The Aria of Anacostia

The struggle of a young, homeless woman between a nightmarish reality and a mirage of what she wishes her life would have been.

The Aria of Anacostia 

The rich red velvet curtains danced elegantly, weaving through the stage lights across the wooden floor to passionately embrace in the center fold. Behind the opaque cloth wall the “bravas” and cheers could still be heard echoing through the theatre. Collecting the roses that overwhelmed the area immediately around the woman’s feet, she hurried into the wings off stage hardly containing her impossibly large smile. The stage hands too were now joining in the applause as she passed through ropes and trap doors, patting her on the back and congratulating her on an opening night the crowd would never forget. She greeted each admirer with the same grin and warm handshake, speechless from the standing ovation that was surely still continuing. Wiping a tear from her eye, the woman looked back from the door of her dressing room at her co-workers, who were still beaming with the delight her performance had inspired. She looked down at her wet palm, examining the salty water between her fingers before closing her fist tightly around the miniscule droplets of happiness: the woman had never known how sweet tears could be.  

 

Wiping the beads of sweat from her oily forehead, she peered around the corner of an abandoned brick building. It was late on a Thursday night, the air still drenched in the warmth of the sun’s rays from the previous day; the street before her was deserted save for the rhythmic clinking of hurtful heels on hot highway. Her body ached with the midsummer Washington humidity as she watched the petit woman hurry along her path home. Her knee pierced with pain every twelve seconds, her arms throbbed with the scars of her latest job, her stomach roared with the memory of her last supper. And yet, all of that seemed to dim in comparison to the nausea she always felt beforehand; clenching her throat, she chocked back the bile that had snaked its way through the pipes of her prison. People had told her that she would get use to it eventually; that a part of you becomes dehumanized to the screams and the tears and the bodily spasms. It had been two years and eventually still hadn’t come.

 

Following, the woman silently lurked in between the slender alleyway, never letting her victim out of sight. Spitting up the evidence of her weakness, she rose to her full six feet. Then, her heart began to beat faster and faster, pounding against her robust chest and trembling her feminine figure. She clung to the garbage can beside her, watching her shadow again shrink in pain. She closed her eyes and focused on the blackness that enfolded her thoughts; there she was calm. There she was free. Still engulfed in her own natural darkness, she listened for the haunting hum of heels, found them, and focused. Opening her eyes with a renewed sense of control, the woman joined her companion on the exposed streets soundlessly.

 

Out in the open, the woman was first able to examine her prey: she was young, pretty with flushed cheeks and a chic short haircut. Her heels were far too tall for her petite figure, but her formal dress was reserved and refined. She was limping on her left foot, perhaps from the shoes, perhaps from an eternal accident, and held about her an air of both dignity and command. Every so often, she would cautiously look behind her with nervous eyes: it was those uneasy glances that her pursuer had learned to invade. At the third glimpse, she attacked mercilessly.

 

Calculating each step with the precision of a professional, she gained speed before the victim had turned in fear. There was no warning siren, no shouts from bystanders, no policemen heroically running to the rescue. Instead there was just the young woman and her counterpart tangoing in the deathly still night air. The first move was to cover her mouth; muffling her screams, the next was to drop her down to the concrete. Controlling her flailing arms was the third, and finally came the poisonous words. To the hunter, this took all but ten seconds; to the quarry, an eternity.

 

“Your wallet,” the woman hissed into her ear. She could feel the warm wetness begin to trickle down the woman’s face and onto her own hands; she had stopped screaming after the first few struggles. Most women did. Looking down to where her bag laid disarrayed on the steamy street, she tried to motion with her hand before remembering they had been violently thrust behind her back. More tears flooded her face, and then the hysterical heaves began to shake her body. Planning her next move, the first woman looked from her victim to the bag, to the empty street to the second alleyway tucked behind a mailbox. Breathing deeply, she released the woman’s mouth and hands simultaneously. Grabbing the bag with the agility of an Olympian, she sprinted away, leaving the young girl still clenching at the pavement, echoing a dying Gaulle she had studied in art class long ago.

