lamentations of a magdalene

There’s such a thing as having a knack for getting yourself into impossible situations, tight spaces impossible to imagine weaseling out of, rocks and hard places and all that. So, you find yourself out there in the abandoned lot the Daniels used to own, with its retention pond thick with mosquito eggs, surrounded by thickset cattails and high grasses. Towards the back, a big red barn looms. All over, it’s violent green, spreading out like an ache. The wire fences frame an upside-down windmill. God, someone should have fixed that up. But as soon as a family kicks the bucket or high-tails it out of Cade’sJunction, all their stuff rots.

Riker sprawls out. Both of you swim in the humidity, stuck together in the tailgate of his dad’s truck. There’s no breeze, just a stale hold in the air. A finger-bruise grips at his neckline. Green and wooden decay smell cuts through as you nestle into the perfect spot, right where his flank spreads out into muscle.

“Gotta get out of this place.”

His toothy grin melts his face up. He can never believe that a person would want to get out, not when the town and the church are full of life for him, swarmed all around him like flies to roadkill. It’s easy to see he plans to live and die here, going clear. The thought feels like a waste. Sweat and musk hits your nose. Spitting the tobacco he bought out of town off the truck’s side, he shifts his body closer, the heat swinging, wrapping soft against the picnic blanket. Kisses pop shivers up on bare skin. You both stick together out of sheer want, the sharp need to have another body there- to witness each other like this, under the marble blue sky.

Outside of town, there’s more than one grocery store and movie theaters and even people who think about church maybe only once or twice a year, Christmas and Easter coming around, clockwork, then leaving them alone for the rest of time. It’s a figure in your mind, dusty and bare. But it’s worth thinking about.

He sighs and brushes the dark red hair behind his neck, sweat sliding down to places your lips have already mapped, covered in dark brown freckles and latent acne scars. So beautiful, his hands in the stark sunlight.

Here’s his flask- well, the thing was his dad’s, but the old man won’t miss it- the liquid swishing, loud like a thunderstorm so close. Riker uncaps it, takes a swig. His eyes close and you can see the exact way his nose slopes as he drinks the liquor down. Come to think of it, most of Riker’s stuff is his fathers’, from the way his shoulders scrunch to how his pupils pinprick when he’s thinking really hard about something, like whether to go another round.

One time at church, you caught eyes with Riker when he was in the second pew from the front with his dad. The older man’s hand was tight on the back of his neck, scruffing him almost. Pinning him like a collar in the stained-glass light. That was the day you really understood the color blue and the day Riker came up and talked about this old field, its dead owners, the rumor of it being a Glory Land. Fresh air and no one else around. Just two bodies in a beat up truck.

And God knows there’s only one way to learn what bodies are for. No use hiding from it.

“Let’s do it again,” he says, as if it’s a prayer. Stupid, thinking that way. He’s an eighteen-year-old boy with too much time on his hands. But then again, he’s a Godly son and a shepherd of the earth and the giver of every nice sensation you’ve ever felt. A future headship, yes.

You pretend to think about it, but really you’re mulling over the way he takes any thought away from you when he’s on you, like he could suck any recollection of sin and God straight out of your head. Lying with him, there’s no such thing as the trailer or your brother or your responsibility to renew the Neal family name. There’s just bird calls and heat blasts. Riker is more handsome than anyone else in the youth group. “Riley,” he says. “Riley, Riley, Riley,” as an admonishment or a beggar’s choice.

And you come when you’re called, because of course you do. There’s nothing better than the clean surrender, than the ability to forget about the cruel, mean shape the world takes.

Domestication doesn’t seem so bad. Man’s best friend is woman, created for him as a helpmeet and a second half of a soul. God intended bodies for each other, so it’s only natural that you found each other. See where the skin meets skin meets blanket. Mark down every detail, mental notes adding up in pieces- an elbow, here, a brush of hair, there.

Something shifts when his jaw connects with your shoulder. Hard, forgiving, a false star shooting from the Heavens. The upside-down windmill still wants to turn and turn and turn.

And turn.

