The Girl in the Flammable Skirt

by Aimee Bender

  “Hello lady,” said Haggie, “wake up and talk to me.” She kept sleeping, sending out her breath to the air and pulling it back in. Private.

  It made him feel worse to be awake when there was someone else there that was asleep. The house seemed twice as big and twice as lonely. Dragging himself up, Haggie lumbered over to the bathroom. He wondered: was it possible to die simply from an absence of tempo? Sure, Mona was ruled by some kind of frenetic march, but there was no doubt that something was moving her inside—Haggie’s internal rhythms were so slow that he wondered if they counted as rhythms at all.

  Inside the bathroom, he opened up the medicine cabinet above the sink; sometimes Mona kept sleeping pills in there that she used when she was too wound up. Which was often. Holding the mirrored door, Haggie took down the tiny red-brown bottle. He read the label. Do not exceed two in six hours. Haggie spilled them out on his hand; they shimmered like miniature moons. I’m bigger than she is, besides, he thought. He took nine, his lucky number, and washed them down with a handful of water from the tap. That should do something, he thought. Because I don’t have my chair. And I’m tired, he thought again. I’m very tired and I want to sleep. He sat down on the floor of the bathroom and waited for a strange feeling to overtake him. The woman in his chair stopped snoring and the house filled with darkness and quiet.

  4.

  When he had finished exploring every knob and bump in the frame, he took in a breath and got ready to face the mirror straight on. He fiddled with the itchy gold necklace. This time would be different, in this fancy man’s mirror, this good-looking man’s looking glass. He crossed his fingers inside the chain and let his eyes shift in and focus.

  5. At the Side of the Road

  That night, I sleep in a bush. I don’t sleep very well there, but I never do, I’ve never been a good sleeper. I can’t ever get comfortable. So it’s okay; the dirt on my cheek is okay, doesn’t make any difference to me. A pillow is no better.

  I dream about my husband. I am dreaming that he is going to the refrigerator to fix himself a sandwich, my food, my bread, my self—digested then gone—and that’s when the shot rings out and that’s when I’m off, in the race, I’m off. He grabs his knee, and I’m out the door. I’m a racer, I’m so fast. In my dream, I run a lap around the world and some people in another country build a monument around my footprint.

  When I wake up, I want to walk for a long time, I think I could walk forever and never get tired. I take one of the cigarettes that man left me and smoke it, it’s been a long time since I did that, and when I stub it out in the bush, it catches on something and the bush starts to burn. Just near the bottom, but it is burning, the bush is on fire. The air is dry, sure, but it was one tiny cigarette and so I am shocked and I look at the bush burn and then I think: maybe this is something spiritual. Here, by the side of the road, just me without any money, just me wanting a new place to go, this is the time for something spiritual to happen, this is my right timing. I wait for God to speak to me.

  The flames snap and hiss.

  A couple drivers pass by and slow: Want a Ride? but I shake my head, no, and it’s not because I’m worried about rapists, I’m not. Something is about to happen here—something big. I’m going to hear what this bush has to say to me and then I’m going to walk forever by myself since I never have and because it’s a better quiet outside than it is in a car and because all I took was one puff and I set something on fire. Me. The bush keeps crackling. I wonder, what will it tell me? What is it that I need to hear? I lean in closer and listen with my whole being. I can’t tell what it’s saying. I can’t find any words, just that fire sound, the sound of cracking and bursting. I start to feel a bit panicked—what if it speaks in a different language? What would I do then? The warmth of the flames flushes my face.

  I speak English, I whisper to the bush as a reminder. Talk to me. I’m listening.

  6.

  Same ugly man.

  7. Back at Haggie and Mona’s

  At one in the morning, a key turned in the lock and Mona tiptoed into the living room. She could see the shape of the woman still there, lungs lifting and releasing. She felt a surge of pride that the runaway was alive and had stayed, and eased herself down on the couch across from the woman and unlaced her boots.

