The Tenth Girl

by Sara Faring

  Gisella: Born to a serial philanderer of the Argentine intelligentsia and his third wife, who had an affair with his editor, resulting in a high-profile separation, her nervous breakdown, and her relocation to Switzerland. Gisella has not celebrated a birthday or holiday with her family since she was five years old, and after the arrest of her father, she will not ever again.

  Diana: The daughter of a general who recently faced scandal for embezzlement and the public abuse of his wife, a former actress with bipolar disorder. The mother took to the streets with Diana, living in a roach-infested hostel for several weeks, before being found and committed. Diana weighed a skeletal twenty-two kilos when found, versus the average forty. Her mother has not been seen since, and her father placed her in our care before possibly fleeing to Uruguay.

  It is too grotesque to fathom.

  Silvina: Her prominent German-Argentine family housed escaping Nazis in the forties before discovering the matriarch was from half-Jewish stock. She starved herself to death, dying from heart failure in their family home in Recoleta when Silvina was six. More recently, her father, an infamous lawyer, has been accused by the military government of pursuing the release of criminals of the state.

  Michelle: After the disappearance of her parents, two members of the wealthy bohemian socialist set, Michelle was orphaned and began living with her aunt, who eagerly awaits each child-support check but provides little care for her. A lawyer noticed Michelle was living in a poorly ventilated and unheated attic and arranged for her to be sent to the school.

  Mariella, she of the yacht in Sardinia: Subjected to systematic physical abuse by her stepfather and shuttled from school to school by her mother as a form of escape. Her mother refuses to acknowledge the abuse outright and leave her husband, an arms dealer with ties to the current military government.

  They are all special girls. Special in that they have been damaged by the same world that seemed to grant them tremendous luck at birth. They were all sent here, to the boondocks across the ice, to hide. To hide and be safe, like me.

  It makes me pity the girls, and to my dismay, the pity begins to caramelize into something like bittersweet affection.

  Luciana: Beloved and outspoken author mother sick with ovarian cancer—her estranged military-supporting father and much-older brothers sent Luciana off, unwilling to keep her around while the mother (primary caretaker) goes through treatment abroad.

  I remember how Luciana’s skin has looked splotchy, her shoulders drooped; a weight grows inside me. An all-too-familiar weight—guilt. I overlooked the girls trying to make Luciana laugh in class—never considered she might soon be motherless, too. It is a strange type of solitude, when your family anchor rusts and breaks apart, setting you adrift.

  I’m heading over to lunch after collecting my papers the next day when I find the group of girls huddled by the front door of the main building, where I fell asleep before my warm welcome. I hear soft crying and cooing and hurry toward them to see what’s happened. They’re all present but Sara, who is ill with some form of cold.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask. I know it is the mother’s illness I read about; I can see from the corner of my eye that Luciana is crying with Isabella’s head on her shoulder. Michelle wipes at Luciana’s cheeks.

  “It’s nothing, Miss,” says Mariella, crossing her arms in front of her chest with a flare of the eyes. Her feistiness, the result of fending off an evil stepfather.

  Michelle whispers to Luciana. There is wordless conferring among the group—exchanged glances, indistinct shrugs.

  “It’s that Luciana’s mother is sick,” Michelle says, tugging at the corners of her Peter Pan collar. “They’re very close.” The girls watch me from the corners of their eyes, lowering their heads. Jaws hard. Picking at cuticles.

  “May I speak with Luciana?” I ask, parting the group. Mariella raises a brow. The others settle back. Luciana regards me with tear-filled eyes.

  “I’m so sorry this happened,” I say, sitting next to her on the steps.

  Mariella snorts, brushing a ball of lint from her skirt hem.

  “Really? You’re not going to tell me it’s all going to be fine?” Luciana asks, choking back tears. “You’re not going to tell me to keep my chin up? You’re not going to tell me that this happens to everyone eventually?”

  I hesitate. Because ever since I lost my mother, I have never wanted to hear that life would get better, even though I know it likely will. I never wanted to hear that I should have faith or use the power of prayer to help myself and not wallow in self-pity. I wanted someone to echo what I was feeling—or, at the very least, to truly hear it—so that I would feel less isolated in my devastation.

