PANDORA

by Rebecca Hamilton

  “I imagine they’re for you,” Mom said. “Funeral flowers, though? I would take it as an insult, if I were you.”

  “Well, I don’t. I think they’re cool.”

  “So who would give you flowers, then?”

  “I don’t know.” Which was the honest-to-God’s truth. Flowers from a secret admirer? It was kind of lame and sort of adorable at the same time. Too bad there wasn’t chocolate to go with them. Maybe there had been and she hid them.

  “No boyfriend still?” Mom said. “Not that I’m surprised. Boys tend to give flowers when they want something. Or already got something. Payment for services rendered, perhaps?”

  “Yeah, ‘cause I’m a big fat ho.” I grabbed a vase off one of the shelves in the curio and headed upstairs, stomping the whole way just to hear my footsteps reverberate through the house.

  Rigel appeared on my bed as soon as I slammed the door. “Your mother is a piece of work, Kathleen.”

  “Preaching to the choir, Jeeves.”

  9: A Tale of Aubergine Mortification

  Rigel’s way of pulling me into a conversation was beyond aggravating. There were things about my life that took me ages to work up the nerve to share with Aka, but by the third night of cohabitation with Rigel, he knew almost as much about me as Aka did.

  It wasn’t that he was sympathetic and I succumbed to his dashing charm. A more accurate description would be to replace “sympathetic” with “relentlessly persistent” and “dashing charm” with “exasperating single-mindedness.”

  He must have been sent to drive me the short stretch between sanity and lunacy.

  Questions came at me with almost no pause after I answered. If there was a game show where you got no points, the rounds took forever, no one applauded, and the quizmaster was more random than a cracked-out spider’s web, it would look a lot like the exhausting hours I spent with Rigel. Only it wouldn’t take as long since no one would watch a game show that has no climax; just questions that drone on and on.

  I lounged on my bed, my eyes on the ceiling. He was in my closet, stretched out on the nest he made himself of my things.

  “So, tell me . . . what is the worst thing she ever did?”

  Rigel had no tact. He gave no sign he was empathetic or compassionate regarding my plight. He asked questions but gave nothing back. It wasn’t a conversation. It was an interrogation. I felt like I was a test subject for a college study. It wasn’t like confiding to an understanding friend.

  “Look,” I said. “I don’t have a bullshit-parenting-skills measuring scale. I can’t quantify what ‘worst’ is.”

  “Well, what sticks out the most in your mind?”

  “Eggplant.”

  I hated myself for admitting it, for even mentioning it, but it was a simple enough answer to an easy question. When I thought about my mother and considered how black her soul truly was, there was never a time I didn’t think of eggplant.

  He stirred in the closet, then my mattress shifted as he pounced atop my bed. “Come again?”

  “Eggplant.” I scooted up against my headboard. Nerves nibbled at me because I’d never spoken of it to anyone. Not my sister. Not to Aka. I was seriously considering telling the most annoying mammal on the planet the weapon which gouged my deepest scar. “What she did to me with eggplant.”

  He sat near my knees. “So, what did she do, throw it at you?”

  There was something rather pathetic about my life that I would much prefer she had. Being pelted with purple vegetables wouldn’t have scarred me near as much. Probably not at all. It wouldn’t have been at all worse than any of her other fits of psychotic rage.

  If she’d had a whole basket of them and used me for target practice, it would have been something my young mind could have accepted. I would have recognized the danger, ducked when I could, and taken a hit on occasion until she got tired or felt like she’d gotten her point across. My younger years were filled with so many of those moments, I can’t remember them all.

  But I remember the eggplant. If I live to a hundred, however unlikely that might be, I’ll remember the eggplant.

  “She made me take a bath in it.” I hated to remember. I wanted to look away. I wanted to change the subject. It would have been easier to pick up the nosy thing and toss him out the window than turn my memory to a time ten years prior.

