Waller Creek
There are no cameras along the creek path, but one just before it.
This essay was written in memory of Haruka Weiser. It was originally published in Hotel Amerika, vol. 16, Spring 2018. No playlist for this one.
It is 2016 and no one has spoken Persephone’s name with serious concern for over 2,000 years. One week ago, a girl was murdered two miles down the road. When I was a girl, I could run two miles in under 15 minutes and did so, day after day, on a brick red track marked with white lines before I turned 18. Persephone and the girl, they do not run anymore.
We are used to the wintering of things, to Persephone’s departure, to the leaving. We accept the barrenness, the snowfall, the quiet solitude, but we still do not know how to stop girls of 18 from dying brutally beside a creek bed. It is April now – in Texas it is so hot that some afternoons, the heat rises from the horizon and dances. I do not trust horizons that don’t stand still, but the girl was a dancer.
I tried to see Persephone as no longer an unhappy prisoner, but a girl comfortable with the choice she did not make. I wanted to imagine her holding a pamphlet in her hand detailing a houseboat for hire on the Mississippi River. Wanted to see her, wide brim sun hat in hand, stepping onto the purple and yellow houseboat, striped suitcase at her side. A three-day stay in September, just for her. Some time alone, just for her. Three days in peace along a quiet river.
But girls like us, girls like Persephone, girls like the girl who was walking home from theater practice across a bridge, and all girls, we cannot shake the dread of what could be waiting for us around the long, winding bend of the street where lamplight does not reach. When a cabinet squeaks in the night, when a thump sounds outside a first-story window, when the bathroom pipes creak, when a metallic sound rings, when a knock comes past sunset, we watch for footprints to block the light in front of the tiny gap between the door and the door frame. We are always waiting for the locks on the door to be broken.
The murderer was sitting at a table in the sunshine, two blocks away. He was using her laptop, trying to crack the passcode, when the police approached him. The girl was from Oregon – a bumper sticker read Portland. And how many times had I crossed his path? How many times will we make Persephone go down to the Underworld winter after winter after winter and refuse to hear her struggling against Hades’ arms. Refuse to see the knife in Hades’ hand, held at her suntanned throat, forcing her downward and farther yet until her scream is just a wind blowing by. A chilled wind, no doubt, one that makes us shiver and lament that winter is coming. But still, we ignore it.
I have to imagine Persephone as happy to maintain sanity in long drives across the country or walks home in the dark. I have to imagine her sitting at a wooden table, pinching a pomegranate seed, savoring the cold burst on fingertips, phone curled between ear and shoulder, talking with her mother. Demeter and her daughter are quietly arguing, one only a mother and daughter could have. The Christmas card that year, the photo included.
I think the bareness of the Hell Hounds’ teeth accentuates the bareness of your legs, just too much. What do you think? Demeter asks.
Persephone sighs, They’ve already been sent out.
It frightens Demeter that her daughter would show her thigh so nakedly to the world, but especially to Hades, the man who bartered her fate. It frightens me that Persephone sucks the juice of the seeds in the ceramic bowl next to her right wrist and circles an ad in the paper for a free ladder. She’s been looking for a new DIY project. It frightens me that she is no longer fighting.
There are no cameras along the creek path, but one just before it. To help identify the suspect, the police released a video of a man getting off a bicycle. Putting down the kickstand.
This footage is not slowed down, the Police Chief tells us in the press conference before they walked into the sunbeams two miles from me.
Everything you’re seeing is in real time. He’s moving slowly. Notice the way he drops the kickstand, the way he is sure the bike won’t fall or make a sound.
The Police Chief takes a breath, knows what we will see next.
The man on the grainy grey footage pulls something rigid, shiny from backpack.
We believe this is a knife. He was preying on her.
Here are the things they teach you when you are a girl, playing in your own front yard, fenced in. If someone you don’t know pulls alongside you and tries to talk, walk backwards away from the car as quickly as you can. Tell them no thank you. If someone comes up behind you, use your elbows, they are the hardest points on your body from that angle. The groin, the nose, the eye sockets, the backs of knees, wrists can be broken. If someone is following, make three right turns to know for certain. If a car tries to pull you over while you are driving cross country, call the local police station before unlocking your car or rolling down your window to be sure. If someone follows you into an enclosed space, like a gas station bathroom, stick your keys between your fingers and form a fist. Download the app on your phone that alerts the police if your finger leaves it for a certain number of minutes. Do not walk home alone. Do not walk alone in the dark. Walk with a male you trust, if you must. Never leave your drink out of sight. If you feel unexpectedly woozy on a date, call a friend and leave. When you are walking to your car in the dark, check underneath it. Check the backseat before you get into it. Lock it as soon as you are inside. Drive away without wasting any time. You can do whatever it is you want to do, like turn on the radio, when you are on the road. If someone says you have a flat tire, get a security guard. Do not follow them out. Do not trust nondescript white minivans. Do not trust cars that don’t have license plates. Speak loudly and clearly, and with authority. Say no thank you. Say no. Say stop. Say HELP. Say FIRE.
Fight. Fight Fight. Fight. Fight Fight.
Scream as loud as you can. Scream scream scream scre
No matter what nightmare I have, when I try to scream, I cannot. My voice falls flat, is only a sigh.
What if it was not the girl, not the girl I have not named because I did not know her, but I could have known her. Women say this after a serial killer has been caught, after half of a woman has been pulled from a truck stop dumpster, after a child turned up in a landfill seven miles outside of town, after a lock of hair was found in the backseat of a car in a junkyard, after a blood stain marked a concrete floor in a basement, after. After.
Women say this because it is how we acknowledge our luck. Our utter, sheer luck that it was not us in a grocery store parking lot whose throat was slit in broad daylight or not us walking along a creek path at only 9:30 pm leaving theater practice or not us who was followed into an apartment stairwell by a stranger or just not us. Not us. Because what every woman knows, every woman who’s taken a self defense class, every woman who follows these rules, women with daughters and sons and wives and husbands and mothers and fathers and friends, women know that if it were to happen to us, we would probably not be so lucky.
They teach you how to break zip-ties on your wrists by slamming your elbows outside your hip bones, how to kick out the tail light of a trunk, how to play nice enough to be trusted, how to run fast because if it were to happen, there is little we could do to stop it. Because when you saw a woman in half, it’s called magic trick.
The girl by the creek, walking the path, probably did not realize there are no cameras there. She was dressed in all black. She was walking home, but she did not make it.
The suspect was arrested with fighting wounds along his knuckles, a badly bruised kneecap, scratches on his neck, bruises along his back, but the girl did not make it home. What does Hades look like every time he pulls Persephone, writhing, through the ground? Persephone keeps dirt under her fingernails every winter, a small act of defiance. Hades cannot stand the sight of it – it disgusts him.
Summer is rising, the sun is setting later and later. In two months, if the girl were walking home at 9:30 p.m., the sun will have just set. Maybe there would even be streaks of golden beams cutting through the shade of trees on the path. There would not be a man on a bicycle, unsheathing a knife from a backpack. But maybe, there would be. We can never know for certain.
In two months, the fear from this fresh, tender tragedy will subside. The city will not issue so many warnings to young women who walk alone. But there will still be a family in Oregon missing a daughter. Maybe Persephone will pay them a visit, sprout sunflowers in front of the mother’s window overnight. Demeter will send a fresh basket of peaches to their doorstep. And I will stick my keys between my fingers while pumping gas by the highway, no matter what time of day it is.
Thank you for reading. If this stayed with you, a single 🫧 Lava Drop helps keep the light on.
Incredible writing, simply incredible!