cherry avenue by paris vasser

There was a swing set on the corner of Cherry Avenue where I would sit and stare into the face of God at night. Tonight the air was pure from the rain that washed away the thick layer of smog that painted the sky and I made sure to suck in all the air I could as I sat on the wet blue swing.  The water seeped through my skirt and touched my thighs making those tiny bumps poke through my skin, chilling my body.  I stared at the black mass in front me and began to pump my legs back and forth to try and get as high over the building as I could. As I gained speed the breeze picked up my skirt and chapped my lips and with every kick of my legs I was over the church and under it. The tip of the cross rose just above my feet before I fell back down to the gravel and scraped my boots along the rocks, only to swing my self in the face of Him again.  This was the highlight, when I could see the roof of St. Paul illuminated by the whiteness of the swelling moon and how small it looked when I was closer to the stars.

             There were three black bees in the puddle beneath my boots.  They looked like a large black mass, huddling together in a clump.  I could see their bloated bodies floating in the water and the thought of the wasted honey inside of their stomachs made my eyes sting.  One of the bees floated away from the others, grazing the edges of the puddle with its now useless wings that twitched in attempt to fly. 

            I looked to see the church doors open and started to walk over.   It’s midnight and my mother still hadn’t noticed I was gone.  I made my way down the dark house of God and a faint smell of smoke from the candles crossed my nose.  As I got closer to the alter, that’s when I saw her. She was spread with her legs open on the stairs like she was making snow angels on the red carpet.  I remember the girl from the corner store on Brunswick St. She would stand in front of it every day with a lollipop in between her lips wearing a fur coat that looked like the skin of a brown bear had been sewn together to keep her warm, while she waited.  Her skirts were always two sizes too small, and the same pair of dazzling green heels strapped around her ankles made the skin fold over the rhinestone straps. One time I saw her inside the market buying gum and I saw a gold rose necklace around her neck and I told her it was so pretty I wanted to rip it off her.  She laughed and told me her son gave it to her and that she never took it off, not even to shower.  Sometimes she stood outside for hours, before a car pulled up and she grabbed her bag and stuck the cherry lollipop in her mouth and walked knees slightly bent to keep from falling over in her heels into the awaiting car. 

            The moon shining through the stained glass windows lighted up the Church.  The Virgin Mary’s face was illuminated by the light and it made red, blue and yellow prisms along the walls of the church, making it look like a kaleidoscope held by God’s hands. 

            “Are you okay?” I asked the body already knowing she wouldn’t answer.  I knelt down by her head.   The smell of her baby powder perfume, and the glitter on her cheeks made me think of the people who would miss her.  How beautiful she looked lying there in a plain white cotton dress that I’d never seen her wear before; her neck was bare and the lights from the window painted her cold body.   My stomach began to cramp and I felt the waves sloshing around in my stomach and the tears of the whore began to seep out of my eyes.   By her left hand there was a compact mirror that had naked cherubs painted on the top.  I stuck it in my pocket and sat on the stairs, twirling a piece of Mary’s soft brown hair, and called the police. 

            The officers prattled on about how they weren’t surprised at Mary Sinclair’s death. Everybody in town knew her; she was our friendly neighborhood dirty secret, reminding the godly folk that people of this town still had sin no matter how many times they’ve been wiped down with the blood of Jesus.  They’d still keep a hooker from going out of business.   The cops asked me questions like why I was there and if I touched the body in any way.  I told them I was there to pray and I didn’t touch the body, but they would find a pile of fresh throw up somewhere around her hair.  The big-bellied officer gave me a ride home and told me that they tried calling my mother, but no one answered. 

            The next morning the death of Mary had spread around town and when I walked into the kitchen I found my mother sitting at the table in her silk robe, talking on the phone.

            “Yesinia found the body!” she yelled into the receiver, pride dripping from her lips.  The headline on the news was ‘Murder on Cherry.”  My mother was cackling, so I walked over to the TV and turned up the volume.  They showed the church with caution tape all around it and a mob of suburban moms and dads with crossed arms and smug faces. 

            “The cops have been calling all morning-“ my mother covered the end of the receiver with her pale manicured hand and turned to look at me for the first time since I entered the room,

            “Turn that off!” She said, hitting her hand on the table. I glanced over my shoulder to see her face pinched, exposing the deep wrinkles in her forehead.

