The Solace of Monsters

by Laurie Blauner

  My eyes flicked open just as Kat opened the bathroom door, allowing some of the steam to escape. I stirred the tub water as I reached for my dirty clothes. She was carrying a bundle of new clothes.

  “I can’t see anything. Remember?” the little girl said, depositing her bundle on the sink. Her hands searched and found my old clothes. “I can hear you splashing.”

  “Your hair resembles a bird’s nest,” I told her, sitting back serenely and quietly in the warm water.

  She looked surprised. “I’m sure yours doesn’t look any better.”

  “What book are you reading?”

  “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.”

  “I don’t know that one.”

  “One is too small, one is too big, and one is just right,” she said loudly as if she was cursing at me.

  “Which one is Theresa?” I swirled the tub water to make rippling patterns over my disintegrating body.

  “Mama’s blind when she wants to be.” She looked askance at me with her gluey eyes. “Who are you really?”

  “Mara Five,” I hesitated, “ish.” I was still approximate in this new world.

  “Why are you here?”

  “That’s a long story. Turbulent,” I gave her.

  “I don’t have any friends to tell anyway.” She seemed unsatisfied with the word and my answer.

  “Neither do I.”

  “Here are some clean old big men’s clothes. Mama said you don’t have a mother and that something happened with your father. She said she can tell. Do you have any brothers and sisters?”

  I thought for a moment. “Maybe, I don’t think so. I don’t really know.”

  She came close to me, whispered, “I have an older brother. But we haven’t seen him since our father died. Peter. Sometimes I can hear him in the woods.” She laughed strangely, as though water was being poured over her, and left.

  I was wearing the shapeless shirt and thick, baggy pants Theresa had given me, warm, clean socks, my old shoes. I was taller than most people so a slice of my waist peeked out from the shirt. We would wash my old clothes as soon as we picked up the rest of the laundry from the people who would pay us. Theresa noticed my missing toes when I put the socks on in the kitchen.

  “Were you in an accident?”

  “No. Actually yes, several.” Just the accident of Father creating me and my body turning against me.

  “I see you’ve lost some of your finger.”

  “Yes, fairly recently.”

  Theresa came over to where I was sitting, patted me on the back. “Don’t worry, you’re safe here. No one will find you out here, in the forest. People can disappear out here for years. My husband used to go hunting for days. And my son, Peter, might still be out there somewhere. He came home the day after they found my husband, and left, and I haven’t heard from him since. I miss him. He must be somewhere.”

  The little girl wandered into the room. She bumped into the wash tub filled with soapy water in the middle of the floor.

  “Sorry, Kat,” her mother said, “I moved it. I’m just getting ready to do the wash this afternoon. I should have warned you.”

  The girl grabbed a spoon, with the oval center cut out, from the counter. She felt for the hole, dipped it into the soapy water and began blowing bubbles, which flew into the air like a flock of round, transparent birds. I had never seen anything so elegant and beautiful. Clear yet full of rainbow colors. The bubbles shimmered and twisted, dipped and rose, crashed into one another, burst, fell back into soap puddles. They lived their whole life cycles within a few seconds. Born, flew, and returned to their origins.

  Theresa was wiping up what remained of the burst bubbles splattered on the floor. “It’s too bad you can’t see the bubbles, Kat.”

  “I can feel them.” The little girl pinched one as it inflated from her spoon while she blew on it. It collapsed, became wet water again all over her hands. “I can see them inside me.” Kat’s head shifted. “Mara?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want to feel your face.”

  I didn’t want her to, but I extended my head toward her, remembering some of the operations. “Here,” I offered.

  Her hands nibbled my face, patting, caressing, twitching, halting at a scar site, then at the mole. “Having a mother is like seeing colors,” the little girl whispered into my convoluted ear. Her active hands finally stopped wandering. “Yes,” she said, “you are large and you shouldn’t be afraid of anything.”

