Painting Their Portraits in Winter

by Myriam Gurba

  Looking at the man, she said, “I’m so very sorry for your existence.”

  She abandoned the Critiques, walked around the table, and stood next to the man. She leaned in towards his cheek. Right above his beard, she kissed him. Into his ear, she whispered, “If somebody lights you on fire for fun and you die of the burns, look for me. I will be your friend. But I cannot be your friend in your current form.” She kissed him once more and then walked away from him, the portmanteaus, “Mexikan, Mexikan’t, Mexikan…” repeating in her mind.

  The ghost was loitering al fresco. Near her, two twenty-something white women dressed in t-shirts cut to expose their armpit hair were ranting. Frustrated by the library, the ghost was taking a more anthropological route. She’d hoofed to the café across the street and stationed herself at a bistro table. She was going to sit and listen to caffeinated people talk. She was going to engage in the coffee-driven culture of the living.

  “Here, I finished reading this,” one hairy woman said to the other. She pulled a pamphlet from her burlap purse and set it on the tabletop. The other woman grabbed it. She said, “Thanks. You were right. It’s hysterical. Loved it.”

  “I knew you would. People flip out over the S.C.U.M. Manifesto but it’s, like, Valerie’s just taking misandry to a hilarious extreme. I mean, it’s an inverse of how men treat us.”

  “Yeah. Fuck men.” The man-hater took a bite of cream cheese and bean sprouts on wheat toast. “Fuck that guy who mooned me the other day.”

  “You got mooned?”

  “Yeah. I was in the parking lot at hardware store after picking up some caulk, and this guy without a shirt, he just had on short shorts and a sweatband, was jogging laps around the lot. He smiles at me, jogs in place, turns around, bends over and shows me his flat ass. I could see his pruney little ball sack dangling, begging to be chopped off.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I yelled, ‘Stay that way so I can run you over with my car!’”

  They snickered together.

  The one who hadn’t been mooned was wearing a sports bra. The fabric under her pits was toasted golden. Her pit pelt ran silky and straight.

  The ghost tugged her nightgown collar forward and peered down into her armpits. She discovered freshly sprung hairs! Maybe she was like these women. Maybe she was a man-hater, too. She thought, Maybe I oughtta snatch that pamphlet. She continued eavesdropping and felt that their conversation was way more enlightening, fun, and useful than that Kant book. She also realized that the women might not like Kant because of his first name, Immanuel.

  The woman eating the sandwich talked about getting her haircut at the mall. As she’d sat in a salon chair getting shorn, she’d lusted after her bisexual hairdresser, Genet. She told her friend, “Genet’s like a Nagel painting come to life.”

  “Meow.”

  “I wanna bend her over and show her who’s boss. Also, I caught two kids doing it in the stairwell over by Carl’s Jr. I guess the smell of charbroiled cow is an aphrodisiac for little straights.”

  “We should go hand out fliers for our consciousness raising group to the girls that hang out there, at the mall, under the clock. Otherwise, they’ll just grow up to blindly suck cock.”

  “Yeah. We oughtta get our hooks into them while they’re teenagers before they let the patriarchy fuck ’em six ways to Sunday.”

  The sports bra-wearer asked, “Do you ever feel like sometimes you laugh at men’s jokes just so they won’t kill you?”

  As the two veered into a conversation of all the things women do to placate men so that men won’t kill them, the ghost got up. It was time to hit the mall. There might be girls like her there.

  The ghost had seen the mall on her way to the café. She’d ignored it, finding its buff brick façade unappealing but the prospect of kids doing it in stairwells and hypersexualized hairdressers enticed her.

  The mall rose across the street from the library. A labyrinthine parking structure surrounded it. The ghost stomped along the pocked concrete trail that led to its ground floor. She was getting a little frustrated with how unexpectedly difficult her quest was feeling, and she floated through the glass doors. She sailed across waxed stone floors and hovered in the wide walkway between Howie’s Hoagies and Salon C’est Chic. Odors representing the two businesses dueled. Aerosol hair spray and perm solution fumes wrestled with scents of horseradish and fresh-baked bun. The result was toxic and fin de siècle. Strangely appetizing. It made the ghost hungry for a pastrami on combs.

