*  The world looks strange when you look through a rainbow.  Everything seems sort of murky and gray even though what you look through is so many pretty colors.  I suppose I expected it to be like that, kind of like when you look through a Mountain Dew bottle you see green.  Then again, I’d always envisioned looking through a rainbow like looking into a kaleidoscope.  I’ve never seen the world through a rainbow. *

*  *  *

Stained Glass

*  *  *

Life doesn’t begin until after dark, at least, it did until the fourteenth.  I’d always thought that February was a strange month, the dullest to be sure, but April was getting weird by then too.  Weird and boring.  An unlikely combination but there it is all the same.

   There was about five feet of snow in my yard; at least one foot was ice from the roof.  I guess we broke a few more records this year, again nothing new.  Five feet of snow, all hard and sturdy, I know that because I danced on it one night.  The snow isn’t really packed but the icy rain made it as safe to stroll across as the wood floorboards in my house.  Have you ever danced under the moon and stars in winter – spring, really – atop a record-breaking amount of snow in just your socks and a robe?  It might be just me.

   Tangents.  I can never stay on-track when I’ve got something to say, something that I never understand myself usually but others say it’s wise and I guess that works.  I don’t need to make sense for myself; I know where I’m heading and what I’m doing in life.  I’m just trying to help everyone else understand.  I understand, you see.

   Life started at dawn that day.

*  *  *

Chelsea.  A typical name to go with a typical face.  She just wasn’t a typical girl.  You don’t meet typical people walking along the highway that early in the morning.  You don’t want to pick people up if you have any sense, not when you’re just about the only car on the road, not if it’s rush hour either.  Hitchhikers with guns and knives and all that, people looking for an escape or just trying to find where they belong and only realizing just then that it was where they came from.

   I’ve got a malady or something, must be.  No one I know volunteers at soup kitchens and at the hospital, no one I know picks up strangers at five forty-five in the morning on the highway either.  Hell, I didn’t even go that far until the fourteenth.  Somehow I can’t stay shocked that I did either.

   She was short and wearing a blue-jean jacket over a pale pink tank top, worn jeans flaring out at the ankles and with holes on the knees.  Dirty blond hair and homely brown eyes set above a longish nose and pouty lips.  You could tell she was someone used to being looked at and someone just as lost as the rest of the world by the scars up and down her arms.  She didn’t just want to find a place to be, she wanted to find a place where she could get the courage to cut deep enough to find freedom.  I knew her type.  I’d been one of them.

*  *  *

She didn’t seem all that startled when my Chevy pulled up beside her, over on the side of the road where worn cement met soggy dirt too worn to produce anything but pathetic weeds and desperate blades of grass.  She was standing next to a few scraggly flowers waiting for the sun to rise to open.  There have never been flowers that close to the road, but then again, I’ve never picked up hitchhikers.

   She had her hands in her pockets and she didn’t look over her shoulder or even at the road at all until I was beside her and she only seemed ready.  Like she knew someone would be picking her up before too long.  She didn’t have a bag with her or anything to carry her belongings, just twenty-five dollars and some crackers in her pocket and a pebble in her shoe.  There was dew glistening in her hair and grass stains on her pants and she seemed both resigned and thankful as she climbed into the cab of the truck.

   “I’m Laurie.  You can turn on the radio if you like.”

   She sighed and rested her elbow on the door, leaning her head against the window and watched the sun climb into the sky through the smudged glass, the soft violets and rose-touched golden smears across the horizon stretched across the field to play across her pale face, dancing colors that lit a fire of emotion in her eyes.  She wasn’t dressed for the cold weather of early spring but I assume she knew that better than I, she was the one who had obviously spent the night out there.  I think I was surprised that she wasn’t sick; maybe it was just the luck of fools.

   The scenery was unchanging for the next hundred miles, power lines providing a little change from the sprawling expanse of empty fields occasionally dotted with cattle and speckled with farms here and there.  I hadn’t been the only one up before dawn, just the only one on the road it seemed.  She didn’t introduce herself until I pulled into a gas station and she got out, went inside and came out fifteen minutes later with a bottle of mineral water and a roll of mini-doughnuts, stopping outside to use the pay phone there before making her way back to my truck.

   “Chelsea.”

   We didn’t speak again until I pulled into the Super Eight at nine that night.

*  *  *

She didn’t offer where she was coming from, where she wanted to get to or what her last name was and I didn’t ask.  She would tell me what she felt like telling me in her own sweet time and if I tried to pry I’d likely get nothing for my trouble except a sulking teenager.  Kids are always trouble at her age, sixteen or so, and I expected no less from her.

