Burying August

by Madeline Mitchell

Luca got thrown off the bus in Arizona for trying to pickpocket the pregnant woman across the aisle. He’d awakened on the edge of a dream he couldn’t remember, which always left him chasing for something real.

Now, he sat at the bus stop, short $3.29 for a ride to Las Vegas, thinking about where he was going to spend the night in a small town he’d never stepped foot in before. He found the answer in the hands of the girl standing to his left. They were familiar hands, like so many of the people he’d once known: large, worn and muscled, long hours of labor evident in calloused skin, but with a precise kind of cleanness that only came from compulsive scrubbing.

The setting sun dragged across the concrete. The heat, dry and urgent, promised nosebleeds if he stayed here. He reached into his backpack for his sunglasses, but right before he put them on, he thought better of it and set them down on the bench.

Luca squinted, but her dark profile cut jagged against the light, face concealed. He asked, “Where you headed?”

The girl stepped back into the bus shelter, and the sunlight slipped off her face and sliced a clean path to Luca. His arm jerked to his sunglasses. They clattered to the ground. She was pretty.

“I’m waiting for someone,” she said.

Pretty in an unexpected way, Luca amended—narrow, deep-set eyes, small lips, pretty in the way knives could be pretty from certain angles. “Me too.”

“Aren’t you going to pick those up?”

“No,” Luca replied, considering all solutions before arriving at the one that would give him the strongest reaction. “I’m blind.”

“Bullshit,” she replied, not missing a beat. “Blind people don’t leer.”

“I didn’t—”

Her gaze fell heavy on him, accusing.

“Okay. Ever met one?”

When she turned toward him, her eyes were dead, dull, like someone forgot a couple layers of paint in her irises. She hesitated, then knelt to pick up his sunglasses. “You’re a very bad liar.”

“People like bad liars. It makes them seem trustworthy.”

“Something tells me you’re not.” She opened his sunglasses, wiped one of the lenses, and gently pushed them onto the bridge of his nose without once meeting his gaze. “There. It was your eyes.”

“What?”

Her lips curled back, verging on pity, which made Luca want to be an asshole again. “It’s your eyes that make you look untrustworthy. Now, you could be anyone.”

He wanted to be anyone. “I’m Luca.”

“Amy,” she said, looking at the pavement.

—

Amy only acknowledged him when their waiter came to put the food down and her gaze fell to his as two plates of burgers were placed on the table. Her eyes seemed to say, Oh. He’s really here. I’m really letting him buy me lunch.

What she actually said was: “Thank you.”

A direct address. Luca blinked and felt his body carve its way a little deeper into reality. I’m really here. I’m really—

They ate fast—matched for speed, bite for bite. She ate messily with a measured uncaring for how she looked that felt invasive to watch.

When she finished first, he slowed his chewing so they could talk. At first, it was like playing a game of tennis with himself, but she slowly warmed up. She wasn’t from around here, not anywhere in Arizona either. California? No. You seem like you’re from California. Fine, U.S.? Why does it matter? I like places, I want to know yours. You can think of this as mine. You like the heat?

Her eyes twitched magically at the same time, like she was hiding something behind them. “It’s familiar.”

That was enough for him.

He slept with her. She had a tiny apartment on the second floor and kept the AC on full and that was enough for him. He knew so little, but he liked the way she lived: quietly, efficiently, like she was truly afraid of leaving a trace of herself on anything. Three months, she said she’d been here—her suitcase was still packed. He got a glimpse into her bag and saw one of those female condoms. What girl had those except one that didn’t want to be touched by anything foreign? When he pushed into that strange ring, he realized being accommodating could also be a way of self-protection. If someone tried to take it out, she would feel it acutely.

She made a low noise, like the moan of a far-off car. Luca closed his eyes.

He saw steaming asphalt, blurred mirages of water, darkened patches of highway that seemed to tremble endlessly in the distance—far away, but close enough to chase the heat, thinking he might somehow drive through it and be forever changed by reaching something unreachable. It could have been the road in Indianapolis, Memphis, a small town he would never remember—

As he was about to reach his peak, Amy dragged him closer with her clean hands and sharp nails and kissed him hard. His hips stuttered inside of her. The feeling of grief resurfaced, like ink through paper, its message unclear. Inside him, someone penned in a box.