  The ghost was about to head into C’est Chic in order to find out what a Nagel poster was, but she sensed a commotion coming from next door to Howie’s, at Tookie’s Toys. Stationed in front of Tookie’s were two men cut from the same cloth as the secret service. Thingies with curling plastic cords were jammed into their ears and sunglasses shaded their eyes so you couldn’t tell their intent. Is the president shopping at Tookie’s? thought the ghost. Is he buying a scale model of Earth so that he can improve his international diplomacy? The ghost decided to find out.

  Crap! she thought. Who is the president? She decided it didn’t matter. Floating into the store, she hovered across the Monopoly board patterned carpet. She swept to the cash register, where an employee in a red polo shirt and khaki pants stared at a man holding hands with a boy. They were browsing at a wall covered in boxed action figures.

  The man’s skin was the color of lait au café, which is eight parts milk, one squirt moo juice. His child companion wore an outfit identical to his: a long-sleeved, blue, button down shirt, black chinos, black house slippers, and white athletic socks. Their hair differed greatly. The man wore a wig that gave him a silky semi-mullet. He wore a touch of black eyeliner and pieces of white tape around his right hand’s knuckles. A few leftover wisps hung from the child’s mostly bald head. He was going through treatment for something, cancer or something like it, and the ghost’s sixth sense told her that the man was emotionally feeding off the kid’s broken-down state. His closeness to death, his fragility. The man saw himself as a fragile boy and wanted to surround himself with himself — other fragile boys. His ideal would have been to swim in a pool filled with fragile boys, but being a bajillionaire in America can’t buy you that. Maybe it can in Dubai.

  The ghost got close to the pair. She wanted to hear what the man was saying to the boy. The man turned his face to the boy. The ghost gasped at his profile. Skin, muscle, and cartilage had been sculpted and resculpted and re-resculpted and pulled and tinkered with and rearranged and messed with so many times that his face, especially his nose, was a mess. Silly putty. Also, the ghost was finding it impossible to tell his race. This ambiguity gave her a feeling of kinship with him. She dove into his head to see if she could find out why he’d done what he’d done to himself.

  Dance melodies pumped through his brain’s stereo system. Neurons shimmied to cutting edge choreography. The ghost tripped on the words sequin, boy, and Peter Pan. A biplane piloted by a chimpanzee flew through the gray matter. A banner waved behind it. It bore the phrase, Carve the race out of your face.

  “Anything you want,” the man said to the boy. “Anything.” The man squeezed the boy’s hand.

  “Okay,” the boy whispered back.

  The ghost wanted to see what words were sailing through the boy’s head. She was curious if he was playing dance music in there, too.

  She penetrated a patch of hairless scalp and heard him thinking, “I don’t want to die, but I especially don’t want to die in his bed. I do want roller skates.”

  Hmmmm, thought the ghost. Something funny is going here. Since she lacked the life experience to understand abusive sexual dynamics between men and boys, her thoughts and feelings couldn’t crystallize around her hunch. She knew, by the knot in her non-existent throat, that something weird was going on but she didn’t have a name for it.

  She felt sad for the carve-the-race-out-of-my-face man. It had taken her getting the gumption to leave the Christmas-scented place and trek
through a canyon and into a town and into its library to glean one useful piece of information, that she was Mexican. Here was a man who knew his lineage but was destroying its evidence. Maybe in death he’d wake up with amnesia, too, and because of what he’d done to his face, he’d be unable to recognize the ghost in the mirror. His ghost might have to go on an identity reconnaissance mission, too.

  The ghost turned and followed Monopoly properties back outside. She stood at the mouth of the store and stared into mall oblivion. Girls in bicycle shorts and shiny shoes laced with black ribbons ran around in herds, pointing at Tookie’s, squealing, “He’s in there! I swear to God, he’s in there!” Their bangs were ratted into claws, some into full-blown fists, and the ghost ran her hands along her silky but flat hair. I wish I could have big hair, she thought.

  The ghost floated into C’est Chic, to an empty esthetician’s station, and grabbed a hairbrush resting on a stylist’s counter. She looked at herself in the oval mirror. Following instinct, she whipped her hair forward, bent her head slightly, and ratted the hair at her bangs and temples. She flipped her hair back, looked at herself in the mirror, and ratted more, till a tumbleweed crowned her. Setting the brush on the salon chair, she grabbed a can of hairspray. She squirted half onto her bush and thought, Now, I’m up-to-date. I’ll feel less self-conscious around those girls this way.