  So I shake my head. “No. I won’t.” I hold her eyes, unflinching, until she buries her head in my shoulder. I choke down the shock and rush of sympathy.

  “We’re here. Understand?” I wrap my arms around her. We speak for some time, in a group. I don’t have a solution, a quick fix—I couldn’t. I’ve never even been able to grieve my mother properly, because some part of me maintains hope she survives. But for once, I feel like time’s effect can be predicted.

  Mariella sidles up to me as we stroll to lunch. “You did good for once,” she says, nudging me in the side before hurrying on to catch up with Gisella.

  I walk on with Luciana, who holds my hand tight and whispers, “I’m sorry I called you an impoverished backcountry orphan, Miss Quercia,” before blushing and looking ahead at the other girls. I squeeze her hand and smile. If it weren’t for her earnestness, I might have burst out in a laugh.

  * * *

  But not every day runs as smoothly. One day at dusk, I go down to my cottage to find a misplaced assignment, and I hear a series of bone-crunching thuds in the alleyway behind the structure, as if thugs are pummeling someone. I run out to find Michelle, her doll body limp in a corner behind a trash bin, her mouth and knees bloodied, as if she fell from a great height. I lift her up into my arms—either she’s featherlight or I’m stronger than I think—and run her to Mole.

  In the makeshift nurse’s office, Mole uses smelling salts to bring her back and checks her eyes for a concussion.

  “You were lucky Miss Quercia found you, Michelle,” Mole says. She looks at me and readjusts her glasses on her bridge. “She might have been out there unconscious for hours.”

  As Mole bandages up Michelle’s superficial wounds, we ask Michelle why she was running around before dinner.

  “I wanted to ask Miss Quercia a question,” she says. “And something pushed me, and—”

  Mole stops her. “Pushed you? Who pushed you, dear?”

  “I don’t know,” she replies, face turning crimson. “I didn’t see anyone.”

  I feel like Michelle is lying—lying to protect someone or to protect herself from scorn. But Mole clucks with her tongue, scrambling my thoughts. “Well, get some rest.”

  I sidle up to Michelle when Mole turns her back to rummage through a dusty cabinet for a painkiller. “Are you sleeping well?” I ask her. My nights at Vaccaro School are a singular misery no other adult in the house claims to share.

  “No,” she says. “But I never have. I have strange dreams about my parents sometimes.” They’ve died, the two of them—I know that from the file. She studies me with her cherubically round face and her familiar eyes, ringed in deep blue. She lifts her chin to the side, inspecting me further.

  “What is it?” I ask, skimming my cheek, as if there are crumbs there. I feel a shiver pass through me. I’m meant to care about this girl; why else would God have made her look this way?

  “You saved her life,” Mole says as Michelle shuts her eyes. “You’re a regular guardian angel.”

  If only she knew why Michelle’s face perturbs me so. “Oh, please.”

  We leave her to rest in the cot, and Mole accompanies me to the door.

  “Her aunt’s a vile woman, I’ve heard,” she mutters, confirming what I read. “Were it not for the inheritan
ce in a sealed trust, she would’ve been dumped somewhere already.”

  “Don’t say that.” I glance back at Michelle, whose chest rises and falls beneath the graying lilac blanket.

  Mole rests a swan-white wrinkled hand on my forearm. “You mustn’t get too attached,” she whispers. “They’re so different from us.”

  I don’t think to ask her what she means—though I gather she’s referring to our class difference. My first reaction is nothing but simmering frustration. I’ve begun to feel entitled to care for these little girls. Heaven knows how it happened, but I feel it is my duty to protect them, perhaps Michelle most of all.

  I invite Michelle to share tea with me and Yesi that evening after dinner, as Mole decides to read magazines in her room alone. We figure we can still get away with it—Morency assuming Mole is involved. We all dress in our pajamas—mine a blue pair liberated from Yesi, which belonged to her grandmother, two sizes larger than her own—and drop into the plush chairs by the sitting room fire. Yesi reads me and Michelle excerpts from a travelogue in exaggerated voices until tears stream down our faces.

