Living Dead Girl

by Elizabeth Scott

  Inside my bruised chest my heart beats a fluttering song, tiny notes but still there because I didn’t tell Ray the truth and he believed me.

  Make his dinner, the corn gets into the potatoes and I have to apologize for that for a long time. My jaw is tired afterward, aching from being forced open, and my head hurts from where he grabbed it, clutching, and he turns to me when the lights are out and we are tucked into my pink bed, but I listen to my heart singing its tiny song and wonder.

  36

  THIS IS THE SONG:

  I lied, and he didn’t know it.

  I lied, and he didn’t know it.

  I lied, and he didn’t know it.

  Ray doesn’t know everything.

  37

  MORNING AGAIN, ALWAYS MORNING again, always another day, and I actually eat breakfast with lunch, one yogurt, two, I am so lost in dreaming.

  I hadn’t known I could still do that, thought my head only painted pictures of things that had blurred around the edges; those first few weeks with Ray or strange, faraway glimpses of that once upon a time girl and her happy, silly, stupid life.

  But I am dreaming, and I even have a plan. I know from talk shows and soap operas, my school, that plans have to be simple. I can’t depend on one moment for everything, can’t expect that Ray won’t be thinking of things I could do and planning ahead himself.

  I will get him Annabel. I will go to the park, talk to Jake, and Ray will take her. He will show her what she must do, what happens if you don’t listen, don’t behave.

  Then, when he is ready to go, I’ll be gone. I will do more than talk to Jake. I will do whatever he wants and then open the door, piece of broken sidewalk in my hand, crack smack him down to sleep. Lay him out on the ground to dream.

  I will take his car. I’ve never driven before but I’ve seen Ray do it, seen people on TV do it, and I will get the key. The car will have gas in it, and Jake will have money—he must have money or a credit card, everyone on TV has one—and I will go. Jake on the ground, waiting to be found, bet Ray will find him first.

  But I will be gone.

  I will be gone, and Ray will have to decide. New Annabel, so smooth and young, with a body that does not have to be tamed into a straight line—or me.

  Little baby girl, with so much to learn, or me?

  He will pick her, better and newer, and I will drive. I remember 623 Daisy Lane, located in Harbor View. Four hours from here, Ray says, has always said, and I can do that. Go there.

  I will go there, tell them they have to leave. That they are not safe. I will see … I will see them. I will make sure they are all right and that they go, and they will want …

  They will not want me with them. I can’t even get a blurry picture of that in my head, can’t see them reaching toward me when I am covered with Ray, so full of him I’m empty. But they will go and I will …

  I don’t know. Hide, definitely. Burn down 623 Daisy Lane after they leave and wait for the police.

  Yes. Ray will not come for me if the police have me. If they have me, he won’t be able to get me. I will be in jail. I will stay in until I am old, twenty-five, thirty, eat all I can and hope I swell up, push out into breasts and hips and belly like his mother’s wide white girth.

  Then, if he comes, he will not want me. I will be safe.

  I am usually a husk, rattling through each day, but now I … I feel. I feel smart. I feel … I feel good. The sensation is strange, tiny stabs of something like pain but not, like … like when Ray is tired from work and falls asleep on the sofa and I get to curl into myself for a whole evening.

  Those nights, legs arms chest feet thighs and everything over and around and under and between—all mine— those nights almost shine. I feel dizzy at that, the thought of my skin not his but mine, and my body, my hollow shell, directed by my hands. Forever and ever, mine.

  My body coming together and taking me away.

  I do not care about Storm, even though today is the day she finds out if the doctor she destroyed can save her baby. Ray said I should go to the park and talk to Jake, ask about Annabel, get images to paint him a picture of her flushed skin, her tiny tired legs and arms tucked into bed, little girl needing care.

  “Make sure to find out when she’ll be back,” he said. “Make sure.”

  I nodded, already knowing what the answer would be, she will be there tomorrow, oh yes, she will, and I get to the park extra early, before any children arrive. Sun on my face and I wiggle my toes back and forth in my shoes, eager.