  She and her big hair floated out of C’est Chic, but wanting to blend in with the living, her feet touched down, and she walked. She padded along the waxed floor and stopped after The Futon Shop, in front of Sticky Dogs. Oh my God, what an odor! The ghost ignored the humanity around her, the girl herds in their short shorts and crop tops getting checked out by dads, surfers, grandpas, and security guards. She ignored the mall walkers wielding hand weights. She ignored two nuns in brown habits fishing chocolate chip cookie crumbs out of the bottom of tissuey yellow sacks. Screw all of them. Deep fat fried hot dogs in corn batter were heavenly.

  The ghost stared at Sticky Dogs aquarium. Sugar swirled through its lemonade and whole lemons, lemon wedges, and ice cubes bobbed. She placed her hands against the coolness and huffed the hot dog smell. On the other side of the counter, girls dipped sausages in yellowish meal and thrust these, dripping, into fryers. The smell was too celestial, something to trade true love in for, it was so good. The ghost’s nostrils fluttered. The part of her that could still experience ecstasy went for it: an olfactory-based orgasm rattled her from the waist down. Pleasure pinged out of her big toe.

  The ghost stayed like this, sniffing cooking corn dogs, for one hour, till her invisible body was all out of smell-based orgasms. She opened her eyes to take stock of her surroundings.

  The teenage girls were gone. A blonde family was sitting down to snack near the stairs, their teeth biting into corn dog tips. Mall walkers were pushing through their sixtieth lap. A little girl with bouncy, black curls pushed a doll in a stroller towards Ayulas Pets and Pet Supplies. Her mom followed behind her. The ghost glanced right, at the tall clock lollipopping between the up and down escalators. The man haters had said that’s where the teen girls hung out, but there wasn’t anybody there. Not even escalator riders.

  The ghost flew into the air so that her feet hung an inch above the counter. She floated across this barrier, into Sticky Dogs. A white ladder leaned against the lemonade aquarium. A blonde Sticky Dogs employee holding the world’s largest swizzle stick was climbing it. Leaning over the side, she dunked in the stick and stirred. Ice cubes tapped the glass and lemons spun in circles. The blonde, corndog-eating dad stared at the Sticky Dog girl. The whole lemons in the tank made the mixture stubborn so she really had to move her whole body to do her job. Her rump jiggled in her red and yellow hot pants. Lemonade splashed onto her hip-length blue top. A conical red, blue, and yellow cap protected lemonade from her stray hairs. Watching the dad’s lap pitch a tent, the ghost’s cheeks imperceptibly reddened.

  Is that what those women at the café were talking about? she wondered. Will my body ever grow into a spectacle for corndog eaters to stare at while I try to work? She doubted it would. As a ghost, do I escape becoming an object?

  The ghost regarded the objects at the food prep station. Two wire baskets filled with lemons. Plastic bags of hot dogs. White vats holding batter. Metal fryers. Most objects here was edible. The girls working there seemed edible, too.

  The ghost floated through the wall, into and through Sticky Dogs’ stock room and wall, and out into an alley. A man wearing shorts and a short-sleeved buttondown shirt was hauling cardboard boxes down a truck ramp and stacking them near Sticky Dogs’ back door. The ghost headed up the ramp and across the truck floor to a corner. She sat, pulled her nightgown over her knees, and waited for the truck to move.

  Without any windows to show her the relationship of the sun to the moon, the ghost had no concrete way of telling time. Ghosts, however, have excellent internal clocks. She knew that it was dinnertime when the truck stopped and withering sunlight came in through the door.

  A man wheeling a dolly unloaded the last of the cardboard boxes. The place where these boxes were heading pulsed. The ghost’s sixth sense felt other ghosts, or ghostlike things, lurking nearby. She crept down the ramp, and followed the dolly-pushing man into an industrial kitchen.

