(a short story)

1. IN THE COLD

Martha, a chunky lass, stood outside the locked door, lost, her sense of the day thwarted by a cheap wooden door with no windows. Sheesh. She wasn’t going to text Nathan, no, she hated how dependent he was on that damn iPhone of his. No, so, Martha stood there, tapping on the frame with her knuckles, the right hand that is. Her left hand was bandaged up after the night before. That was the point. Why she’d come back. To apologize to Nathan. To clean up the mess.

It was too late.

A curtain flickered at the upstairs window. Nathan was home then. He just didn’t want to see Martha right now. Again? Ever? Martha thought about yelling up to him but figured that would prove his point (she was too loud, too big, too…not like other women, ‘real’ women) so that was out. Where did it leave her? Apart from cold on a doorstep in Taos at seven am. Apart from looking like she’d run over a truck and not the other way around. Solidly built, big boned, thick shoulders from the daily visits to Planet Fitness, wide hips thanks to her Nigerian mom, and a shocking streak of blond through the center of her buzzed afro thanks to Nathan for one silly evening together the month before. When he’d still liked her bulk and feisty spirit. When he’d been intrigued and open and passionate to discover her, all of her story that brought her to this point, this body, this life. Martha had ignored his comment, I don’t see you as black, or trans, or gay, or any of those labels, you’re just Martha to me, and he’d hold his pale spotty freckled thighs around her pulling her down to the wooden floor on the porch, laughing at how easily she’d fallen. And she had.

Nathan. Martha. The neighbors were down the road; she was alone in the grey morning damp. Her mood plummeted. What would she tell her friends in New York? They were right? That he was going to get bored or uneasy with who she was? Her physicality? No, no, she wouldn’t say a thing on Facebook, this was private. Painful. She had no plans to go to work either. Not today. Nor would she go out for a beer after work with them, not tonight, not like every other night, and there lay the problem. Less hiking. More booze. More anger at the world. More desperation at the school killings, massacres, and the men that did it. Every single time there was a massacre there was a man, or boy, with a gun. A white man. Every. Time.

Martha hated this fact.

She hated the media for ignoring the fact. They focused on the mental stressors of the troubled kid or young man. Not the race. Not the gender. And it infuriated her so much that she drank herself numb. Not so numb though.

– You know what would happen if the killer was a woman? Or trans? Or a black transwoman? We’d be lined up and shot! We’d be put in prison with no parole, like those immigrant kids separated from their families and kept in huge cages. We’d never be allowed to buy a gun. We’d be thrown out of all schools, churches, killed off in all TV shows and movies. Can you imagine what would happen if these killers weren’t white men? MEN? LIKE YOU!

And at that, she’d thumped Nathan. Hard. He’d fallen over in surprise. Plus, he’s a small pudgy white boy in long shorts and loose tees, there’s nothing to hold him upright in such a storm. He’d fallen on the glass table (his mother’s) and blood spewed out of him, his back, neck, arms, and hands. Bloodied by love. Her love. She’d started to pick up him up but cut herself and stopped in surprise. She’d stared at him, red on white and she’d run. Run back to the tavern in town, on the highway, and sat with the familiar monologues all around until thrown out at two am. The bartender, a kind soul, had put her up in his apartment down the road. A sofa. Coffee in the pot. She’d fallen asleep hard and fast, out in five minutes, down for five hours, and now back at Nathans. With a hangover.

And no key. Sober.

She yelled up at the window. – I quit! I’m not going out there again. I’m done, Nathan, I’m done. I am.

A mourning dove watched her from a branch next to their bedroom. Martha fell to the cobble stone walkway and hugged her knees, rocking herself as her mama would have, she sobbed in anger and frustration and pain and fear and sobbed it out messy and pure until she heard the calm of a country morning full of birds waking up, the rustle of wind through the leaves in the cottonwood trees behind her. The dove called out to her and she wiped her snotty nose on a sleeve, noticing bare feet on the pathway. Nathan stood there, his pale face creased with fear and worry. His hands were taped up but hanging loosely at his hips, his torso bare but clean of blood, and those eyes, a watery blue. He sat down near her but not touching. He had no words. He took her inside, finally saying hush now, stay with me, please.

What’s more fascinating than reading about other lifestyles and landscapes?

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Sarah Leamy (me) has over ten books published including Van Life, an award-winning travel memoir from months on the road with two dogs and a cat in a small and old Dodge half-ton van. You’ll find artwork, books, essays, cartoons, travel stories, short fiction and more on the website.