*Non-Fiction — December 1, 2022
When Morning Comes
{
}
.firstcharacter {
float: left;
font-size: 100px;
line-height: 60px;
padding-top: 4px;
padding-right: 8px;
padding-left: 3px;
padding-bottom: 0px;
margin-bottom: 0px;
}
When I wake up in the empty parking lot it is because he’s at the window with a gun, tap tap tapping on the glass. But it’s the carton of eggs I notice first. He holds them in his left hand, a styrofoam container promising that the dozen eggs within are farm fresh. A chain of sausages adorns his neck like a feather boa, the connection between each link a tenuous thread. It is only after I see these things that the gun comes into focus, sleek and black in his right hand, its contours catching in the light of the streetlamp that glows a dull yellow.
He’s speaking but I cannot hear him, his words muffled by the glass that separates us, by the alcohol my brain is still floating in. I roll down my window just a crack, not even enough for the barrel of his gun to fit through, and I refuse to turn the crank even one rotation more. If he shoots, I lie to myself, this thin layer of glass will protect me.
You are okay, he says. His Russian accent lays over the words like a thick blanket. I nod because I think he’s asking, but maybe he’s stating it as fact: you are okay. I’m still too drunk to ask which way he means it.
Is very late, he continues, and I fumble for the phone stuffed into the back pocket of my jeans. When I open it at the height of my waist—in case this man decides my Nokia flip phone is more valuable than my existence—the tiny digital clock confirms: yes, it is late. You are here all alone in parking lot, bar already close, and as he says this he waves his gun in the air gesturing to the emptiness.
There is a protracted silence in which I look around and see the dumpsters lining the parking lot, the brick buildings, the Amtrak retention wall where empty trains lay dormant and waiting.
Yes, I know I’m alone, I say after confirming with my own eyes. I’m waiting for my friend. As soon as these words exit my mouth I want to snatch them out of the frigid night air and tuck them into my pocket so they don’t reach his ears.
The man casually scratches the side of his head with the gun like all of this is normal. His head is shaved clean, as smooth as a billiard ball. Reading his dark eyes I want to believe I have found kindness. As I look at him, as the gusts of frozen January wind slither in through the window, I think that I want to know his name.
It is not intuition but rather memory that implores me to stop. Hasn’t it always begun this way? Haven’t I always believed too many things? Barbed memories have lodged themselves in the walls of my heart, reminders of having trusted too easily. The boy whose hands hungered for my suffering hitting me for the last time. My last bruise undergoing its watercolor transformation; dark blue to purple to yellow. I have believed in all the wrong people and all the wrong moments, even after the details of how I ended up alone in the park with a man become grainy, even after I throw away the jeans I wore that night because looking at them, at the belt loops ripped at the seams, sent my insides into a state of revulsion. I’ll remember even when I can’t recall the exact words of all the people I shouldn’t have believed, when all that’s left is the taste of something bitter.
I want so much to believe in the humanity of others. It is beautiful, I think, to believe. A time will come when I understand the difference, when I will be able to sort all the people and all the moments; the good from the bad, all the things I should have nothing to do with and the things that are meant for me. And when that happens, it’ll feel like waking up.
Why do you have a gun? I ask, because if I’m going to die I at least want to know something about him.
Why do you have a gun? I ask, because if I’m going to die I at least want to know something about him.
Is very late, he says, lowering his hands to his sides. That doesn’t feel like an answer but I don’t ask again. In the dark I flex my fingers, breaking their invisible frozen casts. Feeling begins to radiate from the marrow of my bones and I turn the key in the ignition, wrap my hands around the steering wheel.
You come, I make breakfast. Is too fucking cold here, he says, holding up the egg carton. His words are jumbled in my ears, not because of how he said them but because it seems impossible he’s asking me this. And when I understand, it seems impossible that I consider his offer. It is so late and everything is quiet. Newark is a loud city, an alive city, but at this moment it feels like we are the only people on Earth. There are no passing cars, no muffled music throbbing behind the brick walls, no people stumbling out of the bar for a smoke, shouting the way drunks do when they’re elated or furious.
For a moment I think I would like to go to this man’s house. He seems like a good man and in my mind his home seems like a good place. But I speak before I can think; in this moment of clarity I understand that I believe too much.
No, I have to find my friend, I say. But thank you. And when I put the car in reverse and drive out of the parking lot, I don’t look before turning onto the street. Next to me on the passenger’s seat is a pack of cigarettes. I extract one with frozen fingers, leaving the window cracked open. There is nowhere to go so I weave through the streets of the Ironbound, smoking and waiting for the car to warm.