  She wandered through its maze of ovens, stoves, and steel shelves stocked with pots and pans, and then pushed open swinging doors and emerged in a cafeteria. Half its lights were out. Four men and three women sat at various round tables, talking across their food trays. They sipped coffee out of Styrofoam cups. One picked at her cuticles. One was eating tater tots with his fingers. A girl in a nightgown sat at her own table. She ignored the meal on the tray in front of her. She stared down at the baby carrots brightening her plate and hardly breathed. The ghost walked to her and sat in the empty stool bolted to the floor beside hers.

  The girl did not blink. The ghost wondered, Is she dead? She reached for the girl’s wrist. Her skin felt cold and goosey. The ghost placed her invisible finger over a vein. A pulse beat.

  The ghost liked sitting with this girl dressed like her, but she wanted to talk to her, not cheat by going into her head to gobble up her identity, memories, stories and hang-ups.

  “Psst,” she whispered to the girl.

  The girl kept staring at the carrots. The girl’s hair was very thin. She lacked eyelashes. Skin swaddled her skull but lacked fat and muscle to prop up her cheeks. This made her face sag like an experienced person’s. The ghost glanced at the girl’s hands. They, too, were chicken bones. The ghost wondered if the girl had a disease that ate her fat and muscle, that might make her heart vanish, and she whispered, “Why are you here? Why are you in this place?”

  The girl stared at her baby carrots.

  The ghost frowned and floated towards two blue uniformed women mopping in a corner. They talked, their heads close to one another’s. One looked at the skeleton girl and gestured at her with her chin. The ghost listened.

  In Spanish, the woman whispered, “What kind of fool chooses not to eat? That girl, she doesn’t eat. That’s why she’s here. I’ve heard that when they take her back to her unit, a nurse sticks a tube down her nose and empties liquid into her stomach. If they don’t do that, she’ll die.”

  The other woman shook her head and muttered, “Crazy, crazy, crazy.”

  The other said, “If my daughter ever did that, I’d make her eat.” She improvised a martial arts move with the mop.

  The other woman laughed and said, “Right down her throat!”

  The ghost heard the skeleton girls’ loud thoughts, I understand you, you stupid bitches. I speak Spanish.

  Then the ghost realized, “Oh my God! So do I! I understand Spanish! I’m bilingual!”

  An orderly by the door called, “Dinner’s over. Back to the unit for group.”

  The men and women and girl stood, carried their trays to a trash can, dumped their baby carrots, hamburger crusts, leftover tots, and fruit cups, and followed the orderly
back through sterile halls. He stood in front of a wall-mounted machine and swiped a plastic card. A buzzer meeped, and he shoved open a heavy door stenciled with the words Chemical Dependency and Eating Disorders, leading the patients through windowless rooms.

  They made their way down a white corridor and into a room outfitted with two pea green couches, a table stacked with board games, a ping-pong table with paddles resting on it, and a foosball table. A gray-haired with lady with a curly reverse mullet and wearing billowing batiked clothes presided from her folding chair. Empty folding chairs formed a moon around her.

  “Welcome to group,” she said.

  The men, women, and girl chose their spots while the ghost leaned against the ping-pong table. The gray-haired woman folded her hands over one knee and announced, “Today, we’re going to do some more inner child work. We’re going to keep trying to connect with that inner child. This is that wounded child who lives inside you but she’s hurt. You’re trying to soothe her with drugs and alcohol and addictive behaviors. That person is in pain and crying. Give that child a voice, a voice that child probably never had when she was growing up. Candice, you’re first.”

  Candice tapped her espadrilled foot against the linoleum. “Pass,” she said.

  “Alright, then. Veronica.” The patients shifted and looked at their laps or stared at the girl. The leader folded her wizard sleeves across her chest and stared down the girl. Aggression emanated from the gray-haired woman. Her lips were already in that phase of life where they were stuck in a frown, but their frown turned further down. Her shoulders tightened. She repeated, “Veronica.”

  The ghost looked at the clock. 7:30. She looked back at Veronica. Veronica acted exactly as she had in the cafeteria. The patients continued looking at their laps or at Veronica’s face. The gray-haired woman stared her down. Candace tapped her toe against the linoleum. Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap. Ahem. Knuckles cracked. Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap. Nothing. No words. That is the scariest: the sensation of freefalling into communal silence. Communal frustration without a language. Tap-tap-tap.