Flowered Couch

  The smell of blood smells like someone's decaying happiness. Chipping away like someone would sit there and chip away at a brick block with a spoon. A spoon that will never make a dent no matter how hard you strike this beast of a smell.An exaggeration for this blood that I've found on the couch seats... but it's accurate. No. It isn't an exaggeration that this is the exact smell. This isn't an ordinary blood stain from a cut or from even a cycle. It smells of death of sadness. It smells of madness a doctor can't diagnose. A madness that will live until it is calmed. It will never be calmed. And it covers my Grandma's flowered couch. The couch I've slept on, ate on, cried on. It covers it like it was painted. Like someone purposely used their hands to spread this girl's blood from her heart and paint furniture with it. Do many painters paint with thick red? As thick as frozen syrup. Probably thicker.Maybe that's where the smell is coming from. The girl who's heart is split open on this couch not the blood that seeps from her temple.From her temple, from her side, from her eyes. Sickening to look at. You don't see blood pour from eyes on your Grandmother's flowered couch she got last week every day now.

 My grandmother threw up. And cried. And screamed like a banshee, such a miracle the neighbors didn't hear. They'd ask, "Why is it a dead girl on your couch Myrtle?" A girl draped over her couch like a shawl cut up from temple to waist. They didn't strip the poor girl of her virginity at least, that's what my grandmother will say to the police when they arrive at the scene hours later. Oh but they did. The virginity of a child whose eyes will never open again,whose nose will never whistle again as she struggles to breathe. She couldn't breathe when the gashes on her side ripped her open as if it were skin on a drum. They only whistled as she grabbed the broom sweeping the confetti of her grandmother's couch. Who cares how the confetti got here. The girl does. I do. I care because I convinced my dear Grandma to sprinkle it on the couch. "It wouldn't be a party without glitter Granny!" I remember screaming. It would be a party without a dead girl on this couch heaving her last nose whistle on her grandmother's flowered couch she bought last week.

  She'll never get to breathe, to smell the scent of death as I am now. How lucky of her. I almost envy her. But I get to smell it. My granny gets to smell it. It was so horrid to her she threw up the three slices she choked down earlier. A frail old woman eating half of a cake wasn't the spectacle of tonight. The spectacle was the old woman dragging the body off the couch and scrubbing the confetti off like it was a disease. When a disease spreads too much, oftentimes it is too late to erase it.

The grandmother who dragged a body into the hallway like a rag doll and threw her into the corner. Looking away as her head smacks against the frame of the door way. She didn't call the police, didn't ask for help, didn't scream. Not even me trying to help her worked. It's as if she couldn't see me..like my touch on her shoulder was a fly that irritated her. She couldn't see me and I couldn't see her. I couldn't see her through the stench. The stench, the decaying,the chipping. Each inhale felt like a knife to the chest. I imagine what the girl felt. At this party of relative's and neighbor's you don't know when to expect dead brown girls on your couch you bought last week.

But the couch was dirty. It had confetti, how stupid of anyone to let the thing get so dirty! Whose idea was it to do such a thing. And it was soaked to the springs, the blood soaked so thoroughly the springs dripped with the smell. Well... who'll clean this mess? My grandmother. She stripped the cushions from inside the covers when dragging the girl down the hall. The bump. The scrape of the girl's head. Grandmother had no remorse, just the need to clean. Again, who'd allow such an expensive piece to get so horrid in such a short time? And oh the smell! Would have to take it to the cleaners! Which was no problem.

So she scrubbed the springs first. With bleach and rags. Scented lavender soap. She removed the horrid smell that made her throw up in agony. She scrubbed the covers for the cushions. Soaked them, ran them in the washers three times. The stain wouldn't come out! Like ketchup on a child's shirt. The girls shirt. All the time she didn't feel my fingers brush against her cheek, clasping her hand.

I screamed and begged but she did not hear. I helped her clean. I ran the covers again, spritzed the springs with water and wiped once more. Threw the cushions into the trash. No cleaner could remove the stench of a decaying girl. For hours I walked back and forth down the hall. She did not hear me. Or see me. The brush of my nails in her cheek was a pesky fly.

The body in the hallway laid still. The girl was me. I was the one decaying. The one who caused a stench so bad in my Grandmother's house she threw up the crickley windows. But I was dead on the floor. Laying in my pile of blood. Drinking it in, breathing, eating it. It sat in my lungs like rocks sat in the bottom of a lake. My happiness...my Grandmother's happiness was a brick. I used my fingers to chip at it as I laid on the floor for hours and helped my Grandmother clean.