It's a Tuesday. I am sitting outside a questionable burrito joint with two other girls. We are all scarfing things that were most assuredly not grown using sustainable practices.
We've been living on this farm all summer, and are supposed to be food snobs, but today is a Tuesday and so quinoa and potato-lentil pancakes just aren't going to cut it, thank God. We are eating overpriced chimichangas in town and trying to remember the last time we showered.
This turns out to be a real exercise in memory recall. This also has a lot to do with why we're sitting outside.
Susan narrows her last shower down to Thursday or the day before. I am swirling my straw around in my glass and wondering whether we should get some tortillas to go when she adds, Last night I dreamed that I was stoned.
Lesley and I look at her. There's a joke in there somewhere, but I can't remember how it would go.
Susan crosses, uncrosses her arms, says, I was buried up to my waist, in the ground. Then they started throwing rocks. She laughs, humorlessly.
I tried to shield myself, you know, with my hands, but what are hands against men with rocks?
I twist the hairband on my wrist around one finger. I remember crushing my hand between two rocks earlier in the week, the terrible words I'd hissed under my breath, the mark it had left in my skin.
I think it was because of the article yesterday, Susan adds. About a woman who was stoned for adultery. In Afghanistan. It took her half an hour to die.
We sit in silence, in the California sun, aware of the pulses pounding in our throats, our cauterized wounds. I wonder about the reporter who covered her death. Did he watch? Did he hear about it later? How does something like that even work?
I couldn't think of what to say out loud, so I tried to speak to this woman, silently, in my head. I told her, You are too holy to be murdered in the dirt.
She replied, Yes. And you are too young to die in your sleep.