After, when Luca went to wash up, he looked in the mirror and found that his face was not his own. The earlier feeling from the diner had vanished. In its place was a need to scrub, or scratch, or pick at a thread until the whole shirt unraveled. Through all of it, he had arrived at one fragment of a memory.

Parked-car silence, post-escaping-his-father calm, dawn crawling across the seats. You want tired August or bitchy August today? [a cutoff laugh, too honest]. You. Just you.

The memory broke off there, as if the road had darkened so that he could no longer follow it. He could imagine what happened next, but was never sure of it.

Luca looked for his toothbrush only to remember he left it in a gas station bathroom in Oklahoma. Like a stranger, he walked out of the bathroom to find Amy dressed and watching the History Channel. I don’t have a toothbrush, he said. She shrugged. Use mine, it seemed to say.

“Use mine,” she said.

—

Every time Luca felt anxious to go home, he started to think of August.

Not the month, but the boy—his boy. His bitten-to-the-bed nails, the rough, cold skin of his recently washed hands, his lips, downturned until Luca blurted out a joke, said something inappropriate that made his facade crack. In that order, he had thought of August on the bus, notebook open on his criss-crossed legs, finger tracing each memory. Each reminder. Sometimes, when he got to the end of a list, Luca could recall August as more than his blurry parts. This was seldom. Mostly in his head, August remained fragmented and disjointed, like a cut-up corpse with parts buried across the Americas—a foot in a California garbage heap, an eyeball floating down a river in Minnesota, his cold, cold heart buried in Texas or Arizona or Patagonia—anywhere hot, if only to make the irony burn.

Luca once read a murder mystery that went like that. He forgot how it ended. If Luca were a murderer, he’d keep the heart for himself—in a little jar in the cupboard to watch it rot. Sentimental, maybe. Stupid, definitely.

He often fell asleep imagining August with a million different endings—dead, alive, with cancer—it didn’t matter. Just still his.

—

Amy worked early mornings but wouldn’t tell him where. She came back and showered, still smelling of earth and sweat. Luca ruled out anything indoors.

The third night, she pulled her tank top over her head, threw it across the room, and asked him if he could do a load of laundry tomorrow at the laundromat across the street. Luca almost laughed. She could be naked in front of him, but she couldn’t look him in the eye when asking a favor. If you can’t, just forget it.

He nodded.

“Heavy soil,” she added, back turned. Loose change fell from her jeans as she shucked them off.

“Okay.”

Amy turned around, clutching a shirt to her bare chest. “I’m not asking you because I need you.” He watched the faint shape of her shadow, superimposed on the yellow wallpaper, as it flickered in the headlights of cars passing outside. “It’s easier this way. You slept with me so you could have a place to stay. I slept with you so someone could do the wash.” She tossed him the shirt.

Luca caught it and said, “That wasn’t why I—”

“You don’t have to lie to me. I don’t care if you’re using me. As long as you stay out of my way and do this for me, you can use me all you want.”

Luca’s jaw clenched. He thought up a million pissy, defensive responses, and then swallowed them all down. He asked, “Do you want me to do anything else?”

—

They fell into a routine. Luca woke up alone, then spent the morning watching the washers spin at the laundromat. Ran to the gas station for a smoke. Then the grocery store, the Goodwill, the local art museum, if he felt like a person—lingering, always lingering in places just long enough for someone to notice him. Laundry, check. Box mac & cheese, check. Steinbeck, check.

At the apartment, he made dinner for Amy against her insistence. It started off as wanting to prove her wrong—he wasn’t using her; he just wanted to repay her for letting him stay. Then it turned into a challenge. He parted with his watch at the pawn shop to buy a rotisserie chicken, traded time for a meal that lasted them three whole days.

Amy came back midday, exhausted and nonverbal, and laid facedown on the only patch of cool, hardwood floor that sunlight didn’t reach. It was an unwritten rule of their partnership that he didn’t talk to her when she was like this. They ate together after.

But one time, maybe two weeks after they met, Amy couldn’t get up. He’d made chili, wanted something warm to fill him up and make him feel whole. The smell of paprika and pepper made the apartment smell like a home—just not his. He waited at the table, pretending not to notice her, until he couldn’t ignore the imperceptible tremors of the body on the floor trying to work again.