  It had been a great date. He’d been one of those men who kissed hard, trying to merge their faces. Hand at the back of her head. It was quite urgent kissing for a first date but she liked that. She left the boots by the couch, tiptoed into the bathroom and flipped on the light and there was Haggie lying on the floor, legs tucked into his chest.

  “Haggie,” she said, stopping still, “what’s going on?”

  He craned his head and looked up at her with enormous eyes.

  “I committed suicide,” he said. “But it didn’t work.”

  “What?” Mona squatted on the floor.

  “I mean,” he said, “I just wanted to sleep and sleep, sleep and sleep, so I took nine pills, nine dangerous white pills, those pills you use to sleep sometimes? I took them hours ago. Hours and hours ago. Nine of them. I’m sure of it. And I feel fine.”

  She stared at him. “Did you puke?”

  “No,” he said, “I didn’t even puke.”

  “Haggie,” she said, “are you okay?” She reached forward and felt his forehead. “You’re not feverish,” she said. She sat down next to him. “Are you okay?”

  “I think so,” he said.

  She stared at him still. He stared back. Standing up, Mona pulled the bottle down from the medicine cabinet and read the label. She looked down at him and shook her head. “Nine?” she asked, and he nodded. She kept shaking her head, placing the bottle back on the shelf and closing the door. Then she squatted down next to him again and touched his hair. Her voice was quiet. “I’m worried about you,” she said.

  “I know.” He reached up an arm to grasp the counter. “Me too.” He pulled himself up. “But still, it’s all so strange.”

  Mona grasped his elbow. “Do you need help walking?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “That’s the thing. I don’t.”

  He walked into the living room and stood against the back of the stiff sofa, facing the big window that looked out onto their small backyard. Mona followed him in.

  “She’s still here,” she whispered, pointing.

  “Did you have a good date?” Haggie looked at the woman sleeping. Her entire face was relaxed. He thought she looked beautiful.

  “Yeah,” she said, “it was really nice. He liked the boots.” Haggie smiled. “Are you going to sleep?”

  “I guess not yet,” he said, “I’m feeling pretty awake right now. I think I’ll just stay in here.”

  “Okay.” She touched his shoulder. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

  He nodded. “I’m good,” he said. “Good night, Mone. Sleep well.”

  Mona picked up her boots and pattered into her bedroom. The woman shifted in the chair. Haggie went over to her and gently rolled the chair forward until they both were in front of the window. He looked at their reflections silhouetted in the glass. She still smelled like smoke and it smelled good. He remembered Mona: what if she poisons you? and smiled. He sat on the arm of the couch and watched their undetailed shapes in the glass. Once Mona went to the bathroom. Other than that, it was perfectly still. After several hours, sunlight began to seep into the backyard, slowly opening out the flatness of the glass and revealing the grass and one tree. A dew-covered white plastic chair. An empty wooden bird feeder. He watched as their silhouettes faded from the window and dissipated into the morning.

  8.

  He started to cry, same ugly man, always: that tidal wave of disappointment. Transformation impossible. He pulled the itchy fake gold necklace off and threw it at the glass where it made an unsatisfying clink; he let out a small, ineffective spit which didn’t land on the mirror at all but instead arced down and splatted onto the fancy silver frame. The muttering man started to rub t
he spit into the frame, but as he did, the saliva seemed to remove a bit of the silver. “What?” he said out loud. He leaned forward. He rubbed more. Silver paint lifted off, thin and papery. Beneath it was scarred wood. The muttering man licked his finger and rubbed again. The paint continued to peel off. Darkened silver, iridescent black, collected under his fingernails, on the tops of his fingertips. Ignoring his face, he hunched down and kept rubbing. What do you know, he said, mutter mutter, well who would’ve thought it was a fake frame too. He rubbed the entire frame until his hands were black and it was no longer silver at all, but just a rectangle of flawed bumpy brown wood.

  Turning the mirror around, he opened up the hooks and removed the glass from the back. Then he hung the frame around his neck. “Will you look at my new necklace,” he said out loud, to the empty street. “This one doesn’t itch at all.”

