Sicily and Juliet

Sicily and Juliet

Sicily sits on the old wooden bench outside of Marvin’s laundromat.  With her hands, she runs over the peeled green paint on the wooden slats that have held the bottoms of countless souls, each one disheveled and lost in a world they would not choose as their own. Discarded cigarette butts litter the pavement underfoot. The sun beats down relentlessly on the woman’s face. The air stinks of stale liquor, gasoline fumes and the stifling fog of the dryers as they pump their exhaust fumes from the side of the cinderblock building. The woman watches as random people living on the edge of poverty walk past her, staring suspiciously, and into the attached convenient store to pick up their dream supply list of cigarettes, scratch-off cards, and large cans of shitty beer. Her ears fill with Spanish, spoken too rapidly for her brain to decipher, white trash slang, and a dialect of black English too thick for her to understand. A migraine is edging into Sicily’s head and painful stars shoot across her field of vision. Her eyes dart about like a frightened animal, feral and nervous. There is a metallic taste in her mouth. Silver? Iron?

An emaciated, ropey, skeleton-man of indistinct age sits down on the far end of the bench holding a tall-daddy beer. That’s what Sicily’s husband used to call them. Her husband who now lives, inescapably, in her head. The thin beer-drinking skeleton-man takes a sip and looks at the woman with a mix of disgust and lust, something Sicily has grown used to. She wears a stained and sweaty tank top with no bra. Second hand jeans that could just as easily have been second hand trash. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail collection of tangles and knots. She used to have a pretty face, but it has been slowly slipping away from her cheek bones after the last twenty years of not caring. A tattoo on her left shoulder reads SUICIDE IS PAINLESS. Not that Sicily would ever consider suicide, but at one time she thought it a romantic gesture. Romeo and Juliet, right? In fact, her given name was Juliet, but she left that name far behind her in another life. “Jules,” her husband would call her. As would her mother. Her hovering mother who would not leave her overbearing opinions to herself. Sicily was sure her husband and mother were out to get her. She was sure they were fucking each other when they were at the house alone. “You’re imagining things”, they would say. “You’re being ridiculous Jules. You need help, Jules. Jules. Jules. Jules.” They said the name with a sarcastic and spiteful tone. She hated that name.  It crawled through her brain like slow poison. She picked up the name Sicily because it sounded exotic. Because no one knew this woman called Sicily. Because Juliet was a monster.

The skeleton-man moves a couple of inches closer to Sicily and says, “Share my beer?” He wears a crooked slimy smile and a gray hoodie on this hot day. There is a cancerous-looking mole on his upper lip. He tried to cover it up with a mustache, but his facial hair grows in like the coat of a dog with mange. He stares at Sicily for a moment longer before dropping his gaze to her nipple profiles in her thin top.

Sicily picks her small backpack up from the ground beside her and places it on the bench between herself and the skeleton-man. She tries her best to shut him out from her mind. To make him non-existent. That is, she had learned, the better way to resolve a conflict.

“Jesus, don’t be that way. I’m just making friendly conversation,” he says.

Sicily continues to shut her mind off and make him disappear.

Skeleton man’s gaze continues to Sicily’s left hand which is now crossing her chest in a protective manner. He catches sight of her wedding band, the only piece of jewelry she owns. “I get it, you’re married. Maybe worried about what your old man will say if you pay attention to another guy. Listen, I don’t want to fuck you, I’m just making polite conversation. Got a smoke?” He puts his arm around the back of the bench so his hand is just behind her closest shoulder.

Sicily turns her face toward the man, “Fuck off. I’m not interested.” Her head starts to pound.

The man stands up and towers over her, the sun haloed behind his head. He is a monster, like Juliet. Monsters cannot be trusted. Sicily picks her feet up off the ground, knees to chest held tight by her arms. She buries her face and screams as loud as she can.

The man jumps back, arms out in a gesture that says, What the fuck? He takes a couple steps backwards, looking around to see if anyone else is watching, and turns to walk away. After walking some fifty feet away, he turns around again to face the woman, “You’re a fucking nut-case!”

Sicily stares at her jeans material that is pressed up to her face, “He is not real. He is not real. He is not real.” She looks up and the man is gone. Not real.

This is not the only person she has removed from existence. There was her husband. He was going to hurt her. She had tried to make him vanish, but he was strong and would not let go. So, Sicily had to use a knife to cut him out of the world. The pain in her head increases, a migraine, just remembering. She left him lying on the floor. She threw her bag together, and she ran. She could not, it seems, escape him still. She has been running and catching rides for, for how long now? Sicily has lost time. but she could not lose the man she was sure she killed. The man who was plotting against her. The man who wanted to lock her away and fuck her mother. She has been constantly haunted by him. seeing him watching her from across the street, from passing cars, from store windows. He is stuck in her head. Changing her name and her life did not make a difference. She couldn’t lose the man’s ghost.

And now she grabs her bag and heads out to the road to get a ride. To get far away from Marvin’s laundromat. Is that the skeleton-man in the Dollar Store parking lot watching her? Yelling out to her, “I don’t want to fuck you. I just want to fuck you up.” She starts running down the side of the road, struggling to throw her bag over her shoulder.

A car pulls up to offer her a ride. She sees a woman in the passenger seat who looks vaguely familiar, but unrecognizable due to the glare on the window compounded by the onset of her migraine. Sicily throws her bag into the back seat and slides in after it. The car heads down the road and the driver turns his head and says, “Where to, Jules?”