Naked, on the Edge

I Am Not My Smell

The moon is a chalk rock, hanging in the sky in the black of the night and the blue of the day. It is there because it has room there; it is comfortable there. The moon is not its light, though some would say it is. The moon is a big round body with a purpose which I don’t understand but don’t need to understand.

I am a woman with a bad foot. My foot was crushed last month by a passing car on Ocean Front Boulevard. I didn’t get out of the way fast enough and it was run over and now my foot is dying. It is purple and fat and aches when I move it. I have washed it in the salty surf when no one else was around. I have pressed on it to pass the pus but it is still dying.

The boardwalk along the beach is where I live. I scour the rusted barrels in the sand in the blue of the day and curl up under the lip of the walkway in the black of the night. I have room here, but I am not comfortable. My swollen and pounding foot smells very bad. My body is covered with old sweat from my arm pits to my ankles and new sweat from each new day, but I am not my smell. Some think I am. I am a body with a purpose which I just now understand.

Last week I found two wonderful things. One was a brand new tee-shirt in the trash outside Surf Side Souvenirs. I clawed it out before the manager chased me away and threatened to call the police. It was tight but I ripped it up the sides and pulled it on over my sleeveless blouse. The other treasure was a dog. I named him Sunshine.

A dog has never been a treasure to me before. In fact, when I first found Sunshine, I thought he was ugly and gaunt. He growled at me and snapped, but I offered him some French fries I’d found in the dumpster behind Dairy Queen, and he calmed down. And then he sniffed at a small gash in my bad foot and began to lick. This amused him, or pacified him, I’m not sure which. His ears went up and his tail began to wag. It didn’t hurt me at all. I shut my eyes, sitting there behind a beach bench on the boardwalk, and let Sunshine lick my swollen, dying foot. I squeezed on the foot, letting it drain for him. Sunshine licked. I pretended I was having a massage from the Man I Love.

As I sat, not bothering any of the vacationers, a child with a red ball cap leaned over the back of the bench and said “Mom, look. That’s gross !”

The mother, face all painted and plucked, also looked over the bench seat. Her face registered my smell and then my foot. She contorted. “Disgusting.”

I said, “In the Bible, Lazarus let the dogs at the gate lick his sores.” But the mother and child were gone already, off in a hurry down the sandy walk and they didn’t hear what I had to say.

Sunshine nipped my foot then, a love bite like cats give to their owners, and licked some more.

The dog had bonded with me, and we stayed together. I had little to feed him; I barely can keep up with the demands of my own growling belly. But we slept together and he would lick my foot and ease the heaviest of the throbbing. His hair was warmer than the grit of the ground under the boardwalk lip. He smelled, too, but a dog is not his smell. Even the richest of people know that. They laugh at a smelly dog and excuse him because they love him and because he is not his smell. He is a body with a purpose and they understand.

The Man I Love came out to the beach several days after I found Sunshine. The Man wore his yellow swim trunks and an unbuttoned red shirt that billowed in the breeze and let me see his tanned chest and black chest hair and little pink nipples. He comes to the beach once a week, on Saturdays. Therefore, I know he is a working Man. A good Man who is a sane Man. A sane man can hold a job.

I haven’t held a job for two years, since I was twenty three. Am I insane? I don’t understand insanity, or if I am insane. But I know now that I have a purpose. If sanity is purpose, then I’m sane. My purpose is dreadful, but it is as sure as the beauty of the Man I Love.

The Man I Love is sane and good. He walks with his chin up and he stretches out to the sun and sea before settling down on the rolls of beach sand. He smiles even when no one is looking at him.

I watched him from my shadows under the boardwalk, but Sunshine trotted across the hot sand and sniffed at the Man’s crotch. The Man laughed and pushed Sunshine back a little, then petted him on the head.

“What a good dog,” he said.

Sunshine wagged his tail and didn’t growl.

“If you were a little healthier,” said the Man. “I’d take you home with me. Go on, now, boy.” He petted the dog again, and Sunshine just stood and wagged his tail until the Man shed his shirt and went for a swim in the waves.

