Sarah the Schizophrenic says the ugly old woman who wanders vacantly down the hall is ugly because she’s filled with demons, that if Mary was a good person her skin wouldn’t be a bunch of crushed tissue paper bruised under the eye-sockets. She’d be beautiful, Sarah insists. Like you.
Well, I don’t know about that, so I take a drag on my cigarette, hold the smoke in my lungs, let it circulate around for a little while, then exhale, flick the ashes off the **** with a swift snap of my thumb. Mary doesn’t do this, I think to myself, ******* off the stick once more. She’s not the one really inhaling Hell. All she does is lie in bed all day with her nose to the wall.
That woman makes me feel *****, Sarah hisses. Half of her face is concealed in the night, the other half dipped gold in the weak porch light. She’s hideous. You’re beautiful though, honey. You’re a doll.
Touching my face lightly with the tips of my fingers, I take another meditative pull, stand and walk a few paces, peer into the darkness. Beautiful. A lot of people say that. A lot of men. No matter how much I try, they still say I’m pretty. Ask for my number. Where’s your man at? I can chop my hair to bits, sleep so little that red and purple rims my eyes, walk so long in the chilly autumn air my cheeks are carved planes, no longer round and soft, but harsh, cold. I can smoke in order to purse my mouth into a puckered sphincter, destroy my image with oversized sweaters and baggy jeans and lack of make-up. Yet they never leave me alone, stare at me unabashedly, hungrily, take a seat next to me on the empty bus, follow me a ways down the street until I have no choice but to take the long way home, just to lose them. Want to know my name, my age, where I live, where I work, but most importantly, am I taken? Do I have someone? The lie always comes easily. Yes, I do. Then, I turn on my heels and walk away. He’s a lucky guy, a lucky guy to have you, they call. ****.
Of course, they know. They all know I don’t have anyone. They can tell by how I quickly avert my eyes, incline my head to the floor. That’s why, I think, they find it so easy to talk to me. An empty, hollow shell, I can be what they need me to be at the moment: vulnerable. Am I pretty? I’m not sure. But still, the notion is enough to make me want to pour a can of lighter fluid all over my face, touch a lit match to my flesh and shave my head just to make them quit coming after me. Leave me alone. All I want is for them to go away.
Yet simultaneously, I find it difficult not to humor their silent pleas. Yes, I want to tell them, I will sleep with you tonight. Come pick me up around eight and make sure you have a bottle of Jack with you. No, I don’t care what your name is, and I’d rather not look at your wrinkled face, your ******, defeated face, either. Sure, I will make you feel worth something and you will allow me to forget where and who and why I am for a few hours, and then early in the morning I will slip out unnoticed and never see nor hear from you ever again.
You okay? Sarah asks. My cigarette has burned down to an angry red stub. I drop it, squash it beneath my feet. Yes, I say, sticking another one between my lips.
Are you sure? she shudders. That woman just walked by. I think she’s trying to possess everyone. It’s enough to make someone go crazy.
I do not answer. A few minutes later, a man walks out, joins us. His face is haggard, unshaved, his shoulders hunched, hands in his pocket, a tangled marionette dropped by society. Fumbling with his cigarette, when he finally stuffs the lighter back in his pocket, he glances up, sees me, freezes. I look up at the sky, legs and arms crossed, smoke seeping from my mouth.
You’re real pretty, you know that? He asks after a while. I shrug, waiting for the inevitable. After a brief pause, it comes: You got a man?