   The stars were pale, flickering things sometimes shining through the hazy cloud cover that did little to block the glimmering moon above and a halo of cigarette smoke surrounding her on the balcony of the hotel room, standing in her bra and jeans and refusing to acknowledge the cold though I could see the Goosebumps on her arms from where I stood at her side, nursing a beer and smoking a cigarette as well.  Hey, if she sprang for the doughnuts for breakfast I at least owed her a smoke.

   She had one of those hopeless looks in her eyes as she drew heavily on the cigarette and exhaled slowly.  She wanted to be seen as tough, mature, independent.  I could tell she was seconds away from breaking down and sobbing herself to sleep and she knew it just as well.  Crushing the butt to the thin iron railing she took a deep breath and walked back into the room, laying out on one of the beds, trying hard to sink into the mattress.  I had watched her hand trembling when she put out the smoke and I gave her a handful of minutes before tossing mine over the railing and staring upwards until I decided that I’d had enough of the cold to last me until morning.

   There were streaks on her face, her mascara had run badly, and she was sitting up cross-legged on the bed, holding a razor blade in shaking hands.  I handed her the bottle of beer, still half-full, and she guzzled the rest without stopping for a breath.  Oh yeah, she was ready to break.  She was one of those girls too strong to bend but brittle enough to shatter, there was no balance for her, no compromises.  She could have been me, seven years back, expect my eyes are green and my hair is auburn-brown.

   The bottle dropped back on her bedspread, a simple pattern like mine, and rolled to rest against her pillows, the knife resting on the bed in her lap.  Her brown eyes were haunted when they sought mine out and her lips drained of color but still stained with dark lipstick making her pallor all the lighter.  Closing her eyes, her right hand fumbled between her legs and found the blade and she threw it across the room after slicing her finger on the sharp edge and she fell back against her pillows numbly, shuddering as she held in tears.

   I sat on the edge of my bed, idly wiping at my own jeans where I had some dark marks from an interesting night with a guy who had promised me the moon and the stars and was gone before I’d woken up.  I kept the jeans as a reminder that I was still dumb sometimes, that I was still just a lonely girl looking for Prince Charming and running into the drunkards instead.  It would be a while before I found a new man to trust enough to bring into my bed and then who is to say he would be any gentler?

   Clearing my throat, I reached out to her and touched her shoulder lightly, trying not to startle her though she jumped anyway.  I gave her a thin smile and brought my hand back into my lap, watching as she collected herself a bit, watching as she sat up against the headboard, drawing her legs up so she could wrap her arms about them, a child in more than just appearance.  I watched and waited until she was sniffling and rubbing at her eyes with one hand, through weeping and then I decided to speak.

   “The last man I was with cut me.  He said it added to the thrill of sex.” I smoothed my jeans out, hands wiping over the dried blood.  “If cutting my body myself didn’t add to the thrill of life, how could his slicing my thighs make sex any better?” I wasn’t expecting an answer and she didn’t offer one.  “The last woman I was with stole my cocaine and my car and left me in her apartment, though it wasn’t really hers.” That had been five years ago, when I was about nineteen.  Since Vanessa and Marcus, I hadn’t been too interested in getting attached to anyone, let alone fucking them.  I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t for a goodly time still.

   “My mom was an alcoholic and a stoner, my dad just drank.  They used to beat up on each other and then screw and it’d be over.  You punch me, I pull a knife on you, let’s go make love and everything’ll be peachy keen.” It was, until my mom smashed a whiskey bottle over my dad’s head and he threw her down the stairs.  “I ran away when I was fifteen.  I hung out with my friends, smoking pot and butchering myself, getting wasted every night and experimenting with whatever drugs I could get my hands on.” I chuckled dryly.  “I was so drunk and desperate one night that I snorted sugar.  And then I had sex with some kid who was over eighteen and the cops got involved since I was underage.  Rape, they called it.  He was taking advantage of me.  Fuck no, I put the moves on him and fucked him on the couch while he was too messed up to know which was the ceiling was.”

   She was watching me quietly, interestedly.

   “I decided to leave after that though.  Bought a vehicle.” Well, I went back to my house and stole all my dad’s money and then I left a couple hundred on my neighbor’s table and took off with her car.  I had taken a gamble doing that.  She knew I was having problems and she often let me stay at her place, I just wasn’t sure that she wouldn’t call the police on me.  Three hundred wasn’t barely what that car was worth.  “I’ve been on the move ever since, really.  Make a little money at a part-time job, maybe work the streets if I get too low on cash and sleep in my truck if I don’t have enough to afford a motel.”

