“Hello,” I say once I get past three levels of automated menu, “have you towed a black truck in the last couple of days? A Ford Ranger?”
“What’s the license plate?”
I squeeze my eyes shut until I remember Uncle Bill’s license plate number. I can hear her typing in the background.
“Yeah, yeah, we got it in a couple days ago.”
My tongue is lead. It takes so much effort to ask, “Where did you find it?”
More typing. “I’m seeing here, hmm, out near Highway 95, a few miles up the 156 turnoff. Do you want to come in today to pick it up?”
That’s way out in the desert. Uncle Bill wouldn’t just abandon his truck out there, on the side of the highway.
“You’ll need registration and a photo ID,” she adds before I have a chance to respond to her first question.
“What if I’m not the owner?”
She sounds tired. “Then you’ll need the owner to come with you.”
“What if I don’t know where he is?” Panic cracks my voice high and strained over the last words. The woman on the other end of the line goes quiet, and I wait for her to say something that will break the spell of dread that’s suffocating me.
The typing picks up again. “Well, once you find him, have him come on down to the impound lot and pick it up. Towing fee’s $150, plus $30 a day for every day it stays here.”
“Can’t I,” I begin, but she interrupts me.
“I’m sorry, honey, but if it’s not registered to you, you’re out of luck. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
I don’t even tell her no. Just hang up. Then I walk back home as the sun runs tracks of sweat the length of my spine. Uncle Bill isn’t on some weekend trip. He’s just gone. He left us, like Mom always said he would. Or something worse.
I won’t let myself think about that. He’s fine. He fucked us over, he abandoned us, but he’s fine.
“Hey, honey,” my mom says when I let myself in. “I made sandwiches.”
She’s washed her face and redone her lipstick, and her menopausal cherub’s face is framed by a freshly washed blue sweatshirt. Minnie Mouse smiles wide and inviting from the front of it, mocking me.
She doesn’t remember.
I bite into one of the sandwiches. An oil spill of grape jelly floods my mouth. “Thanks, Mom.”
I take another bite and gag on the combination of dry bread and saccharine jelly. I want to hurt. I want to hurt in a way I’ve never hurt before, in a way that will strip me clean of the guilt and the terror long enough to think. I want to punish myself.
So I’ll punish myself. What’s the worst thing I can think of?
I chew the sandwich till it’s mushy enough to swallow without choking. Then I excuse myself to the bathroom and run the shower so hot it steams up the mirror. Water pings off my exposed shoulders like tiny burning bullets. I kneel on the slick shower floor and retreat inside myself, reaching for cold iron and the beast beyond.
A small, useless voice inside me resists. Isn’t it enough that I’ve given up my independence, that I’m maxing out my credit card to rent a car and drive alone into the desert, isn’t it all enough suffering already?
A whimper. Chain rattles. I smother that voice and whisper, “Run.”
Pain like a burning brand, like a thousand hot needles sliding into the divots of my spine. I bite my tongue and hope the remnants of the scream that leaks around it will be disguised by the hiss of the shower. My curse hurtles through the pathetic confines of my musculature, burrowing into creaking joints, seeking a weak spot where it can burst through. If I stumble, if I give in, it will pin my elbows back and thrust apart my ribs and I will no longer be hunger hiding in a human body, but a mutant creature primed for violence.
Stop. I crumple, sliding on my knees across the shower floor. Stopstopstop. My jaw warps. Saline floods my mouth.
It’s too much.
It’s what I deserve.
It only stops if I can stop it.
