I fought the urge and lifted more branches off the place where I had lain. If I was going to get to Seattle from here, wherever here was, I needed some clothes. I couldn’t imagine anybody stopping to pick me up with me looking the way I did. I knew Richie had worked hard to get rid of all clues to who I was, but I thought maybe my companion in the grave might not be so naked of identity, so I brushed dirt off her, and found she was not alone. There were two bodies in the dirt, with no sign of afterlife in them except maggots, and no trace of clothes. One was darker than me, with fewer marks on her but the same rope burns around her neck. The other one was very light, maybe white. She was really falling apart. They looked like they must smell pretty bad, but I couldn’t smell them. I couldn’t smell anything. I could see and hear, and my muscles did what I told them, but I didn’t feel much except the gathering fire inside me that cried for Richie.
I brushed dirt back over the other women and moved the branches to cover their resting place again.
Downslope the trees waited, making their own low-level night. Upslope, open sun: a road, probably. I scrambled up toward the light.
The heat in my head and heart and belly burned hotter, and I churned up the hillside and stepped into the sun.
A two-lane highway lay before me, its yellow dotted center stripe bright in the sun. Its edges tailed into the gravel I stood on. Crushed snack bags and Coke and beer cans lay scattered in the bushes beside the road; cellophane glinted. I crossed the road and looked at the wooded hill on its far side, then down in the ditch. No clothes. Not even a plastic bag big enough to make into a bikini bottom.
The heat inside me was like some big fat drunk who will not shut up, yelling for a beer. I started walking, knowing which direction would take me toward town without knowing how I knew.
After a while a car came from behind me. Behind was probably my best side; my microbraids hung down to hide the marks on my neck, and Richie hadn’t done any cigarette graffiti on my back that I could remember. A lot of tricks had told me I had a nice ass and good legs; even my pimp had said it, and he never said anything nice unless he thought it was true or it would get him what he wanted. And he had everything he wanted from me.
I could hear the car slowing, but I was afraid to look back. I knew my mouth must look funny because of the missing teeth, and I wasn’t sure what the rest of my face looked like. Since I couldn’t feel pain, anything could have happened. I bent my head so the sun wasn’t shining in my face.
“Miss? Oh, miss?” Either a woman’s deep voice came from the car behind me, or a man’s high one; it sounded like an older person. The engine idled low as the car pulled up beside me. It was a red Volkswagen Rabbit.
I crossed my arms over my chest, hiding the burn marks and tucking my rope-mark bracelets into the crooks of my elbows.
“Miss?”
“Ya?” I said, trying to make my voice friendly, not sure I had a voice at all.
“Miss, are you in trouble?”
I nodded, my braids slapping my shoulders and veiling my face.
“May I help you, miss?”
I cleared my throat, drew in breath. “Ya-you goin’ do down?” I managed to say.
“What?”
“Down,” I said, pointing along the road. “Seaddle.”
“Oh. Yes. Would you like a ride?”
“Mm-hmm,” I said. “Cloze?” I glanced up this time, wondering if the car’s driver was man or woman. A man might shed his shirt for me, but a woman, unless she was carrying a suitcase or something, might not have anything to offer.
“Oh, you poor thing, what happened to you?” The car pulled up onto the shoulder ahead of me and the driver got out. It was a big beefy white woman in jeans and a plaid flannel shirt. She came toward me with a no-nonsense stride. She had short dark hair. She was wearing a man’s khaki cloth hat with fishing flies stuck in the band, all different feathery colors. “What ha—”
I put one hand over my face, covering my mouth with my palm.
“What happened—” she whispered, stopping while there was still a lot of space between us.
“My boyfriend dreeded me preddy bad,” I said behind my hand. My tongue kept trying to touch the backs of teeth no longer there. It frustrated me that my speech was so messy. I thought maybe I could talk more normally if I touched my tongue to the roof of my mouth. “My boyfriend,” I said again, then, “treated me pretty bad.”
“Poor thing, poor thing,” she whispered, then turned back to the car and rummaged in a back seat, came up with a short-waisted Levi’s jacket and held it out to me.
I ducked my head and took the jacket. She gasped when I dropped my arms from my chest. I wrapped up in the jacket, which was roomy, but not long enough to cover my crotch. Then again, from the outside, my crotch didn’t look so bad. I turned the collar up to cover my neck and the lower part of my face. “Thank you,” I said.
Her eyes were wide, her broad face pale under her tan. “You need help,” she said. “Hospital? Police?”
“Seattle,” I said.
“Medical attention!”
“Won’t help me now.” I shrugged.
“You could get infections, die from septicemia or something. I have a first aid kit in the car. At least let me—”
“What would help me,” I said, “is a mirror.”
She sighed, her shoulders lowering. She walked around the car and opened the passenger side door, and I followed her. I looked at the seat. It was so clean, and I was still goofer dusted. “Gonna get it dirty,” I said.
“Lord, that’s the last thing on my mind right now,” she said. “Get in. Mirror’s on the back of the visor.”
I slid in and folded down the visor, sighed with relief when I saw my face. Nothing really wrong with it, except my chin was nearer to my nose than it should be, and my lips looked too dark and puffy. My eyes weren’t blackened and my nose wasn’t broken. I could pass. I gapped the collar just a little and winced at the angry dark rope marks around my neck, then clutched the collar closed.
The woman climbed into the driver’s seat. “My name’s Marti,” she said, holding out a hand. Still keeping the coat closed with my left hand, I extended my right, and she shook it.
“Sheila,” I said. It was the first time I’d ever said it out loud. She. La. Two words for woman put together. I smiled, then glanced quickly at the mirror, and saw that a smile was as bad as I’d thought. My mouth was a graveyard of broken teeth, brown with old blood. I hid my mouth with my hand again.
“Christ!” said Marti. “What’s your boyfriend’s name?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said.
“If he did that to you, he could do it to others. My daughter lives in Renton. This has to be reported to the police. Who is he? Where does he live?”
“Near Sea-Tac. The airport.”
She took a deep breath, let it out. “You understand, don’t you, this is a matter for the authorities?”
I shook my head. The heat in my chest was scorching, urging me on. “I have to go to town now,” I said, gripping the door handle.
“Put your seat belt on,” she said, slammed her door, and started the car.
Once she got started, she was some ball-of-fire driver. Scared me—even though there wasn’t anything I could think of that could hurt me.
“Where were we, anyway?” I asked after I got used to her tire-squealing cornering on curves.
“Well, I was coming down from Kanaskat. I’m on my way in to Renton to see my daughter. She’s got a belly-dance recital tonight, and—” She stared at me, then shook her head and focused on the road.