Pure Heaven

Thirsty Work — Chapter 24: by which he meant unholy hell

Two young women from California travel to New Orleans in search of redemption after the death of their mother. Carolee thinks she will show her little sister the world, but what they find in the barrooms of the French Quarter at Mardi Gras is more than she knows how to handle, or could have imagined back home. This is the twenty-fourth and final chapter of the novel Thirsty Work.

Trigger warning: rape and violence.

Terry had an ego the size of his cock, dangling down dangerously between his legs. He walked with a swagger. Wore a jaunty white cap. Didn’t seem to realize that his nose was bulbous, his skin porous and greasy, his body brittle and thin. He took me home with the casual air of a man used to taking home women. He was so pleased with his penis that he didn’t notice when I turned my face toward the window.

Outside, the sky was pale; A window across the street stared back at me, unblinking. When he finished, he got up and went, humming, to the refrigerator, where he kept a stand of celery and carrot sticks in a glass.

Remy had a home on the outskirts. The light was warm yellow there. Big, red flowers bloomed in the yard. There was a picture of his grandmother on the mantle. He was tender in his lovemaking. It seemed, when I closed my eyes, that he cared for me. When the phone rang, it was his girlfriend. It was easier if I didn’t pretend.

Richard was barefoot and snaggletoothed. Jeff was small and mean. Big Dave had the eyes of a convict. But none matched Jack the blonde in their potential for violence. Jack of the big biceps. Jack of the tight tee-shirt. Jack who had ridiculed me that first night when I went home with Dennis. Jack’s eyes were dead.

The night he came into the bar he angled straight for me, as if we were old friends. “Hey Carolee,” he said, remembering my name. He smiled and I saw that his teeth were small and pointed. I knew he was laying a trap. But I didn’t care. It was bound to be someone. It might as well be him.

He bought me a beer. Talked with his friends. Invited me to a party. “We’re getting a keg out by Tiny’s place tonight,” he said. “I could take you over, if you want to come.”

Sally reached over and gripped my hand as I was leaving. “Where you going, sister?” “There’s a party, out by Tiny’s, Jack here is going to take me.”

“Why don’t you wait for me? I could bring you later.”

“I think I’ll go now. With Jack.”

“Come here,” Sally pulled me closer. “I don’t like Jack. I don’t trust him. I don’t think you should ride with him.”

“I thought he was your friend?”

“Not outside this room, he ain’t.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be okay,” I twisted out of her hand.

Outside the night was damp. I pulled my jacket closer as I walked beside Jack to his little black car.

Once inside, he turned on the radio, reached over to the glove box. “Wanna smoke some pot?”

“Sure.” I took the baggie from his hand.

I rolled a joint while he drove. Then lit it and looked out the window. I tried to keep track of where we were going, but soon lost my way. The music was loud. The pot worked on my muscles, making them looser. I smelled Jack’s sweat in the close car. Not an unpleasant scent.

“This is good stuff,” Jack said, as he took a big drag on the joint. I nodded. Already my head was spinning around.

“How about pills?” he asked. “You ever take one of these?” He pulled a big black pill out of his shirt pocket, it had a small purple stripe around the mid-band.

“What is it?”

“Something good. Something to relax you,” Jack waved the pill in front of my face. “You never had anything like this, I swear. I took two last night. It’s like pure heaven. I’ve only got this one left. You want it? I’ll give it to you.”

That was sweet of Jack. Sharing his stash. Giving me his last pill. “Okay.” I put it in my mouth, knocked my head back, swallowed.

The party was loud in a small house out on the bayou. As soon as we got there, I knew I shouldn’t have taken that pill. I couldn’t see anyone I knew. The black shapes outside seemed to be melting. The light from the bulb on the front porch hurt my eyes. I couldn’t get out of the car.

“Jack. I don’t wanna go inside. I don’t feel good. I think I’ll just sit here.”