  Rigel tilted his head at me, clearly confused. He must have expected me to say she force-fed me, or constructed a rudimentary weapon from its flesh and stabbed me in the eye.

  “Like a health spa method of ridiculousness?”

  I snorted. “Yeah, for my health. She’s always so concerned about that, isn’t she?”

  Rigel’s beady little eyes narrowed. “You are being sardonic again, are you not?”

  I swayed my leg against him to shove him off the bed. “Aren’t you tired yet? Go to bed.” I rolled away from him and frowned at the wall.

  His front paws pressed against my hip and he pushed at me. “No, you have to tell me of this bizarre eggplant bath ritual.” He walked around me, against the headboard, then settled in front of my face on my pillow. One of his paws patted my bangs against my forehead.

  I let out a small breath. “It wasn’t a ritual.”

  It was a punishment. Mom punished me for embarrassing her in front of other people in their home. I was an ungracious guest, a spoiled child who thought she could misbehave away from home and not get in trouble. At least that was how she colored it when she told Dad. He hadn’t been there. I like to think he would have stopped it, that he would have told her—for once in his life—she took things too far.

  But no one there cared enough about me to stop her. No one ever wanted to get involved.

  My mom’s dad was the marrying kind. That is, the kind that married a new person every few years and we were to call her some variation of “Grandmother.” Some were okay and some were just lunatics.

  The one I called Nonna divorced Grampa before I was old enough to ever remember them being married. Unfortunately, Mom had taken a liking to that temporary stepmother and wanted her to stay in my sister’s life and mine.

  Nonna had remarried. Her new husband was a tyrannical man who thought it was his personal mission from God to save the sinful souls of this world. We were not to call him any variation of “Grandfather.” He was Reverend, though I don’t know if he had any credentials to back up his proclaimed status as shepherd to his weak-willed flock. Mom was one of his devoted sheep. I was a sacrificial lamb.

  We spent many evenings with sweet Nonna and Reverend who wanted to save us from eternal damnation. We would gather in their finished basement. He would give his sermon, then she would play the organ while the sheep spread out on the furniture and floor and tried to communicate with the Holy Spirit. Much of what they did scared me. Some of the adults would begin to talk nonsense. They said they were channeling the Spirit and speaking in tongues. As a little kid, I had no idea what that meant. I just thought they were all weird.

  To be honest, I still do.

  One night, one of the taste bud-deprived sheep brought what might be the most disgusting creation ever conceived by man: eggplant casserole. I was seated at the kid table in the kitchen with other kids who were just as reluctant to eat it as I was. It looked like vomit had vomited on my plate.

  I begged not to eat the scary mound of sauce-covered rat guts and pickled elephant eyeballs. My seven-year-old mind was convinced it was an attempt on my life.

  Mom was embarrassed, which inevitably led to furious. She apologized to everyone for my adamant refusal to eat dinner, and my upper arm soon felt the familiar grip of sharp fingernails pressed between my small muscle and bone. I’m certain she aimed for the same spot every time she was pissed at me. I had perpetual fingertip bruises and little half moon cuts most of my childhood.

  Reverend said I was sinful. I was a disobedient, ungrateful child. He read to me from his black, tattered-leather book with gold embossing. He said God was too benevolent to
punish children. He trusted his righteous worshippers to set naughty children on the path to Heaven.

  My path, apparently, was the short distance to their guest bathroom. Reverend told Mom I must bathe in my sin. In retrospect, I think the man wasn’t entirely chaste in his thoughts when it came to little girls. I say this because a decent man wouldn’t have insisted on what followed.

  Mom drew me a bath. When the tub was about three inches deep in cold water, she turned it off. I was made to fetch my plate from the table. She took it and scraped the nasty, clumpy muck into the middle of the tub.

  I stripped on command, my body trembling at first in fear, then at the chilled water I slowly lowered myself into. My soft, young skin became gooseflesh as the water cooled my body. I turned pinkish except for the fingertip bruises on my arm.

