The Girl in the Flammable Skirt

by Aimee Bender

  PART THREE

  The Healer

  Loser

  Legacy

  Dreaming in Polish

  The Ring

  The Girl in the Flammable Skirt

  THE HEALER

  There were two mutant girls in the town: one had a hand made of fire and the other had a hand made of ice. Everyone else’s hands were normal. The girls first met in elementary school and were friends for about three weeks. Their parents were delighted; the mothers in particular spent hours on the phone describing over and over the shock of delivery day.

  I remember one afternoon, on the playground, the fire girl grabbed hold of the ice girl’s hand and—Poof—just like that, each equalized the other. Their hands dissolved into regular flesh—exit mutant, enter normal. The fire girl panicked and let go, finding that her fire reblazed right away, while the ice spun back fast around the other girl’s fingers like a cold glass turban. They grasped hands again; again, it worked. Delighted by the neat new trick, I think they even charged money to perform it for a while and made a pretty penny. Audiences loved to watch the two little girls dabbling in the elements with their tiny powerful fists.

  After a while, the ice girl said she was tired of the trick and gave it up and they stopped being friends. I’d never seen them together since but now they were both sixteen and in the same science class. I was there too; I was a senior then.

  The fire girl sat in the back row. Sparks dripped from her fingertips like sweat and fizzed on the linoleum. She looked both friendly and lonely. After school, she was most popular with the cigarette kids who found her to be the coolest of lighters.

  The ice girl sat in the front row and wore a ponytail. She kept her ice hand in her pocket but you knew it was there because it leaked. I remember when the two met, at the start of the school year, face-to-face for the first time in years, the fire girl held out her fire hand, I guess to try the trick again, but the ice girl shook her head. I’m not a shaker, she said. Those were her exact words. I could tell the fire girl felt bad. I gave her a sympathetic look but she missed it. After school let out, she passed along the brick wall, lighting cigarette after cigarette, tiny red circles in a line. She didn’t keep the smokers company; just did her duty and then walked home, alone.

  Our town was ringed by a circle of hills and because of this no one really came in and no one ever left. Only one boy made it out. He’d been very gifted at public speech and one afternoon he climbed over Old Midge, the shortest of the ring, and vanished forever. After six months or so he mailed his mother a postcard with a fish on it that said: In the Big City. Giving Speeches All Over. Love, J. She Xeroxed the postcard and gave every citizen a copy. I stuck it on the wall by my bed. I made up his speeches, regularly, on my way to school; they always involved me. Today we focus on Lisa, J.’s voice would sail out, Lisa with the two flesh hands. This is generally where I’d stop—I wasn’t sure what to add.

  During science class that fall, the fire girl burnt things with her fingers. She entered the room with a pile of dry leaves in her book bag and by the time the bell rang, there was ash all over her desk. She seemed to need to do this. It prevented some potential friendships, however, because most people were too scared to approach her. I tried but I never knew what to say. For Christmas that year I bought her a log. Here, I said, I got this for you to burn up. She started to cry. I said: Do you hate it? but she said No. She said it was a wonderful gift and from then on she remembered my name.

  I didn’t buy anything for the ice girl. What do you get an ice girl anyway? She spent most of her non-school time at the hospital, helping sick people. She was a great soother, they said. Her water had healing powers.

  What happened was the fire girl met Roy. And that’s when everything changed.

  I found them first, and it was accidental, and I told no one, so it wasn’t my fault. Roy was a boy who had no parents and lived alone. He was very rarely at school and he was a cutter. He cut things into his skin with a razor blade. I saw once; some Saturday when everyone was at a picnic and I was bored, I wandered into the boys’ bathroom and he was in there and he showed me how he carved letters into his skin. He’d spelled out OUCH on his leg. Raised and white. I put out a hand and touched it and then I walked directly home. It was hard to feel those letters. They still felt like skin.

