve chosen. I turn, ready for the confrontation. The Red Hot Devil he’s sucking on dances on the tip of his tongue and clicks against his teeth.

It takes me a moment to understand. Violence isn’t just an act, it has a taste and it has a smell. I smell Nelson’s cinnamon-breath, like I smell stale scotch, like I smell a damp basement.

“I am Eric.”

“Really? That’s funny, because that’s not your name. Only I know it.”

“Why don’t you tell me, Nelson?”

“Oh, this is too easy.” Nelson turns to his audience. “He wants to know his name. I look at him and I see only one thing. Your name is…cocksucker!”

Rising like a crane over the roof of an unfinished house, I turn to Nelson.

“No, it’s not. It’s Eric.”

Nelson’s face burns red with humiliation.

“I remember all your names. Crybaby. Sissy. Freak. Retard.” The names vomit out of my mouth. “Best of all, I know your true name.”

My eyebrows arch and curl. My nostrils flair. My lips twist into a wicked smile. Bile erupts from the depths of my stomach. I choke. My mouth fills with what I imagine to be the taste of a cocoon. Nelson stands, his fists clinched at his sides. The cocoon explodes, releasing black moths.

“Pussy,” the moths hiss. The cackling birds fall silent beneath their noise. Nelson pulls his arm back to punch, but before he can my fist drives deep into the soft pillow of his belly. The Red Hot Devil flies out of his mouth and shoots across the bus. The flame dies, the cinnamon fades away—replaced by the tinny smell of blood. Nelson bends over and retches. I drive my fist square into his nose. Blood explodes. As he collapses, I yell to my classmates.

“Is this the show you wanted?”

I jump on top of him. My fist connects again and again. Every punch is a repeated question I want answered.

“What’s my name?”

“Eric,” he manages to gurgle.

“What’s your name?”

“Pussy,” he says weakly.

“Remind me again. What’s your name?”

“Pussy,” he screams.

“Mine?”

“Eric…Please stop, I’m sorry.”

These are the words I’ve been waiting for. But I don’t stop. Nelson has just handed me the keys to a brand new car. I own him. He is mine to do with as I please. At my age I don’t own much—books, moments from my childhood hung from the ceiling. I own the soldiers, and I own the drawings. Now I want to punch holes in a pickle jar and stick Nelson on a shelf.

From behind, I’m grabbed by the neck of my jacket and pulled off of Nelson. I turn and almost punch the bus driver in her face. The bus has stopped somewhere in the blur of blood.

“Eric,” she says, as if my name is a question difficult to ask—like I am anyone but who I am. I look down to Nelson, his dirty white t-shirt covered with streaks of blood. My knuckles torn and bleeding. I pull away from the driver and run towards the front of the bus. My classmates have become beetles and earthworms discovered under rotting logs. They squirm and twist excitedly as I pass.

I catch my reflection in the driver’s mirror—a demonic blur—then step off the bus into a desert made up of infinite versions of the dead woman. They are all her, piled one on top of each other.

Then I realize the bus has stopped barely a half a block from my house. I run past my father pulling out of the driveway. I stop at the car window and leave a bloody palm print. At this moment, it’s as if one hand touches my dad’s window and the other turns a doorknob. I’m heading to a house—not mine—the one that feels like home. I’m leaving my mother. She is a shadow in a kitchen window. Hands dipped in dishwater. I’m leaving my father. He is a faceless blob writhing behind the wheel of a car parked in a driveway.