Suzy

Suzy had quite the set of teeth on her. Only they weren’t hers. They were fake. Suzy had dentures. So when she got a hold of Gabriella’s jawbone and bit down, it sounded like a Fireball breaking in two. I could hear it over the shouting of the girls, echoing off the brick walls of the apartment buildings on either side of the alley. There were about a dozen of us, my half with Suzy and the other half with Gabriella. We were circled around Suzy, her back flat to the tar, and Gabriella sitting on her chest.

Gabriella was much smaller than Suzy, but quicker and dirtier and angrier. Our two groups were usually very peaceful so no one was expecting Gabriella to sneak up behind Suzy and beamed her across the back of the head with a glass Budweiser bottle. Before Suzy knew what was up, Gabriella had her pushed to the ground, digging her boney knees into the muscles of Suzy’s biceps, her arms freed for the punching. And when Gabriella started to swinging, there was blood everywhere within two hits and that’s when I realized Gabriella’s got her big rings on.

“Come on! Hit me back, ya fat dyke!” That twig of a girl Gabriella was screaming.

None of us helped, because none of us knew what to do, stunned as we were in this makeshift circle, more like an oval since the alley was so narrow. And we were more worried about Gabriella, that is, until all the blood. Then we were confused. Suzy’s blood, coating those rings: the gaudy turquoise antique ring from her grandmother, the silver snake that coiled all the way up to the knuckle of her right ring finger, and the gold plated pinky ring, a gift from her latest boy thing.

Pretty soon, Gabriella’s girls were yelling things like: “Teach that dyke her place!” and that’s when my girls started to tense up. Now, I understand why the others weren’t worried about Suzy. As humans, we are more akin to protect beautiful things, like Gabriella. She had a thin face for a Native, thin nose, high cheeks, wide eyes, full lips. There were rumors she was a mutt, like me, but her beauty quickly overrode the snide side-mouth comments. She was pretty and Suzy wasn’t. And to have her face beaten in by a pretty girl just didn’t make sense to me. Suzy didn’t need to be made any uglier. So my girls and me were poised for a full on brawl, ready to pull that little bitch- no matter how lovely- off her, but before we could make our move, Suzy had snapped out of her stupor and wriggled free her left arm.

It flailed around briefly at her side, then, reaching up, wound all four fingers of her meaty paw around the long, dark hairs of Gabriella’s side ponytail. It was a low move, the pulling of hair, but Gabriella had started it with the bottle. There was a brief moment of frozen time, where I could have maybe taken off into flight, or ran around the block only to return to the same scene. I saw every emotion possible run through the features of that pretty face, from realization and finally to fear as Gabriella tried too late to untangle Suzy’s fingers. That big paw pulled her head straight down; we all heard the ripping of follicle from scalp, like fabric in a sewing circle, our grandmothers tearing old shirts and curtains to make quilts.

Not all of Gabriella’s hair ripped out however and Suzy still had full control of that head. They were now face-to-face, gazing into each other’s eyes. The moment would have been intimate if it weren’t for the clots of thick blood smeared across cheeks and knuckles and rings. Maybe I was just imagining it or maybe I was the only one looking close enough, but I could have swore I saw Suzy’s eyes get wet and Gabriella’s mouth open in a pleading ‘sorry’. And then, by raising her fist and straightening her elbow, Suzy pulled Gabriella’s face skyward, so that she was looking up to her maker, pleading her wordless ‘sorry’ to any god who would listen.

Then, snap!, like a trap, the right side of a pretty jawbone caught in the dentured maw, breaking brown skin, the grinding of fake teeth against splintered bone, forever disfiguring that pretty face.

There was more blood now, gushing it seemed from every orifice in Gabriella’s head, as if her whole face was one pulsing wound, pumping pint after pint of black blood down onto Suzy, in her swollen eyes and cocked mouth, too puffy to close. Gabriella was still on top of Suzy, but she was thrashing on her side like a fresh caught fish, slapping it’s scales and bloody mouth against the wood deck of Suzy’s chest. All us girls were silent, holding in our gasps with our mouths all in Os, wondering when Suzy’d let go or Gabriella would stop screaming.

She had forgotten how to throw punches with her tiny, ringed fists, and when she fell silent and limp against Suzy’s blood-sticky body, that’s when we understood just how much pain she had been in.

None of us girls moved. We stood staring at Suzy with the shredded hunk of face still in her mouth, lying in the puddle of Native blood mixing and steaming, the girl she loved unconscious on her large breasts.