Sunshine came back to me. I sat in the shadows, my bloated foot resting on a mound of sand I’d made, and rubbed the dog’s head. The dog’s nose was wet and probing, first on my hand and then back to my foot. What a wonder to pet something the Man had pet.

As I ran my rough fingers through the dog’s fur, I began to understand my purpose. I began to realize why I existed.

My heart hammered, and the painful rhythm echoed in my foot.

I slept restlessly and feverishly that night. A barb was in my chest, cutting with each breath and making it feel as though blood were seeping out to my stomach. I was nauseous, but swallowed it down as I stroked Sunshine.

The next day was Sunday. A lot of people come out on Sunday, even more than Saturday. The sun, in its purpose, was bright and hot. The moon held its position at a distance. It was white and faint.

I moved along the boardwalk. My good foot was bare. My bad foot was wrapped in a rag that had once been a beach towel left behind on the sand by a careless family. Pain sang with each step, hitting high notes when the weight was on the ball of my bad foot. I sweated hard, as the heat of the infection climbed around inside me. Sunshine trotted along, hoping, I suppose, to be given more french fries or to have the chance at my foot again.

The Dairy Queen was busy. Gaily striped inflated floats were propped up against bike stands. Customers ate inside in the air conditioning and outside at the umbrella-shaded tables. I stood beyond the low chain fence, watching the people eat. Dusty sparrows fared better than I; they flew freely among the tables to gather the scraps. Vacationers watched them with smiles. But I was gawked at by those who noticed me. Their stares held me back behind the chain fence.

To the rear of the restaurant was the Dumpster. I limped around and waited until a pock-faced boy had emptied a container, then I dug inside. Sunshine sat at my feet and waited, chin up. I found some ketchup-covered buns for him. For me, there were chunks of cheeseburger and a third of an apple pie.

I went to a small tree and slid down to eat. I studied the beef beneath the bright orange varnish of cheese. A cow had its purpose. If the cow knew it, would she be distressed? Or in knowing, did a cow embrace life for what it was? The meat was cold.

As I licked grease from my fingers and Sunshine nosed into the towel to get at the fluid from my foot, I saw a flash of open white shirt. My head turned, and there, not ten feet from me, was the Man I Love. He was fumbling in his shorts pocket for his wallet. Seeing his nipples, my own grew hard. I wished I could have licked them like Sunshine licked my foot. I wanted to give them a love bite, and not have the Man push me away because of my smell.

Sunshine ran to the Man. The Man didn’t see the dog coming, and when Sunshine jumped up and wagged his tail, the Man stumbled back. Sunshine dropped down and the tail-wagging increased.

“Hey, boy, you’re back?” he said.

Sunshine’s whole body wagged. I thought, if I was the dog, could I make the man like me enough to take me home? I sucked my fingers and scratched at a sweat-inspired tickle on my stomach.

“You ugly old thing,” he said. He rubbed Sunshine vigorously beneath the gangly, whiskered chin. “What do you want from me? You’re a mess, now get away.”

Sunshine’s claws clattered on the concrete of the sidewalk, a happy dog’s dance.

“I can’t take home an old, skinny dog. Sorry, pup. Vet bills aren’t something I want to get into.”

The Man I Love squatted down and played with Sunshine’s ears. My own ears tingled, imagining the sensation. “Now get. You made my hands stink.” He laughed, sniffing his hands. Sunshine’s body wiggled with joy.

The Man left, wiping his hands on his shorts, certain to wash them once he was inside the Dairy Queen. But certain not to think the dog was bad because he had a smell.

Sunshine came back to me, sat on his haunches, and dipped his tongue to my foot. I pushed him aside and went back to the Dumpster. Beneath mangled Styrofoam, I found a half a fish sandwich. I took it to the tree, slid down, and worked my fingernail into the gash in my foot. It hurt, but the sharp, rough edge of the nail tore the gash into a substantial hole. Sunshine watched. I stuck a small piece of the meat into the hole.

