by Leah Thomas
It wasn’t that I thought menstruating was gross. Women’s bodies are not gross, periods are not gross—Sarah had drilled that into me pretty well, and I agreed it was bullshit that girls ever felt gross at all, or like they were worthless when they bled.
What was gross to me was how my body didn’t feel like mine.
I wouldn’t mind if it was anyone else’s blood. But my body was staining me, screaming, You’re what people call a woman, and there’s no changing that. No buts. It’s been decided for you.
It felt like a life sentence.
———
I avoided the cafeteria. I didn’t feel up to smiling and putting on a bubbly face for the girls I usually sat with. Instead I sat down in front of my locker, tucked out of sight, and ate my sad salami sandwich and FUNYUNS there. Soon I felt too queasy and achy to eat, so I pulled out the Game Boy and caught some Tentacools in Pokemon Blue. The games never worked when Sarah was in there, which meant I hardly ever played, and I was still stuck on, like, the third gym.
A few minutes before lunch ended, I tucked the Game Boy under my arm, stood, and walked to the trash can to dump my grease-stained lunch bag. When I turned, Seiji was there, leaning against the window with a chocolate milk carton in his oversize fist.
He was beginning to haunt me in his own way, or maybe he always had. I fought the self-conscious urge to look at my lap to check for blood. He was staring not at my legs, but at the battered old Game Boy tucked beneath my arm.
Oh.
His battered old Game Boy.
“Does it still work?” he asked, but I’d started for the bathroom.
For Christ’s sake.
HBO
Patricia got to be a lot older than Sarah ever was, around as old as my mom, before a stranger strangled her while she was out jogging early one January morning. Before the sound of her killer’s footsteps broke the snow on the trail behind her, the sunrise gave her hope that spring was coming soon, that the future might be brighter. She told us that hope took her mind off her aching joints and the difficult holiday season. Patricia told us she was already dead before her killer raped her.
“There’s no mystery to solve,” she told us.
She was right about that. Searching online articles revealed that Patricia’s murderer was caught months after her body was discovered, in the summer of 1993. His wife called in a tip after finding a bag of women’s hair in his glove compartment. The man stood trial for the murder of three Michigan women, each one strangled, then raped. Each one abandoned in a forest. His fate in court was sealed when his wife attested to years of abuse, and numerous women came forward to claim he had tried to attack them or had offered them rides while masturbating or worse. Patricia’s killer was killed in a prison brawl.
He wasn’t anyone Patricia had known, and his name mattered less than dirt.
What mattered then, and now, was Patricia. She’d started talking more, and within a week, she wasn’t as jumpy as she’d been when we first helped her in from the cold. She was never as brash as Sarah (no one was). Patricia was thoughtful and experienced, and had this acerbic sense of humor that made our lobby conversations more meaningful.
Two weeks or so after she moved in, Patricia was watching Sarah and me trying to rearrange the couches in the lobby to make the space more comfortable. She said, “So long as I won’t be stepped on, it’ll feel like a luxury to me.” When Sarah pondered whether we should save up for an old TV from St. Vincent DePaul, Patricia joked, “That’s very kind, but don’t bother unless you can arrange for HBO. I need to watch Ghost on repeat for weeks straight, thank you very much.”
“I don’t know what HBO is,” Sarah said, holding aloft a finger, “but I’m going to ‘Ask Jeeves’ about it later.” Sarah had come along with me to the library, nestled in my pocket while I looked up Patricia’s story. Her newfound internet prowess was going to her head, but who could blame her? Sarah had spent years beneath a bed, unable to interact with anything or anyone. Once she realized that her electrical aptitude applied to computers and search engines, there was no stopping her.
With Patricia settled in, Sarah began slipping away alone at night to spend hours at the library, relishing the internet and all the injustices it exposed. She’d come a long way from when I met her, when she couldn’t even grasp the existence of handheld games. Now she was something of a cybernaut, at least when it came to true-crime research. She said the forests of Rochdale had their fair share of ghosts. Sarah was collecting the names and photos of local victims in an online folder, a strange echo of the Lisa Frank one I’d left behind at our old apartment.
According to Sarah, running into someone like Patricia was bound to happen. Small as Rochdale was, it was part of rural America, and statistics claim that three women are killed in small-town America each day. Girls go missing all the time, too, and half the time they’re just called runaways and ignored until months have passed.
“There isn’t a square mile in the world that isn’t haunted by a dead girl, you know.”
Sarah shared her findings with me and Patricia, who began spending the whole of her time inside the hexagonal lobby.
“I’ve had enough of the outdoors,” she said. “I’m old, or trying to be. I wanted to be a grandmother, you know.” Her posture collapsed a little, brambles grew through her hair. “I don’t know what my children are doing now.”
“I can ‘Ask Jeeves,’ if you want,” Sarah offered, but Patricia shook her head.
It was the one rule of our lobby: we didn’t ask questions that one of us might not want the answers to. I knew how unwilling Sarah was to talk about her life before death, and how unwilling I was to talk about my life before I knew her. It became instinctive not to pry. But when Patricia told us more about her life, she became alive.
