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Aurnia
The red and blue lights flashed wildly on the narrow brick walls of the alley, exploding against the thick layer of clouds that hung heavy above me, threatening, as always, rain. If I had been a typical seventeen-year-old—Christmases split between Ma’s and Da’s, homework copied from a friend against a locker before class, college brochures piling up in the perfectly suburban mailbox—the red and blue lights might very well have been fireworks. A family reunion with frozen hamburger patties and screaming toddlers. Some public holiday, a three-day weekend spent at the shores of Rossbeigh Strand in County Kerry with only slightly pervy uncles. A Saturday night with friends pretending to be drunker than we were off weak beers stolen from our fathers’ garages.
But I wasn’t a typical seventeen-year-old.
The flashing red and blue lights weren’t fireworks. They were the lights from a cop car, a cop car I was handcuffed in the back of.
I knew enough of the law, them being more consistent visitors to my father’s house than dear old Saint Nicholas, to know that they needed very little excuse to turn things from bad to worse. I’d dropped out of high school a year earlier, but I honestly don’t think that would have made much of a difference: it’s not like my Algebra teacher (a big-bellied man whose “one-on-one guidance” involved explaining a problem with his sweaty hand on the side of your neck, his hot breath against your cheek, and his eyes down your shirt) was going to go over the negative impact of resisting arrest between the quadradic equation and solving for “y”. Besides, it was pretty much common knowledge, right? If you get arrested, ask for an attorney, keep quiet, don’t make things any worse.
Just a few problems: one, I didn’t have enough money for food most nights, let alone an attorney. Two, I didn’t exactly do quiet. And three—and this one’s the kicker—I wanted to make thing worse.
A radio cracked and popped in the front seat, but whatever message was related about jewellery missing or searched side streets or incoming backup was inaudible over the slamming of my heels against the hard plastic divider.
The metal of the cuffs cut painfully into my wrists. It was only made worse when I slid down on the bench to lift my legs, but my rage served as a kind of shot of adrenaline: all I could really feel was the pounding of my heart, fast and erratic and showing no signs of slowing down.
I couldn’t feel the strain of my shoulders from my arms being wrenched behind my back. I couldn’t feel the scrape on my cheek where I’d been slammed by the officer roughly against the brick wall. I couldn’t feel the bruises from being tossed, with nothing to catch my fall, into the backseat, riveted plastic as hard as concrete.
I thought my rage might beat right out of my chest. It probably hurt worse than everything else combined, but at least it erased the lingering touch of the officer who had searched me: his fingers between my black jeans, dipping inside the waist, yanking up my hoodie, sliding a little too slowly between my tits.
“I’m going to give you one chance to stop,” the officer said as I drove my heels again against the dark grey plastic, leaving black scuffs.
The officer’s eyes found mine in the rearview mirror. They were bored, uninterested. What was it to him that a teenager wore herself out in a state-owned car? He probably had a car of his own at home. A wife to sit in the passenger seat, clutching her purse in her lap. Two kids, one boy, one girl, to quarrel in the backseat, Cheerios littering the carpeted floor.
My feet momentarily stalled, sank to the edge of the seat, toes balanced over the edge. The officer drummed his fingers against the steering wheel.
“I mean, think about it, kid,” he said. “You’re already busted. I think we both know that the security video at the jewellery store will show you there. You’re going to have to face some consequences. But, and you really should think about this, I can help you.”
The officer twisted around in his seat to look at me through the thick wire mesh.
“You want me to be good?” I asked, sweetly I think, though sweetness was rather foreign to me so I couldn’t be sure.
The officer’s eyes narrowed briefly in suspicion, but then he nodded and said, “That’s right. Be good.”
The officer was about to turn back around to his crackling radio, to the red and blue lights flashing on the icy hood, to the thought of his wife asleep in bed, or the woman he wished was asleep in bed, when I asked, “What kind of good?”
His eyes again found mine in the rearview mirror.
“Part my legs ‘good’?” I asked. “Lean forward a little so you can catch a glimpse down my hoodie ‘good’? Open my mouth real good, like?”
I watched the officer’s eyes flicker over my body. Even with it crammed up against itself, I knew he was seeing exactly what he wanted to see. I’d hid enough times under a pile of threadbare sheets in my bed as the door creaked open, yellow light spilling across me along with the pounding of bass and the reek of pot, to know that men didn’t need a naked woman in front of them to see a naked woman.
“I can make your life hell, girl,” the officer finally said through clenched teeth, tearing his eyes from me like ripping a Band-Aid from an open wound.
I laughed and the officer’s gaze on me was more wary than if I had been a six-foot-ten, three-hundred-pound man than a waif of a girl who could barely reach the top shelf of the convenience store to steal a loaf of stale bread.
“Make my life hell?” I laughed. “You?”
Confusion painted the man’s face in the front seat. Of course it did. What did he know of truly mean men? What did he know of cruel smiles that struck more fear in me than a thousand of his raised batons? What did he know of sneaking in through bedroom windows to avoid tiptoeing over druggies passed out across the living room floor? What did he know of the consequences of waking one?
He had his kids’ prep school tuitions to keep him awake at night; I had a hungry stomach. He had a wife’s credit card debt (too many shoes, too big a closet) to worry about; I had a father with a needle and a bottle of pills. He feared the long stretch of boredom before inevitable death; I often feared I wouldn’t make it through the night.
Without warning, I began kicking again at the back of the plastic divider. When the officer shouted once more for me to stop it, I just kicked harder, faster. I knew he couldn’t do anything to me.
My life was already hell. And I was more than used to it.
It felt good to drive my anger like a piston through the heels of my black combat boots. It felt good to lose control, because then I didn’t have to pretend that I had any in the first place. It felt good to send pain radiating up my legs, to feel like my ice-cold toes were going to snap off with each bone-rattling thrust. It felt good to blow up my life.
Because I was mad at myself. That felt a whole lot better than being mad at the world, at my father, at the fates that robbed me of a mother, a stable childhood, a chance at happiness, mad at my teachers, mad at the system, mad at Dublin, cruel, cruel Dublin, mad at the way men looked at me, mad at the way they possessed me but didn’t protect me, mad at my friends, Jack and Lee and Mia, mad at them for leaving me, mad at everyone for leaving me, mad at everyone for always, always, always leaving me.