 

Not stopping to see what treasures the bag held, she ran past the mailbox and down the second alleyway, darting from empty street to empty street. She let the wind blow back the tears that still clung to her hands, let it fill her nostrils with the scent of forgetting, let it wash away her crimes against humanity. She had almost escaped it, she thought to herself as she slowed down. She had been so close, and she had failed herself. Stopping, both her breath and the nausea returned. Once more she covered her mouth in preparation for what she knew would come after the coughs.

 

“Damn it,” she cursed out loud, but the fire hydrants stood solemn and the trees ruffled with disinterest; to them it was just another night on the streets of Anacostia. Relieving her stomach, she stared down into the green liquid. If only she hadn’t looked up she would have escaped it, she thought. But alas, she had given in and gave one last, longing look at the poetic spectacle; only, her punishment wasn’t one of biblical salt. It was much worse. Looking into the watery eyes of your victim is always much worse.    

 

“Brava mon amour! You were magnificent tonight. Absolutely magnificent! Your performance brought tears to my eyes,”

 

Still breathing too heavily, the woman examined the objects laid with care upon the park bench. Two hundred sixty three dollars and thirty four cents- enough to buy her a finger; two folders and a notebook with haphazard notes scribbled on the pages- useless; a gift card to the Gap- she could use new clothes; lipstick, the reminisce of a lunch eaten on the go, and a few other odds and ends that had become the expected casualties of every assault. Arching her back in a lyrical stretch, she picked up her plunder and placed it gently back in the bag, except the money, which she stored away in a safer spot. Laying down on the cool metal, she closed her eyes and again let the darkness cradle her weary mind. She could hear the snores of Fred on a bench nearby intertwining with the traffic’s din and distant footsteps. The orchestra of the city streets lulled the woman into a state where teary eyes could trouble her no more.

 

“Where’ve you been off at V?” At first, the woman tried to ignore the man’s question by feigning sleep. Unconvinced, he shoved her legs from the bench and took the now vacant seat with satisfaction.  Still sore, the woman groaned as she pushed her cumbersome body upright.

“I’ve been around.”

“Not lately. Haven’t seen you at the kitchen all week. So where’ve you been off at?”

“I just told you, around. Always around,” the woman shifted her weight, hiding the bag beneath her torso.

“Easy girl, just a question. Anyways, got your block this morning. Didn’t mean to disturb you or nothing,” the man apologized. Reaching into his pouch, he pulled out a newspaper and forced the publication into her hands. Waiting for a response that never came, he left her as quickly as he had come.

 

Holding the paper to her chest, she watched the man walk away. She liked Charley, his tan, rough skin, his untidy hair matted with dirt, the way he fit his rangy figure into his too small orange vest. She had known him for nearly a year now, but rarely said more than a few words in his presence. She had learned to hold her tongue in the company of men years ago. Flipping through the pages of the latest version of Street Smart, V let her mind wonder to the conversations Charley and her had when he wasn’t around. They would talk about the latest performance at the Kennedy Center or scoff at the politicians who were ‘out to make a difference.’ Their dialogues would last until the first rays of sunlight stretched their drowsy arms across the tall buildings, huddled together on her park bench. How warm it felt in his arms when she was alone.

 

Lost in her world of dreams for most of the day, reality descended with nightfall. Shaking, she took the bag and money and briskly left her bed. Taking a detour, she disappeared into an empty storefront that still promised sales of fifty percent off. Delicately removing a lose brick from the wall, she chose the middle of three needles, straightening the two left behind into a perfect parallel. Once upon a time she remembered being afraid of shots as she sat with her shiny shoes at the doctor’s office, of how she would have to hold her mother’s hands tightly, of how she let out a wail even before the metal pierced her then whole skin. Now she lifted her arm without any deliberation; V examined her nearly transparent forearm. The veins were weak, collapsing like ancient Roman aqueducts that once transported a wealthy flow of untainted richness. With a steady hand and a precise eye, she felt the slight twinge of the point penetrating her walls. The injection calmed her still trembling mass, easing the pains both mental and physical. Swaying in the darkness, she stood enjoying those few moments of sweet serenity; the high would come soon enough and bless her with its power of redemption, she thought as she replaced the sacred object back into its protective shrine. Yes, soon enough. 