  I don’t know exactly how the fire girl met Roy but they spent their afternoons by the base of the mountains and she would burn him. A fresh swatch of skin every day. I was on a long walk near Old Midge after school, wondering if I’d ever actually cross it, when I passed the two of them for the first time. I almost waved and called out Hi but then I saw what was going on. Her back was to me, but still I could see that she was leaning forward with one fire finger pressed against his inner elbow and his eyes were shut and he was moaning. The flames hissed and crisped on contact. She sucked in her breath, sss, and then she pulled her hand away and they both crumpled back, breathing hard. Roy had a new mark on his arm. This one did not form a letter. It swirled into itself, black and detailed, a tiny whirlpool of lines.

  I turned and walked away. My own hands were shaking. I had to force myself to leave instead of going back and watching more. I kept walking until I looped the entire town.

  All during the next month, both Roy and the fire girl looked really happy. She stopped bringing leaves into science class and started participating and Roy smiled at me in the street which had never happened before. I continued my mountain walks after school, and usually I’d see them pressed into the shade, but I never again allowed myself to stop and watch. I didn’t want to invade their privacy but it was more than that; something about watching them reminded me of quicksand, slide and pull in, as fast as that. I just took in what I could as I passed by. It always smelled a bit like barbecue, where they were. This made me hungry, which made me uncomfortable.

  It was some family, off to the base of Old Midge to go camping, that saw and told everyone.

  The fire girl is hurting people! they announced, and Roy tried to explain but his arms and thighs were pocked with fingerprint scars and it said OUCH in writing on his thigh and no one believed him, they believed the written word instead, and placed him in a foster home. I heard he started chewing glass.

  They put the fire girl in jail. She’s a danger, everyone said, she burns things, she burns people. She likes it. This was true: at the jail she grabbed the forearm of the guard with her fire fist and left a smoking tarantula handprint; he had to go to the hospital and be soothed by the ice girl.

  The whole town buzzed about the fire girl all week. They said: She’s crazy! Or: She’s primitive! I lay in my bed at night, and thought of her concentrating and leaning in to Roy. I thought of her shuddering out to the trees like a drum.

  I went to the burn ward and found the ice girl. If anyone, I thought, she might have some answers.

  She was holding her hand above a sick man in a bed with red sores all over his body, and her ice was dripping into his mouth and he looked thrilled.

  I want you to come to the jail, I said, and give her a little relief.

  The ice girl looked over at me. Who are you? she asked.

  I was annoyed. I’m in your science class, I said, Lisa.

  She gave a nod. Oh right, she said. You sit in the middle.

  I looked at the man in the hospital bed, the bliss on his face, the gloom on hers.

  This can’t be too fun for you, I said.

  She didn’t answer. Come to the jail, I said, please, she’s so unhappy, maybe you can help.

  The ice girl checked the watch on her flesh hand. The man beneath her made something close to a purring sound. If you come back in an hour, she said at last, I’ll go for a little bit.

  Thank you, I said, this is another good deed.

  She raised her slim eyebrows. I have enough good deeds, she said. It’s just that I’ve never seen the jail.

  I returned in exactly an hour, and we went over together.

  The guard a
t the jail beamed at the ice girl. My wife had cancer, he said, and you fixed her up just fine. The ice girl smiled. Her smile was small. I asked where the fire girl was and the guard pointed. Careful, he said, she’s nutso. He coughed and crossed his legs. We turned to his point, and I led the way down.

  The fire girl was at the back of her cell, burning up the fluffy inside of the mattress. She recognized me right away.

  Hi, Lisa, she said, how’s it going?

  Fine, I said. We’re on frogs now in science.

  She nodded. The ice girl stood back, looking around at the thick stone walls and the low ceiling. The room was dank and smelled moldy.

  Look who I brought, I said. Maybe she can help you.

  The fire girl looked up. Hey, she said. They exchanged a nod. It was all so formal. I was annoyed. It seems to me that in a jail, you don’t need to be that formal, you can let some things loose.

  So, wanting to be useful, I went right over to the ice girl and pulled her hand out of her pocket, against her half-protests. I held it forward, and stuck it through the bars of the cell. It was surprisingly heavy which filled me with new sympathy. It felt like a big cold rock.

