A View from the Ledge

(trigger warning: domestic violence)

Mmm. Can you feel that sun? Ah swear, I’m gonna get freckles! Ah mean, ah know I’ve already got some cute white patches, but a few more wouldn’t hurt. Mayhaps she’ll come talk to me more if ah do.

Ooh, she’s back!

“Carmen, Carmen, wake up, she’s back!”

Through the filthy windowpane, ah see our girl striding up the driveway. We been sitting on this here ledge for nigh on three hundred days watching her comings and goings. Ah started out a wee bundle of spikes. Now I’m near five inches tall. She’s gonna have to re-pot me soon.

“Who’s back?” Carmen looks like me, but she got more spikes. Inside and out. She’s as sharp as a prickly pear when she’s dehydrated, which is surprisingly often for someone who should be storing her water.

“The Water Woman. She’s back. Oh, don’t she look fine.”

“You always saying she looks fine.”

Man, Carmen’s grouchy after a nap!

“Quit barbin’, ya fig!” Get it? She’s a barbary fig! Ah swear if the Water Woman gave me the time of day ah would have her in stitches.

The Water Woman drops her bags on the doormat. Her hair’s bobbing in a pitch-dark halo around her moon-sweet face. Ah stand up all straight, prickles bristling. I’m sure I’m looking extra green today.

Those big brown eyes sweep over the room, crossing right over me on my windowsill. I wiggle my roots and say real loud, “Over here!”

Ain’t no good. She squeals for the hairy four legs that licks her knees and don’t give me a sweet second of her attention. Ah breathe in her orange blossom smell. Dayum, that woman smells like manna.

“Quit making a fool of yourself, Austin. She doesn’t give a fig about us.”

Ah look at Carmen. Her prickles are dewy, her flowers are blushing pink, and her pads are quivering. She is trying not to laugh.

“Did you just make a joke?”

“Ah don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her hometown accent always comes out when she’s lying. She likes to pretend she’s an English flower, like the rose bushes and dear Daffy—God rest her soul—but she’s got southern roots same as mine. The other flowers grouch about Carmen, saying she’s got a prick too far up her... you see where I’m heading. But they don’t see the soft side of her stamen.

Ah still remember the day we got potted side by side. She was a trembling, tiny thing. No fruits or flowers, just two little sprouts, emeralds sparkling in walnut soil. She was such a small bud; I wanted to wrap her up in my roots. So no, the Water Woman don’t come my way today, but that’s just fine because ah got my Carmen.

***

The glass gone turned cold. Outside, the rose petals are drifting to the ground like crimson snow. The Weather Man’s back. My my, you don’t know if he bringing sunshine or a storm. He talks loud and leans dirty black boots on the coffee table. His hair’s the colour of the sun, but his eyes are ice blue, like his soul’s froze up.

On the good days, Water Woman gets high-pitched giggly, twittering like the starlings on the other side of the glass. She flits around, preening her feathers and dropping food into Weather Man’s mouth.

But the Weather Man’s like the birds that tap at the window tryna’ pick at our heads. One big white feller flew straight thud into it once. Carmen and me watched it tottering, flapping, squawking its head off out in the bushes. It near crushed Petunia with its fat orange feet.

When there’s thunder in Weather Man’s eyes and a sour stench on his breath, you know bad’s coming. Water Woman shrinks. Her shoulders hunch like she’s folding in on herself. Water rolls from her eyes, black tracks racing down her nut-brown cheeks. One time after he booted the four legs in the belly, she pushed him out the door. He stopped coming around for a while.

Ah prayed to all that’s green and good that he wouldn’t come back.

Carmen don’t talk when the Weather Man’s around. Don’t want him looking our way. Don’t want to end up like Daffy; the stain’s still clinging to the wall. Water Woman don’t notice it much; most of the walls are stained. Since she met the Weather Man, the place been getting’ greyer, like we living in a storm cloud. Water Woman don’t smell like orange blossom no more, she reeking like charred wood and mouldering fruit. She been puffing out smoke like she stoking her own fire and she ain’t washing her sap off her outer skin, neither.

Here he is. Hammering on the door, tripping over the carpet. Ah almost laugh watching him trying to hold up the wall like it gonna slide around if he don’t. He drops on the couch, and she sits on him. Maybe she’s trying to pin him down, setting her roots. They start bucking, makin’ noises like the four legs when he’s drinking his dinner.

