Lose yourself in Shantell Powell’s rhythmic “The T-Bone,” the newest entry to our New Voices catalog. After the narrator and her friend are in an accident on a winter night, her mind reels in shock. “Apparently trauma makes me flirt, fight, flight, freeze, fawn,” she observes. Powell’s poetic prose is a gift we all need right now.
The minivan screeches to a halt, halt, halter on the horsepower. Power to the horses, power to the people, who let the airbags pop burning dust, pockmarking my skin with lifesaving powder burns? The minivan belongs to my friend, and now it is dying. It smashed into another car and flattened its entire face. The night is slick with melting snow and the other car turned into our lane on the red, offering its belly in submission like a dog who knows it’s done wrong.
Where are my glasses? Why do my lips sting as though slapped by my father for offering sass? There was no sass, Daddy. Just a bad decision on a cold night and it’s a miracle nobody dies. Ambulance and cops here now, and I’m getting my neck and back checked by a cute paramedic named Brad.
“How does that feel?” he asks.
“Well if I knew what a good massage I’d be getting, I’d’ve plotted a car accident years ago, Brad.”
Apparently trauma makes me flirt, fight, flight, freeze, fawn. I’m fawning all over Brad. Not because I want him. Naah. It’s just that my friend is so scared and hurt and a few laughs will keep her from screaming and crying and I can’t handle the screaming and the crying, Brad. Never could.
And so I ride in the ambulance with my friend. She’s strapped onto a spinal board, her unmoving face oozing tears like salty dew. She’s lost all her color. White as a redhead’s bare butt. “Boring view, you got there,” I say. I look at Brad. “You oughta tape porn on the ceiling. It’d make for a good distraction.” My friend sniffles, and a tiny smile blooms like snowdrops on the ass-end of winter. Time to ratchet it up a notch. “You can’t get away from me now,” I say. “I’m totally gonna draw a dick on your face. Hey Brad! You got a Sharpie?”
If looks could kill, there’s an attempted murder when her teary eyes shoot me, stab me, fire away. Here comes the gasp of shock followed by a witchy cackle. “You wouldn’t dare,” she says. “You wouldn’t fucking dare.”
I waggle my eyebrows. Brad laughs. My friend laughs. I’m a livewire, and the show must go on.
Pun or no pun, I keep everyone in the emergency room in stitches. A stranger emerges from a side room to thank me for keeping him from fretting. You’re welcome, mate. Glad to oblige.
It takes a week for adrenaline and funny bone juice to calm the fuck down. When everything is peaceful and all is right in the world, BAM! Fire in the hole! Bolt for cover.
Trauma’s one helluva ride. Loud sounds make me jump like Michael Jordan. Check out my hangtime. When I’m alone, I hide beneath my desk, shaking what my momma gave me. On the road I flinch at intersections, brace for impact, flinch fight flirt flight fawn freeze. But I kept my friend from screaming and crying. She’s gonna be all right, and someday, maybe I will be, too.
Shantell Powell is an elder goth, Indigiqueer, and swamp hag who grew up on the land and off the grid in an apocalyptic cult all over Canada. An alum of The Writers’ Studio at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver Manuscript Intensive, and LET(s) Lead Academy at Yale, her writing appears in Augur Magazine, Solarpunk Magazine, The Deadlands, and more. When she’s not writing or making things, she wrangles chinchillas or gets filthy in the woods.
Find her on Mastodon at https://c.im/@Shanmonster or at her blog, Nudity is Only Skin-Deep: http://shanmonster.dreamwidth.org