  Here, I said, shaking it a little, go to it.

  The fire girl grasped the ice girl’s hand. I think we weren’t sure it would work, if the magic had worn off in junior high, but it hadn’t; as soon as they touched, the ice melted away and the fire burned out and they were just two girls holding hands through the bars of a jail. I had a hard time recognizing them this way. I looked at their faces and they looked different. It was like seeing a movie star nude, no makeup, eyes small and blinking.

  The fire girl started to shiver and she closed her eyes. She held on hard.

  It’s so much quieter like this, she murmured.

  The other girl winced. Not for me, she said. Her face was beginning to flush a little.

  The fire girl opened her eyes. No, she said, nodding, of course. It would be different for you.

  I clasped my own hands together. I felt tepid. I felt out of my league.

  I don’t suppose I can hold your hand all day, the fire girl said in a low voice.

  The ice girl shook her head. I have to be at the hospital, she said, I need my hand. She seemed uncomfortable. Her face was getting redder. She held on a second longer. I need my hand, she said. She let go.

  The fire girl hung her head. Her hand blazed up in a second, twirling into turrets. I pictured her at the mountains again—that ribbon of pleasure, tasting Roy with her fingertips.

  Ice whirled back around the other girl’s hand. She stepped back, and the color emptied out of her face.

  It’s awful, the fire girl said, shaking her wrist, sending sparks flying, starting to pace her cell. I want to burn everything. I want to burn everything. She gripped the iron frame of the cot until it glowed red under her palm. Do you understand? she said, it’s all I think about.

  We could cut it off, said the ice girl then.

  We both stared at her.

  Are you kidding? I said, you can’t cut off the fire hand, it’s a beautiful thing, it’s a wonderful thing—

  But the fire girl had released the bed and was up against the bars. Do you think it would work? she said. Do you think that would do something?

  The ice girl shrugged. I don’t know, she said, but it might be worth a try.

  I wanted to give a protest here but I was no speechwriter; the speechwriter had left town forever and taken all the good speeches with him. I kept beginning sentences and dropping them off. Finally, they sent me out to find a knife. I don’t know what they talked about while I was gone. I wasn’t sure where to go so I just ran home, grabbed a huge sharp knife from the kitchen, and ran back. In ten minutes I was in the cell again, out of breath, the wooden knife handle tucked into my belt like a sword.

  The fire girl was amazed. You’re fast, she said. I felt flattered. I thought maybe I could be the fast girl. I was busy for a second renaming myself Atalanta when I looked over and saw how nervous and scared she was.

  Don’t do this, I said, you’ll miss it.

  But she’d already reached over and grabbed the knife and was pacing her cell again, flicking sparks onto the wall. She spoke mainly to herself. It would all be so much easier, she said.

  The ice girl had no expression. I’ll stay, she said, tightening her ponytail, in case you need healing. I wanted to kick her. There was a horrible ache growing in my stomach.

  The fire girl took a deep breath. Then, kneeling down, she laid her hand, leaping with flames, on the stone jail floor and slammed the knife down right where the flesh of her wrist began. After sawing for a minute, she let out a shout and the hand separated and she ran over to the ice girl who put her healing bulb directly on the wound.

  Tears streaked down the fire girl’s face and she shifted her weight from foot to foot. The cut-off hand was hidden in a cloud of smoke on the floor. The ice girl leaned in, her soother face intent, but something strange was happening. The ice bulb wasn’t working. There was no ice at all. The ice girl found herself with just a regular flesh hand, clasping the sawed-off tuber of a wrist. Equalized and normal. The fire girl looked down in horror.

  Oh, pleaded the fire girl, never let go, please, don’t, please, but it was too late. Her wrist had already been released to the air.