Ah seen this ritual before: taking their skin off, rolling around like tumble weed on a hot day. Their insides are a different colour. Hers are nutty brown, dark like new-watered soil. But he’s pale. White as a sun-bleached pebble.

She starts screaming, kinda like the noise she made when she got one of Carmen’s thorns in her finger, but her face is beaming brighter than a spring morning.

“Carmen,” ah whisper. “Is she happy or dying—I can’t tell?”

“Ah ain’t looking!” She scowls.

They slip their outers back on: his, fading black and sagging down past his skinny behind; hers, orchid pink, clinging to every curve.

He says something, and her eyes sparkle amber with tears. But this time she don’t shrink. This time she’s yelling. He gets so loud the four legs starts howling, its pitch-black nose pointing at the roof. She hides him in the kitchen so he don’t get a boot in the belly, but he carries on howling and scraping to get back in.

Weather Man tries to open the door, but she spreads her skinny body so he can’t. He shoves a balled hand up to her face, roots sticking out in his neck. She retreats, trembling next to us. It’s the closest she’s been to us all day. Ah can smell her, salty and sour.

Carmen’s thorns unfurl, preparing for war.

“Ah don’t like it, Austin.” Her voice is trembling and ah wish our pots were closer so I could stretch out a spike.

“It’s alright. It’s fine. Nothing bad gonna happen.”

“Just listen to yourself!” Water Woman’s yelling and Weather Man’s no bleached pebble no more. He’s redder than a rosebush.

Like a dive-bombing bird, a bottle comes flying at the window. Water Woman ducks, screams. With a bang, it starts raining glass. It cuts, and it stabs and all ah can think is my poor Carmen. The glass is scattered over her soil.

A streak of red runs from Water Woman’s hair to her chin. She leans a hand on our windowsill. Her thin brown roots curl around Carmen’s cup.

No!

She lifts Carmen up.

“Put her down! No, Water Woman. Put her down!”

Flashes of blue, white, blue, white, blue, white light up the window. Water Woman freezes. In his hand, Weather Man has another bottle, glinting under the fluorescent lights. They look at it. Three bangs come from the front door. He lets it drop to the floor. She slowly lowers my Carmen back on our ledge.

“It’s the police. We’ve had reports of a disturbance. Could you open the door, please?”

Weather Man lifts a finger, jabs it towards Water Woman and then to the couch. She sits. He trips over a chair leg and lumbers to the door. Pulling it open, he lets a sliver of the flashing lights in through the crack along with one eye and half a bearded face.

“Hello sir, my name is PC Harman. Is Miss Agni home?”

“Yeah,” Weather Man says.

Ah strain my prickles to catch their words.

“Are you a resident in this house?”

“No, I’m her boyfriend.”

“Please, can we come in, sir? We just have a few questions and would like to speak with Miss Agni.”

“Well, she’s not interested in answering your questions.” He slams the door shut. The man on the other side says something ah can’t quite catch.

“Darrell, we’ve got to let them in,” Water Woman says. She’s off the couch, wiping the black stuff off her cheeks, smearing the red all down her face.

Weather Man staggers out of the way as she tugs the door open. The bearded man, head to toe in black, removes his cap and steps in, a lady close behind. Water Woman starts twittering again like she would on the good days with Weather Man.

“I’m so clumsy. I fell and hit my head and made a fuss about it. Darrell was just calming me down, saying I should see a doctor.”

Weather Man’s face looks like a derecho just swept by. From grim-thunder to seeing his skies free and clear, he starts nodding away.

Ah can see the pair in black surveying the carnage: splintered glass, ash-stained walls, cracked TV. The four legs still howls and scrapes at the door.

The lady—tall with glasses and a shrewd look in her eye—ain’t buying a word that comes out of our girl’s mouth. She comes to Carmen and me and ah know she sees us. Ah know she sees what’s really going on here. Real gentle, she picks the glass from Carmen’s bristles. Carmen tries not to move, tries not to prick the lass.

For a moment, I wish real hard that the lady in black would pick us up and take us away with her. But then I see Water Woman. So small, still trembling in the Weather Man’s shadow, though she’s trying to hide it. Ah know we can’t leave her.

The blue lights fade away, like a bud retreating from the cold. The room’s real quiet. They staring at each other.

“Did you call them?” He steps toward her.

“Don’t be stupid. When could I call them? I’ve been with you the whole time!”

“Don’t you go mouthing off at me!”

Ah reach out my spikes to Carmen, and we wait for the storm to pass.

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