 

 It’s not that the woman did not enjoy dining at the kitchen with Charley; the food was always flavorsome and the atmosphere inviting. But some days, some weeks, she just couldn’t go there- couldn’t see those people, couldn’t face those inevitable discussions. And so, in lieu of her meals with Charley she dined at a local order-in shop with cheap, greasy food that she could eat with her painstakingly washed hands. There she could sit quietly and eat her nachos, or talk to the emptiness that sat across from her. By the time she walked into the bar there was no one there to glare embarrassingly from across the room: it was just her and the bartender.

 

“Two burgers, fries, and a strawberry milkshake please.”

“How would you like your burger cooked m’am?” The waiter was lanky as he called out from behind the bar at his only patron.

“Well done. No red,” V responded without taking her eyes off of the empty booth before her.

“Dinin’ alone tonight then?”

“Always alone.”

“Right. I forget.” 

 

The food never takes long to prepare, and she waits patiently listening to the sizzling of her meat. Leaving his post from behind the bar, the man carries two hot plates to her table in the corner. He knows her, not by name, but by face. He remembers her as the woman who always comes in five minutes till closing with the smell of the streets, and as the only customer he never kicks out, no matter how long she sits at his bar. Instead he just waits quietly among the bottles of liquor and watches her sip her strawberry milkshake, having incredibly intellectual conversations with the air.

 

“Will that be all m’am?” With a silent response, he turned to walk away.

“You know, I once dreamed of being an opera singer. When I was a young child,” pausing, he turned in hope, optimistic that she was addressing him. But her words were spoken to the lifeless fabric and stained curtain. “And I was good. I was real good.”

 

“You are good, Vanessa. You are very good.”Her parents are there.

 

Usually, the boy left V and her scholarly prose undisturbed; but tonight was different. She was not talking about the environmental movement in South Australia or of the literary works of James Joyce and their relationship to Irish composers. This story was personal, a subject she had never crossed in all her delusional conversations, a subject the boy longed to learn. He had two choices: take the blue pill and return to his post behind the bar, crouching on the sticky floor craning his head to hear her tragic tale, take the red pill and take the empty seat to look at her emotive expressions that promised to tell so much more than mere words.

 

Turning once more, he took the seat opposite her like a shy schoolboy arriving late to class. At first she looked at him with fearful eyes, then with curiosity, as if this was the first time she had truly seen him in all the nights they shared together. The silence lasted for a long time as she examined him; the boy was afraid she would never return to speech and cursed his decision to impose on her intimacy. Finally, after a few French fries and a long sip of milkshake, she began once again.

 

“I was probably no more than fourteen when I decided that I wanted nothing more than to be an opera singer. My father had taken me to see Aida and I absolutely fell in love. The librettos filled me with emotions I thought impossible at such a young age. Her arias were more powerful than anything I had ever heard, and yet still so delicate and endearing. For weeks all I did was listen to the recording he had bought me as a present over and over. I became obsessed with the words, with the emotions behind them, with the notes that made them take flight. I would come home from school and practice singing along with the tape, until it broke. I cried for hours in my overly pink room until the flood of tears reached my father downstairs in his study. He loved me; it broke his heart to see my blotchy red face so wet. The next week I was enrolled for private lessons in operatic training. And so it began.”

 

She spoke not to the bartender, but to the air surrounding him: every so often her face would change, her lips halfheartedly twitching up into a smile, or her eyebrows lowering in melancholy. The boy simply sat there without a word, afraid that he would stop her if he said something wrong. He did not mind sitting silently however. As long as he could stare into her dark features and at least try to understand he would suffer any amount of disregard. And so he sat and listened, entranced by the melodic story of such a strange stranger.  

