Sarai Walker - Dietland

The light turned green and I felt the whoosh of traffic around me, but I didn’t budge. “Get the fuck out of my way,” he said, but I wasn’t going to get the fuck out of his way. He could have easily ridden around me, but he wasn’t the type to back down when challenged, even if he had a schedule to keep. I squeezed my free hand into a fist, a wave of heat filling me from top to bottom, red moving up a thermometer.

“You wanna fight, big girl?” There was that cackle again. In that moment I hated him more than I had ever hated anyone. I reached my right hand into the satchel resting on my hip, the strap crossing my chest, and felt the brick inside.

“A fight is exactly what I want.” This sentence escaped my mouth as if someone else had programmed me to say it. Something had overtaken me, but I liked it. I grasped the brick hidden inside my satchel, moving my fingers over its dusty surface. The man’s face was covered in armor, but I could aim at his mouth.

Are you crazy? a voice inside my head said. It sounded like Sana’s lilt.

The man stood up from his bike and swung his leg over it. This is it, I thought. He lowered his bike to the pavement. He was wearing shiny black bike shorts and a tank top, his arms muscled and tattooed. Still I didn’t budge. I was willing to see this through, even if he punched me in the face and bashed my head into the concrete. Bring it on. I’d been punched in the face before during the New Baptist Plan and survived, but that time I hadn’t fought back. A fight is what I’d wanted these past few weeks. Maybe now I was going to get it. It’ll hurt, but it’ll feel good too.

A Baptist isn’t afraid of a little pain.

I gripped the brick, steeling myself. If there were butterflies in my stomach, some had broken free and were fluttering through me, pumping me up, urging me on. I wanted to open my mouth and release them in a roar. I pulled the brick from my satchel, but an arm came in between the bike messenger and me, the arm of a large black man.

“That’s enough,” said the man, who was wearing a security guard uniform. He seemed to be about my father’s age. A crowd surrounded the messenger and me on the crosswalk, which I hadn’t noticed from within my bubble of fury. The bubble popped.

The messenger held up his hands as if the police had told him to freeze. Big black guy trumped big white girl. He picked up his bike and got on it. “Crazy bitch,” he said as he rode away. He’d backed down, but I hadn’t.

I turned to the security guard, irritated. I hadn’t asked to be rescued.

“I’ve been watching you,” he said. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“That guy tried to insult me.”

“Better to just ignore him.”

“Says who?”

“Says somebody who doesn’t want to see you get your ass kicked.”

I was going to put the brick back in my satchel, but decided to carry it home in my hand. “I appreciate your concern,” I said in a petulant daughter voice.

“You better watch yourself,” the man called after me, but I ignored him and hurried along toward Calliope House, high on my encounter with the guy on the bike. When I opened the door, I was anxious to tell someone what had happened.

“Where’ve you been?” Sana asked, coming down the stairs. I was breathless, my face flushed.

“I almost just got into a fight with a bike messenger.”

“What are you doing with that brick?”

“I’ve been carrying it around with me.”

“Give me that,” she said, snatching the brick away. She was still being prickly, just as she had been during the bomb threat, so I moved past her and went into the kitchen. I lifted a carton of apple juice from the top shelf of the fridge and poured myself a glass. Sana had followed me and watched me gulp it down.

“Nice eye makeup,” she said.

“Thanks. I had a makeover.”

“Have you seen yourself?”

I bent over and looked at my reflection in the microwave. The black eyeliner had bled beyond its borders. “Raccoon eyes,” I said. Kitty had written a whole column about it once. I used my fingers to wipe off some of the greasy makeup, as black as a tire’s skid mark.

“Do I need to worry about you, Plum?”

“I’ve never felt better in my life.” It was the truth.

“Plum—” she started. I held up my hand, knowing what was coming, but Sana wasn’t deterred. I knew she’d been saving this up and now it was flooding out: “You’ve been through a lot . . . You’re not used to living without Y—— . . . You’re upset about Leeta . . .” and on it went.

“I feel alive now in a way I never have before. I thought you were happy for me?”

“We’re all happy for you, but how many times could you have been arrested in recent weeks?”

“Several.”

“What were you doing with that brick?”

“I fantasized about smashing someone with it, but in reality it’s not so easy, I guess.”

“Are you even listening to yourself right now?”

“People count on us to be passive. They deserve to be punished.”

“The haters outnumber us by a large margin. Are you going to smash them all?”

This wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I’d been enjoying my high, but Sana had extinguished it with her incessant scolding. I missed feeling high. In its place was agitation.

I excused myself to go to my room before our exchange could escalate. I’d save my anger for those who deserved it. I still wanted a fight, but not with her.

In my room, I took off my heavy boots and tossed them into the corner. My tights were dirty from touching the bike, so I brushed them off, moving my hands along the curves of my calves, feeling their bulk. It felt good to touch my body. It centered and calmed me.

I peeled off my tights and unbuttoned my dress, which was sweaty under the arms and down the back. I took off everything else and climbed into bed naked, enjoying the chill of the sheets. I breathed slowly through my mouth, placing my hands on my stomach to experience the movement of air through my body, keeping a rhythm. My thoughts were zipping around in my brain. Unable to corral them, I kept focused on my breath.

Sana didn’t know what it was like to be numb for so many years and then to feel again. Before quitting Y——, I’d been like a lamp that was broken, but now I was switched on, emanating heat and light. There was pleasure in feeling strongly. Even an emotion like rage could feel good—it was almost cleansing, the way it made me feel alive.

I ran my hands over my body, playing with my nipples, placing my hands between my legs, exploring. I wasn’t like those women on the screens in the underground apartment, who had sanitized slits between their legs. Between my legs was a handful of flesh and hair. While on Y——, I had masturbated a couple times a year, but it was never worth the effort—all that stroking for a tiny pop at the end. Now merely rubbing my fingertips together aroused me. Without the drugs, my body was alert to touch.

Since I didn’t want to be fuckable anymore, I focused on how I felt inside, not how I might have looked to an imaginary someone. I was anchored in the sensations of my body rather than living outside of it, judging it. Sometimes I thought about sex with a partner. Rubí went out all the time and offered to fix me up, but I wasn’t ready. That step would come in time. I was content to be alone for now, to become acquainted with the body I had never liked to touch. I rubbed myself, the whole messy handful between my legs, my hand bringing me closer to what I wanted: pleasure and release.

I slept for a little while, then went downstairs to make dinner, feeling mellow and balanced for the first time that day. Rubí was sitting at the kitchen table with a glass and a bottle of tequila.