Crossing to safety
Smells Like Make-Believe: Volume 1, Issue 2
Afterwards, Sofia saw Wyatt-shaped people everywhere.
Her eyes found his stocky frame over and over, a world populated with Wyatts. Each time it happened, an invisible hand divided her ribs and gripped her heart until the person turned, and she realized that his nose was too big, or his hair was too long, that in fact the man in her field of vision didn’t look like Wyatt at all.
The constant vigilance was exhausting. Her nerves felt as if someone had taken a match to them, fried the ends until they were kinked and crispy. It didn’t matter that she had spotted countless Not-Wyatts. The real one was still out there, still dangerous, still determined to be with her. He could be lurking in the next doorway, following her on the sidewalk, shadowing her in his car. He could be anywhere.
Sofia hadn’t been back to the apartment since the night she found Wyatt in her bedroom. She had jumped when she saw him there, which made him laugh. Until that moment, she never noticed the ugliness of his smile, the way his lips peeled away from his teeth to form a leer.
I mean it, she had told him. You and me are over. They argued back and forth for a while. Why do you have to be so cold? Wyatt said. His gruff voice turned whiny around the edges. Don’t you miss this? He unzipped his jeans, thrust his hips at her. When she moved towards the door, he blocked her, pushing her onto the bed.
Her roommates were gone. No one heard her cry out.
She might have gone to the police after Wyatt left, but she had heard stories of the mock gravity that greeted girls like her, girls with last names like Hernandez. They would try to catch her in a lie, twist her words, suggest that she had made it all up. Her legs shuddered so violently against each other afterwards that it was impossible to stand up. She crawled to the bathroom to clean him off of her, scalding the inside of her legs with hot water from the tap. Volunteering for a police interrogation was unthinkable.
Her friends were sympathetic, but not surprised. Terrible things happened to so many girls. Every time you dated someone new, it was like playing with your life. Just a few weeks before, a woman they knew was jumped by her ex as she stood outside her apartment, fumbling in her purse to find her keys. He didn’t leave for several hours. She almost didn’t survive.
It could have been worse, her friends said when Sofia told them about Wyatt. They weren’t being mean. It was just the truth.
She stayed with her parents after that, on the fold-out couch in their living room. Wyatt called her, wrote on her Facebook wall, sent text messages at all hours of the day and night — Guess u found somebody else and I’ll find out who he is and U will b sorry, just wait n see — vague threats that made the blood thump between her ears.
Her job called, wondering where she was. She told them her father was sick. Said she was sorry, but she couldn’t come back. The real reason was that Wyatt knew where she worked. It was too risky. They sent her final check in the mail, thirty dollars and seventeen cents.
Wyatt had never been to her parent’s house, had never met her family. Whenever she had invited him to attend a holiday celebration or a birthday party, he had groaned in dismay. “Do we have to go? I like it better when it’s just the two of us.”
Wyatt was naïve in that way. He didn’t yet understand that to control a woman, you need to infiltrate every aspect of her life.
When her period was late, Sofia peed onto a stick in the grocery store bathroom. Two red lines marked the beginning of something. She wrapped the stick in a stiff paper towel and dropped it into her purse. Later in the day, after the shock wore off, she thought about it carefully.
A baby could change your life. Not in a misty, powder-scented way, but in a way that made people look at you differently. Women with children got respect. It had happened to her older sister. Sofia saw with her own eyes how other women started listening to Rafaella after she had her kids. But Rafaella had a husband, a cook who smelled like fried food and couldn’t hold down a job. Not exactly a catch.
It occurred to Sofia that being a mother would provide cover, the ability to make decisions without the need to explain herself. Only in her case, there would be no man to boss her around, no one to take money she earned and spend it on lottery tickets or beer. It was as if a door had opened up, and she merely needed to walk through it.
You have choices, her mother said when Sofia told her about the baby. You don’t have to keep it. But she had begun to form a plan. A firmness possessed her, an instinct for preservation she had not known she had. She deleted her Facebook account. Cancelled her cell phone. Traded her car for one with about the same number of miles — a white Camry, seven years old, with a dent in the front fender.
She balled up her short dresses, gave away the silk tank tops and rhinestone-crusted jeans she had worn to meet up with friends. Those days were over. Cutting off her hair was the final part of her camouflage. Gone were the long, curly locks Wyatt claimed turned him on, replaced by short, wispy chunks that framed her face.
If he glimpsed the new Sofia from a distance, he wouldn’t look twice.
After a month of searching, she found a job with a property management company near downtown. They were looking for an office assistant. Before the interview, she purchased a thin gold band at a department store jewelry counter for forty-three dollars and slipped it onto her left ring finger. The baby wasn’t showing yet, and her short hair and conservative clothes made her look serious. After only a few minutes, the hiring manager closed her notebook and asked if Sofia could start the next day.
Her co-workers assumed Sofia was married. They bustled in and out of the office, met for drinks after work, conducted complicated spats and thinly veiled affairs. She never joined them, and they never asked. Though she hadn’t been to church for years, she bought a white plastic rosary and hung it from a pegboard next to her desk. In a second-hand store, she found a blurry photo of a soldier wearing army fatigues, and propped it next to her computer.
If people assumed certain things, she didn’t correct them.
A friend of a cousin needed help covering the mortgage payment on her house. The house was nothing special, but the room for rent was large and it had its own bathroom, an unbelievable luxury. Sofia pinned a string of Christmas lights around the perimeter and set up a crib. Her very own space.