  The door to the sitting room creaks open around nine. The cold returns—a chilly draft that sinks into exposed strips of our skin.

  Yesi looks at me. “Close the door, would you, Swamp?”

  I press the door closed, only to be pushed back into the room by it. I see skirts, flaring black, before—

  “Where is Dr. Molina?” asks Morency, a tower of black, as she crosses her arms.

  Yesi stands to attention on instinct, while Michelle falls back into her chair, as if to melt into the soft leather.

  “This is wholly inappropriate.” In two strides, Morency reaches Michelle. “You have abused your privileges. You should be ashamed, keeping a student out this late, what with girls getting lost at night. Must I truly patrol the house, ensuring everyone is safely in bed?”

  My eyes flick upward to catch a shadow of concern pass over Morency’s face. “Girls have been getting lost?” I think of Michelle falling behind the garbage.

  She frowns and plucks Michelle’s hand from her side, ripping her from her seat. “And in pajamas. To bed. All of you. Now.” She jerks Michelle toward the door. “Michelle. Now.”

  Michelle’s knees wobble. “Can’t Mavi and Yesi escort me to bed?”

  “How dare you refer to them with such informality.” Morency’s free hand curls into a fist. “They are your teachers, and you are their student. Never forget this.”

  She tugs on Michelle, who looks back at us with watering eyes before vanishing into the dark hall. Yesi and I silently replace the books on the shelves and wipe down the rings of tea made by the mugs on the wooden side table. How can Morency behave with such harshness toward us for trying to bond? Wasn’t that the intention of her giving me an envelope of the girls’ secrets—to better connect me with them? We hurry toward the staff hall, and Yesi links her arm through mine.

  “I hate her,” she says aloud.

  I understand: I, too, feel like a pest to be swept away by the broom of Morency’s skirts.

  “She treats us like children.”

  “Worse.” I squeeze her arm. “But it can’t be easy single-handedly protecting us from the evil of the house, and all that.”

  Yesi laughs, her blue eyes flat as coins.

  “I wonder who was lost,” I add. “What could that even mean?”

  “It means some of the girls have gone hunting for the dark prince again in a desperate effort for entertainment. Don’t you remember being that age? Wandering around, baiting dangerously complex older boys, hoping they’ll even look your way?”

  I blow the air from my mouth. “Not really.”

  She bursts out with another laugh, this one authentic. “Me neither, Swamp.”

  Smiling, I look ahead. Were it not for Morency, it would have been a perfect evening, the kind to make you believe in the potential for sweet dreams. We weave our way to the staff hallway as I think about what I’ll choose from the breakfast buffet tomorrow. The scrambled eggs have been a touch overcooked lately, and the absurdity of the thought makes me laugh. The crepes continue to hold their own.

  Yesi grips my arm. “Who is that?”

  I look down the hall and see only darkness. “Who?”

  “Lamb?” She tightens her hold.

  But I’ve noticed now: It is a man’s figure. He stands a head taller than me, his slow approach menacing.

  “He doesn’t look familiar,” I whisper to her. His gait is both hesitant and malignant in its disjointed looseness.

  “Oh, hush,” she whispers back, tugging me closer still. “Must be kitchen staff.”

  I can’t make out a single feature. The hallway narrows, and I graze a miniature chair, tripping to the ground and pulling Yesi with me. The shadow rushes forward.

  “Fuck,” it says, hoarse. Breathless.

  I take the outstretched hand: Dom. His hand singes mine where they meet.

  “Jesus, Domenico, you scared Mavi,” says Yesi, brushing herself off. I shoot her a look. “And curse a little more loudly, I think Buenos Aires didn’t hear you.”

  “I scared you?” There’s no sarcasm in his voice, only surprise tinged with concern. As if I’m some kind of superwoman. Yet he’s still holding my hand. Cautiously, carefully, not so much as something wounded, but as something that might disappear. His hands are warm to the touch, too warm. They send a strange and invigorating charge through me—I cannot help but think, over and over, how different he feels now from the first time we touched, at the very first breakfast. His fingers were made of ice then.