            “I want to know who did it.” 

            “Nobody knows. That girl was in and out of so many cars I don’t know where the police are gunna start.”  She was back to talking on the phone and giggled at whatever the person said.  I grabbed a red apple from the bowl on the table before turning off the TV.  I walked away and my mother yelled,

            “Take your meds before you leave the house!”  I heard her sigh under her breathe and explain to the phone how her daughter was on three different medications each of which was more expensive than one her car payments. 

             I stuck my headphones in and grabbed the white bottle that sat on top of the stool right by the front door.  I popped two baby blue pills and put the bottle in my bag before slamming the door behind me.  As I walked, I took the mirror from my pocket and played with the latch, opening and closing it.  My mind kept filling with images of Mary’s body spread open at the alter.  Her white dress looked like the baptism dress my mother dolled me up in when I was seven.  I remember coming home from my sprinkling and my mother yelling for me to take off my dress before playing.  I ran to my dad and he winked and told me his princess could wear it for just a little while longer.  I never felt more beautiful than I did in that white dress and I remember running around the living room pretending I was an angel. 

              I ended up at the church and I noticed how different it looked from last night.  Now it was covered in buzzing voices gossiping about the defilement of their Lord.  News vans and reporters scattered the green grass trying to get information from the cops.  I stood next to an old woman who I recognized as the deacon’s wife.  Her name was Ms. Anna and she always wobbled around with her cane that had a dove’s head carved into the top.  She would poke girls with it and say things like, ‘“Hell is real and it burns, baby girl, and the devil is waitin’ to grab you any chance he get.” Her face was brown and caked in thick makeup that sunk into the cracks on her skin.  Her lips were pulled back into a satisfied smile and she said to a plump woman next to her, 

            “We just can’t question the Will of the Father.” I snorted and looked at me, scanning my body and stopping at my chest; Ms. Anna let out a chortle before saying,

            “I don’t know how your mother lets you out like that.” Before turning her attention back to the scene in front of St. Paul’s.    I walked over to the swing set and opened the mirror.  I sat with my back towards the church and lifted the mirror to see brown skin like my father had and a mess of bottle red hair.  Through the mirror I saw the neighbor boy, Andrew, come up behind me and he plopped himself down in the swing next to mine, shaking the entire set. He was four years older than me, but had the face of someone in his thirties.  A long face, with rough black stubble on his chin, his skin was a soft white that I often kept my hand from touching.   Andrew dug his feet into the wood chips and said,

            “Did you hear she had a kid” He looked up from the ground, his black hair falling into his eyes and let out half a laugh. Andrew’s eyes were a dark blue that always looked tired, with wrinkles in the corners of his eyes.  I told him he was too young to have wrinkles, and he said that age was never a concern of his.  When my mother saw him in church she would tell him how she could see the light of the Holy Spirit in his eyes and each time she said this Andrew’s eyes would darken slightly so I don’t think my mother could see. His knuckles would turn white as he clenched his fists behind his back, and his cheeks would turn red before smiling a smile that never reached his eyes and said, “That’s because I ate Him.”  This made everyone laugh and my mother laughed the loudest. 

             I told him I didn’t know she had a son as I thumbed the mirror and noticed my fingers were beginning to feel the familiar numb sensation, making it harder to open and close the latch.  Andrew stood up from the swing and reached out his hand telling me to come over to his house.  I reached for his hand noticing dots on the back of it that looked like teeth marks. He was staring at me the way a cat stares at a mouse, waiting for it to make the first move.  I put the compact in my pocket and put my hand in his.

            Andrew and I sat on his hardwood floor in his bedroom with bags of hot Cheetos surrounding us.  He took his pet snake, Eddie, from the tank, wrapped it around his forearm, and told me to touch it.   I stroked the snake’s skin as he watched and felt the roughness of its body and felt how cold it was on my fingers. I noticed Andrews fingers, stained from the cheetos and they looked like Mary’s.  Her fingers were long like Andrew’s and when I found her body her nails were stained a deep red as if she had been finger painting, the way I used to do in Sunday school.  I remember dipping my fingers in the paint and imagined Mary, in her white dress doing the same, dipping her dead hands into a can of paint and drawing a heart or an angel, making sure not to drip. 

