Elegies for Uncanny Girls

by Jennifer Colville

  With ten hands we dug two holes, deeper this time and pooling with water. Once we were inside the brothers and sister slapped sand onto our stomachs, heavy dollops of it, cold explosions that turned warm as the sand covered and sucked at us, as the pat, pat, pat of their hands moved over us like muscles. We were being swallowed inside the earth’s stomach!

  I tried to surrender to its full-body squeeze.

  “You’re stupid, Caroline,” said Paul, kneeling over us and shaking his head.

  Then he moved on top of me, bent close, and winked.

  And in a second they were gone. Not just Paul, but Emily and even my brother. They left us packed in, the ocean rushing up at our eyes.

  At first I decided we were fine. I hated Paul, and decided we were fine. I could wiggle my hips and thought I could slowly work my way out. I knew the story of the people born from the mud of the Nile and I imagined the reverse, a de-evolution—that we might erode and slowly join the ocean, like cocoons the water washed over and hatched into fish. By the time I remembered the horror movie about the adulterous lovers, buried to their necks and left for high tide, Caroline had already started to scream.

  Then someone walked up behind us.

  Someone with large hairy legs straddled us, towered above us, not as threatening as Zeus, maybe more like the Jolly Green Giant. He took a puff on a cigarette, blew out a thin trail of smoke—the track a jet makes, miles up in the sky.

  “What do we have here?” he asked. “What are these specimens washed up by the sea?”

  “Dad, dig us out!” Caroline yelled.

  “They make strange noises. Gurgle. Gurgle.”

  He gave us a long puzzled look, exclaimed “Aha!” and dropped to his knees.

  It didn’t help that Caroline’s dad was a scientist.

  He worked carefully, dividing the sand along our chests into four even piles, rounding each pile, until we were only heads attached to large floating breasts. He held up several small seashells, rolling them between his fingers, assessing size, and shape, before placing one on each peak.

  “Sex correctly identified!” he said, spreading his arms wide as if offering an embrace, but his head was right over mine and I could see a secret pleasure in his smile. I could see it scissoring up through the slit of his lips.

  The next day Caroline wouldn’t go in the water, nor the day after that. While our brothers and sister went to the beach we spent our time lying on the docks trying to catch crabs with bubblegum attached to the ends of strings. We set the traps by lowering the chewed-up treasure right down to the crabs’ doorsteps. When the crabs crawled out and got their claws stuck we reeled them up to the dock, spinning.

  “We’re probably giving them mini heart attacks,” Caroline said. She dropped one into our plastic bucket, made a grimace with her face, and held it over the top of the bucket like a lid.

  “Stupid crabs, stupid crabs,” she told them. But when one crab’s body fell off and we pulled up just a dangling arm she looked disturbed, and scampered down to the rocks to find the rest of it.

  “If we hold the body up to the arm it might reconnect,” she told me, and I remembered our school nurse, the same nurse who lectured us on the proper uses of maxi pads. She’d once instructed us to save our finger, or any small appendage, in a plastic bag in the event we cut something off. She’d said that the veins and the tissues of the severed parts wouldn’t forget each other, they would re-bond, open right back up.

  But once Caroline was down on the rocks, she gave up quickly. She climbed back up to the dock, and lay down on her back with her T-shirt strategically bunched. I followed her back up and dumped out the bucketful of crabs, gently, but so she would notice—and let them plop back into the sea. When she didn’t respond I put on my roller skates and rode in circles around her so the slats of the dock rumbled under her arms and legs. I performed spins and leaps—I wanted her to be inspired or jealous of how I could be light and powerful, a goddess of the air and rocks and sky. But Caroline had sealed off her energy along her border. Before, her energy had been something I could walk into, feel around me, suck up like a mist. Now it was guarded, and she vibrated it seemed with the effort of just staying separate. Now, she acted like an off-limits sticker, or a pair of fancy jeans. This made me not want to share with her, but to grab what she had like a boy might, to steal it for myself.