   Chelsea licked her lips hesitantly, brown eyes sad as those of a little puppy starved of attention and food.

   “I’m not about to screw you when you go to sleep or anything.  I picked you up because you’re like me.  Kindred spirits or something.  I figured you would understand.  I figured you might have a chance.” Hey, I had had a chance; I was living in the city a few miles back, a place where I had a backyard and a tree and where I could walk to the hospital and down the street to the Salvation Army where I helped out.  My cat would be fine on his own for a few days.  Damn beast acted like I wasn’t there even when I was, he could live a few days fending for himself if those mouse heads by my bed in the mornings sometimes were any indication.

   I fell silent and rummaged in my jacket for my pack of cigarettes and pulled one out, lighting it with a cheap lighter from the gift shop on the first floor.  I offered her and she took it gratefully, still looking hesitant to speak.  I didn’t imagine that she had had a kindly neighbor’s shoulder to cry on and I didn’t imagine that she would find it any easier to tell her woeful tale to a complete stranger than to the friends she must have had.  Of course, sometimes telling the stranger could be easier.  Chances were you’d never meet again.

   After taking a few drags she gathered enough courage to speak and once she began I doubt she could have stopped.  An abusive uncle living in the house, a brother with his eyes set on his little sisters, a boyfriend who had gotten her knocked up and left her to fend for herself.  An abortion.  Lonely nights spent trailing the blade through her skin, making patterns sometimes when she felt the inspiration to, sometimes just cutting when she couldn’t think enough to do anything else.  She called herself an artist and she was.  Somehow, I ended up hugging her and an arrangement was struck up.  She’d be sticking with me and leaving the knife behind.  She was ready for a friend who could heal her wounds rather than carve new ones.  Besides, the paints and paper from the gift shop seemed a brighter future.

   We had the continental breakfast and left, driving on to another hotel and did the same thing for a few more days before I told her I had a house in the city several days behind us.  She seemed a bit surprised and wary; of course I would have been too.  She had grown to trust me and I had just thrown some of that back in her face, but she said she wanted to stay anyway with me.  There was nowhere else for her to go.

   The cat liked her, even if she yelled at him when he walked across her paintings.  It was the start of something, something strange and beautiful, and something I’d never expected.  Chelsea was gone one day with the truck and a note scribbled out that said she would be back.  Eight days later she was, with a girl around her age that was addicted to cocaine and had her own scars.  By the time a year had gone by, there were ten girls in my house, and we even had a few boys after that.  The House of Healing, they called it.  A place to stay while they picked the pieces of their lives back up.  Many of them volunteered like I did, some of them left after a time and a few more would come.  I kept track of almost all of them and Chelsea kept track of those I didn’t.

   I read the obituaries for three of them and I heard that a couple more had reverted to what they were before.  Most though I helped, Chelsea and I.  In every one of their young faces I could see my own past reflected and I know we left our mark on plenty of those kids.  Some who left came back and there were children there too, born out of wedlock by the ravaged girls who wouldn’t give their unborn children up, either to abortion or adoption.  I didn’t care; it made the house happier and brought many of the kids back from the edge.

   Chelsea told me one day why she had stayed.  After I told her the truth so many years ago, she had departed for a few hours, walked out into a downpour and returned to the café hours later when the sun had returned.  She said she had found a rainbow and she had looked through it and she had seen how to make her life as pretty as her paintings.  She said I made rainbows for each of the battered teens that came into my care.

   When Chelsea killed herself, throwing herself out of the window she had painted herself in her room, a mosaic of colors and shades, throwing herself into the drizzling gray world outside, I didn’t want to believe it.  When I looked through the jagged shards of the window still in place, the colors having run because of the rain a bit and blood blotching parts of it in rivulets or drops, I came as close as I ever had to seeing through a rainbow, to seeing through her rainbow.  And all I saw was a cloudy day.

*  *  *

*  I had thought happiness was at the end of the rainbow for her.  That was what she had lead me to believe and that was what I discarded when I stood over her grave and let my tears land on the earth that separated her from me after so many years of friendship, after quarrels and long nights where she would disappear or I would leave, after screaming at each other or holding one another close during a thunderstorm that had us scared to the tips of our toes and giggling like little girls because of something we couldn’t identify.  I understood myself and all the people who came to live in my house.  I understood her too, even if she thought I didn’t.  Hers was a world of darkness that no sun had ever shined on and that no rainbow would ever grace.  Hers was a darkness different from mine or anyone else’s.  I’ve never seen the world through a rainbow, and neither has she.              *

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