Luca knelt quietly beside her and was transported back to a memory of his mother. When she returned from a day crouched over someone’s feet—washing, scrubbing, massaging—and her back gave out halfway to her bed. He was ten and distraught, but she knew exactly what to do. Get the tiger balm. Roll my shirt up and start from the top of my back. Just one knuckle. Come on, it’s okay. One finger. Now drag it down my spine. Hard.

He dragged his index finger down Amy’s back with all the force of his twenty-year-old self, digging both hands into the meat of her back, covered only with a thin, sweat-through t-shirt. Amy mumbled something into the floor.

“What?”

“My shirt, just take it off.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s okay,” she said, voice strained, attempting to be gentle. “Take it off for me.”

When Luca pulled her arms out of her shirt, he noticed her hands—the dirt smeared into every crevice of skin, the thick black lines under each nail, the tiny cuts in her palms. He could still feel the sun beating down on her back.

Luca worked his hands over her until they were smeared with dirt, and she pushed him away.

Afterwards, during dinner, she asked quietly: “Where did you learn to do that?”

Luca wasn’t sure if it was awe or suspicion in her voice; it was always difficult to tell with Amy. “My mom.”

Amy nodded as if that answered everything. “How old were you when you left home?”

“Eighteen. My dad was a cop. He would’ve hunted me down if I wasn’t an adult.”

She stared blankly at the wall, which had nothing on it. “Mine was a landscaper. He cut down trees for a living. He threatened me with a chainsaw once.”

“What did you do?” Luca tried to ask, but Amy didn’t respond. He felt a wall being constructed inside of him again, constricting around his lungs. Amy’s face became nothing but a checkbox again. Something to use and scribble over. He got up from the table, suddenly not hungry, and went to wash the dishes.

“Luca?” Amy called out.

Luca turned around. “Hmm?”

She shook her head. “Nevermind.”

—

Every time Luca felt anxious to go home, he tried to think of his past.

When he was eighteen and wanted everything to be terrible—for it to be the worst, so that nothing could ever top it. He had wanted the world to end. He wanted his father dead, he wanted eviction notices and college rejections and every mental illness diagnosis in the dictionary. He wanted a reason to feel terrible. Then he met August, and shortly after, he got one. Another memory, this one in sonic pieces: you fixate. Kind of like your dad, you know. [a cough, a motor starting a few miles away]. Some people have to. [an old song dulling into static].

At a psych eval, Luca was once asked what his most precious memory was. It took him ten minutes to think of one, and when he did, it was so simple, it felt stupid to say.

It was a small moment: after Luca got out of August’s car, he was walking back up the driveway when August shouted, “Wait!”

Luca turned around, heart in his throat, but August’s eyes grew skittish, and he shook his head. “Nevermind,” he said, face scrunched up like he was in pain, and rolled the window up. Luca stood in the driveway to watch his car leave. He’d filled in every blank of August’s silence and knew exactly what he meant to say: that there was no truer iteration of i love you than nevermind.

—

Amy had been let go. Luca knew because he spent the morning waiting for the heat behind him to disappear and then it didn’t. She pressed herself against his back, and this was how he knew something was wrong. They stopped sleeping together after a week, and she hadn’t tried to after that. That morning, when she tried, Luca turned her down. His dreams were still fresh on his breath. It was August’s mouth that had called him a traitor.

He went to make eggs, where the sound of frying oil blended into the sounds of her joints cracking. Her silence reminded him of August—the bottling, the refusal to share pain—it pissed him off and he didn’t understand why. Whatever he felt for August, Luca didn’t think it could be so easily replaced by something new. A terrible anxiety seized him at the thought of forgetting. Or even worse, not caring enough to remember.

In the bedroom, Luca rummaged through his half-unpacked belongings until he found the notebook. He flipped the book open to a random page and saw the beginnings:

Your name is Luca and you are 18 years old. You have—

Your name is Luca and you are 19 years old—

And then he quickly found August. He read over his lists, soothing himself as images and words flashed through his mind with a tinge of familiarity. He came to one and stopped. Reread. Reread again. As if pulling on a thread, Luca unraveled the tangled memory of what he dreamt on the bus. He saw wrists, and then bathroom tiles. Blue, faded. Then there was a body on the floor. Blood that glittered like cider.

Luca had dreamt that August killed himself. It took Luca a moment to reconcile that no, August did not kill himself by slitting his wrists. No. He drove his car into the ocean.