First she told us she adored reading, so Sarah had an idea. I started “borrowing” library books and tearing out the pages, stapling them to the bulletin board and walls so she could walk around the room to read them. I could barely keep up with her voracious bookworming, and of course she missed every other page because she couldn’t flip the pages over, so I began tacking crossword puzzles to the walls, too. Eventually the entire lobby was wallpapered. It felt cluttered, more like a bird’s nest than a home, but all those words seemed to reassure Patricia.
To my surprise, her favorite books were epic fantasy and science-fiction novels. The wall behind the check-in counter was soon smothered in maps torn from the front matter of books. Sometimes I caught Patricia squinting at them, readjusting her track pants, which tended to slip down when she was a little low or distracted. Other times, Sarah would float just above her head, staring at them with her, asking questions like, Where’s the McDonald’s? and What makes a mountain lonely? and Excuse me, miss, but where are the toilets? until Patricia could not help but chuckle and shoo her away.
Sometimes they touched each other—little nudges or hugs, like real sisters, and I felt a twist of envy in my gut.
“Have you always liked books this much?” I asked Patricia once, while I tacked the pages of Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower to the wall. By then it was almost November. Patricia had started requesting specific books. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the library would soon get wise to my antics and she’d be cut off.
“Oh, absolutely. I loved reading when I was your age. I used to come home from school and read an entire book before bed. Have you ever done that? It’s exhilarating.”
I shook my head and frowned; the stapler was out of staples. “No. I’m not a big reader. The effort never seemed worth it to me.”
“That’s a shame. Escapism is humanity’s best invention.” Patricia had her back to me. “Every page is precious as mithril,” she’d told me, whatever that meant.
“But when I got older, I sort of . . . stopped reading. I don’t know why. I think maybe I stopped seeing myself in the characters.”
I looked at the back of her head. The brambles had grown long and t
horny, but she hardly looked bruised anymore.
“Maybe that’s my issue,” I admitted. “I’ve never seen myself in characters.”
Patricia turned and met my gaze, eyebrows raised. “Really? I suspect you haven’t found the right book yet. I used to do really well with reluctant readers, back in my teaching days. Give me some time to get to know you better, Dani, and I’ll think of a good one for you.”
“Really, you don’t have to,” I protested. “It’s a waste of time.”
“I want to do it. And I’ve got nothing but time.” She smiled, eyes mischievous. “As you and Sarah seem intent on giving me what I want, Slurpees and all, you’ll have to accept this homework assignment.”
I threw up my hands. “Yes, Patricia.”
She turned away from me again. “Get back to work! Those pages won’t staple themselves, will they? I need to know what happens to the intergalactic necromancers.”
I returned to the wall, face flushed, happy to be parented for once.
GATORADE
Patricia had been living with us for a month—it had to have been a month, because I was bleeding again. Coach Ma hadn’t kicked me off the team after I left her worrying, but she had made good on her promise to punish me with exercise; I had to do twice the push-ups and crunches as everyone else.
Usually that was fine, but usually I wasn’t a gory mess. It infuriated me that this was a problem I’d have until menopause, a recurring, violent battle. On the second day of my second period, my cramps left me lagging behind the other runners, bent double on the track. Charley passed by with an encouraging “You can do it!” His two thumbs up felt really damn condescending.
By the time I got home, I was in a vile mood. Sarah had enough of my muttering, and asked me to tuck her in my backpack so she could get a break from my dramatics.
“As if you aren’t dramatic,” I snapped, pulling my shoes off.
She sighed in my ears. “I’ll go check on Patricia. In the meantime, chill.”
“People don’t actually say chill,” I said.
“How would you know? You don’t talk to other people.”
I yanked off my headphones and pushed the Game Boy to the bottom of my bag.
I stomped to my bedroom to find Mom digging through my drawers.
“Why are you in my room?”
She looked up at me. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“I do your laundry, hon, and suddenly you’ve got no underwear. And funny thing, I ran out of pads, but I haven’t been using them.” She frowned and sat down on my bed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It wasn’t about you,” I said, because the truth was I was angry.
We flinched in unison. We were so unused to talking to each other.
“Why . . . why don’t I treat us to dinner tonight, sweetie?” Mom suggested. It sounded like the last thing she really wanted to do. “We can go to China 1 Buffet, catch up.”
“It’s not my birthday. There’s literally nothing to celebrate.”
“Well, you might feel like that now, but this is a wonderful thing, and I know it was late in coming. I’m . . . well, I’m proud of you, Daniela.”
I cringed at the name. “Proud? What the hell is there to be proud of?”
She looked at me. Heavy as her mascara was, the bags beneath her eyes outweighed it. “He told me I couldn’t raise you alone, but here we are. We’re doing okay, and you’re growing up fine.”
“I’m not,” I blurted, before I could stop myself.
“Of course you are! Sure, puberty’s no pleasure cruise, but you’ll get through it. And I know you probably don’t want to hear this from me, but you’re looking older, too. Boys are probably interested in you. You’re plenty good lookin’, sweetie, even with your eye, and—”
“Stop. Mom.” I knew she was trying, in her ass-backward way, to be a parent. To give me the talk. But she was terrible at it, and so was I. I couldn’t express how deeply I hated the basic premise of this conversation: that I was a woman, and soon I’d fuck men.