“Nonsense. You don’t want to miss the fun.”

Jack reached in to pull me out of the car.

“No, Jack. I’m gonna puke. Let me just stay here.”

“No way, honey,” he swept me up and out of the vehicle. “I ain’t gonna let you puke in my car.”

Jack put one of my arms around his neck, held my waist in his strong hand, dragged me toward the little dark house. My legs wouldn’t move. I felt my tongue hanging out of my mouth a little. It seemed I was paralyzed.

Inside I saw fat men on an old couch drinking beer. A woman with black eyeliner all around her eyes. Jack dragged me past the main room, through the kitchen, to a bedroom in back. Clothes were piled on the floor. A few posters were tacked to the wall. A lone light bulb swung from the ceiling. The sheets were dirty and damp.

“You just rest here,” Jack said, laying me down on the bed.

“Thank you,” I slurred. “Can you bring me a bowl? I might need to puke.”

He laughed.

It might have been two minutes. It might have been an hour. A man came into the bedroom and pulled his pants down.

“You ready girl?” he asked. “You ready for me?

I didn’t resist as he pulled my pants off. I couldn’t. Besides, wasn’t this what I wanted. Wasn’t this the rough justice that I deserved? He put his penis in me and came right away, then left the room. I tried to lean down to pull a blanket up to cover my naked legs, but I felt too dizzy.

Not much time passed before another man standing beside the bed. This one was fat, and smelly. He burped beer breath in my face. He grabbed my breast in his mitt like a baseball and twisted. He laughed when I yelped.

When the third one came I tried to get up off the bed. “I want to go home. I’m leaving.”

“No you’re not.” When I started to sit up, he hit me with the back of his hand. My lip caught on a tooth. I tasted blood in my mouth. “Lie back down you fucking slut. You’re not leaving until I get my piece of you.” He pulled his hand back and hit me again.

By the time Jack came into the room my stomach was covered with semen. Blood and spit strung out of my mouth.

“Having a good time at the party?”

I choked.

“Isn’t that good stuff I gave you? That little black pill? Isn’t it close to heaven?” Jack took a piece of my inner thigh between his fingers and pinched, hard. I didn’t know if I was crying.

“What did you think would happen, Carolee? Did you think you could just fuck anyone you choose? That little twit, Dennis? How is this any different from picking up a different man every night at the bar?” Jack pulled his zipper down, slowly, and pulled out his penis. “Open your mouth,” he said, kneeling on the bed.

I turned my face away. He slapped me.

“Open your mouth,” he pulled my head back by my hair. “Open your mouth bitch, I said,” he pulled harder. He held his penis in one hand, my hair in the other. As he pulled my head back, I felt my mouth opening.

Then the door slammed open and Sally stood in the frame, the billy club from behind the bar dangling from one hand.”What the fuck is going on here?!”

I saw her see me. I saw her see me splayed out on the bed with my shirt torn, my legs bare and bloody, mouth open, belly covered with cum. I saw her see me torn open for a frozen moment, and then her eyes turned to stone. “Get your hands off her!” she shrieked, charging Jack, pulling him back by his shirt and slamming him into the wall.

“I called the cops,” she said with the club held high above her head. “You better start running. Unless you think a rape charge isn’t gonna fuck with your parole.”

Jack looked at her, looked at me flayed on the bed. “You didn’t call no cops,” he sneered.

“Feel like gamblin’?”

Jack stood still for a moment, arms hanging like heavy weapons at his sides, fingers flexing. You could see he wanted to take Sally and shove her against the wall, but she stood her ground. Outside, you could hear the sound of feet running, doors slamming, cars starting. So Jack stuffed his penis in his pants and ran past her out the door.

In the car, I laid my head on her lap while Sally drove.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled into her thigh.

“Shhh,” she stroked my hair.