 

“I loved those lessons. They were consistently the highlight of my week. I practiced my scales to such an end that my mother would plead with me to rest. I studied harder than all my subjects at mastering the art of reading music. I learned to not only sing with an air of control and obedience, but to live with one. My teachers were taken with my raw talent, with my dedication to the composition. They predicted great things for my future, even the Met one day they would claim. And this all pleased my father, who would listen with bliss at my recitals and talk proudly of his daughter, the opera star, at business lunches. More and more he would take me to see my g-ds on their stage adorned with magnificent costumes and fantastical sets. Eventually I went on to study at Julliard and the New England Conservatory with the greatest teachers. I continued my learning of the classics in Italy, France, Germany, perfecting both my voice and my intellect. And then father got sick.”

 

At this her voice quavered. She looked down from her invisible audience for the first time, and a single tear fell gracefully from her bowed head. The young man wanted to reach out to her, to hold her and tell her that it was alright to cry, but he did not dare to move. After a few moments, she again lifted her head as if her fleeting grief had only been imagined.

 

“I returned at once to his side, but it was too late. He had left me before the spring flowers that we use to pick together awakened. It wasn’t soon after that my mother too left me from heart break. Our home that was once filled with laughter and the scent of fresh laundry became a lonesome building of nothing but bricks and wood. Unable to stand the memories that lurked around every corner I left my little town and moved into a small loft with friends I had met while in my studies. Not a day has gone by since without thoughts of what life might have been with them there.”

 

“I toured with many regional operatic groups and enjoyed every precious moment of those productions. I worked harder and harder with each performance, putting more and more of my soul into the music. It was my life, my reason for existence. My friends told me that I practiced too much, that I was going to ruin myself if I did not slow down, but it would soon pay off. I auditioned at the palace that had inspired me so many years ago, to become one of the g-ds that I admired like idols on an alter. I had become a part of the Metropolitan Opera House. Suddenly, I had a renewed passion for life and all that it offered. I glowed with delight and seemed to float when I walked into a room. I was so young then, so beautiful, so good.”

 

She trailed off at her last vocal thought, and it lingered in between the couple for seconds, minutes, hours, suffocating the air until it burst into pictures of the past. The boy marveled at the empty space as it inexplicably swirled into faces he had never seen. At first he was absorbed in the wonders of the dancing light, then frightened, then sickened.                     

 

Dan catches her as she is going into the room

 

The bar tender was there, but he wasn’t. He was still seated on the tattered booth in his humble bar, but he too was walking hurriedly behind a beautiful woman in a dark alley of New York. She was listening to something and humming sweetly in the darkness, a sugary smile lighting up her youthful lips. She was right, she was beautiful. Her long, shimmering hair was tied back into a tight ponytail, her clothes hung loose on her immaculate figure, pulling tightly at her curves to hint of what lay beneath them. She was nearly six feet, and yet walked with sophistication as if she were a royal family member from the kingdom of Brooklyn. She stood in such stark contrast to the somnolent woman that he now shared a table with, and yet it seemed as if the vision had not faded too much with the passage of time.

 

With each stride that she took her ballet shoes tied to her backpack rattled with excitement, as if they still held the ghost of her last movements. She turned a corner, and then another, and then another. Unsure of his role in this wistful apparition, he followed guardedly. She reached her hand carelessly behind her back, searching for what he presumed were keys jingling in her bag. The woman was determined to triumph in her quest without setting the earphones or the backpack down beside her. Consumed by her pursuit, the woman never saw the shadow come from around that last corner. She didn’t hear the footsteps or the heavy breath; didn’t heed the gasp of the indiscernible boy watching her or his shouts of warning. She had found the keys and pulled them forward, wearing a bright white smile at her victory. But the smile was ironically placed as the shadowy man closed in from behind.