  The fire girl’s arm blazed up to the elbow. It was a bigger blaze now, a looser one, a less dexterous flame with no fingers to guide it. Oh no, she cried, trying to shake it off, oh no. The ice girl was silent, holding her hand as it reiced in her flesh palm, turning it slowly, numbing up. I was twisting in the corner, the ache in my stomach fading, trying to think of the right thing to say. But her body was now twice as burning and twice as loud and twice as powerful and twice everything. I still thought it was beautiful, but I was just an observer. The ice girl slipped silently down the hallway and I only stayed for a few more minutes. It was too hard to see. The fire girl started slamming her arm against the brick wall. When I left, she was sitting down with her chopped-off hand, burning it to pieces, one finger at a time.

  They let her out a week later, but they made her strap her arm to a metal bucket of ice. The ice girl even dripped a few drops into it, to make it especially potent. The bucket would heat up on occasion but her arm apparently quieted. I didn’t go to see her on the day she got out; I stayed at home. I felt responsible and ashamed: it was me who’d brought the ice girl to the jail, I’d fetched the knife, and worst, I was still so relieved it hadn’t worked. Instead, I sat in my room at home that day and thought about J. in the Big City. He didn’t give speeches about me anymore. Now we stood together in the middle of a busy street, dodging whizzing cars, and I’d pull him tight to me and begin to learn his skin.

  All sorts of stories passed through the town about the fire girl on her day of release: She was covered in ash! She was all fire with one flesh hand! My personal favorite was that even her teeth were little flaming squares. The truth was, she found a shack in the back of town by the mountains, a shack made of metal, and she set up a home there.

  The funny thing is what happened to the ice girl after all of it. She quit her job at the hospital, and she split. I thought I’d leave, I thought the fire girl would leave, but it was the ice girl who left. I passed her on the street the day before.

  How are you doing, I said, how is the hospital?

  She turned away from me, still couldn’t look me in the eye. Everyone is sick in the hospital, she said. She stood there and I waited for her to continue. Do you realize, she said, that if I cut off my arm, my entire body might freeze?

  Wow, I said. Think of all the people you could cure. I couldn’t help it. I was still mad at her for suggesting the knife at all.

  Yeah, she said, eyes flicking over to me for a second, think of that.

  I watched her. I was remembering her face in the jail, waiting to see what would happen when the fire hand was removed. Hoping, I suppose, for a different outcome. I put my hands in my p
ockets. I guess I never told you, she said, but I feel nothing. I just feel ice.

  I nodded. I wasn’t surprised.

  She turned a bit. I’m off now, she said, bye.

  When the town discovered she had disappeared, there was a big uproar, and everybody blamed the fire girl. They thought she’d burned her up or something. The fire girl who never left her metal shack, sitting in her living room, her arm in that bucket. The whole town blamed her until a hungry nurse opened the hospital freezer and found one thousand Dixie cups filled with magic ice. They knew it was her ice because as soon as they brought a cup to a stroke patient, he improved and went home in two days. No one could figure it out, why the ice girl had left, but they stopped blaming the fire girl. Instead, they had an auction for the ice cups. People mortgaged their houses for one little cup; just in case, even if everyone was healthy; just in case. This was a good thing to hoard in your freezer.

  The ones who didn’t get a cup went to the fire girl. When they were troubled, or lonely, or in pain, they went to see her. If they were lucky, she’d remove her blazing arm from the ice bucket and gently touch their faces with the point of her wrist. The burns healed slowly, leaving marks on their cheeks. There was a whole group of scar people who walked around town now. I asked them: Does it hurt? And the scar people nodded, yes. But it felt somehow wonderful, they said. For one long second, it felt like the world was holding them close.

  LOSER

  Once there was an orphan who had a knack for finding lost things. Both his parents had been killed when he was eight years old—they were swimming in the ocean when it turned wild with waves, and each had tried to save the other from drowning. The boy woke up from a nap, on the sand, alone. After the tragedy, the community adopted and raised him, and a few years after the deaths of his parents, he began to have a sense of objects even when they weren’t visible. This ability continued growing in power through his teens and by his twenties, he was able to actually sniff out lost sunglasses, keys, contact lenses and sweaters.