  Yes I worry about what I will say to Jake, has to be words today, has to be, Ray will be watching, but words are just letters, right? A. L. I. C. E. Put them together, pull them apart, make new ones. I can do that, have to do that.

  Can do that for legs arms stomach back chest elbows knees of mine to be all mine.

  Lucy, now Annabel, comes in, little red backpack. She was going to toss it on the ground, but stops when she sees me.

  Look at her. Little girl, Ray will want her, and I will be alone, my skin my own. Thought washing over me again and again, joy.

  “You’re crying,” she says. Not a question, no wondering why, and I touch my face. It is wet, the skin on my cheeks tightening as it dries. Like it will crack if I open my mouth.

  “You don’t cry?” I ask her, and my skin stays in place. If she doesn’t, Ray will take her and never look back, forget all about me. I didn’t cry either. Not until I met him.

  She shrugs. “No. Jake says only babies cry and I’m not a baby even though he says I am.”

  “Babies are little.”

  She looks at me like I’m stupid. “Right. And I’m not. I can touch the sky when I swing. I can go that high.”

  I nod. Touch fingers to my face, still wet, so glad it will be her, not me, that I’m overflowing.

  “You should stop crying,” she says, her little face frowning, and then she pats my knee. Her hands are tiny. “You aren’t a baby anymore.”

  “No,” I say, but my voice is a little girl cry, soft and weak. Ray has taught me only one way to speak. “I’m not.”

  I watch her swing, this little girl who I will help Ray take, who will learn she is a baby, helpless as one and born into a place where she cannot grow, where she must stay as she is now even though her body will try to change.

  Ray will hurt her. Pain and tears soothed with ice cream and threats. Maybe she will try to run too, wake up and race for the world only to end up on the side of the road like me, the world turning into a blur that ends only when she wakes up naked and bloody and broken. Reborn.

  Better her than me.

  “Hello again,” Barbara says, leaning into where I’m looking, following my eyes to the little girl on a swing, feet pointed toes-up at the sky. Enjoy it while you can, Annabel. “You know her?”

  I shake my head.

  “I saw you talking to her. She’s good on the swings, isn’t she? Are you taking her somewhere later?”

  I shake my head no and I am not, not really. Ray will. I will just help.

  “You sure?”

  “Where would I take her?”

  Barbara shrugs. “Just asking. You … you’ve been crying, you know. Sometimes people have—they have thoughts and they know they’re wrong, so they feel bad and—”

  I laugh because what Ray does is not thought. It is action, creation, destruction; a whole word that he rules. Five years have not been full of thoughts. They have been full of him making and unmaking me whenever he wants.

  “You think that’s funny?” Barbara’s voice has gone hard, angry edge like Ray’s when his eyes aren’t gleaming but disappointed. Little girl full of lies how could you? After all I’ve done for you. I rub the bruise on my chest, stiff sore muscles cramp, and scream without sound, my mouth closed, my face still. I’m good at doing that.

  I’m used to it.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, hunching into myself, she is not Ray but she is angry, and if she gets angry and takes me away, no one at 623 Daisy Lan
e will be all right. “I don’t—I’m just sitting here. I just want to be left alone.”

  “Oh,” Barbara says, different voice now, softer, and sits down next to me on the bench. “Did you used to be like her, the girl on the swings? Maybe once upon a time? And then maybe your parents—”

  Bitter taste in my mouth, like Ray’s skin shoving into me—take it, Alice, take it, open wide, that’s my girl—and I lean forward, staring down at the ground. Once upon a time was a long time ago and that girl is gone forever.

  “I was never like her.”

  Barbara crosses her legs at the ankles. Her shoes are black, her feet small. “You hungry?”

  I sit up because I am, I always am, and she says, “Here,” and hands me a sandwich. It is in a plastic bag, and it is big, two huge slices of bread, lots of meat, and not one but two slices of cheese. My stomach cramps so hard my vision spots, and my hands shake when I take it.