When he proposes to Jane Westman, it’s like things finally come together the way they were supposed to. Riker is still on one knee, wearing those chinos you know he got from his dad’s closet, the fabric bagging around his thighs and needs, not quite muscular enough, even though his mother raised him a farm-boy. His biggest secret is having to cut new notches in every belt he gets. Familiar, a body. Jane’s hands clasp by her jaw, hair pulled back in a sweet updo. The scent of bridal carries across the chapel and, all at once, the stained red carpet is interesting enough to catch your full gaze.

She’s like a Virgin Mary, pristine and pure, rocketing towards her wedding night, going all silly over his big blue eyes. True that he could have any girl he wanted; true that he’s just following the natural flow Cade’s Junction carries- down to early marriage, long family life. One has to wonder how long this has been in the works. Just watch her, watch that rock on her hand glitter. It’s hard to be mad.

At least he knows what to do with a woman now. Riker told his buddies that much over football passes at youth group. Knows how to keep a marriage bed happy, he does. Thanks to you.

How’d he even afford a ring like that? God, Jane’s tiny finger bulges with the rock. He’s talking now, about his plans and his secrets, says that he wanted her from the first time he saw her. Was he planning this the whole time? Had it in his mind as his hands were so hot against your chest, your inner thighs? Maybe it was always there. Not quite playing with a full deck, but Riker is funny, kind, good with humor and handsome. Better than the other boys, who clap him on the back, cheering him on.

Holy was his name when it crawled out of his lips and unholy is the body that held him inside once. First. Jesus Christ, Lord in vain. Jane’s unsoiled by the world, her pale skin glowing, her mousy brown hair tucked behind one ear. Condensed, all the details.

He had you. He had your soft hands- bigger than Jane’s, so you couldn’t have that ring even if you wanted it. They crested over his hair, down his back. Simplified and dirty. You held his jaw open and his lips taut and taught him all his lessons about being a good man. No one would ever know how this feels, not in here, the chapel mouth open, pews like razor teeth.

Riker’s a good boy. He gives his toys back, but they’re not quite untouched or unburdened. Like a peach, a single bruise can pose death to any woman in the New Testament Church.

“Riley,” Rodney hits your thigh. “Hey, snap out of it.” Turn towards him and roll your eyes, faking him out. He doesn’t know the whole of it.

Now, claim to need the ladies room. Slink back towards the chapel exit. Organ harmonies like angels cascading over the air. In the back storage room by the west hallway, Brother Amos keeps communion crackers and wine. No one here drinks grape juice like those halfhearted Christians on the outside. This church sucks from the Lord’s vein like life-milk, whole from the savior like He intended.

So, this could work. You uncork the thing and take a whiff off the mouth. It smells like vinegar and old fruit and it burns down the back of your throat. Liquid lighting fire. Feels cleansing, a controlled burn, a natural devastation, an understorygrowth peeled off for something new. Kicking off the sandals Mom got from the thrift store out of town, the hardwood is a freezer burn underfoot. This place could be a coffin. Wouldn’t that be a surprise for everyone? Here lies Riley, dead because some half-stupid boy wanted her once and never touched her again. Riker always knew better than to stay too long with a trailer-park girlfriend. Only good for a spell, those kinds. Your kind. The thought hits like a knee to the stomach. How melodramatic can things get?

Your brother and mom won’t find you until the whole bottle is gone, babbling on and on about communion, the Lord, the body, and the scores kept between the glass sky and the empty Daniels lot. Every trace of Riker will be gone one day, but it’s almost as if he’s still touching you. Image after effects, like staring into the sun for too long. Mom will make you take from your savings to replace the alcohol and Brother Amos will make you write lines over and over (“I will not give into temptation”, perhaps). But it was worth it, feeling whole.

Somewhere beyond the good and the bad and the sinners and the stained glass windows is a bonfire by the lake on a summer night.

With a whole life wrapped around this tiny town, twisted between people- Mom, Rodney, Riker- what really is there to show for it? The knot’s so tight it’s going to snap. Rodney tossed you the keys to the family car, made you promise to be safe. Pray nothing else comes to fruition because there’s not much more a single person can take. It would be funny to an observer, how the only prayer that leaves your mouth these days is a one-sentence plea to not be caught in the web of lies you created. A single mind can only hold so much back.