  “Life isn’t always so simple, Kat,” her mother instructed her. “Okay, Mara, let’s go.” Theresa was carrying several empty sacks.

  Everything smelled fresh and clean, including me. Even the little girl’s hair looked brushed and the dazzling color of sunlight. It amazed me how much of a person’s history could be washed away.

  I hadn’t really noticed the woods before. They had surrounded Father’s house like an inadvertent gate. They crept toward Theresa’s house as though they were trying to surprise her or consume the house and yard.

  “Subterfuge,” I murmured to myself.

  I reminisced about running through the forest a few days ago, but I hadn’t really experienced the woods. Only at night and only as a difficult, threatening geography to leave behind. In truth the forest was a companion.

  “Gloves,” I whispered to myself.

  Bathed and with some food and sleep, the woods insisted on offering me pines, spruce, Douglas fir, elm, junipers. I could hear a river between the leaves, cotoneaster shrubs, sagebrush, thickets. I’d read a botany book at Father’s but I didn’t know how a plant felt or smelled as they pushed their way into the world. There were crags and mountains in the distance that thrust their faces into the sky, as if the sky, too, was blind and trying to visualize them by touching them. The profusion of every green thing kept on tapping my shoulders and head, brushing my back and legs. The world was incredibly beautiful when I wasn’t running through it. Butterflies, moths, and iridescent flies filled space not strangled with vines or trees. Birds chattered their boisterous songs and called to one another.

  Theresa hesitated a moment, crushed the leaves of a common tansy bush, held it beneath my nostrils, allowed the odor of camphor and menthol to fill my nose, reminding me of Father’s laboratory. For one second I could hear the clatter of metal instruments, the whirring and thumping of machines, bright lights focused on me and bounced away, something thick and wet being cut open, and then that brief memory faded.

  I could detect the hidden scratching of rodents and rabbits, fox, the clandestine movements of deer. The forest was so alive in a way I hadn’t seen from my window. It was full of movement, smell, taste, small noises. Blossoms had fallen and seeds and pods had dispersed, swarming and lying fallow and waiting on the ground for the ideal circumstances to grow and thrive. Purple lupines, red poppies, asters, paintbrush, lichen, mushrooms stood at attention, wanting to be noticed. I wanted to call to Theresa, up ahead, to stop walking while I stood still and became a part of the forest like some large, ravaged tree. I wanted to sit, listen, smell, become a part of what had been growing all around me all those years and I hadn’t been able to touch it.

  Finally Theresa sat down on a huge, jutting rock that she said could have once been part of a glacier. “How are we going to explain you to the people I work for?”

  “Ubiquitous,” I threw at her, having no idea how these things worked, politeness and explanations.

  “You’re a strange one sometimes, Mara. I don’t know what you’re talking about half the time.” Her brows drew together, her skin rippling like water. I noticed a small thin scar near her hairline. “I can’t say that you’re a family member like some long-lost cousin because I grew up here and everybody knows my family and my business.” Her features drew together contemplatively. “How about saying that you’re a friend of Peter’s he met in another town and you’re
visiting for a while? You can say you didn’t know that he wasn’t living here anymore when you stopped by.”

  “That’s when a person says one thing but means another, lying. It’s complicated,” I said. I thought of Father and how he had described the world.

  “I hate to ask you to lie, but if we don’t, whoever is looking for you will find you, and all my customers will be suspicious of an outsider.” Theresa shook her head. “That’s just the way this town is.”

  “Father told me that the world is difficult and full of wars, crime, famine, rapes, and shootings.”

  “Outside here, yes.” She nodded. “We have our own problems, but we don’t have big city problems here. At least not yet. Or not in the way you might think.”

  “I don’t really understand the ways of the world.”

  “That’s okay, Mara. Your father must have kept you isolated, which isn’t a bad thing raising a kid.” She patted my knee. “I can use you, and work will keep you busy and your mind off of terrible things. And church helps.” She lifted my chin with her hand. “I’ll explain things to you the best I can.”

