As a child, in the aftermath of her parents’ divorce, she had a recurring dream. Beams of filtered sunlight cut through the darkened window panes of the family’s grey Toyota. The road unrolls before them like a ribbon of tar slinking through an undulating seascape of sand. Outside the car, the sky is white with platinum sunlight. The white noise of indistinguishable conversation hums in her ear. She watches as a pinprick perched on the horizon grows into windowless skyscraper of brick. The peroxide heat has blanched its walls a dusty dying pink. Cement gutters run down its sides. On the roof a black bull, all brute strength and glistening hide, runs wildly from side to side. How she, being sealed off in the back seat of the Corolla, can see the bull is unclear. But she can see it. And she sees in excruciating detail what happens next. A sleek white dove, flutters across the cement rooftop. In one violent bound, the bull gores it with its yellowing horn. And there is blood. More blood than is possible. It floods the roof and comes screaming down the gutters, flying out into the soft sand dunes. Her mother, looking straight ahead, enunciates, “That’s bullsh—”.She clips the remark mid-phrase. Each clean syllable of the half pronouncement rings out through the interior of the car. And they sit there, baking in the grey Toyota, each knowing what she had intended to say, none having the courage to finish it. And she, the girl, watches the blood burst out into the shifting slopes of the burning desert and wonders for whom the censorship was intended.
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