by Gretchen Rix
WHEN GYMKHANA SMILES
By Gretchen Rix
Copyright 2011 by Gretchen Rix
This is a work of fiction. No character or incident has been based on any actual person living or dead.
Cover photo by Roxanne Rix. Cover design by Molly Humphrey.
Published by Rix Café Texican
Gymkhana cupped the powder horn in her hands and sniffed deeply as she was told. She knew from seeing the others in this ceremony that the dead powder adhering to the horn still held some potency and that she should sneeze now, so she did. The fiendish old man wearing the oryx head as a hat grinned and slapped his hands on his blue jean clad thighs. His digital wristwatch flopped loose and fell into the thick brown carpet. He ignored it.
“Thirty-two,” he said in a throaty Texas drawl that almost but not quite disguised his Dominican origins. “Thirty-goddamned-two,” he crowed.
The girl choked when the old one’s oryx head went sliding off, and when the depraved bugger scrambled to catch it and force it back, she concealed her dry, husky laughter ineffectually. When she was the thirty-two she would not wear the damned thing. She’d get a colorful hat, or a Nike cap. Yes, she thought, she’d get a cap.
One of the young pretty girls sitting in the circle glared, then helped fix him up, watching Gymkhana uneasily as she did so, not paying the old one his proper due. She got a hard slap over her mouth for her trouble. Gymkhana savored the moment. This girl was standing in for her cousin Celeste, and she hated her for it. Before this night was over she hoped he’d punch her again.
“Thank ye,” the old man said, roughly pushing the young girl aside. Her mouth bled. He spoke directly to her, Gymkhana noted in surprise, and not to the chit. She didn’t like it; didn’t trust it.
Old black man and young black girl seemed to read her thoughts. Both looked straight at her as she stared at the blood seeping from her rival’s bottom lip, their own thoughts transparent: the old man was clearly waiting on her transformation, the younger girl on her failure. Gymkhana was careful not to let what she was thinking leak out to them. Both could just broil in the Houston humidity with her and wait, as could everyone else. She would revel in her position, though it was proving difficult--there were thirteen of her relatives crowded into that tiny, insulated room.
The Houston humidity was murderous. Gymkhana ran with sweat. It dripped from her mahogany-tinted face down her coffee-colored neckline, but she held herself in check; her life depended on it. Her cousin Celeste had been declared incidental shortly after this very same ceremony when she had flinched from the position. That would not happen to her. She wore the crucifix Celeste wore. She could not be touched.
Gymkhana was the thirty-two, or soon would be, she calculated, looking at the man tied to the chair in her direct sight. It was Mike. Even when they had told her it would be Mike, and even when they had told her why it had to be Mike, she had not believed they would do such a thing to her. Gymkhana quivered with rage. For the past year they had given her everything. She’d had absolutely everything she ever wanted. But now there was this--Mike tied to the chair in the blood room.
The one had been easy, even though it had been her first; a drugged child, and one that had made a pest out of itself during its captivity. The two had also been easy; a girl this time and also a stranger to her. The three, the four, the five; she learned from each. And now it was time for the thirty-two. (She put the thirty-one out of her thoughts as best she could, wincing, making her shoulders jerk with the fear and shame she had felt.)
“Not going there,” she said, aloud evidently because every eye except those of the captive in the chair fixed on her face.
Gymkhana snapped her teeth at them and their eyes moved off her. But she had caught the attention of the man in the chair with the clicking of her perfect teeth. The lolling head came up from his chest and she looked straight into the exhausted face of her boyfriend, Mike Mykela. Gymkhana refused to flinch, but she rebelled against her fate inside the privacy of her own skull. The one, the two, the three and up to the thirty-one, yes, she had done them each and every one, and of her own choice; but how in God’s name could she do Mike? And who the hell said she had to do her own boyfriend? She should be making the rules now.