On a local map, she used a pencil to outline the part of the city where she used to live, cross-hatching the area until a geometric shape emerged, grey and shining. The Wyatt Zone. It was dead to her. There were whole neighborhoods she would never visit again, streets that might as well be on the moon.
Eventually, her eyes stopped darting in fear towards every man she saw. She told herself that she had become someone different. That if Wyatt was still looking for her, he wouldn’t find her, because the old Sofia no longer existed.
Tonight, as she does every night, Sofia leaves her desk at 5:10 and drives seven miles to her sister’s house to pick up Nicolas. The entryway to the duplex where Rafaella lives is coated with cracker crumbs, and a cat dashes for the open door when Sofia arrives. Her heart leaps at the sight of her son’s gummy smile.
At home, she parks the car and fastens the baby carrier into the stroller for their evening walk. She has nothing to cook for dinner, so she varies her usual route, taking them to the market several blocks away, where she picks out a package of chicken, a few onions, and some rice. At the checkout line, the cashier leans across the counter, batting her eyes at Nicolas.
“So handsome,” she says, and Sofia is secretly thrilled.
Outside the market, she waits at the corner while the pedestrian signal changes from blinking hand to stick figure. She is pushing the stroller into the walkway when she senses motion out of the corner of her eye. A man in a superhero costume has leapt off the sidewalk and is running towards them. His face is covered with a mask, and he wears an ill-fitting black and yellow suit.
He is upon them in an instant. “Move!” He shouts, and wrests the stroller handles out of her grip, and her baby — her Nicolas — is being wheeled away from her.
She runs after them, pushing strangled sounds out of her mouth as she propels her body forward. Her nightmare is happening. Wyatt has found them. He has tracked them down, wearing a ridiculous disguise, and now he is running away with her son.
She hopes someone hears her screams, but she cannot tear her eyes from her child. The stroller bumps over the curb and onto the sidewalk, and Sofia lunges towards the man — he is inches away — when he abruptly stops.
They collide, her body smacking into his, nearly toppling them both. Then she is pounding him with her fists, striking his arms and shoulders and stomach with all of her might.
“Whoa! Hey! Whoa.” He darts of out her reach, holds out his palms to fend her off. “Easy now. Easy.”
She struggles to right herself. Her chest heaves. “What. Were. You—” Her breath comes in gulps.
“That car! You didn’t see it?” He points a gloved finger back towards the street.
“What car?” Her voice is hoarse. A burning sensation fills her throat. She unbuckles Nicolas from his carrier, where he blinks up at her, sucking steadily on his pacifier. Her legs sway beneath her she hoists him into her arms. He is here. He is safe.
“That blue sedan! You didn’t see it? It was zigzagging in and out of the lane. I think the driver was drunk.” He babbles on excitedly about how the car might have hit her, how it only takes a second for a bad driver to destroy the lives of innocent people.
The shiny gold of the man’s belt has flaked away in spots, and this small detail softens something inside of her. This oddly-dressed stranger is not Wyatt. He is taller than Wyatt, for one thing, and his voice is higher-pitched. For reasons Sofia still does not fully grasp, he felt it necessary to hijack her stroller, but it is over now. He has no further interest in her baby.
She spies an empty bench several feet away and staggers to it, collapsing onto the seat. “I misunderstood,” she says. “Thanks for your help, Mr. — ?”
“Call me Electron,” he says, his voice suffused with pride. He gives a short bow and adjusts his plastic yellow shin guards before he turns to go. The soles of his sneakers are worn down along the inside edge, causing his knees to dip towards each other.
Nicolas squirms on her lap, kicking one tiny foot against her thigh, chanting “Gah” each time he swings his leg. The sensation soothes her. Several more moments pass as they sit on bench. Eventually her heartbeat returns to its normal cadence. A breeze kicks up, and she buttons her son into his jacket, pulling the hood around his face.
It occurs to her that whether she and Nicolas were in danger or not, the masked man has done her a favor. In a matter of seconds, he has demonstrated that all it takes is one slip-up, one accident of time and place, to endanger the life Sofia has worked so hard to build.
Her short hair, her new-old car, her careful maneuverings: They will not save her. The greasy graphite block on the map is a myth. As long as she lives in this city, there is a chance Wyatt will find them. She must plan for the future, for a day when she can move herself and her son away from here. But as soon as she thinks it, she is overcome with defeat. How will she ever?
She looks down at herself, at her sturdy hands with their sensible nails, her short legs in their plain black pants. This body, her body, once endured something terrible and became well again. It made a human being, and pushed it out into the world.
Somehow, some way, she can accomplish this next thing, too.
Nicolas tips his face up to hers, working his lips together until bubbles form around the edges. Sofia runs her fingers through a prickly thatch of his hair. Tonight, her son is secure on her lap. Tomorrow, she will think about what lies ahead.
Inspired By:
An elusive young man has created a superhero persona, and patrols his small town busting crimes. He is particularly keen to stop drunk driving, motivated by the memory of his brother who was killed in a drunk driving accident at the age of 17. Local police do not support his vigilantism, and hope that he will give up his mask and cape. — via The LaCrosse Tribune
What this project is about: Every few weeks, Jennifer Jeffrey + Natalie Greenfield pick a news item and each write a fictional story around it. Read more details in Announcing Smells Like Make-Believe.