When I stop, it is on a street far from where I woke. I open the door just a little to snub the cigarette butt into the pavement, pinching the crumpled end and depositing it in an empty convenience store cup I find on the floor of the car. When I realize I should call my friend, I dial her number and it doesn’t even ring. It is only her prerecorded message to the world: You know who you’ve called, leave a message. Or don’t.
All that’s left is to wait for the sun to rise. If I had gone with him, I think, could these have been my last hours? I catch my shadowy reflection in the rearview mirror; it could have been my face on posters, on the local evening news. It would have been the most recent picture my father has of me. He wants his moments to be presentable, things he can point to and say, That is my work. But I am not what he’d imagined; too messy, too disappointing, too much. So it would probably be my senior portrait, Class of 2005 written in script across the front of the prop diploma I hold in awkward hands. Next to the picture of my fake smile would be my life in facts: age and birthday, height and weight, eye and hair color, my last known whereabouts. My father would distribute the posters, contact the police and the newspapers because he knows what he is supposed to do. He would possess all the signs of a worried man, a desperate man. And still he would seethe, not because he is a broken man who raised a broken daughter. He would rage at the idea that I never asked questions, that I believed blindly, that I was impulsive and spontaneous and unthinking. Which is to say, he would seethe because I grew up exactly the way he wanted: unquestioning, resigned, without resistance. With the end of winter my remains would turn up somewhere along the Hudson River, discovered by a passerby. After that day, whoever found me would feel the warmth of spring and still think of a dirty river; they would see trees in bloom and remember the sight of a body washed ashore. And still, after that day, the world would be unmoved by the loss of another young woman whose face once appeared on a missing person poster.
But I want to believe that if I had gone, I would have driven to his apartment, some place where we’d have to climb three narrow flights of stairs to arrive at his door. His home would be so small and warm, the divisions between his living room and kitchen and bedroom imperceptible. He would seat me on his sofa, an item of furniture passed from one owner, to the next, to the next, because each previous owner went back home to a place where everyone understands them, or maybe they just bought newer sofas. His apartment would be small but neat; a few pictures tacked to the walls, a television, a few shelves populated with books, their outward facing spines emblazoned with letters of the Cyrillic alphabet, something that would feel both familiar and indecipherable. He would make breakfast at four o’clock in the morning and from behind closed eyes I would hear the sounds of eggs frying, sausage sizzling, grease popping, his low voice humming a song I’d never recognize because it was one his mother used to sing to him. He would mention this and name the melody, and without opening my eyes I would smile knowing there is a mother on the other side of the world who thinks of him. And maybe I would mourn the eggs and sausage, those fragile things split open by his calloused hand, the food that embellished his figure at my car window. But the moment would pass, hunger and need overshadowing the poetry of miniscule loss. He would bring me a plate. Don’t get up, stay under blanket, he would say. Once I finished, I would pull a blanket up to my chin and feel my toes beginning to warm. There, on this man’s sofa, I would ask his name and he would tell me and I would ask him again because I want to make sure I got it right. And I would fall asleep and he would go to his own bed, not too close but not too far from me.
In the car, I smoke one more cigarette before I drift into uneasy sleep. I will rest and wait for the stained glass sky of January to reveal itself, to outline the flat tops of buildings and convex peaks of homes that stand side by side in Newark. By then the sidewalk’s population will have grown from non-existent to sparse; a few people pinning their coats to their bodies and leaning into the cold as they go to work or buy morning bread.
When morning comes I’ll drive thirty minutes to the McDonald’s in Edison—the one on the southbound side of Route 1—to meet my friend. When she tells me everything that happened to her, she’ll punctuate her story with cigarette smoke and laughter. I will see her despondent eyes but won’t say anything because those aren’t the kinds of things we talk about. At least you’re alive, I’ll tell her, at least you’re okay. And that will be enough because that is what we have learned to hope for; that as girls and women, we go about living and don’t wind up in a moment that could be labeled careless. We hope we won’t one day lay down, close our eyes in the wrong place and never open them again. We live on unbroken eggs, hoping they don’t crack.
The last puff of smoke crawls away from my mouth on an invisible staircase and I hug my knees to my chest. Before I close my eyes I think about the man in the parking lot. I hope he made his way home, that he ate and is asleep in a warm bed. I want to believe that if I had gone with him, I would have been just fine. I want to believe the morning would have come as steadily and peacefully as the rise and fall of my sleeping chest, and the world would have been as it should be. Because there is someone, I tell myself, who just wants to ask me if I’m okay and give me something that was once their own. There is someone who will bring me in from the cold and leave me dreaming under a blanket on a second-hand sofa, letting my untouched body thaw.
Originally published in No Tokens Issue No. 10. View full issue & more.