Safer Inside

It started with a knock.

Tap, tap.

Mac, who had been sitting on the couch moments before, started shaking, his face ghostly pale. He raced to his private bedroom closet, closing the door with a snap.

The Feds.

He’d been warning me for years.

The television laugh track fills the space. I click off the TV.

Mac reappears for a moment to hiss at me.

“What the fuck are you doing? Turn it back on. It’ll cover the sounds.”

I turn it back on and follow him into the bedroom.

He is back in the closet, boarding himself in.

“Maybe it’s not the feds,” I suggest, my voice small. “We could just peek for a second?”

His laugh is sharp and bitter, muffled by the door between us.

“Don’t you know anything?”

I shook my head even though he couldn’t see me.

“The Feds expect you to use the keyhole. They’ll shoot a laser right through your eye and storm the house.”

Of course.

I didn’t understand why the FBI was trailing Mac. I had asked once, the night he told me they were after him; the night he had been fired from the bank.

“You’re not strong enough to keep the secret,” he had said absentmindedly ashing a cigarette onto my leg.

“Of course, babe,” I had soothed him. “You know best.”

So we had stapled blackout curtains over the windows.

I quit my waitressing job.

I stopped speaking to my family.

I had done everything he’d asked, followed every instruction.

But now Mac is silent, and I am not sure what to do.

I creep to the front door, desperate to know what’s happening.

Seeing no other way, I peel the layers of duct tape off the keyhole and peer through.

Even the fragment of the world is so bright, I have to step back and blink before I can orient myself to the scene.

I expect it to be like the movies—tactical vests, guns, tanks—but it is so much more mundane. There is a portly officer with powdered sugar on the front of his uniform, my sister, and our landlord, Mervin.

I think of the eviction notices slid under the door each month. Mervin must have called the FBI as a tactic to get us out after we stopped paying rent.

I had hoped…

But Mac was right. Of course, Mac was right.

They are here.

The government is here.

I walk back to the closet door on wobbly knees.

“Mac? It is the police.”

He swears on the other side.

I feel like a child—lost and frightened.

“Can I come in there with you?”

No response.

I clasp my hands together and look up at the ceiling, trying to wipe the tears from my voice before I speak next.

“Mac, what am I supposed to do?”

Silence.

Mac’s silence always meant rage. His rage was far scarier than the FBI.

I rub my left arm—the one he broke the night he thought I was conspiring with the cops when I had turned on the overhead light. The bone hadn’t set right and stuck out at a weird angle.

I glance around the dark apartment.

Think, Maddy, think.

But my brain is like sludge.

Perhaps if I just did a line, I could make a plan…

The sound of a key in the lock interrupts my thoughts. I hold my breath as the door swings forward; the slide chain catches with a clunk.

“Open the chain.”

I don’t move.

Behind me, a commercial blares.

“Maddy? Maddy, open the door.” My sister’s voice is pleading.

My breath comes shallow.

Bolt cutters slide in between the door and the frame.

It happens as if in slow motion—the door swings open, spilling brilliant, blinding sunlight into the dark space.

My knees give way.

“I’m coming in,” the police officer says, voice steady and loud.

“Please,” I beg into the floor, arms covering my head. “Please don’t hurt me.

I wait for the worst.

Then, someone is rubbing my back.

“You’re okay, Maddy, you’re okay.”

My sister’s arm is around me, picking me up, dragging me toward the door.

A second set of hands grabs my shoulders and pulls.

I feel the sun hot on my face, bright even through my closed eyes.

The arms release me to sit on the sidewalk. I curl into a ball, practicing opening my eyes through my fingertips against the sun.

I take it in an inch at a time—the grass, a daisy popping through a crack in the sidewalk, my sister’s sneakers pacing back and forth, then her face, puckered, glancing at me, then looking away.

A gun fires somewhere in the apartment. I grip my legs tighter and watch an ant march by.

I hear the crackle of radio static and the thud of boots coming towards me.

“I need backup—suicide, drugs, and unregistered weapons.”

Another crackle of static.

My sister has stopped pacing. She is staring at me, raking her fingers through her hair.

“Maddy?” I stare at her. She doesn’t say anything else.

The cop looks down at me.

“Sit tight, ma’am. My partner will be here to talk to you soon.”

I stare at the sugar on his shirt.

What’s the difference between jail and how I had been living, anyway?

I will never sell Mac out.

Never.