  I took off my skates and sat down. I put my hand on her stomach and smoothed out her shirt. She pretended I wasn’t there so I pretended she was dead and that I was preparing her for a funeral: I brought my fingers up over her face, touched her eyelids and smoothed down her eyebrows. I fanned her hair out around her head, took off my bracelet and set it on her stomach as an offering. I got close and stared down at her; I pressed the tips of my eyelashes into hers. I put my hand on her stomach and made it crawl, slowly, up under her shirt. I thought of measles, chicken pox, red lumps that were contagious. When I touched her nipple it felt like half of a grape, sliding under silk. I said, “See, I’m not afraid of you.” I rolled away down the dock and waited to see if she would come back.

  Audra

  The first time Molly saw her, Audra was throwing herself backward, hooking her knees into the high beam of the jungle gym and flipping. She was upside down, and falling through the air. It was spring in Ohio, the summer heat creeping in. It melted the edges of buildings, turned the ramadas and portables, the large flat cubes of the public school buildings, into shivery holograms. Molly closed and opened her eyes, for the girl wavered as she landed and walked toward her—she could have been the shadow of a bird, or a displaced piece of dream.

  Molly chose not to alert her best friend, Cindy Fairchild. Cindy who sat next to her, expertly flipping colored rings from the backs of her hands to the palms.

  “My name is Audra,” the girl said, stopping five feet away, standing perfectly straight as if held up by strings. She was small and thin and her skin stretched tightly across her face, a little like cooked plastic, Molly thought, as if she’d been stuck in the oven and Shrinky Dinked.

  Now Cindy looked up. She wore clip-on hair feathers and they shivered at Audra’s presence, expanded like defensive bird wings.

  “Stop where you are!” Cindy said. She jumped up and pointed to the border where the cement patio they’d spread their jacks across met the sandbox, the border she and Molly enforced to ward off boys, to protect their best-friendness from other girls. Cindy crossed her arms over her chest, tapped her foot. She gathered herself into making a visible effort at being polite.

  “I’m afraid to say that you can’t play with us,” she said, circling Molly’s waist with her arm, including by excluding, in a way that made Molly feel specially chosen, indebted and bound.

  Once, on an overnighter, lying on Cindy’s plush pink comforter, Cindy told Molly that Molly had a special something—she cocked her head, looked into Molly’s eyes, and said, “Hmm, I just don’t know what that is yet.”

  “What does she have to say?” Audra asked, bypassing Cindy and pointing to Molly, who was stuck, thinking about how Audra’s blue jeans were rigged up with a nylon belt so they buckled under it and folded into pleats. Audra had a silver embroidered star on her hip pocket, but it had burst open—the threads were the trail the star left behind.

  “I talk, she listens. Our teacher Mrs. Clements says that I’m verbal and she’s visual, which, contrary to what you might think, doesn’t mean she’s stupid.” As she said this Cindy thrust one hand out and put the other on her hip in a defensive dance move à la the Supremes.

  This made Molly feel sleepy. She felt sleepy every time she played with Cindy’s jacks—the azure blue hoops, the lovely bright reds, transparent as cherry cough drops. She felt tired about having to keep her own jacks, which were scratched and ugly, hidden in her pocket. She was tired, which was somehow dangerously close to angry, about not being able to wear her chocolate-flavored lip gloss, the one that she spent three months’ allowance on. She felt she could not wear this li
p gloss because Cindy said it made her lips look like mud.

  What she did next felt violent, like a magician pulling a bright red scarf up and out of her throat.

  She looked up at Cindy, whose head was backlit by the sun so the blond hairs that escaped her barrettes buzzed in an electric halo. She said, “She can play with us.”

  With one swift movement, Cindy bent down and made her jacks disappear into her jack sack. She swooped back up, feathers twirling, and left as the bell rang. And when Molly turned to look at Audra whom she had just stood up for, she was gone.

  Back in the classroom, at reading time, Cindy chose to partner with Jeani, a new girl whom Molly had seen eyeing Cindy’s eraser collection. She’d seen her look at the pink ice-cream cones, the fat rubber hearts, the chocolate bars that actually smelled like chocolate—erasers bought with the money her father the heart surgeon gave her every time he went out of town on important business. Cindy didn’t vulgarly flaunt her erasers—instead she kept them lined up along the metal pencil rim inside her desk so everyone could catch glimpses of them when she reached inside to slowly sharpen a pencil.