  9. Mine

  I sit with the bush for a long time but it says nothing to me. It continues to burn, still mainly near the bottom. I listen harder and harder, feeling a certain despair build, wondering if it will ever reach out and talk, if ever I will understand the message meant for me, but then, just as I’m listening as hard as I possibly can, it hits me, pow, like that: of course. It is saying nothing. It’s a listening bush. It wants me to talk. My burning bush would be different, my burning bush would be like me.

  So I clear my throat and I tell it things, I talk to that bush. I don’t think I’ve ever said so many sentences in a row before, but I talk for at least an hour about myself—about me and my husband and my mother and my allergies, and sometimes I don’t know what to say and then I just describe what I see. The street is gray and paved. The ground is dry here. The sky is cloudless.

  It’s wonderful. It’s wonderful to talk like that. After a while, I’m exhausted and I think I’ve said enough. I feel great but my throat is dry and I need some water, so, thanking it over and over, I leave the burning bush by the side of the road for somebody else. And I start to walk.

  It’s hours later when hunger and fatigue hit, and I find myself in front of one house, the only house on the block without bars on its windows. That’s the one I knock at. And that’s the one that answers. It’s a nice place. It is quiet inside. Just as I’m dozing off, ready to really sleep for the first time in a long time, I think about my husband and where he is, what he’s doing. I like to think he’s limping around the house, shouting my name, sitting on the bed and looking where the mirror was and staring at the grain of the wood. I like to think he opens the refrigerator and sees me inside.

  But truthfully? Let me tell you what I honestly think.

  I think, maybe he hasn’t even noticed that I’m gone.

  But. I have.

  DRUNKEN MINI

  There was an imp that went to high school with stilts on so that no one would know he was an imp. Of course he never wore shorts.

  He bugged the girls; he had a few friends whose parents were drug addicts; he was the greatest at parties—he’d take any dare. He propositioned mothers. He told stories about airplane sex. He claimed he knew everything about women. They were all fifteen; no one dared contest that.

  One thing he didn’t know was that there was a mermaid at the school; she was a sophomore as well. She wore long skirts that swept the floor and one large boot covering her tail and she used a crutch, pretending like her second leg, which of course didn’t exist, was hurt.

  She was a quiet one, that mermaid; she excelled in oceanography class, but she also made an effort to not be too good; she didn’t want to call attention to herself. On every test she missed at least three. (What is plankton? A boat, she wrote.) She was very beautiful; hair slightly greenish which everyone attributed to chlorine. Eyes purplish which everyone attributed to drugs. The girls called her a snob. The boys shoved each other and agreed.

  The imp sat behind her in the one class they shared: English. He had a perpetual monologue of jokes going on under his breath. Did you hear the one about the square egg? he’d say to himself, laughing at the punch line before it even happened. Often, it never happened anyway. One day he reached forward and dipped a strand of her long mossy hair into his beer. He snuck beer into class, no problem. He was a clever imp. He’d poured it into a Coke can.

  What he didn’t know was that her hair had nerves; it was different than human hair; it was not dead skin; it was alive. The mermaid felt the change instantly and woozed with contentment: liquid. Lifting. Home.

  Had the imp lifted the can, he would’ve been stunned: it was so light! Where did the beer go? Had he looked closer, he might’ve seen it riding up the strands of her hair, brown droplets on a lime escalator, sucked up by that straw of a lock, foam vanishing into the mane in front of him, the mane he pictured at night floating over his small shoulders when he was in his bed, naked, eyes closed.

  Snob queen. Hair green. Mine.

  The mermaid got drunk off the beer. She had very low tolerance. There was no alcohol allowed underwater.

  That day, she exited English class swaying. The imp picked it up right away; he thought: man, she’s a party girl, too! She’s perfect! Drunken Mimi!

  He worried about taking off his clothes. He worried about her hand, grazing to his knee—what are these wooden poles doing where your shins should be? she’d ask. She’d have a puzzled look in those purpled eyes. Snob, he’d think. He worried, but still, he tracked her through the halls; the way she leaned, hard on this drunken day, was sexy. The way she trusted the crutch. He tracked her one huge boot.