Luca only remembered because he stole the police report from his father. He could not count the number of times he’d needed it as a reminder. Every time, he experienced the grief as if it were new, reliving the same nightmare over and over until the reality became a little bit truer and began to stick.

Still, he forgot.

—

“You don’t remember anything?”

It was iffy. Luca did, and he didn’t. There were things he could never forget: hands, or kindness, or the make and model of his father’s first car. There were also things lost inside of him, rattling around somewhere—his mother’s face, the pin of his debit card, the street he grew up on. Then, there were the things he remembered, but with effort. He carved paths through his brain, dug through the sludge and haze of it—wrote everything down. Went through each list until it led him to something new. “I remember bits and pieces of everything. If I do certain things, then bits and pieces turn into fragments.”

Amy picked all the fries out of her gyro until she found one she liked, and then bit into half of it. “Why?”

Luca shook his head. “I don’t know. You want the scientific explanation or my explanation?”

“Both.”

“Dissociative amnesia, or I’m bad at letting go of things so my brain tries to force me.”

Amy stopped chewing.

“It’s not treatable. I forget everyone eventually. It just takes—”

“Everyone?” she broke in.

Luca nodded, not understanding the relief that pounded in her eyes. Everyone, everyone, everyone—

She suddenly surged across the table and kissed him, as soft as steam touching his lips. Like remembering something you thought you lost. Luca understood. The girl sitting across from him with longing in her eyes—it was a deep longing to be forgotten, to pass through life touching as little as possible. Whatever had created that fear, wherever it came from, he did not care. Because he would give her what she wanted. That was all he could give her.

“Sorry,” Amy said, pulling away. The corners of her lips twitched with the threat of a smile.

“Why?”

She shook her head. “I think it’s gonna rain soon. We should go.”

Outside, for the first time in three weeks, it rained. They waited it out under the awning of a gas station, sat on the curb, smoking. The sun set without either of them noticing.

“Happy birthday, by the way,” Amy said, breathing out a thin line of smoke.

Luca looked at her funny. “How’d you know?”

“I don’t know. You learn things when you wake up early. You left your driver’s license out and I looked.” A stray drop of rain extinguished the end of her cigarette with a little sizzling noise. “August 30th. It doesn’t suit you.”

Luca scoffed. “What would suit me?”

“Something in spring.”

A quick image flashed through Luca's head: August, mouth wide open, beneath a melting icicle, catching the water with his tongue. Try it. [laughter, the sound of sunlight melting snow].

“You know. I hope you make up with her—whoever you’re always thinking about when your face goes blank like that.”

Luca lit Amy’s cigarette again. I promise it’s good, tastes like [inaudible]. If you could live in one season forever, which one? Me too. “Him.”

“Hmm?”

“He’s a him.”

She stared at him for a second. “Oh.”

Luca blew on the lighter, expecting it to flicker out like a candle, but it didn’t. The flame held. [light rain, the hinge of a door creaking] I’ll be back soon, okay?

Amy shifted and then became still. “What’s his name?”

—

Every time Luca felt anxious to go home, he thought of August.

The month he spent with Amy, not the boy. Her cramped apartment, the heat, the sun-spent, metallic smell of her clothes. Droning voices from the History Channel always speaking in the background. The clean plates she left after a meal. The tiniest twitch of her lips, like butterfly wings—that close, barely-there joy. Like that, he began to make another list in his head. Eventually, he started writing it all down again.

—

Two days later, Amy left. Luca woke up to heat behind him, but he rolled over and found nothing but sunlight on the sheets.

The seasons were changing, and so was the land. Thin, reddish dirt blew into his eyes when he stepped outside, and he wondered if her hands had touched it, held it even for a second. The crop season was over. She was probably already headed somewhere even hotter to leave a million handprints in the soil that blew away by sunset.

“There’s a phrase in Arabic that I learned,” she had said the night before in the dark. “Ya’aburnee. Do you know what that means?”

He shook his head, leaving it up to her to interpret the vague rustling of the sheets.

“It translates to: ‘you bury me.’”

Luca was quiet.

“It means that you wish you’d die before the other person because it would be too painful

to live without them, to bury them instead. I hope you have to bury me. Selfish, isn’t it?”

“I did know that,” Luca murmured. “Someone told me that once.”

About the Author

Madeline Jinette Mitchell is a mixed Korean American writer and translator. She holds a B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she served as Editor-in-Chief of The Madison Review.