  “You still have the card I gave you?” Barbara asks as I’m eating and I nod, closing my eyes, pretty sandwich with salty cheese and slippery ham and cottony bread, so light in my mouth. I could eat these forever, until the world ended and beyond.

  “You live around here?”

  I swallow, think about Ray watching the door with a knife at my throat. This is what he didn’t want, doesn’t want, and I could tell her everything—I live with a man who says he’s my father but isn’t my name is Alice but it really isn’t five years ago once upon a time I died and now I am here and take me home to 623 Daisy Lane please.

  Ray would know. I wouldn’t come home and he’d know and leave and 623 Daisy Lane would disappear, the whole house burned and everyone inside dead while the police checked to make sure I was real and they would never find him and when they told me I was safe—and I will never be safe—he’d find me and I’d be a lying woman then.

  And I know what he does to them.

  “I live over in South Estates,” I say, naming an apartment complex at the far end of the other bus line, the one I never ride on. I see ads for it, though, red brick building in pictures on bus stop benches.

  “And you come out here to get away?”

  I nod.

  “Will you be here tomorrow?”

  I nod again, Ray’s fury when I tell him, and I will have to tell him, choking my throat so tight I can hardly breathe.

  “Good,” she says. “See you then.”

  38

  I DON’T KNOW HOW ANNABEL CAN STAY on the swings so long. Ray, right after we moved here, took me to a playground near Shady Pines. I’d expected it to be like the apartment, saggy and old, the grass beaten down and sparkling with shattered glass.

  But it was gorgeous. Everything was new and shiny and sturdy, glinting in the sun. A woman who spotted the two of us standing there, Ray telling me to go play and me looking at him, checking to see if it was a test, sure it was because that’s what Ray did when we first moved here, tested me all the time, said the city had just donated it.

  “I hope it looks like this for more than a week,” she said, and Ray laughed and I cringed, the shiny metal too new for me. The kids around it, on it, not like me. I was still brand new, but even then I understood they were not like me. They were a test, and one I had to pass. My heart wasn’t as hollow then, still beat with soft thumps of hope.

  Even so, I didn’t swing, and the playground got taken over by taller kids, ones who sat on the swings and smoked and did things under the slides, and if we drove by and saw them Ray never slowed down to look. Was always proud of me for not looking either.

  As if I wanted to see. I know what everyone is capable of, the ooze inside. And those kids’ embraces just reminded me of what waited for me. What always waited for me.

  Ray never looked for playgrounds after that one time. He didn’t need them, he said, wasn’t like those sweaty-eyed perverts lurking around, hoping to glimpse a flash of child flesh, bend of an elbow, piece of thigh.

  “Sickos,” he said. “They just want to look. They don’t want to take care of someone. Aren’t capable of it. Don’t know what love really is.” Wrinkled his face, shaking his head. “I feel sorry for them. Don’t you?”

  Hot hand on my head, blessing curse. Love, Ray would say. My special love for my special girl.

  Red-faced, pushing, eyes closing, flying open to look at me, oh Alice, oh Alice, my girl.

  I look away from Annabel kicking her feet up into the sky and watch the grass under my feet. Once, on a talk show, this death expert said it’s everything underground that makes grass so green. That dead things make the living.

  I want to lie down on the bench then, or better yet, on the grass, rest on something living and see if I can hear the dead underneath. But I can’t, because then people will look and Ray doesn’t like looking, wants me silent, his little ghost girl.

  I lean over and touch the grass instead. I have not felt grass in years. Ray doesn’t like me getting dirty.

  It doesn’t feel like much of anything, and I am oddly disappointed, like when the soap operas are taken off so someone important in a tie can talk about things that don’t matter because they will never reach me. Ray has me wrapped up tight from the world.

  “You lose something?” Jake says, and squats down across from me, touching my fingers in the grass. I slide my hand back, wipe it on my jeans. His hands aren’t hot like Ray’s but they are longer than mine, bigger. I know what that means.