Stalling, the seventeen-year-old girl looked around her. No one showed any sign of leaving. Gymkhana could feel their veiled eyes watching her, but only Mike looked directly into her face and she could not read his thoughts. As they stared at each other, the old man suddenly made his move, lurching toward the chair. Once again the oryx on his head slid off. Gymkhana took this as the sign she had been waiting for, deciding on the spot to bypass Mike.
“Let me, old father,” she said, standing up in the stately way she had been coached, tucking the powder horn into the waistband of her pants and gliding toward him. She caught the oryx horn in both hands and gently tugged it upwards. The problem was the chinstrap that hadn’t been tightened enough. With great pleasure she corrected it, pulling it that one notch too many and then soothing his grumbles with honeyed words as she readjusted it for comfort. It would only take one quick twist of her wrists and his tiny neck would snap.
He had been the one who’d betrayed her cousin Celeste. Too bad she couldn’t really twist his head off right now, she thought, her mind wandering, her eyes focusing on the oryx relic. Piece of junk, she thought. When it was her time, she would have that Nike cap, or maybe something else pretty. This obscenity was going in the trash ASAP. When she was the one making the rules she would have pretty things--which should have been now, since the formality of the ceremony was over.
Becoming the thirty-two and taking the thirty-two could be private or not, whichever she chose, but she only had those two choices. Bypassing Mike in public would take courage and power; there was no way to predict how her family would react. Sending everyone away and dealing with Mike alone would be futile. Someone had to take his place. She did it anyhow.
“Be gone,” she abruptly told her relatives. “This man and I have business to attend,” she said, pointing to Mike shaking in his bonds and beginning to wail softly. “Get away with you now,” she ordered.
Gymkhana saw surprise in some faces, heard grumbling from a few others, but soon only she and the selected man remained in the room. The old man with the horns on his head had been most reluctant to leave, but a few whispered words from the girl-in-waiting brought a grin to his wrinkled face and he lurched his way out with the rest to wait near the swimming pool. Gymkhana knew they could still hear some of what happened in this room from poolside, but not all.
“God provides,” she whispered, looking with pity down into Mike’s gagged and crying face. She patted his arm and walked into the adjoining bedroom, shutting the door between them. When she could no longer hear him she collected herself and went to the bookcase. “God provides,” she repeated, giddy with relief. She had thought of someone who could help her.
She took down the American Standard Bible her family tucked away for Sundays. It always traveled with them. It was old and smelled funny and it had a lot of things stuffed into it, mostly papers of some sort or other, but also flowers, small pieces of cloth, and crumbs from food. Before she knew what she was doing, Gymkhana had shaken all of it out of the Good Book and onto the unmade bed.
Miraculously, the flecks of dark chocolate that the recently deceased Celeste had carelessly crumbled into it were still there, and now they lay like mouse turds on the white sheets she’d dumped the Bible detritus onto. Celeste was the only family member Gymkhana knew who’d liked the nasty, bitter taste of dark chocolate and she remembered her equally nasty habit of eating while reading. She had been right about this Bible; it contained the essence of Cousin Celeste, or at lea
st what had escaped the execution.
Gymkhana put a sliver of chocolate on her tongue while keeping the other hand on the Bible, and bent all her concentration on the last she knew of Celeste. Corresponding with the dead was never easy, never pleasant, but Gymkhana needed her cousin to get her out of this nightmare.
The chocolate slowly melted on her tongue. By now unaware of her actions, Gymkhana bent her head down to the sheets and licked chocolate into her mouth with a frenzy of movements that would have scared anyone seeing her at it. She finally got one of the pressed flower petals stuck in her throat instead and choked.
“Sucks, doesn’t it?” Celeste commented.
“That you, Cousin Celeste?” Gymkhana asked, coughing up colors.
“Who else would debase herself for dried up chocolate shavings?” the voice replied. “Now, what do you want?”
Her wounded voice had clearly carried into the other room. Gymkhana heard Mike begin to struggle against his bonds.
“I don’t feel real good,” Gymkhana found herself saying, realizing for the first time she was abruptly and acutely ill. It hadn’t been what she was going to say. Gymkhana swayed on her feet, spitting out the flower she had chewed. She had been fine only minutes before.