  When class was over, Cindy and Jeani, who was pretty but who Molly was happy to notice had a mole on the tip of her nose the size of a small ant, walked the long linoleum hallway arm in arm.

  Out on the playground, the sun was trying to light fire to the grass, great bright patches streaked between the trees, and Audra was running through them, wavering in the humid light, disappearing into shadow. As Molly stepped through the gate in the chainlink fence that surrounded the schoolyard, Audra zoomed past. She stopped five feet in front, turned around, skipped ahead, looked back smiling.

  Audra followed Molly home or Molly followed Audra. They took the path through the nicer neighborhood, with the trimmed lawns and hedgerows, where the enchanted air slowed time, suspending white poofs of pollen.

  In front of a large pointy house, Audra stopped. “Is that where you live?” She leaned back, looking up, as if at a skyscraper.

  When Molly shook her head, Audra shrugged and said, “Too bad.”

  “Where do you live?” Molly asked, for she secretly hoped Audra lived across the ravine, on the less-nice side of the neighborhood.

  “Oh, I travel. I want to become an acrobat,” Audra said, and Molly saw Audra in a sequined leotard, spotlit, balancing on a high wire. Even now Audra held out both of her arms, and began to spin. She let go of the rock she held in her hand only when it was impossible to know where it would land. It skimmed past Molly’s head like a missile.

  “Try it,” she said, handing Molly a rock. Molly spun once and threw the rock down the safe path of the sidewalk.

  “Cindy thinks you’re a chicken,” Audra said. She stopped and looked directly into Molly’s face, so close that Molly saw she had very small and slightly pointy-looking teeth. She swooped down, picked up another rock, and spun again, and this time Molly spun with her, anticipating all potential points of impact—the sparkly bay window of the big house, the hood of its sleek silver sports car, and suddenly Cindy, on the other side of the street, walking fast and furious—her feathers flying.

  Molly saw the rock rise through the air. Inside she called out, “Cindy!” but outside she watched the rock arc and descend with pleasure. It hit the back pocket of the new designer blue jeans, the blue jeans with an embroidered firecracker on one butt cheek. On the other the word “Pow.”

  Later Molly would discover that these blue jeans had been bought with money Cindy’s father gave her mother to take Cindy on long shopping sprees while he was out of town having an affair with his nurse. And later Molly would remember the two images of the firecracker and the “Pow” when her mother told her that Cindy’s parents were getting a divorce. Later her mother would whisper this information in her low serious voice, as if it was something she would rather not say but had to. As if it was Molly’s duty, especially then, to be a good friend.

  Molly’s mom was scrubbing the inside of the oven when Molly and Audra walked past the kitchen door. She was waist deep and partially digested. Molly held her finger to her mouth and rushed Audra by, past the bowl of carrot sticks her mom had laid out as unenticing bait.

  “Hello?” her mom called out, as Molly softly clicked shut the door of her bedroom. She felt herself tingling, as if she were made of TV, a sassy kid on a sitcom, one of the shows her mother didn’t like her to watch.

  Molly was excited to show Audra her bedroom in a way she’d never been with Cindy. She showed her the bunk bed and the white shelves that her father built, running around the top of the room. The shelves were lined with stuffed animals, some of whom Molly secretly liked less than others and didn’t bring down to the lower bed where she slept. But she could justify this, she thought. The ones she did bring down, Winnie with the missing eye and Fuzzy with the pointed head, were the ugliest, the most forlorn, and as her mother would say, the most in need of her love. Outside of school, in private, Molly tried to be very good.

  She climbed up onto her bed, grabbed Fuzzy and Winnie to explain her good-night routine to Audra.

  She said, “First I say good night to all of my stuffed animals at once. I say, ‘Good night, sweet animals.’ Then I say another good night to Fuzzy and Winnie. But I always switch the order so they know I don’t think of one of them first, or save the special one for last. That way they know I love them both the same amount but in different ways.

  “My mom says she’ll always love me but sometimes she doesn’t like me very much,” she continued. And then Molly told Audra that she always found Fuzzy under the bed, or upside down in a corner, always somehow doing the wrong thing.