  The food beneath me squished between my split parts. The sensation made me gag a little. I was told to vomit in the bathtub if I had to, but if I did, I would have to sit in there longer and then clean up the mess when I was done. I held the gorge in.

  Other members of Reverend’s flock were brought in to stare at me. I tried to cover myself with my little arms. Adults looked down their noses and whispered to each other. The other kids were the worst. They snickered or made faces, but some took one look at me and their eyes went round with terror. They knew it could happen to them. The Reverend was making an example of me. With my mom’s help. I bet none of those kids ever complained about dinner again.

  My sister was the only one with any decency in her. She was brought in, and the first thing she did was ask Mom to let me out. It was useless, but appreciated.

  Mom sat on the closed toilet lid, glaring at me as if I just ripped the head off a kitten and gotten the blood all over her favorite shoes. My teeth chattered and my fingernails turned blue as I sat there, a naked mockery of Christian parenting.

  And people wonder why I don’t believe in God.

  “That is it?” Rigel said.

  I was lost in memories of staring eyes and chattering teeth when he spoke. It was a sharp contrast to focus again on the warmth and comfort of my room. “What do you mean?”

  “I expected violence. At least a little bloodshed.” He rose and stretched his body lazily, turning around like a puppy to stamp a comfortable place to again settle down. “All you did was sit on some food in cold water.”

  “It was humiliating!” I shoved Rigel off the bed with one hand. “The single most humiliating thing in my entire life. Thirty years from now when someone says, ‘Wow, that guy was humiliated,’ no matter who they are talking about, they won’t have been more humiliated than me.”

  “That is . . . unverifiable,” Rigel said as he flounced back to the closet to nest in my things. “Humiliation is not something which can be measured.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  How did he not understand? I was a wet, naked child on display like some horribly disfigured carnival freak. I was laughed at and ridiculed for weeks.

  I rolled away from him to frown at the wall. “Maybe since you parade around naked twenty-four-seven, you don’t get it. But any other naked mammal would understand.”

  Well, maybe not a naked mole rat or those hairless cats, but I’m pretty sure even the bald monkey at that one zoo would have understood my humiliation.

  “Do not blame me for humanity’s unnatural desire to cover themselves,” Rigel said with all the pompousness he could muster. “I daresay it is not the only unnatural thing about your species.”

  “And a talking skunk is not unnatural at all,” I shot back.

  “Sarcasm is the blunt instrument of a dull mind.”

  “Is that a quote or something?” I didn’t care, but I wanted to call him on his inability to use his own words if it was.

  “I am not sure. It should be.” His rustling in my closet was louder than normal, but I didn’t turn to investigate. I assumed he was throwing a hissy fit. “It is something everyone should be told.”

  “You are a snooty little prim, aren’t you? What are you, the reincarnation of the world’s most virginized librarian?”

  “‘Virginized’ is not a word.” Rigel’s voice grew shrill, which only increased my amusement. “And it would have nothing to do with my opinions if it were.”

  “You know what I mean.” I was surprised at how easy it was to upset him, especially considering how he’d been egging me on for days. Apparently, he was better at giving than he was at receiving.

  “I am afraid I do not,” Rigel huffed. “Your argument is that I am deficient in some way because I have class and higher expectations of human behavior than you do.”

  “First of all, that is not my argument,” I said as I slinked under my covers and reached to turn off the lamp. “Secondly, you’re not deficient. You’re delusional. Having expectations just leads to disappointment.”

  “Bitter. That fruit will ferment in your gut until it blinds you to all reason.”

  “Eggplant is a vegetable,” I said in the darkness.

  “Goodnight, Kathleen.”

  “Piss off, Jeeves.”

  ***

  “Here.”

  Josh stood alone at his locker and I took the opportunity to finally hand over the letter which had been a stone around my neck for days.

  He unfolded it and scanned it before asking, “This is it?”

  “I’m not Shakespeare.” Or a miracle worker. “Don’t like it, write your own.”