I didn’t believe either of those things. Why did she?
“What about that cute boy on your track team?” She’d gone to all of one meet, but Mom’d noticed Charley and his stupid grin. “I think he likes you.”
“Mom, stop.” Why wouldn’t she? Hadn’t we both had to tell Dad to stop? Didn’t she know how vital it was to honor that word? How terrifying the world was when that word stopped working?
“I’m sure other girls your age are dating. It’s natural—”
“Stop.”
“Sweetie, first we need to set some ground rules. Some boys might have other intentions, and you need to be careful—”
Blood roared in my ears. “Stop.”
“You need to be prepared to defend yourself, or say no—”
“I’m not you, Mom! I don’t feel the need to screw every dirtbag I meet!”
If I could have bottled those words inside me again, maybe I would have. Instead, I tore my gaze from her shattered face and fled our ugly little apartment.
THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS
By the time I crawled through the window and up the stairs to the lobby, I was heaving. This wasn’t quite a panic attack, but it wasn’t great, either. “Sarah? Sarah!”
“She’s not here.” Patricia was floating near the ceiling, feet dangling as she perused the pages posted highest.
“Not here?” I gasped. “She said she was going to check on you.”
If Sarah wasn’t here, then where was she?
Patricia frowned down at me. “Is everything okay?”
“No,” I said, slumping into one of the chairs. “It’s never going to be okay.”
“Never say never.” Patricia floated to the ground and perched on the chair across from me. It was still a bit sad, but we’d put some embroidered throw pillows on it. “Although what does ‘okay’ mean, anyhow?”
I shrugged, abdomen aching.
“Maybe there’s no such thing, and there’s only better or worse. I suppose the more important question would be, is there any way I can help you, Dani?”
Sarah’s absence made me more honest. “No one can help me with this.”
“Hmm. That may be the case, but it may not be. I didn’t think anyone would ever help me out of the woods, until you came along.”
I threw up my hands. “It’s really unfair when you guys do that! I mean, how can I complain about my dumb eleventh-grade problems when y’all were murdered and stuff! It makes me feel like my issues are stupid and petty.”
Patricia patted me on the arm; she felt like cool water. “You can only be where you are.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Were you a therapist?”
She laughed, suddenly seeming younger in the face. “I told you: I was a teacher, but sometimes there are parallels, I guess. So let’s try it. What’s on your mind, Dani?”
I looked at her. Patricia wasn’t angry like Sarah, and she didn’t seem as sad anymore. Something about her seniority and stillness slowed my heartbeat. Mom’s words were still pinging off my eardrums.
“What do you think of men?” I asked.
Patricia considered this. “That’s a pretty broad question. Help me out?”
I tried to put words to thoughts I’d always had, but never dared to voice. “I mean, Sarah hates boys, and a lot of men do evil things. I know that. God, do I ever know that. And it’s not like I’ve met many boys that I trust or even like, and obviously I shouldn’t, because . . . well.”
“You spend your time with people who have been victimized by men,” Patricia said bluntly. “You’ve seen my reality, and Sarah’s reality.”
“And mine. Dad used to hit us.” I spoke as quickly as I could. “Me and my mom, I mean. All the time, when he was angry or drunk or sober or tired, whenever. That’s why—well, that’s partly why we came to Rochdale. I still dream about him sometimes, and it makes it hard to breathe. When I wake up, I wish men didn’t exis
t. But at the same time . . .”
“Again, you can only be where you are.” Patricia adjusted her glasses. “I don’t hate all men, because I have to believe that individuals can outweigh the negative norms of the patriarchy, and that all the evils the patriarchy has proliferated in our culture for centuries won’t be eternal, and men can be allies to the women and minorities they’ve subjugated for so long to use their privilege for the good of humanity.”
“Um.” I gawked at her.
She stared at the ceiling, gathering her thoughts. “Let me say this: I have a son, and I love him dearly. I raised him alone. And I tried to raise him to treat people—all people—with kindness. I taught him to listen before speaking. But when he was seven, I got a call from one of his teachers saying that he had hit another child, a little girl, and called her a ‘stupid bitch.’ ”
I thought of Seiji and the angry word scrawled on the surface of my desk.
“I know my son didn’t hear those words from me. When I asked him why he would ever say such an awful thing, he told me ‘All the boys do that kind of stuff.’ It broke my heart to hear that, and even more to know that I couldn’t change what others taught him. He’d lowered his expectations of himself.”
“So what did you do?”
“I made him read,” Patricia said with a little smile. “And I told him to promise me that for a year he would only read books written by people who were not like him. Women, people of color, queer people.”
“Queer people,” I echoed and the words resonated deep inside me.
“I told him if he was surrounded by white boys at school, he’d better not surround himself with them at home. Maybe it was sentimental, but it helped. I believe my son grew up to be a decent person, for the most part. So to answer your question: I don’t think all men are bad, or at least they don’t have to be. What do you think?”
