Freedom

I. PRE-DAWN: We are alone among beasts.

The dripping yellow night falls upon her like one of those slasher movies where the girls are always dumb. The mist under the streetlight in this crummy part of town where she has always lived swirls like dragons in a video game sky. She is trying to think about other things besides the pain. She wishes she was a video game. Hates everything real. She imagines becoming an angel made out of mist floating away, looks down once more because she must and continues walking crouched over in her wet skirt and soggy shoes toward the abandoned house where Sammy used to live.

She looks there and over there and over there to make sure no one sees her and knows she is here like this. Mama doesn't even know because the baggy shirts and big skirts must have worked. She hardly even noticed anything except once when she asked "What you looking like these days?" The girl is skinny and long like a runner except for the stupid gross balloon in her middle. She hates it but loves  it, too, the same sickening love she felt for the dead kitten on the street in front of her house that time, its face still cute its body crushed. She doesn't really know much about love or what you're supposed to do with it. It always feels fake and messes her up inside. Maybe Sammy or that kitten was it for her, the best she'll know.

She stops to grab herself again and keep it from coming out until she can reach Sammy's house. She thinks he went to Atlanta with his mama but it's a blur, things that used to be real are a blur. She used to have a crush on Sammy when she was little and now can't remember where he went or why. His daddy beat them, maybe. He had bruises on his arms he didn't talk about. Maybe he was protecting his mama. Sammy left a long time ago and where he used to live is still empty, which is why she's going there. She worries about dying there maybe if something goes wrong and then thinks maybe that's good.

She wishes God would make it and her cousin and her mama and everyone else disappear. Screw you God enters her head, something she has never thought before. Don't tell Grammy, don't tell Mama. She starts walking again, glancing around with her head tilted to make sure again no one sees her. She was a dancer, wanted to be a dancer. Knows how to move her hips, to push from the core. Has a high butt, the thing they like. Seconds ago she walked past the arts high school where she danced where she wanted to be a dancer, holding her sopping wet panties so it didn't come out, her feet sloshing in her ruined brand new shoes, the yellow streetlights dripping, the rest of the night incoherent. Broken windows reflect light like weapons up ahead and allow her to see Sammy's house. There is only what she sees and knows and feels. 

Jacksonville, Florida, downtown, Jerusalem Street, Sammy's house underneath the interstate's curve, boarded up, now upon it, from its front porch she squeezes and stumbles through an opening in the boards, sweaty greasy skin scraping against moldy wood into a cave of urine and filth. She stands and her eyes hurt trying to see and not see, slowly turning like a horror movie, looking toward every corner and into two hallways, no one else no addicts no drunks. Sammy was in here a long time ago, watching TV or playing Call of Duty. He loved Call of Duty. You were my friend and I liked you a lot. More than like, really. Light slants into the broken room onto the floor she stands over, eyes now adjusted, blood on her legs, vomit in her throat, disgust and fear and somewhere in there also little girl love for Sammy. Sammy are you a good man. Is there such a thing as a good man. I am here, where you lived. I hope you are a good man.

The wood floor dark and sticky, graffiti on the wall angry and like it's laughing at her, a sad destroyed room, ammonia fumes from blankets mashed against the wall, she falls onto one of them curled, the smell makes her gag. 

This is her second child. She knows how to squeeze this one out fast. The first one, a girl, came feet first, with no one to help her, and the thing strangled, and the mother, this child then sixteen, almost bled to her death. She awoke with bare consciousness the next morning, the dead baby between her red-stained legs, still tied, and howled in horror. She knows what to do this time.

 The twenty-eight-year-old man who did this to her, her cousin, twice now, bastard, is drunk at The Majestic Bar two blocks away. She can picture the cocky way he stands, thinking he's royalty when he's really nothing at all with a nothing life. He does not want to know about the baby. Behind the bar with a pool stick in his hand he threatened to hit her with it while blood and water ran down her legs and ruined her new shoes and made them soppy and sick on her feet. "Get the thing out and take it somewhere, bitch. Just like you did before. If I see it or hear about it I'm gonna kill it. Get on now, go!" Then he went back inside like the king of nothing and like she was nothing. That arrogant smile walking away. She stood crying but the tears dried on her cheeks and she walked barely living and kept walking, decided where she would go, past the school where she wanted to be a dancer to this house that used to be Sammy's.

On her back, her face turned to the floor, grinding into the blanket's wet filth, hips raised, skinny legs taut, she groans like someone between beatings. The baby's head. A deep breath a muffled scream then the ungodly force of motherhood. The baby's shoulders.

Rest. Streetlight through boards. Again. Muffled scream. One of the baby's arms. The girl's bony shoulders plow against the blanket and floor, please please end, bruises burrowing into her. The other arm. She reaches down and around and feels it, slaps her own butt, pushes harder than consciousness, the baby is out, the rush of pain's end. The girl falls back euphoric and empty and fully adult.

Silence, breaths, silence. Wind suddenly, through boards, then stillness. She opens her eyes to the dark room and lifts herself to sitting. It came out last time on its own, she tries to wait but can't, so wet and ugly inside. There is a rusted can top within reach, nausea feeling for it. The slime of the cord from inside her, pulling on it with the other hand, a jolt of fiery pain inside, the noise of the placenta thing leaving her and hitting the floor throws vomit to the top of her throat and out onto the blanket beside her. She wipes her mouth with her shoulder. She looks away and feels what she's doing by touch. The rusted can top gnaws at the cord, she cuts her finger, until the cord flings itself apart. The baby jostles to stillness without sound face up as if looking at her with closed eyes. It does not move. She looks sideways at it. It still does not move and she hears no breaths but her own. It must be the same as last time. The girl mother leans closer, listens next to its mouth, then lifts herself, looks again at the silent baby, sees he's a boy, sees no movement still in its little chest, does not touch it, stumbles to her feet and takes steps toward leaving, looks one last time, drags her soul to a back door and runs and stumbles through backyards and driveways, behind sheds, over weeds and trash, going anywhere in an opposite direction. She falls into dirt, now covering her sweaty arms and knees and crawls to the back step of another boarded up house and sits, gasping, blood leaking out on the concrete step. Her breathing slows. She gently closes her eyes. The absence of love holds her.

A dog from the neighborhood a few people feed scraps to enters Sammy's house through the same broken boards the girl mother used, sniffs around scared, finds and eats the placenta growling, licks the newborn's face and brings the first sounds of life.