Dreadful Young Ladies and Other Stories

by Kelly Barnhill

  He left her his poems. He had already promised that he would, and so the girl was waiting by the window. Expecting. Boxes arrived filled with smudged notebooks, stacks of torn paper, inked sections of box tops, envelopes marred by off-kilter metaphors and mostly apt allusions.

  “We don’t want them,” her mother said when the truck arrived. But the girl insisted, and men delivered the poems into her room, leaving her mother grumbling downstairs. The poems lined the walls and blocked the window light; they assembled into chairs and chaises, into curtains hanging from the walls, lamps hanging from the ceiling.

  “Well,” her mother said. “I hope you’re happy.”

  And the girl was. At first. She slept on a bed of poetry, felt the click and beat of internal rhythms moving up her legs as she slept, the slick of rhyme in her mouth each time she inhaled. She let the color of his words rest against her eyes as she dreamed and dreamed. Each night she saw a boy made of paper—scribbled eyes, a lettered mouth. She saw a body that formed and unformed as the wind blew, and a mind that insisted on revising itself—words written and unwritten, arranged and scattered, a poem that would never be finished. And somewhere inside that paper boy, a flesh heart quivered, and swelled, and pumped, and beat, beat, beat, beat.

  She woke each morning stained with graphite and cut by paper. She stopped eating. Love satisfied her. She stopped wearing shoes. Handwritten letters cushioned the space between her soft toes and the hard ground. She wore a dress made from notebook paper. Stanzas bound her hair. Her mother shook her head. Worried.

  “It isn’t right,” her mother said as the girl drifted to the breakfast table, followed by a flurry of unbound papers. “Girl your age shouldn’t be tied down.” The poems shivered in horror, but the girl gathered them in her arms, curled her pink lips, and crooned as though hushing a child. “She didn’t mean it,” the girl said.

  Her mother handed her coffee, juice, plates heaped with food, but the girl refused. She stood, the poems standing with her, and walked away. “You’re just jealous,” she said.

  “As if,” her mother grunted.

  In the doorway, the poems crinkled their edges in disgust.

  Time passed, and at last the girl ate. Her mother wept in relief.

  The next day, she bought a red dress. The notebook pages fluttered sadly to the ground. The girl skipped to the door as a horn blasted outside. The girl’s mother, watching from the window, heard a car shudder and spurt before rumbling into view on the street. The pages tumbled toward her, assembled themselves into a stack, and peered over the sill.

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” the mother said, giving the pages a sympathetic pat. “Nothing lasts forever.”

  The next day, the girl bought new shoes. The poems were heartbroken. They swirled into the basement to sulk.

  Days passed.

  A whole week.

  “You should do something about that boy,” the mother finally said one morning at breakfast.

  “What are you talking about?” the girl said, shoveling eggs and sausage into her mouth. Sinking her teeth into bread and butter and sugared fruit. “He’s wonderful.”

  “Not that boy,” the mother said, impatiently. She jerked her head toward the doorway. “That one.” A thousand bits of torn paper—each one bearing a tiny love poem, so smudged as to be illegible—gathered themselves into the silhouette of the dead boy, wavering hopefully in the shadows. A paper cowlick draped over a handwritten, hopeful eye.

  “Oh. Him.” The girl shrugged. “He’ll take the hint eventually.” She gulped her juice. “Right?”

  But he didn’t. He made himself into cardboard shoes with haiku on the toes. He unraveled the spiral spines of his notebooks into fingers, and at night he etched his name on the insides of her arms, the soles of her feet, and even the pulsing curve of her throat.

  “Knock it off,” the girl said firmly one night, hurling her pillow into his papery middle. He scattered and sobbed. Tear-soaked couplets landed on her bed. Sonnets drenched in misery and snot hurled themselves in wads onto the ground.

  That morning when she showered, he fingered words through the steam. “Ode to Things Unfair,” read the bathroom mirror as she slipped her nakedness from stall to mat. “The Beautiful and the Cruel” proclaimed the sink with toothpaste letters. She wiped the wetness from her face, threw her towel on the ground, and ran her fingers through her long hair.

  Paper hands curled around the edge of the door. Paper eyes peeked in. They ogled.

  “That’s it,” she said. And she meant it.