The hospital was white and quiet after the dark, loud party. The chrome bars around the bed glistened in the artificial light. The sheets were starched and smelled of lemon. A nurse came in with a bowl of warm, soapy water and gently swabbed my bloody thighs.

They stitched up my lip. They put an ice pack on my eye. They rubbed lineament into the scratches. They moved my legs up and apart so they could take samples and look at my vagina. A nurse in the background turned her head away.

I slept then, the dense, dead sleep of the used up, the wrung out, the completely broken.

I woke up once to feel Cathy touching my cheek softly.

“You’re here?” I whimpered. “Are you really here?”

“Yes. I’m back.”

One morning in the clear light we had the conversation.

“What happened to you?” Cathy asked.

I was still laid out in the hospital bed. Clean and tended, covered and safe. I remembered all the times she’d looked to me for answers as a little girl, all the advice I had given her so blithely, confident in my expertise. But this time, I felt only shame and confusion. “I don’t really know. It wasn’t just them. It wasn’t just that night. I’ve been sleeping with a lot of bad men since you left.”

Cathy looked shocked. Then angry. Then hurt. “But why, Carolee? Why would you do that?”

I looked out the window across the rooftops of New Orleans. A graveyard in the distance grew monuments like trees. “I guess I felt guilty. I thought I deserved it. You were gone. I thought you were missing! Aunt Viv told me Grandpa was a pedophile.” Cathy’s eyes grew wide. “And there’s something else I haven’t told you — that I haven’t told anyone. Something I did. Something bad.”

“What?”

“I left Mom to die alone, Cathy. I knew she was dying that night! I went to see her in the hospital, and I could tell she was dying. But I ran away.”

The air left the room as if pulled through a vacuum. Cathy stood by the window with her arms in her hands. She looked at me, hard, struggling to understand all I was saying. Her face blanched white against a white background. I felt myself crumpling into the blankets. My body folded up and began to compress.

“Mom didn’t die alone, Carolee.”

“What?!?”

“The hospital called the house. They told us to come over. Everybody was there when she passed— circled around her bed. It didn’t matter that you weren’t there, Lee. We were there. We were with her.”

I could hardly believe it. It felt like a heavy metal or poison was gushing out of my gut. “Are you sure?” I felt myself shaking.

Cathy stepped to the bed to embrace me. “Yes.”

I broke open and flowed off the bed. The floor was brown and black. There was a small bug there, a tiny grey spider, making its way across the linoleum. There was a blade of wet grass on Cathy’s shoe. I heard myself crying.

A nurse came in and asked Cathy what was happening. She brandished a needle. “We can give her something to calm her.”

“No!” Cathy’s voice reverberated within my skull.

In a white room in New Orleans, in a hospital named Charity, my little sister scooped what was left of me off the floor into the soft hollow of her hand.

Later, when I’d re-entered my body, I thought to ask her how she happened to be back in town.

“The trip didn’t turn out as I expected,” she told me. “Turns out, Carl didn’t want to bring me back.”

I stared.

“Good thing I had a little money stashed in my sock.”

We laughed together then, and we were still laughing when I was released from the hospital a day later, and we walked out to my blue Volkswagon squareback in the parking lot, the car I’d piloted so jealously on our trip out here, sure I was the only one qualified to steer.

Sally had come to see us off, bringing a bouquet of red roses, and Terri with box of beignets. Viv pressed a framed family photo into my hand: herself and Mom looking gorgeous as young women. We gave them all hugs and our address in Stockton. Invited them to visit. Promised one day to return.

“How long do you figure it will take you to get to California?” Sally asked.

“It took three days to get here, but that was with a maniac driving,” Cathy said. “This time, we’re going to do it different. We’ll take our time. Maybe even stop to sleep and go to the bathroom.” More laughter.

“Carolee got us out here. But I’ll be bringing us home.”

The End. That’s it! I hope you enjoyed the story. Find more of my work (and many others’) on Fourth Wave and on my Amazon author page.

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