“I don’t wonder,” the Celeste voice said. “That was oleander you just coughed up. And a red one, too.”
Agitated, the girl almost came out of her corresponding trance, but she subsided in a few seconds by applying her will. She could feel Celeste in her face, whispery, almost tickling against her skin. “Will you help me?” Gymkhana asked.
“Go drink some soap,” Celeste said. “Throw it up. You’ll be all right.”
Gymkhana did as she was told, staying in front of the bathroom mirror afterwards, captivated by the sight of her face fading in and out of focus, one minute her own features, the next those of dead Celeste. When they talked it was like watching something from a freak show.
Gymkhana felt someone walk over her nonexistent grave, jumped with the frisson, and then forced herself to deal with the problem at hand. Who had been thinking so hard about her? It had to be Mike.
“That’s not what I meant,” she said slowly. “I’m the thirty-two now,” she said.
“Don’t I know it.” Celeste sounded irritated.
“Were you ever the thirty-one?” Gymkhana asked.
“No way,” Celeste cried. “They put me down beforehand. I never got infected.” She paused. “You know this, girl! Why you pretending you don’t know all this?”
Gymkhana struggled to frame a response. Her face crawled with the effort to restrain Celeste long enough to take control of the conversation. She spat out the words. “They gave me Mike!” she said. “I need you to help me.”
“Then why waste time?” Celeste spat out the words in imitation of her host. “Talking about the thirty-one; you think I didn’t see that mess?”
Gymkhana caught a quick glimpse of her face in the mirror; shutting her eyes didn’t erase the vision. Celeste had conjured up Gymkhana with her mouth full of blood and her fingers in the woman’s neck, a memory she could still taste. She reared back from the sight and stumbled towards the bed.
“Whoa there girl,” Celeste cautioned. “Don’t go causing no accidents to yourself. That won’t help your Mike none.”
“Then tell me what the hell will!” she screamed.
“Hush yourself,” Celeste ordered. “You should hear the noise you’re making.”
Gymkhana had the uneasy privilege of feeling herself talk out of both sides of her mouth as her correspondence continued.
“I can see straight through you,” Celeste said. “You wanted to be the thirty-two and now you are. What’s it to me that your Mike is the payback?”
Gymkhana opened her mouth to protest. Mike screamed in the living room, and then there was a resounding thump. The Celeste part of her leaned in real close and took her breath away.
“And what do you really care, anyhow?” the wraith suggested. “Why don’t we just get the pliers out and get this finished,” she whispered. “They’re right over there in the dresser drawer.”
“He was your Mike before he was mine,” Gymkhana said, seeing her hand shoot out to reach for the drawer and the tool. So tired, she thought. She was so tired of fighting, and it had only just begun.
Before Gymkhana felt Celeste leave, the dead girl mockingly rearranged Gymkhana’s face into a show of sorrow. After laughing, the Celeste presence quivered in her flesh and spoke her last. “Reminding me you stole my man, that’s not a bargaining chip, girl. I should care? I should care? You think I should care? Let go now. There be only one way to bypass that pretty meal. It be your own flesh, and you and I well know it. Let go now.”
Gymkhana came to herself with a pair of pliers in her hand and the taste of dark chocolate in her mouth. The American Standard Bible lay in shambles on the sheets. She listlessly poked everything back inside it before girding herself to face the reckoning. Celeste rested quietly in the back of her mind, biding. It seemed corresponding with the dead had been a mistake--it got her the pliers, that was all. Her family wasn’t going to wait by the pool all day. Someone would be designated to come see what was up.
Hiding the tool in the small of her back beneath her pants and walking out of the bedroom, Gymkhana discovered her family hadn’t waited at all. That girl was there prodding at Mike who was on the floor still tied to the chair. Before the intruder could blink, Gymkhana and Celeste were on her, knocking her onto the floor beside Mike. The pliers came out, startling the girl into an ear-splitting scream of desperation. Gymkhana backed off, suddenly unsure of her plan.