 

The boy watched in terror as the woman struggled with her assailant. Her screams pierced the night air until a sock was violently shoved into her mouth. She was powerful, her long legs kicking hard and her upper body struggling incessantly to escape. But he was stronger. She was blindfolded and pulled up the stairs of her own home. The bartender could hear the muted cries and heavy body striking each wooden slab. He wanted to run for help or better yet to disappear from this hellish vision; but he knew that he was there to follow the woman and took flight down the street and up the dim hallway.     

 

She was on the bed when he entered through the open door, tied to the post with the laces from her ballet slippers. She was crying, her body shaking with an ecstasy an unearthly fear. The man slowly unclothed and moved towards his prey. She shivered silently as he stroked her face with the back of his hands. She was still blindfolded, and only the sinister sensation of his touch told her what article of clothing was to be assaulted next. The man was gentle, smelling each garment and removing it with tenderness. Both naked, he climbed on top of Vanessa, his pant heavier still with each touch of his bare skin to hers. Still shaking, the man kissed her cheek as if they were lovers. Smiling, the man continued to her mouth, and then stole much more than her kiss.

 

The boy watched from the door in horror. He could not bear it, and yet could not look away from the incomprehensible scene of nightmarish lust. Finally, he tore away from the sight, back down the stairs and out of the door into a brightly lit police station.

 “And you never saw his face?” The woman was sitting in an oversized sweatshirt with her head bowed, still shaking. 

“No.”

“Is there anything that you can tell us that might give us a clue as to who it is? Maybe you noticed someone watching you lately? Or a previous relationship that ended on bad terms?” The police woman, though patient and caring, continued to push Vanessa despite her cavalry of negatives.

“No.”

Unable to stand silently, a third woman took Vanessa’s hand and held it tightly. “Please, my friend is tired. She needs rest from all of this questioning. Can’t we come back another day?”

“We prefer to talk to the victim as soon after as possible to ensure the most accurate description.”

 “But clearly she’s not giving any description if she was blindfolded now is she?” The woman replied, visibly frustrated.

“Perhaps you know of someone who would be inclined to do this?”

“I’ve told you all that I know. Look, I want to find this guy as much as you do, trust me. I want to find him and kill him for what he’s done to her. But sitting here with her like this not answering any of your questions is not going to help you find him, and it’s not going to help me try to ease her pain. So please, can I just take her home?”

“Not back to your apartment.”

“No, back to my parent’s place in Queens. We can both stay there until we find another place to live.”

“Fine. You may go.”

 

The boy was back at the bar that he had never left, sitting across from the woman he had hardly known. He looked at her pale skin, at the scar on her neck that he had never noticed before. Her gleaming hair was now knotted with the grit of the city, her luscious lips now cracked with the harsh winds of the streets, her youthful glow stolen from her, probably still laying like a broken child on some bed in Brooklyn. He looked at the crown of her stooped head, incapable of speech. When she rose, she looked at him for the first time, a sad, hollow smile painted on her once pretty face.   

  

“It did not matter that I was blindfolded. The hospital results came back within a week. Dan had been our roommate for three years. I had brushed my teeth with him and sung to him dancing around the living room. He was one of my best friends, but as I stood there across from him, iron bars between us, I could not even look into his face.”

 

They hurry in to dress her, uncluding the puppeteer who speeks to her directly.

 

“The more time that passed, the more I saw myself slipping from the cusp of reality. Dan was jailed, Maddy and I got a new apartment near her parents in Flushings, I eventually went back to the opera house. But I knew I was losing myself. I could no longer look at my reflection in the mirror without turning in shame. I could not ride the subway without only seeing faces of those who could hurt me. I feared what lurked not only in the shadows of city alleyways, but behind shower curtains and under kitchen tables.” She paused before continuing, letting out a long breath of disenchanted air, once again addressing the empty space rather than the still shocked boy. “I would shake in fear as a stranger passed me on the street, and barely touched my dinners in fear that they had been drugged.”

