The Garage and the Red Jeep

The young woman paced around the room she and her husband had been living in for the past three months. It was a single room attached, or rather dry walled off, from the parking space of the back alley garage to a house on the west side of Chicago.

The house was occupied by the girl, her husband, and various others, mostly illegal Mexican immigrants. All occupants in the house rented a room and shared the common living areas. Someone had been eating the couple’s pizza from the refrigerator. The girl’s father had told her she might try putting some laxative in a delicious looking pie, but now she was leaving and that wouldn’t happen she thought to herself.

She scanned the room trying to decide what else to pack into the bright red Jeep Cherokee that was parked in the garage. They had bought the Jeep when they lived in Florida.

That was a little over a year before, when the first of his infidelities there in Florida occurred. One was with a girl named Carolina, a girl with fair skin from Cordoba and another from Colombia, named Mona. This was when the girl began to suspect he was only marrying her to get his “papers”, his American citizenship, so he could stay in the States to make money.

Back then the girl had been young, just arrived in Florida from living a safe and sheltered life in Iowa. It was no wonder that she was romanced into foolishness by the tall, dark, foreign man. She thought that by making him get a tattoo with her name on it and moving him to Chicago, away from Carolina and Mona, that things would be different.

But after their first week in the windy city she had found out, that while she was working as a receptionist downtown, and going to her first semester of college for fashion design, that he was planning to meet up with an Italian tourist.

Shit, she thought, a lot more will fit but I have so little time before he returns home from work at the pizza shop.

The pizza shop he managed was where he met the younger girl she had found the phone number of on his phone. He usually guarded that phone with fervor but he had gone to the main building to shower the night before and forgotten it in the room with the girl. The girl had been bored as they had no TV or computer. There was just a mattress some clothes and a radio. She had been listening to NPR and feeling very isolated in the tiny room when she noticed the phone. So she looked at the call list and saw an unfamiliar number with no saved name. She called it under private and when a female’s voice answered she hung up.

Why was that the final straw? She didn’t know, maybe it had something to do with that small room they shared, the isolation. No matter, she was no longer willing to wait up for him at night to close the pizza shop at unusually late hours, she was ano longer able to be such a jealous person.

She was sick of feeling crazy and unattractive. He had quit having sex with her because he said he was afraid she would become pregnant. It didn’t seem right to her, she was taking birth control and they used condoms. It made her feel unattractive and like a fool for half believing him, having no choice but to obey his wishes.

Once again she scanned the room. What a room, so small and depressing she thought.

It was a room in such a bad neighborhood that she was afraid to venture out beyond the tall cheap wooden privacy fence. When she arrived home from work she would push the button to open the garage door, push it to close it, and then get out. While walking on the porch to the kitchen one Sunday afternoon she had noticed men training dogs, for what she guessed was dog fighting, in the abandoned lot on the other side of the alley of their garage home.

She hated going into the common area to do such simple things as cook or shower or even pee. Those that she shared the house with were strangers, people who were not friendly at all. One was an old, grumpy Mexican woman who always frowned and never made eye contact. She was like a ghost, walking quietly in her loose ratty dresses never really making her presence known. Even more frightening were the two Mexican men that shared a room. They were very frequently on the porch smoking marijuana even in the cold of a Chicago winter, or they were drunk on the porch and had lustful eyes.

With her as she packed were her two golden Pomeranians. The played and barked, somehow having room to play in the tiny room. They were the one thing the man had let the girl buy to make her happy yet he was abusive to them and they cowered when the man was around.

This wasn’t supposed to be where she lived she thought to herself. Not like this at all.
Then all of a sudden the urge of knowing took over. Her pride and control not to make a fool of herself faded. She picked up her cell phone and looked at the name she had saved in her phone, puta.

That bitch, she thought. But him too, she is only seventeen.

She had first heard about Liz from a co-worker of Pedro's a few weeks back. The girl had been told that this young girl kept coming around for no apparent reason and was too friendly to Pedro.

