Sacrifices
Joanne Surridge
Sacrifices
Copyright 2016 Joanne Surridge
Sacrifices
The woman stood, staring around her at the world as it now was. The desert beyond the prison gleamed and flickered in the fast rising heat of the early morning.
‘Kay!’ a voice called her old name, and she swivelled around, scanning the barren tarmacked area. Finally, she spotted a tall woman standing beside a building at the end of the car park. She had long, grey hair tied in a loose ponytail. Wisps flew away from her head and she wore a dingy cheesecloth tunic over a pair of too short flared jeans. Rubber flip flops completed the outfit, and she rested on a walking stick. The figure waved, and Kay headed towards her.
‘Dinah, it is so good of you to come,’ Kay said, as she was enveloped in a brief hug, then shepherded towards a dilapidated van parked a few hundred yards away.
‘Of course I came, I couldn’t bear to think of you coming out on your first day without a friend,’ the woman said as they climbed into the van. ‘Had to be careful, don’t want to get you in trouble before you even get anywhere.’ Kay watched the tension in her friends face slip away as the van pulled away from the penitentiary grounds.
‘My therapist said I should avoid my old ‘associates,’ Kay sat back, and wound down the window. ‘Fuck it. Let’s hit the road,’ she said.
Dinah whooped, and put the radio on; the channel played old hits of the seventies that slipped them back in time to their recollected youth and they sang along together.
‘I wrote to the drop address I remembered,’ Kay said, ‘I didn’t really think ‘Auntie June’ would still be active after all this time.’
‘We kept the old girl going,’ Dinah winked. ‘Just in case anyone needed a safe way to contact us. When I heard on the news they were letting you out, I started checking the post office box.’
As they laboured along at forty miles an hour, Kay’s euphoria sank into exhaustion. For a little while, she rested her head back and listened to the music.
‘Is he happy that I’m out?’ she eventually asked Dinah.
‘Of course he is. He has been longing to see you, we all have. There are some new people, and they know all about you,’ Dinah said. As she spoke of him she seemed to gain energy, her face flushing like a teenager talking about her first boyfriend. ‘You can do what the beasties want for now, until we can get you home,’ Dinah was concentrating on the road, occasionally glancing across at her passenger. ‘Damn, bitch, it is so good to see you,’ she said, reaching out and gripping Kay’s hand.
Kay pulled the visor down, and bared her teeth in the mirror. ‘Well, I certainly have changed, that’s for sure,’ she said. She ran her fingers through her hair, it’s once gorgeous blondeness now dull and limp. Her eyes, always her most compelling feature, were a deep violet blue – the blue of flowers and oceans he had said when they first met –now they stared from a sallow and uncared for sixty-year-old face. She pouted into the tiny glass; lips once plump and pink were now a narrow line set in puffy jowls.
She had been invisible among the prison issue suits and the prison issue faces. Now, in the sliver of glass the years of prison food and black market pain medication were reflected back at her. Dressed in her own clothes and in the light of the sun she saw herself for the first time in years.
The pout turned into a grimace as she snapped the visor back in place.
In the late morning heat, they arrived in front of the run down halfway house. Dinah leant on her stick with one hand and linked Kay’s arm with the other as they walked up the overgrown pathway to the reception door.
‘Man, getting old is no fun,’ she said. She handed over a piece of paper with a phone number and email address on it. ‘When you can, just call or email and we will come get you.’
Kay watched the van drive off, her exhaustion and dread leaving her unable to even raise her hand in farewell.