  It was lunchtime. The mermaid wandered off to lie down under the orange-red bleachers. Her head felt bleary. Her hair felt alive. When she let it stray out into the dirt, her hair coughed. She put her backpack under her head and that was better.

  The imp found her there. He wasn’t sure what to say.

  Did you hear the one about the man with one leg? he began. Then he felt stupid right away. Bad choice.

  The mermaid looked up.

  Excuse me? she said.

  The imp sat down next to her, arranging his stilts.

  So, he said. A guy walks into a bar.

  She turned her head slightly toward him, but said nothing.

  He lay down next to her. The dirt was flat and fine, and he picked up a discarded cigarette butt and began digging a hole to put it in.

  The imp was nervous; he hoped no one was sitting above them, on the bleachers, eavesdropping. That tall guy? they’d say. He’s not nearly as smooth as he says he is.

  I like your hair, he said then.

  Thank you, said the mermaid. She paused. She looked at him for a long second. Then she said: You can touch it if you want to.

  Really? The imp wanted nothing more.

  Really, said the mermaid. She gave him a lip smile. Just be gentle.

  The imp left the half-buried cigarette butt and reached his hand forward to stroke down the fine green strands.

  Soft, he said.

  The mermaid shivered. Each hair delivered a tiny note of murmurings all the way down through her.

  The imp started at the root and let his hand ride the sheen all the way to the ends.

  So did you hear the one about the dead cat? he said, giggling a little.

  The mermaid didn’t answer; her eyes were closing.

  See there’s this cat, the imp began, and it gets hit by a car. And when it goes up to heaven, St. Peter asks it why he should let it into heaven.

  I know you’re an imp, said the mermaid.

  His hand paused.

  Don’t stop, she said. Please.

  How did you know, he wailed, no one knows! He pictured the police. He pictured the PA announcement. He clutched her hair for a second, inadvertently.

  Ouch, said the mermaid. Gentle please.

  Will you bust me? asked the imp.

  Of course not, said the mermaid. I like imps, she said.

  You do?

  Definitely, she said. Imps are sweet.

  Sweet? Sweet? He touched her arm.

&
nbsp; No, she said. Just the hair.

  He twitched and coughed. Stroked her hair again, slower now. Her face was starting to flush, a slow reddening.

  It’s my secret, he said. She said, I understand.

  He said, I’m not so sweet.

  Her hair was growing staticky; it clung to his fingers.

  Okay, he said, and he giggled again. Okay, he said, so the cat, the dead cat, it tells St. Peter it’s been a good cat, it brought mice to its owner for many years, said the imp.

  His legs turned in and out, the stilts brittle bones beneath his blue jeans. He kept stroking her hair. Root to end. Root to end.

  St. Peter, continued the imp, so St. Peter sends the cat to hell because it’s a killer.

  He paused, hand in the middle of her head.

  Don’t stop, she said again.

  Root to end. Hair curved around his fingers in soft coils.

  Your hair is pretty, he said.

  She was quiet. Her hair lifted off the backpack onto his hand, a cloth of pale pale green, a curtain rising.

  The imp’s hand was steady but his fingers were trembling now. Okay, he continued. So. In hell, the devil said: Catch me some mice, killer cat! I want to cook them in my stew!

  But the cat said No. It said I won’t do that for you, devil. I only kill mice for a good master; I won’t kill any mice for you.

  And poof! The cat went straight up to heaven.

  The imp giggled. He looked down at the mermaid.

  That’s it, he said. That’s the joke.

  Root to end.

  I made it up, he said.

  Her eyes were closed; her breath was faster.

  Mimi, said the imp, are you okay?

  Don’t stop, she said again, barely breathing, please, she said, keep going. He kept stroking down, watching close, what was going on?, and when her back finally curled up, breath out in puffs, he didn’t stop even then, he was steady and quiet and watching, he was root to end, until finally she reached up her hand, breathless, and grabbed his, holding on so tightly, thanking him over and over, not snobby at all, not snobby at all, thank you, thank you, until he laughed out loud in surprise. Her purple eyes were purpler and he thought he smelled flowers.