  “Still,” she said, “I don’t say good night to him first or last. I say, ‘Oh, Fuzzy!’ I just feel sorry for him and wonder if he’ll ever learn.

  “Oh, Audra,” she suddenly said, looking at her dirty shoes and worn jeans. Molly reached out to give Audra a hug.

  Audra dodged away, walked to the middle of Molly’s room, and started to turn in circles. Her tennis shoes had holes in the toes, and looked more dirty against the freshly vacuumed carpet. When she stopped turning she focused on Molly’s desk—the wood across the closed top was painted white and buckling a little. It was a desk you opened by pulling on a porcelain knob, a knob with a pink rose encircled by a gold ring. Inside Molly kept her journal of thoughts.

  Audra walked toward the rose on the knob and cocked her head as if to see in under its petals. Molly looked too, so closely the petals seem to rustle. The rose was a rose she’d forgotten about—it wasn’t the silver star she really wanted. In fact her mother had picked it out; she’d swept down the aisle right past her star, slowed at the rose, and said, “Oh, but this one is so sweet and old-fashioned!”

  Audra looked at the knob and squinted her eyes. Molly felt her head grow as big as a bulb, her body shrink to a stem.

  Audra wrapped her fingers around it and pulled. Molly wondered if it was because the surface of the desk was painted white that what she kept inside, by contrast, felt dark. As Audra took out the book of thoughts, Molly moved toward her. She clamped her hands onto one end of it, held on but didn’t yank it back. Audra ran her hand over the cover like a fortune-teller, hovering over the sparkly stickers, and Molly could feel the thoughts pulsing, rising up. Inside was what she’d written about her brother, and her mother. Audra dropped the book on the floor.

  “Eh, probably boring,” she said, and walked toward the door. When she opened it, there was Molly’s mom. Audra dodged around her and disappeared.

  Molly’s mom now stood, hands on her hips, taking full advantage of the doorframe. Molly chose not to notice the soot marks on her mother’s forehead. She neglected to remember how her mother so eagerly awaited her arrival home that she sometimes appeared to jump out of the clutches of the house and run into the front yard, as if she had been wrestling with it. Instead Molly only saw the you-should-know-what-you-did-wrong-and-I-know-you-know-so-there-is-no-point-in-saying-it look. And a
lthough this normally made Molly shrink and stew, today in the humid heat, Molly felt strangely buoyant.

  Her mother, regardless of her loneliness, wasn’t fair with her rules. She didn’t press them on her younger brother whose skateboard ramp collected strange boys, every day. These boys tracked mud into the bathroom, drank from the water glasses and left them broken outside in the dirt. Molly had watched her mother pause, stand and listen to the boys in the alley, through the open kitchen window. She saw the space she gave her brother. She knew that when it was bedtime and after her mother had tucked them in (taking turns with who she said good night to first), her brother would creep out of his room and up onto the couch—pulled by her invisible strings which were so loose that they gathered and pooled under the circle of her reading lamp. Bit by bit he told her about the boys—what he was thinking, his notes on the day.

  “Girls,” Molly had heard her mother say through the open car window, to Cindy’s mom. “They’re more difficult.”

  “Where’s Cindy?” her mother now asked.

  But Molly had sealed herself off and was reciting the hundreds of rules she was supposed to follow: to not be too smart, for then there wouldn’t be enough smartness left over for her brother; to not be an “individual” like the bossy girl in her Brownie troop; to never want to beat anyone, for that meant leaving a bruise; to carry her mother around inside of her, packed in tight, like a compass, but to never repeat the things her mother said. She had learned this last rule only a few days ago, when Cindy’s mom sat on the couch saying, “Oh, Rachel, all I do is talk about my problems.” Molly, who had just entered the room, felt her mother’s words leap from her mouth: “That’s OK. Some people can’t help being self-involved.”

  “Where’s Cindy?” her mother repeated.

  Molly shrugged.

  “So it’s starting,” her mother sighed.

  “What?” Molly asked.

  “The secrets.”

  And Molly was afraid this was true.