  He stares at me, and I feel naked. He lets go of my hand to right the chair, glancing at me with a suppressed cheekiness as if to say, The chair is the only victim of a fright here. “Are you hurt?”

  “No. Of course not. But what are you doing so far from your room?” I say before I realize it sounds like I’m nagging an owner of the house. “Not that it matters,” I add, fussing with my hair.

  “I’ve noticed something,” he says, fighting a grin. “Every time you tug on your hair, you’re lying.”

  My hand freezes. I can feel two sets of blue eyes on me: amused in different capacities.

  “But to answer your question, I’m only exploring,” he tells me.

  “That’s just lovely,” says Yesi, pulling me forward with her. “Speaking of exploration, we’re off to our beds like two good little teachers, to explore the riveting world of the subconscious. Right, Swamp? Right.”

  “Sleep well, Swamp Thing,” replies Domenico, walking away from us.

  “You are so incomprehensibly screwed,” whispers Yesi, ferrying me onward. I turn back to see one of his hands raised in farewell.

  * * *

  This house, with its shrinking rooms and meandering halls, with its wild fog—none of it feels quite real most of the time. It’s as if the house constructs an elaborate fairy tale for each of us—a gothic mystery for Yesi, a bildungsroman for the girls, a strange sort of romance for me … warping our perceptions to better suit its private fantasies. I’m ashamed to admit it, but only during my time with Dom do I feel clearheaded. Awake. We have a rhythm, now, in the house, and only he rips me from its lulling embrace.

  What will come of it?

  I’m suddenly conscious of the winding, circuitous path my blood takes through my veins and arteries. I look down at my hands, and my nails are still bitten down to the nubs, plus a touch swollen and dirty around the beds—the humanity of that reassures me. If they looked perfectly clean and polished, too, I might think I’m in the throes of a hallucinogenic drug.

  10

  ANGEL: 2020–1000

  Sometimes inside him I shake like I’ve been dipped naked in icy waters.

  Not because I’m scared of what I’ve done, nor because I fear losing control of this Greek god of a flesh machine.

  It’s because I’m so powerful, and strength is a singular type of beauty I always felt too removed from to understand.
>
  I feel the energy coursing through his veins, blood powering ropy muscles I never once acknowledged in the old world. I couldn’t even tell you if my old body was ever in possession of these muscles, this cartilage, these ligaments—there’s a length to this body that’s impossible to render familiar but instinctively embraced, if that even makes sense. I’ve absorbed an extension of myself, effortlessly. Like a concert pianist nailing a ridiculous chord during one practice, as if by magic. I’ve broadened my handspan on the cosmic keys, my footprint on the sand of the new world, in more ways than I can understand.

  I can do more than see as he sees. I can smell as he smells—skunkiness, musk—and taste as he tastes. His heart beats faster, and it’s my heart, beating for me.

  I explore myself.

  The stretches of flesh I thought would scandalize me like a little kid finding a dad’s Playboy … don’t. It could be the nerve endings, tingling and bright, all for me. I take hold of a forearm, an ankle, anything handle-like, and it blushes red or chills blue-white under fingertips of pressure. Mine.

  Everyone should have the privilege to experience this before they die. Or after, as it happens.

  When I try to speak at first, even to clap my hands, I feel a bit slow—I’m the accident survivor, coaxing every inch into understanding the PT specialist’s instructions. I’m the baby dumped in the pool for the first time, flailing and agape. The actions follow the commands in inconsistent waves.

  But pretty soon, I come to my feet easily enough, a crescendo of muscular dominoes.

  I explore the house.

  I need to see every corner of the house now, in my new body; I need to talk to everyone, in my new body; it’s like Christmas Day for good Christian kids, and yes, I’m not oblivious to the legitimately absurd creepiness of treating a body like a gift from merry old Santa Claus.

  I imbue Dom with my intentions—take this hall, wrench open this door. I’m not sure if that’s how it works, if mindfulness plays a part in this. At first, I wander the halls, jerking around like an idiot playing a zombie in a haunted house. I find a cabinet full of sliced bread and eat a slice mindlessly, mouth barely closing around the doughy hunk—jaws misaligning so that I worry I’m going to bite my tongue off.