  “It’s just . . . I expected bigger words,” Josh said as he folded it again and stuffed it into his back pocket.

  “Seriously?” I said. I wondered if he’d forgotten our previous discussion in regard to believability. “It’s from you, dumbass. It can’t sound too educated. It’s not like you have layers.”

  “Hey, I have layers.” He closed his locker, then cocked his head at me and lowered his voice so only I could hear him. “Why are you such a bitch? Do you even think about what you’re saying, or does it just pop out unfiltered?”

  I wanted to be insulted, but couldn’t quite summon the emotion. I have to admit, it was more insightful than I thought him capable.

  “It depends on who it is.” Pure honesty. It was a trait many lacked. “If you and your friends never gave a shit about how I feel, why should I worry about you?”

  “My mistake,” Josh said, then shrugged his bag to a better perch on his shoulder. “I thought you wanted to be better than us.”

  Whoa. What was that? Something that left me to blink stupidly with my mouth agape. It felt like a morality lesson from King Self-Involved. It wasn’t the sort of thing allowed in my universe. I felt awkward and abruptly exposed, like a hippo out of water—with slightly better teeth.

  The petulant retort of, “But I am better than you,” died in my throat. “Whatever.”

  I was reduced to the ultimate lame comeback for any comment that had no intelligent response. In short, I had temporarily adopted Josh’s catchphrase, except it didn’t belong to him alone. It belonged to the masses. I was reduced to being one of the masses. Yes, I was having a mild inner freak-out.

  Josh smiled faintly and walked away.

  I watched him. The bounce of his blond hair told me nothing, and his narrow hips only whispered against his too-tight skinny jeans. So much for body language.

  The rest of the day, my mind wandered back to the exchange I had with Josh. He seemed almost perceptive, which chipped at my long assumption he was as plastic as the giant belt buckles he wore. Perhaps he, like those gaudy adornments, had a rarely seen strong metal core.

  Or I read too much into one random instance of depth. I thought his psyche might normally be a puddle, but on occasion a heavy rain turned it into a lake. A small lake. Maybe a pond.

  After a few hours, I realized I gave too much thought to Josh. Who he was and what he did never mattered before, and there was no reason for that to change. He was a jerk unless he wanted something. Besides, he liked Macey.

  Not that it mattered to me.r />
  By the end of the day, I was resolute to never write another letter for Josh or anyone. I felt a little ill at the thought of Macey reading words I’d written and Josh getting all the benefits of her appreciation. I decided it was my principles that felt like drunk mice dancing in my gut.

  In the end, I was just glad to be rid of the stupid letter. It took too long to do, and it felt wrong. For all I cared, Josh could keep the remaining ten bucks he owed me.

  Just the idea I might have helped him get laid would haunt me for weeks.

  10: Planting Seeds of Doubt

  Rigel was out and about in the school again. I didn’t know what he did all day. He would never tell me, so I stopped asking. I decided he was the reincarnation of some prissy clergyman and now dwelled in the ductwork of the girls’ locker room, lamenting how he couldn’t choke the chicken without an opposable thumb and a reachable penis.

  I assumed. I hadn’t seen it (not that I ever actively looked for it), so it had to be small. Maybe like a cat’s. I knew nothing of skunk genitalia, and had no plans to look it up. Some mysteries weren’t important enough to solve.

  What was worth doing was spending time with Aka. We lounged in the grass as far from the school as we could while still being on school property. Large bushes lined the edge of the property and we protected our lily-white skin by lingering in the cool shade the trees provided. It was my free period, but Aka was skipping a literature class.

  “Nothing more,” he said, his hand gesturing skyward. “What if?”

  His economical word usage was at times more annoying than actually clever. He was capable of complete sentences, and saying less sometimes gave the impression he was less intelligent than he really was.

  “Then I’m screwed as usual,” I said, “if I have maybe eighty-five years in me, and I wasted the first twenty-percent of my life being an idiot.”

  “Idiot?”