I suppose I was only seventeen but then he was 25 and now he is 27, now it is much worse. What a pervert. After everything I’ve done for him. She began to cry as she pressed send to dial the number of his puta.

It rang twice.

“Hola?”

The girl paused and audibly breathed.

This time, “Hello?”

“Liz, this is Pedro’s wife. Do you know me? Why is your phone number in my husband’s phone?” said the girl, shaking, her stomach becoming more and more nauseous. She was loosing her cool, beginning to unravel. Her forehead was hot and she could feel sweat on her brow.

“No, no, you have wrong number.”

Then the call was ended. The girl felt a flash of anger and she quickly called back.

“Hola, you have reached Liz, leave a message!”

The girl threw her cell phone down on the unmade mattress that served as the couple’s bed. She hurriedly finished throwing random clothing and shoes into a suitcase, zipped it closed and made her way to the door calling to her dogs.

“Basil, Tio, come on. Outside”

The two small golden dogs looked up at her with their coal black eyes and mouths, they didn’t know what was going on and were full of excitement. The tiny dogs followed the girl to the patio that led to the entrance to the garage where the Jeep was parked. The garage was dark and smelled like trash, the girl turned on the light. She put the dogs into their separate kennels in the back seat and shut the cage doors. The dogs began to whine like puppies..

“Oh, don’t worry my babies,” she cried as she wiped away tears, “We’re going to be OK, Mommy loves you both.”

She struggled to place the suitcase in the back of the Jeep with the rest of the things she had randomly packed with a clouded mind and then with all of her strength slammed the back shut. Just as she was stepping up into the driver’s seat the garage door began to open.

Oh, no! She thought, he is back.

She panicked, yet still managed to get into the driver’s seat and lock the doors. She could see now in her rear view mirror, the garage door fully open, that Pedro was getting out of his co-worker’s car and waving good bye.

He walked into the garage, she kept her eyes on him in the mirror and saw his look of surprise. She could only imagine what he was thinking and she became afraid of him even locked safely in the Jeep. She started the Jeep and waited. He walked up slowly up to the driver’s window and tapped on it lightly. She cracked it a bit so she could talk.

“I’m leaving you,” she said.

He smiled and laughed, “You are what? You no take the Jeep. Is mine. Why are you leave?”

“I found her number on your phone. Who is Liz?” she asked and then shouted, “Who is Liz, who the fucking fuck is Liz?”

“She my friend.”

“Then why did she hang up on me when I called? Why wouldn’t she talk to me if she is just your friend?”

“You take my phone? Why you touch my phone!”

“Fuck you! I’m leaving!” she said and put the Jeep into reverse and began to back out of the garage.

“You stop, stop now,” he began to scream seeing that she was in fact leaving this time. He began to get angry. He ran forward and kicked the driver’s side door leaving a large dent and breaking his big toe.

He, now seeing the damage to truck and feeling that to his foot, jumped on the hood of the Jeep. And he jumped up and down, up and down like a wild ape.

The girl was crying and screaming, "Get off! You are crazy! Get off! What are you doing. Leave me alone!"

The dogs in their cages were howling in terror. He kept jumping up and down on the hood and she sat frozen in terror. Her arms held tightly in front of her chest, her shoulders hunched, she watched frozen in terror.

Finally she snapped back to the moment and realized she was in fact safe in a locked vehicle. She put the vehicle in reverse backing into the dark alley and turned around with him still on the hood. Then all of a sudden, without much thought, she slammed down on the accelerator then quickly braked to scare him off the hood. Instead he fell head first in the gravel alley in front of the Jeep.

For a moment it crossed her mind. Pull forward, run him over. It was an accident. It was self defense. Kill him. Do it. She imagined his bones breaking under the tires, the blood and sounds that ran through her mind all horrified yet fascinated her.

But then in the middle of her fantasy he stood up, brushing the dust off of himself slowly. She turned on the head lights to blind him, he drew his hands to his eyes to shield them from the light. She just waited, and then he slowly, defeated, walked back into the garage as she blankly stared ahead. A few moments later the mechanical garage door could be heard shutting with him back inside and then she drove away.