              Andrew stopped me by taking my hand and moving it the other direction, saying that it would feel smoother if I rubbed it the other way.  This reminded me of when I was at my job in the mall selling lotions and beauty creams from the kiosk next to the pretzel stand. I stood there, shoving lotion samples on to people who complained about the flakiness of their skin.  I liked when they swatted my hands away like the bees.  I remember Mary coming to try a sample of lotion and I poured the rose scent cream into my hands and massaged it into her skin.  She giggled and told me that roses were her favorite flowers because they still smelled sweet even after they died. I could almost smell the baby powder again when Andrew asked me what I was thinking about.  I told him I had never touched a snake before.

            “He’s not so scary is he?” he asked before looking down at my hands and let out a small laugh, showing his teeth and saying how he loved how the Cheetos left a stain even when his hands were washed.

            We sat on his floor for hours, watching Eddie slide around the room, not saying anything to each other, only listening to sounds of our breath escaping from our chests.  The room was dark now; the only light was a dull yellow from the streetlights outside.  Andrew was sitting so close I could feel his breath on my skin.  His eyes caught he light from outside and he whispered in my ear, “She was beautiful.” I looked at his face and the light made his skin look like yellow wax and his eyes were empty.  I wondered if he was even really there and I put my hand on his face, hoping it would melt away and I would be back in my room with no one noticing I was there, but my fingers were met with his warm skin and my body went cold.   There was a crunching noise in the room and I was able to take my eyes away from his.  Eddie was in one of the bags on the floor and I stood up and walked over to the window, watching the lights from my house across the street.  As I stared past my reflection in the window, I saw my mother sitting on the couch with a magazine, not thinking of me, not thinking of anything at all.   Andrew stood behind me, his reflection in the window next to mine, and he let his stained fingers rest around my neck.  I stared at his face in the window until all I could see was my own. 

            On my way home from Andrew’s I stopped back at the swing set.   I threw my bag down and my dad’s old Woody Allen matchbook with the words, “I was thinking about Christ,” printed on the front and the white pill bottle fell onto the wood chips.  I put the matchbook into my pocket and picked up the container and saw something glistening in the wood chips.  I picked up a golden rose necklace and felt the cold metal in my hands, thinking of Mary, dead in the church, and of Mary in the cars of men who wore suits and drank from the communion wine every Sunday, and Mary, naked, covered only with the shame of forgotten wives.   I stared at the necklace and my stained red fingertips and my eyes began to sting.  

              I opened the bottle with the white label that had Zoloft printed in bold black letters.  The first time I saw these I was six and sitting in my dad’s office playing with the blue-eyed Barbie dolls my mother bought me for my birthday. I remember ripping the heads off of the dolls and delicately placing their headless bodies in the purple plastic convertible and pushing them around the room.  With one hard push the car went flying across the room and rammed into my dad’s desk sending pens and papers and the white pill bottle to the ground. I couldn’t pronounce the name them so I called them Daddy’s blue candy.   I only got to hold it for a few seconds before my father took it from my small hands, patted me on the head, and told me he hoped I would be a better driver when I was older.

            As I sat on the swing, boots digging into the wood chips, I popped open the cap and I swallowed.  I swallowed the eyeballs that rolled around in my mother’s eyes when I talked, I swallowed the ink from the pen that Doctor Yu used to prescribe and fix me, I swallowed the thin wafers and the thick blood of Jesus, I swallowed the tears and the mucus building up in the back of my throat after the boy next door zipped up his pants and said I should go.  I swallowed the baby blue candy like my daddy did and I swung through the air until my hands turned white and red from the cold and I couldn’t hold on to the rusted chains anymore.

            I don’t know how I made it home.  All I remember is being shaken awake by sweaty hands and of my mother. The church was on fire. My mother dragged me out of bed and back to the church.  The building was crumbling fast and the same mob that had been there earlier that day was now gazing into the flames.  I reached for my mother’s hand, but she was gone.

             I left the crowd and sat down on the swings, looking at the way the fire crept up behind the stained glass window and highlighted the cheekbones of the Virgin Mary and the somber color in her lips. I thumbed the golden chain around my neck and as I began to sway softly with the breeze and the muffled shouts of the firefighters a quiet giggle slipped past my lips when I saw that Mary had never looked so alive.