  I nodded, and her hand dropped away. “I still haven’t met God yet.” I was thinking about the church.

  Theresa roared with laughter. “I can’t say many of us have.”

  “I thought that was why people went to church.”

  Theresa laughed again but didn’t say anything.

  I pointed at her forehead. “I see that you have a scar too.”

  “It’s old.” Theresa rose from the rock, retied her shoes. “We’re almost to the first house. Mr. John Benjamin, he’s an old-timer. He was born here, grew up here, and he’ll die here. He never married and I’ve been doing his laundry for years. So you know what to say, Mara, if anyone asks you?”

  I nodded. I didn’t like lying, but I could see it had its advantages.

  We were walking again. A cluster of buildings appeared with sidewalks and a dirt road down the center. The town was dug out of the forest. The houses seemed old, peeling, leaning toward the ground like scraggly weeds. I could ascertain a bar, a grocery, a clothes shop, and a post office. Was it a mirage, flickering in sunlight since the trees had been cleared around the space? A few cars gathered there, and I thought I could see someone pacing and smoking outside the bar. We veered away from the town and went down a side road, arriving at a house that seemed to have a lopsided smile and was covered with tumbleweeds. A smallish dog, chained to a piece of old farm equipment, barked repeatedly at us. I could smell its disturbance, cigar smoke, burnt onions and eggs. Black and white colors leaped toward me. It ran to the end of its chain, choked itself as it tried to snap at us.

  “Obstreperous,” I offered Theresa. I felt sorry for the dog.

  “Calvin, be quiet,” Theresa told the dog. It whimpered and followed its tail until it sat down in the dirt.

  When we approached the house, the front door flew open and an ancient man stepped out onto the dilapidated porch. He was the oldest man I had ever seen. His organs and limbs would be useless for Father’s experiments. He smiled broadly and his face was wrinkled beyond recognition.

  “Mr. John Benjamin, this here’s Mara, a friend of Peter’s who stopped by to see us, but she didn’t know he was gone. Mara, this is Mr. Benjamin and you’ll be picking up his laundry from now on.”

  At least I didn’t have to lie. The old man picked at his teeth with a miniature piece of wood and spit at the ground. “You can call me John.” He turned to Theresa, “She’s a strong-looking one.”

  “Yes, she is,” Theresa continued, “I might have her doing the cleaning soon too. First we’ll see how the regular washing goes. That’s you and Miss Elaina for now.”

  “I keep on threatening Theresa that someday I’ll get a washer and dryer.” The old man gargled his laughter. Theresa had a light, wispy laugh. Then there was my terrible grinding guffaw. They were both startled by it.

  “You sound like a broken lawn mower.” Then the man laughed again. “Do you girls want any coffee before you go?”

  “No, but thanks for the offer.” Theresa picked up a large dirty brown bag on his slanting porch and slung it over her shoulders. She handed it to me when she came down the rotten steps.

  The dog’s barking began again. It was straining at its chain. I put the laundry bag down and ripped the chain off of the old thrasher so the dog was free. I dragged the dog, which pulled away, toward me and lifted it up by its collar. I held it still in my hands as I raised them over my head. I didn’t care whether I unintentionally crushed the noisy, unhappy dog or not. It needed to learn about limits and freedom, a lecture Father often gave me. Its turbulence was the owner’s fault, not the dog’s. I opened my palms and Calvin, the dog, frantically twirled around on them. The dog barked and circled but had nowhere to go, and it wouldn’t jump from that height. Finally the dog calmed down after kicking its legs and smelling and nibbling at my hands. The only other choice was to let the dog free, into the forest, where it could be injured. And, like me, the dog would have its day.

  When it sat quietly, I said, “Good dog, Calvin.” I let it loose on the ground, and it barked once at me and then ran to the old man. It lay down on the porch, the collar and a small piece of chain resting along its back.

  “There,” I said, “now the dog’s free. It doesn’t need the chain and it will remember me and be good next time I come.” I picked up the man’s bag of laundry and hoisted it onto my back.