 

“The doctors all said that I was physically healthy; that I was just suffering from post traumatic stress disorder and I should go see a psychologist twice a week. But their elaborate machines and technical tests never picked up what I already knew. I had fallen ill with a sickness that was eating me from the inside out. It would pull on my nerves like some repulsive marionette theatre until I cried for no reason. It would whisper in my ear to trust no one, that I was alone and no one could help me. It would flash films on my mind through some dusty projector until I couldn’t tell which images were real and which were hallucinations. The torment went on for months until I couldn’t take the voices and tears and fears any longer. And I left.”

 

The woman continued, but her body rather than words became the language of her tale as the couple sat in silence. The lines upon her cheeks became a map of her bus trip to Florida, twisting at state intersections and pausing at cities over the bridge of her nose before the contours again turned sharply north. The fear that had eaten her from the inside out was now oozing from her pores and clouded her eyes with an impenetrable cataract of imaginary predators waiting to strike. Her matted hair and encrusted fingernails cried of her inability to trust, to even exist consciously with other people. The beauty of her deep breaths exhaled the scent of her remedy for her incurable disease, and the ugliness of the money in her front pocket shimmered with the means of that medication.           

 

Immersed in the book written of wrinkles, the waiter could not help but scream at the suddenness of her hand’s movement. Looking down at the knife’s handle, still juicy with hamburger oil, he followed the metal line down to where the point had pierced the sleeves of his jacket, pinning him to his table. V got up and walked behind his bar, ducked her slender figure just below the counter’s surface, and reappeared with what he guessed was half of his earnings from the week. Placing it gently in the backside pocket of her sullied, ripped jeans she rounded the bar to again approach the young man; from the corner of his eye, the bartender caught a glimpse of some burnished point.

 

“That was over two years ago now, and still people are watching me, waiting in garbage cans or behind a bar for me to slip into comfort, waiting to attack. The reel of monsters plays on repeat on the backs of my eyelids as I sleep, and the soft, sweet melody of hellish screams resonates endless through the caverns of my ears.” Throughout her monologue, the man tries vigorously to free himself from the table, but his fear for the look in her eyes grips him tighter and tighter to the wooden boards. Slowly, she pulls out the fresh five from his tip jar. “This magic can only go so far. He said not to worry, that the liquid would help in ways that doctors and pills couldn’t. He said that I only had to do it once to feel better.” Her voice grew louder with each step closer to her trembling victim. “But I couldn’t just do it once. It makes me free. It makes my parents still alive, gleaming proudly down at me from their balcony seats. It makes Dan still my best friend singing Singing in the Rain. It protects me from all the people who are out to hurt me, people like you.”

 

“Please…Don’t hurt me. I’m not out to hurt you I promise, just please let me go,” the man could feel the tears swelling in his painfully widened eyes, and he tried to chock back the scream lodged in his neck. She slid next to him in the booth, caressing his cheek just as he had seen from years before, but expression was not one of delight or satisfaction. Her smile was sad; her eyes overflowing with hurt color. Beyond the dirt that caked her skin, underneath the veil of sorrow, the man could still see that beautiful woman he had followed down the street, could still hear her sweet humming somewhere in the distance. Looking him in the eyes, she knew what words could not express.

 

“But in the end it isn’t so bad. Running on the hot pavement with tattered shoes almost feels as if I were still dancing on the old wooden boards of a stage still hot with the light’s warmth. The screams that go unheard are Puccini’s librettos echoing not off grimy facades, but in a magnificent amphitheatre with sparkling white marble.” She paused, tilting her head back and closing her eyes. Though tears streamed down her cheeks, the smile she wore was one of sincere happiness as she raised the knife towards his throat. “And the eyes, those watery eyes of my victims that I leave behind, are swelled with emotion of how beautiful my performance truly is.”    

Author's Note

Just a short story, incomplete at the moment- all the italics will build themselves into actual paragraphs of the main character's dream world. Looking for some feedback before I continue on with it.