When the Flowers Died

She felt no connection with either. The girl in the back row had gone to communion. A dare and a few puffs on a joint had ended that. Why trade instant heaven for the fifty-fifty chance of winding up dead in one? She’d had to replace Christ’s teaching and protest demonstrations had proved more satisfying than turning the other cheek. But she’d kept her new self a secret. She’d left home in clothes fit for the public library and kept the low cut pink clinging dress at somebody’s pad. She couldn’t even remember where it was or any of her deceits and alibis for coming home late or the name of the first boy she’d gone all the way with, only that he’d chewed gum all the way, so it wasn’t exactly Goin’ to Acapulco with Bob Dylan. Sex and Doublemint, peace and pot, all intimations of the good life now a faint tangled skein in one compartment. Then there was the other one she never opened, with pieces of a brain like chopped up calamari in afterbirth spattered over the wall and Paul or Jason’s hand slapping her hard to stop her screams. She never opened that compartment, but sometimes the simplest things did, a car backfiring, a drop of blood. She’d adopted a mental chastity, avoiding films or television that flaunted scenes of violence and any newspaper accounts of murders. But the chunks of brain in bright red sauce still hovered, ready to obliterate everything else, career, passion, hope, everything. Many times she’d come close to seeking help. But from whom, from where? A confession booth? An analyst’s couch? She’d eventually have to tell all the gory details. Then what? The titillated priest or shrink would probably probe for more, for deeper sins or childhood molestations. Or either might think she fantasized the whole thing. After all, the Mayor had issued an official announcement that not one person had been killed or seriously injured during the period of rioting. And this had never been questioned.