  “I hope so,” the old man said, shaking his head.

  When we had walked far enough away from the house, Theresa exclaimed, “I sure hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “I must figure it out as I go along.” I didn’t know why I did what I did, but I received a brief memory of dancing with a man in a tuxedo, a band played behind us, and other couples in long gowns danced slowly around us. I twirled on my own in the center of a dance floor, and a large dog ran out from an inner room, stopped at the hem of my dress, lunged at my leg and bit me. I was perplexed, then bleeding.

  “I don’t want to lose any customers.” She wagged a finger at me. “The next one is a retired schoolteacher, and she’s probably seen everything. She was my teacher when I was a child.” Theresa trudged ahead.

  We passed glimpses through thin trees of the town, which consisted of three neon signs, several large windows full of merchandise, a radio blared through the two long streets, from one end to the other. A few people entered or exited cars. Everything seemed old, as if the town, as well as the people, were living in a past time. A ghost town I had seen in a book. Father, too, wanted to live or relive another time from his life, and I wondered if all humans, because of memories, were fated to cherish either the past or the future, ignoring the present.

  The next house was closer to town and had a much neater appearance, like that of a freshly baked cake. It had been painted recently, was upright, and the plants and grass around it were tidy. No dogs barked as we approached the front door, which had a bell. Theresa repeated her rehearsed lie about me when a woman older than Theresa opened the door. She had white hair in a bun, thick eyeglasses, and her eyes, like fish underwater, swam toward me and remained on my face as though I had smeared breakfast on my nose unknowingly. At her doorstep I inhaled deeply, catching the odor of books, filled with stale paper, orange juice, and something fruity and light, perfume I think, which I had never smelled before. Theresa and the woman were exchanging pleasantries. I closed my eyes, but a memory of being on a plane that was falling out of the sky began to overtake me, so I opened them quickly. My stomach lurched back into place. I scratched my ear and the curved top rim, the helix with a bit of the triangular fossa, bloodlessly fell into my hand. I slipped it into my pants pocket, patted the hair covering my ear. Memories began arriving faster than they had previously. I was trying to direct them more, on and off like the computer.

  “Are you unwell?”
Miss Elaina’s glasses were focused on me.

  “Except for losing things from my body I don’t want to lose I am perfectly fine.” Then I realized that I had answered too honestly. They were both staring at me.

  “Come inside and sit a while, both of you.” Miss Elaina swept us inside with a gesture of her hand. Theresa told me to leave the old man’s laundry bag at the doorstep. I ducked into the house, which was roomier than Theresa’s.

  We were seated on an embroidered sofa. Every surface and piece of furniture in her living room had curlicues or stitched finery. Everything was embellished and feminine. I had only seen rooms like hers in magazines. It was full of small objects that had no purpose except for a collection, decoration, or to remind Miss Elaina of another time. Porcelain cats, thimbles from various states, doilies, a pink hurricane lamp. Theresa’s home wasn’t like this one. Everything here was delicate or breakable. I needed to be cautious in my movements.

  “Exactly what things?” Miss Elaina inspected me with her eyes. “You do have several scars.” She lifted my limp wrists. I pulled them back toward my body.

  “I’ve told her that she can explain everything to me when she’s ready,” Theresa stated.

  “Do you have books and writing implements here?” I was excited by the implications.

  “Of course I do. I was a teacher here. Would you like some tea?” she addressed us both.

  “Yes, please.”

  Miss Elaina sat in a carved wooden chair with a straight back but I still towered over her, even sitting, which made me feel clumsier than usual in her dainty house. I would practice all the etiquette I had learned from Father and Theresa. Miss Elaina left the room.

  “I need to get back to Kat. I don’t like her wandering alone in the woods so much,” Theresa whispered to me. “So I can’t stay here. If you want to remain, can you find your way back to the house?”

  “Yes, and I can carry both bags of washing back home for you.”