“She’s play-acting.” Celeste had come back to plant that observation in her mind. “It’s pretend. Look at her eyes.”
The girl-in-waiting was up already, squatting near Mike’s head, keeping her hands flat on the floor for balance; or for traction, Celeste whispered. Her eyes were widely open and fixed absolutely on Gymkhana’s face. But she wasn’t able to control her mouth; Gymkhana thought it had a sly look to it.
Mike got her attention, his voice cracking, sliding up the scale to shrill and then back to something like a bark. “Please, Gym,” he begged. “Just let me go. I won’t tell.” That was all he got out before she jerked the thong around his throat to silence him. With the new girl in the room there was no way Gymkhana could just let him go. Celeste spoke up, reminding her that she had faced a similar dilemma and died for it. Gymkhana reached for the crucifix hanging around her neck, cupping it in her hands.
Which one would it be, Gymkhana wondered, the girl or Mike? Celeste snickered in her head. They both knew that at no time had Gymkhana ever considered the other alternative. The thirty-two always had the option of stepping forward and giving herself. While Celeste snorted her derision (she knew Gymkhana was incapable of making a sacrifice of herself), the girl-in-waiting made an unexpected play.
Launching herself from the carpet, she pointed directly at Gymkhana and screeched, “You ain’t the thirty-two yet and you ain’t gonna be!” Then she whipped her other hand from behind her back and threw something bright and shiny with all her force. It hit Gymkhana in the chin and bounced off, knocking her back.
“That was a knife, goddamn it,” Gymkhana mumbled through numbed lips, but even she couldn’t understand what she’d said. Her hand on her face, Gymkhana lurched from the scene back to the bathroom mirror to inspect the damage, caring for nothing else. The girl-in-waiting scrambled for the front door. Mike’s futile effort to stop her barely registered.
“My tooth!” Gymkhana screamed from the bathroom. The knife handle hitting her soundly on the chin had chipped the bottom off one of her front teeth. “You killed my tooth!” she cried.
Not having the sense to leave without knowing the outcome of her attack, the younger girl stood poised at the front door directing all her attention back to Gymkhana in the bathroom. Jubilant as she heard Gymkhana’s outburst, she moved carelessly into the middle of the room
and put herself within Mike’s reach. He grabbed her ankle and pulled her off balance, but she kicked him off her with little effort, and then walked past him to recover her knife. “I killed more than your tooth, you old sack of pus,” the girl commented.
Gymkhana continued to moan from behind closed doors. The girl-in-waiting crowed to herself, dancing in place. “Not gonna be the thirty-two anymore,” she trumpeted. “You belong to me now,” she told the man on the floor. “You gonna behave? If we be quick and get it done right now, you won’t die, Mr. Mike,” she said quietly, one eye watching the bedroom door.
“But she will?” he asked.
The young attacker looked at him in surprise before nodding at him with reluctant approval.
“If we’re fast enough,” she said.
He thrust his bound hands forward. The girl in the living room cut the duct tape from him. “You know what this is about?” she asked, easing him from the toppled chair, stretching him out on the carpet without any fight.
“Becoming the thirty-two?”
“Not so loud,” she ordered. “Sit up slowly and rub the blood back to your legs. She’s not going to stay stuck in that room forever.”
But Gymkhana wasn’t stuck anywhere. Silently she watched them from the partly opened door, her bottom lip worrying at her chipped front tooth. Bypassing Mike wasn’t going to work, she realized, seeing the two talk softly to each other. It wasn’t even an option anymore, not with the loss of her tooth.
Gymkhana felt a surge of regret pass through her. Was any of it for the boyfriend who was clearly no longer on her side, she wondered, or was it all for her lost position? “You won’t get me like you got Cousin Celeste,” she declared. “Not if I get you first.”
Gymkhana no longer had the thirty-two perfect teeth that were necessary to move forward in the ceremony. Mike had them, of course; and the girl hovering over him had them. She had to have thirty-two perfect teeth in order to be the second. Mike had been vetted by their dentist, so she knew Mike’s teeth were also perfect.