  “You look … nice,” Jake says, and I look down at myself, in my too-small jeans and strange strained pink shirt, and wonder what I look like to him. “Wanna go to my car?”

  I look like what I am. I live so I can be what Ray wants, what he needs, and you can see it if you look hard enough. You can see that you can make me do anything. Most people look away, though. They do not want to see what it is possible to make with hands just like theirs.

  I get up and follow Jake to his car. He offers me some pills and shrugs when I shake my head no, swallows them down dry. “Fucking school,” he says. “I hate it.”

  “Does your sister hate school?”

  “She’s six,” he says. “She still thinks it’s fun.” His look says I have said something stupid, something everyone should know, and I look down, wait for him to put his hands on his belt. Must think of something to say. Must think of words.

  He does it for me, clearing his throat, tapping the fingers of one hand against his leg. “You like school?”

  “It’s okay.” I remember desks and telling secrets and standing in line for lunch. Throwing food away because I was full or didn’t want it.

  I would give anything to go back and take that food, slap that stupid once upon a time girl and shove what she was too dumb to want down my throat, eat and eat until I grew thick, fleshy everywhere with rolls protecting me from everyone’s eyes. From Ray’s eyes.

  “So, uh, do you want to … ?” He rubs his leg, and then tries to take my hand again. I let him this time, hold still while he rubs it across the front of his jeans. He is so tentative, so unsure.

  He seems so young, younger than I’ve ever been, even when I was born into Ray’s arms, and it takes no time at all for me to talk without words, without doing anything that Ray will see. Just my hand moving back and forth, not even on his skin. So easy.

  He tries to touch me afterward, hands on my chest, mouth looming toward mine. He does not push my breasts down, flattening them, but cups his hands around them. I don’t mind that, but I do not like his mouth on mine, him trying to breathe into me, the darting slick surface of his tongue. Ray kisses my forehead or my knees or the insides of my thighs, but his mother made him kiss her good night every night and so he told me he’d protect me and never kiss me.

  I push away after I’ve counted to ten twice, and he says, “I don’t kiss right, do I? My last girlfriend said I sucked.”

  I don’t know what to say to that, to the naked worry in his voice. His weakness makes me nervous.

  It makes me want to hurt him, too.

 
“See, my friend Todd—you’ve probably seen him, the really tall guy with the amazing girlfriend, the one with legs …” He trails off. “Anyway, he had her set me up with May, who is kind of fat but does it with anyone and—well, we went out for a while. Todd says I shouldn’t be such a fucking girl about this stuff but, you know, it’s not like—” He blows out a breath. “It’s not like there’s a fucking manual or anything, is there?”

  He laughs. “A fucking manual? Get it? Shit, these pills kick ass. Sure you don’t want one?”

  I shake my head, and words fall into it. “I have better ones.”

  “Bet you do,” he says. “You’re like … I don’t know. A rock. You know, nothing to see, but then you pick it up and there’s this stuff on it. What kind of pills?”

  “Where does your sister come in the park?”

  “Lucy?” he says. “I don’t know. The entrance over by the school, I guess. How come you always ask about her? I’m too boring to talk about?” Ray would say that as a low, throbbing whisper, louder than a roar, but Jake makes it a needy whine, like a fly’s buzz.

  Bzzzzz. Bzzzz. I listen to the flies during the day, in the summer. They fly around, living on who knows what—air maybe?—and then, come fall, they’re gone. I wish I could be a fly. Live on nothing. Have wings.

  “You do like me, right?” he says. “I did everything Todd said, offered you my best stuff, talked to you, washed up after gym.”

  I do not know normal, but I do not think Jake is it. He is watching me, huge-eyed, far away but here at the same time. So eager to be told he’s good, he’s special, that he …

  He reminds me of me. Living dead boy, all broken inside.

  “What happened?” I say, and he blinks slowly, slip sliding in his seat.

  “What do you mean?”