“Sunshine,” I said. I pushed his nose to the hole. He sniffed, licked, and then gave my foot a bite. It was gentle at first. I gathered handsful of grass to each side of me. “Sunshine,” I said.

Sunshine licked, then bit again, this time harder. A pain that was not the pain of infection drove up through my ankle into the calf of my leg. I sucked air through my teeth. The grass in my fingers ripped from the ground. “Sunshine,” I whispered.

The dog began to chew, working for the fish in my foot. Blood and clear liquid oozed out between Sunshine’s working jaws. Bright stars prickled the edges of my vision.

Not here, I thought.

My foot jerked away from Sunshine. He whined softly, and then reached for the running wound again.

“Not here,” I said. I put the rest of the fish sandwich down the front of my tee-shirt and tucked the shirt into the waist of my shorts. Then I pushed up from the ground, holding low, thin branches of the tree for balance. My weight was on my good foot, and I was afraid to shift.

A young couple, arm-in-arm, walked by me. The girl wrinkled her nose and nudged her boyfriend. He frowned in my direction and said, “This place wants tourists, they should keep the trash out of public view.”

I wobbled; my bad foot caught the brunt of my weight.

A groan scrabbled up my throat and whistled through my lips.

It took me a very long time to walk back to the boardwalk.

The railings of the steps to the beach were hot and welcomed. They eased the burden on the bad foot and allowed me to slide down to the sand. Sunshine kept by my side. His tail didn’t wag. He was all business. That was as it should be. I crawled beneath the lip of the boardwalk, then under the steps where the sand was wet and dark and white ghost crabs scuttled about as if it were night.

I eased down onto my butt. My lips were dry and my throat full of the sand of my soul. I wedged my good foot against the back of the bottom step to hold me in place when the real pain came. I pet Sunshine on his gaunt, fur-covered dog skull, and then pulled the fish sandwich from my shirt.

Dogs, I’d heard once, had germ-killing saliva. That was why they could lick their own wounds and not get ill. That, I supposed, was why the dogs who licked Lazarus’ sores didn’t die. That was why I knew I could feed Sunshine and make him healthy, and then the Man I Love would take the dog home with him.

Through the slats of the steps, the vacationers cannot see me, but I can see them. I can see the hairy legs of the men and the shapely legs of the women as they descend to their temporary paradise by the ocean.

Happy people, oblivious to the crabs and the ugly dog and the stinking woman beneath the steps.

I poke more of the fish sandwich deep up into the gash in my foot. Sunshine nuzzles, licks, and then chews. My eyes squeeze shut against the razor-screams of my foot. I feel the hot blood rush out onto the cool sand and the rhythmic stroke and pull of the dog’s teeth.

Sunshine won’t eat all of me. He will lose interest after a bit and will go off after a Frisbee or a toddler, looking for a playmate. I saw a black and white documentary once, a long time ago. A Nazi dog chased down a Jew and mauled him, but even a trained Nazi dog did not eat a whole Jew. The Nazis had to give the man to the wild pigs to finish.

But what I give Sunshine will be plenty, more than I could ever salvage at one time in a dumpster without being chased away. And what I give him will be my end. My bleeding is profuse. Even a towel-rag could not stop it. If I wanted to stop it.

My teeth clench and I search out through the step slats for the moon. I can’t find it, but I know it is there. The chalk rock in the blue sky, the meaning of its existence a mystery.

I loosen one hand long enough to cram in more fish. My foot screams the agony of the crucified, offered for a higher purpose. Flesh rips within the canines. Then I feel the bone snap, crunch.

Sunshine will blossom and be fat and full and healthy and go home with The Man I Love. I will be part of it. I will be pet even as the dog is pet and loved even as the dog is loved. I will lick the man’s chest and pink moon-nipples even as Sunshine does.

I howl into my shoulder and grab the steps.

Sweat pours from my flesh, thick and sour. My breath on the air is that of a corpse in the grave.

But the smell of my blood is sweet.