Diana Abu-Jaber - Birds of Paradise

If something awful is going to happen to me, I will let it happen, until the Judging is over. Whenever that turns out to be. Murderers get the death penalty, so maybe that will happen to me.

Signed: Felice Avis Muir

When Felice left — each time she ran away — she took almost nothing with her. The first attempt, a week later, was mostly an experiment. The police brought her home: she apologized to her parents, she went back to school; she pretended to be her old self, as best she could. But she kept her manifesto folded into a rectangle in her backpack. It took six attempts over the next year, but one day she left home for good: she made it stick.

HER HANDS SWEEP over her body, checking that she’s still alive and unhurt. The feeling of relief comes in a burst, revives her, cascading through her system — her lungs ache with a ripping influx of air. She turns toward the surf, but there’s another explosion — air shredding open, just inches past her shoulder; her hair lifted and singed.

Her magical grace broken, Felice stumbles and stumbles, clumsy and shaking. She can’t get purchase on the sand. A hand seizes her ankle, the fingers digging in, and she flashes on the way Bethany went down on the sidewalk, how Felice knew she wouldn’t get back up again. “Fuck, you stupid, fucking…” the man trails off, sounding almost rueful, as if sorry that this is the way things have to be. As he drags her upright, her hand touches the dimple in the sand, the nub of bullet.

She can’t see his face, just a glimmer of teeth. His hand is heavy, pulling her to her knees. The pants unzip silently. Her eyes water shut but this seems to make the roar in her ears louder, so she opens them again. His fists are full of her hair, yanking her head. She clutches his legs as if she might drown. Her senses drown, her eyes and nose full of salt, taste of limp flesh: a moan shifts through his body. She feels a frigid metal pressed into her spine, pointing down into the path of vertebrae. Tears leak from her eyes in an inert, horrible way; his hands crushing the skin at the back of her neck. She can’t breathe and she wonders if she were to do something like reach for his gun it might persuade him just to kill her more quickly. Instead she reaches carefully and cups the humid sack of the man’s scrotum as if for a caress, then squeezes with all her might, crushing his testicles. He screeches and goes straight down, banging his chin against the top of her head. He rolls in the sand, retching. Felice staggers a couple of steps, stunned. She can hear the man trying to recover himself, moaning and gasping. “You — you’re gonna die. You’re just gonna — fucking—”

Felice manages a few more steps, but she’s shaking so badly she keeps going down to her hands and knees. She can make out the man’s form, rolling over and up onto his knees, sides heaving, he lunges at her. She feels hands on her shoulders, a fierce grip, and she gasps. Her scream sails through her as she feels herself falling backwards. Then nothing is holding her down. Forms like pieces of night come loose, a thudding, sand spraying: two bodies thrashing. For one protracted, surreal moment, she thinks that the other man has caught up to them, that he and Marren are wrestling. But then she hears a choked-off straining, then wheezing, a very soft, low, stifled gurgle. After a pause, from the deep seam of the night comes a rattling, warbling sound unlike anything she’s ever heard before. She reclaims herself, trembling, curls her hands into her arms, chest hunched over her knees. There’s the sound once again, dismal and chilling.

EMERSON, CROUCHING ON HANDS and knees. She senses his hands near her, hovering, careful not to try and touch her again. Maybe he knows how it goes, has seen it happen with other street kids — attacks and rapes. “Felice,” he whispers. She wants to ask where he’d come from, how he’d found her. But shock has stripped the voice out of her, so at first she can’t make a sound. It seems possible that he might dissolve like a puff of dust — a hallucination. Finally he risks his fingertips, then his hand on her back. “We can’t stay here,” he whispers.

“You—” The whisper scrapes in her throat. “What — happened?”

“He’s done. I made sure.”

Her mind is narrow and isolated, her senses heightened to startling clarity: she can smell the topaz wisps of algae beneath the rocks and hear the crackling scurf of mole crabs plugging into the sand. “There was another one. With him.” She scans the area, but the streetlights barely reach them. Clouds twist over their heads; the beach is a dark miasma, a gaseous planet. Something rumbles low inside her, slick pain in her gut, and she runs over the sand, toward the water’s edge, barely skimming off her jeans in time. Her bowels liquefy. The surf boils around her knees as she finds and yanks free the silver necklace, throwing it into the moonlight. She finishes washing herself off, the water warm and mineral as a desert sea. But then her stomach lurches, bringing up bile and a hot streak of old alcohol. When she crosses the strip of sand to rejoin Emerson, he peels off his T-shirt so she can dry her legs. She accepts, too numb to be ashamed. He takes the damp shirt and whispers, “Someone is out here — something moving — over there.”

Her gut rumbles again, but she clenches herself. They wait in silence, looking: Felice can perceive the third presence which also seems to be soundless and motionless. Barely twenty feet away. The dead man’s body seems to be deliquescing into a black pool on the dark sand. Nothing is clear. She strains her eyes but can’t make out the other man. Finally Emerson murmurs, “Let’s move.” He helps her start walking, to orient herself along the ridge of unlit beach, to stay far from the streetlights, slipping away.

THEY STICK AS CLOSE to the water as they can — the only place on Miami Beach that doesn’t glow all night. It roars and surges, higher than ever, and makes it impossible to talk or think. When they notice the first hints of gray in the sky, they cut up into the neighborhoods. Emerson tells her that he’d gone to the Cove that evening, looking for her. He didn’t see Berry or Reynaldo, but some of the outdoor kids had seen her in the club, talking to Marren, and another had just spotted her walking out onto the sand with him. “She should not be with that guy.” The kid had pointed in the direction that she’d gone. “You better fucking hurry.” Now Emerson doesn’t let go of her hand, nor does he ask questions about Marren, for which she is grateful. They make it to Derek’s house and throw pebbles up at the window they think is his bedroom. It turns out Derek’s father is out again and Derek is hanging around downstairs on the couch, the light from the TV shuddering through the rooms.

Felice uses the toilet, sweating and trembling and hunched, while Emerson and Derek confer in the kitchen. She waits until the serrated pain in her gut eases a bit and everything inside of her seems to have streamed away in a thin liquid. After that, she washes her face and hands and she rubs toothpaste all over her teeth and tongue and the inside of her mouth with her fingers. She rinses, clutching the rim of the basin. She churns Listerine in her mouth and spits, then swallows a tiny, fiery capful. Before she goes out, she cracks the door. She hears Derek say “lose her.” He’s arguing for Emerson to let Derek and their friends take care of him. “She’ll be okay. Girls are okay — people feel sorry for them and take them in.”

“No, man.”

“I bet she’s still got parents somewhere. I hear she comes from some fucking house in the Gables. Fuck, your stupid temper anyway, man. What does she need with a maniac like you?”

“Fuck you, Derek. We’re together now.”