The next town over is a thirty minute drive, but the lake is only a handful of minutes away. Past the church where they train children like hound dogs to sniff out impurities, a black night sky stretches out, absent of moon and stars. The pretty dark-skinned high schooler at the Come ‘n’ Save said everyone meets for a bonfire on summer Friday nights, getting high on the muddy lake beach and skinny dipping in the moonlight. She didn’t even know the name Riley Neal, said they were all a good crowd, loving new faces, new revelers and rebels.

“I can tell you’re cool,” she said. She sipped from her blue slushy. When the sun hit her lip gloss, it struck you how pretty people could be. “I’ll introduce you to everyone.”

Words fall out. “Yeah. Count me in.”

Before you left, you dug in your jewelry box, under the statuette of a spinning ballerina, and put the purity ring Mrs. Delilah gave you back on, when she sat all the young girls down in the New Testament Annex without her husband around. The thing’s China-made, already turning the skin underneath it a mild green. So long ago, there was a promise to God and an absent father to keep an aspirin between your knees whenever a man was around and the room sang with hush whispers. No child could imagine disobeying the Word so blatantly or looking a boy in the eyes or becoming a sinner-Jezebel-Lillith-Babylon-whore.

Suppose that chance was gone before you were even born. Circumstances like mothers and fathers define us for life.

Pull into the dirt-clodded parking lot and step out, rolling the shorts you took from Mama’s dresser up past mid-thigh, long blonde hair cast back. Riker would be so jealous, going to a party like this. Nowhere near his truck or his eyes or the little green apples growing on the Daniels’ dry lot. The lakeside abyss crowds with bodies. No small-town cops stay out this late, no one to police the laughter or put out the bonfire, which smokes high and wide, wrapping around you. Here, everything is draped in heat and lightning bugs. All of it is a bodily sensation, deeply physical.

Sexy is the word on the mind, stepping towards the ring of beach chairs and towels. A man- almost too old- braves a step forward, holding a silver flask in his palm. He looks like a character in one of those after school TV shows, golden in the firelight.

“Haven’t seen you around before,” he says. A name comes out, garbled, and then he’s taking your hand, holding it, warming it up near the fire, pulling you closer to the center of the party. So tall and wide, this man, with enough attention to bask in. His eyes, black in the dark, rake along the lakeside. “Think I would have remembered you.”

The lie comes easy when the flask trades hands. “Moved from out of state.” The liquor burns going down, uncut and uncontrolled. God won’t forgive what you don’t bother to confess. “I’m Riley.”

Like a dream in an endless sleep, you’re everywhere at once- floating above the lake and the fire, pressed up against all the other partiers, dancing to worldy radio songs about love and lips, and back on the ground, bubbles rising through an open ribcage. The man throws a smile, shoots down a gulp from the flask himself, and cuts closer. Skin to skin touch smarts like a lit candle. Everyone comes around and cracks jokes and a beer can tossed like a badminton birdie lands in your hand. Showing more skin than ever in a bathing suit top stolen from the thrift store, but there was always something hidden behind long skirts and high necklines that people want to see. Not a thing shameful about it. Maybe this could be a life.

The night lapses. With enough truth mixed in with lies, people enjoy having you there, loving the stories about crazy religious parents and imagined rebellions throughout your childhood, stealing from the liquor store, drinking through church services from age thirteen. Some of it is for the narrative, but most is because no one wants to babysit at a party or take care of the new girl, so it pays off to bring in some experience, even if it’s a tall tale.

Their games are exciting, the water cold, the beer bubbling. It’s human. When the golden man from earlier lights up, everyone crowds around the bowl and breathes in the smoke. You take it like a natural. So good to be looked at, to be on an even playing field. For the very first time in a long time- or possibly ever- you feel like you exist. Here, surrounded by strangers and smiling faces, it’s all very real. No exit sign or parachute to catch hold of. Falling is flying too.