The dead crocodile

My hands trembled and I had to put the phone down to steady them. My whole body was quivering, and just like when you shake a can of coke, I thought I was going to explode somehow too if I let myself open. I wish I could lean my head down, but a giant tray of pizza scraps and an empty coffee cup took up the mass of space in front of me. So I sat there in our usual spot at the truck stop right next to the outlet where we had plugged in all of our ten various gadgets. I was alone and had been doing my nightly ritual of writing, reading and instagramming, until I got tired. I sat there and steadied my hands instead on the edges the table and let the phone go.

I had received a message on the Gram similar to this one last week, that’s why the second message was a really gutter punch, this time it sounded worried, rushed, concerned, and urgent. The first time I had a similar feeling of illness and a tinge of nausea. But this was the second time, the second person. The message was lengthy and intimate and with each word going further down the screen of my phone, I thought of every message I never sent to these women, and my stomach tightened into a knot. Tears bubbled and one spilled over.

The words accounted for the story of a young woman who was threatened, and then another one. The words hurt because they were me. His body wrapped around me then and coiled my breath into the memory of him and I thought, “I am going to suffocate.” Him. The threats were an afterthought. They were what you must do when you smash glass on a linoleum floor in a fit of rage. You get the broom and sweep it up so you don’t slice your foot open. Whether you want to sweep or not, you have to, a natural reaction, the threats and the sweeping. What lay beneath them was an image, a grand oil color painting by one of the masters. You know you are in a historical building of great significance when there is one of these hanging over you. In the entrance, or perhaps the foyer of an important museum. The deep articulate perfection of brush strokes draw you into a dimly lit room where people are dancing and fighting, and a dark story unfolds in candlelight, the face of one person stares back at you amidst the towering canvas and it steals your breath. This was him at his best, larger than life, intimidating and mysterious. And he definitely put you in your place.

But the him that was spoken of in the message was him I knew in dark rooms after everyone was gone. The one whose sweet words turned into shaming, and rage, and anger. The one whose words twisted, and shifted, and entered you whether you wanted them inside of you or not. This time it wasn’t me though. I snapped out of lucid memories to return to her and picked my phone back up.

What transcended next was the tipping of dominoes. My work over the past months to break free and I now found myself in the middle. She wanted to talk, so to my surprise in a matter of minutes we were speaking. And then I was speaking with another young woman, and then another. The rain came down hard that night and soon it was midnight and I was sitting outside in my rain jacket in a camp chair drenched, holding space for these women’s stories to be heard. I searched the trailer for my emergency Marlboro Lights. When in doubt smoke a cig, not a shot, of vodka, or whiskey or whatever.

Now from here dear ones, I found myself with absolutely no place to go and that was exactly where I was supposed to be. I awoke at 6:15 a.m. the next day not groggy but electrified with a feeling of shock and “I’m no longer crazy, am I." I ran two miles in laps around the truck stop parking lot. The truckers must think I am crazy. I finished my last lap and saw a dead crocodile smashed into the dirt, splayed open, and tiny talons poking up from the dust. It appeared to have been run over by one of the massive trucks. “Holy crap,” I thought. This croc was so close to where we walk around barefoot, in the dark, at night. The fear came and then passed, and then entirely forgotten. My ritual of dealing with the non-existent public women’s restroom wasn’t amplified anymore. I got my ticket to enter the restaurant to use their bathroom, went pee, then walked through their expansive seating area, through the gift shop, stood in line to check out, then not having purchased anything, I handed my ticket back over and exited the building, a ten minute process but bladder relieved. The small stuff didn’t matter today. The dirt and the self-pity didn’t cling to my body as tightly today. I just was. I was. I was apart of a small group of women who had experienced something so intimate so private that I thought no one would ever believe or understand. But they did.

The truck stop was no longer an isolated wasteland that we were stuck at. It transformed into a haven of sorts, a place to literally sort stuff out. We could use their Wifi in our regular seating spot while charging our devices. We used our bicycles to explore the surrounding area in the warm sun as our skinned tuned from pink to golden. I conversed more with these women and formed a new collective of support as we independently sought out support from advocacy centers too. Did you know these places have 24-hour support lines? I suppose this fact had been told to me in a presentation or class at one point and slipped in one ear as “I’ll never,” then here I was, in deep gratitude for the funding and staffing of these very support services. I sat in my normal place at night but no longer alone. I would be leaving soon on my own. My Brazilian visa is up and the car isn’t fixed and it was time to keep moving. I was ready.