  She invited her girlfriends to a bonfire. They drank sticky-sweet wine coolers in clear bottles and vodka-spiked cranberry juice, filled high and sloshing over the rims of their plastic cups, spilling onto their hands. They drank to sisterhood. They traded stories of past lovers, painstakingly detailing each excruciating inadequacy. The girls were brutal, and specific. In the box next to the fire, the poems winced.

  The girls promised to never date poets again. They pinkie swore. They sat close together, bare shoulders touching bare shoulders; they cocked their glossy heads and sighed as, one by one, they tossed the poems into the fire. Their young skin glowed in the firelight; their pearl teeth glinted through the smoke.

  Inside the flames, the poet composed in their honor. His words were now a burning thing, as his life burned and his soul burned and the whole world burned and burned. He sang of the shiver on the neck at the touch of a lover’s mouth, the taste of breath in the ear, the agony of a finger’s brush against a lonely hand. He sang of breasts and skin and throats and thighs and mouths in mouths on mouths.

  He sang of a girl, mostly true.

  He sang of a boy, his smudged, smoky scream, his life cut short: a poem flung out, pinned onto the cruel, dawning sky.

  1. Fran

  It was easy enough to lose a child by accident. To do so on purpose turned out to be nearly impossible.

  The child slid his grubby, slick fingers into her hand. Hung on for dear life. He rubbed his face on the seat of her skirt, and hooked his arm into her purse’s glossy leather strap. Meanwhile, people passed by without a glance, their hands full of drooping cotton candy or oversized stuffed dogs with weak seams or shrill whistles in the shape of a bird. Aggressively unattractive parents wooed their children with sweets and grease and cheap toys. Fran pressed the fingers of her free hand to her mouth and choked down bile.

  The child stumbling next to her hip was not her own. This child, with thick lips and the watery squint of dull eyes, was her lover’s. Or, more specifically, her lover’s wife’s child.

  If a child was an anchor on a good man’s soul, Fran reasoned, if it kept him from daily loving his love, would it not be better if such a child disappeared?

  Children disappear every day. Just watch the news.

  When Fran was fourteen, she took her little sister to the park. The little girl flew higher and higher on the swing—lace bobby socks, black mary janes, a dress lined with crinoline flapping about her spindly legs like white and pink wings—while Fran leaned against the elm tree and let Jonah Marks slide his hand into her shorts. Let him hang on tight.

  Watch me, the little girl cried. Watch me. Her voice bounced against the basketball court, rustled the leaves, floated on the breath of Jonah Marks, on his wet lips and insistent tongue. Watch me.

  When she turned, the little girl was gone. The swing still arced back and forth, a memory of her body. She flew away, Fran told her mother, her father, the social worker, and the police. I heard the rustle of lace and the flapping of wings. I heard a voice echo within, around, and above. She flew away.

  And she may have done. Really, who’s to say?

  But Fran’s little sister was a pretty child. No one ever snatches the ugly ones.

  Fran’s lover’s son was not a pretty child. He whimpered and wheezed. He chortled and pleaded. An endless litany of
wants.

  Grant me a snow cone.

  Grant me a foot-long.

  Grant me a deep-fried candy bar on a stick.

  Fran tried to dash away at the restroom, but the child appeared like magic at the doorway and grasped the hem of her skirt. Fran tried to dodge him in the haunted house, but he kept close to her heels in the dark. He hid in her pocket. He slid into her shoes. The weight of him swung from side to side. She heard him flapping and flying. Watch me!

  Fran sent the child to the top of the giant slide hoping for an opening, but a convention of police officers gathered without warning to look appraisingly at the hordes of ugly children hurtling down yellow humps, their faces lit by the misplaced love of their fawning parents on the ground. Fran was, she saw, surrounded by idiots. And she couldn’t slip away.

  The child at the top of the slide—her lover’s wife’s child—shivered and shook. He gripped the burlap sliding sack the way a skydiver hangs on to his defective parachute before his final bounce upon a pitiless ground. Fran looked up. Felt her shoulders hemmed in by police.

  She flew away, she wanted to say to the cop on her right. Children disappear every day, she nearly said to the cop on her left, especially the pretty ones. It isn’t my fault that the boy is hideous.

  The ugly child peered down at Fran, held her gaze. She imagined him in black mary janes. In bobby socks with lace at the ankle. She imagined him on the arc of a swing, unhooked from gravity, bumping against the sky. The wind lifted his pale hair like the crinoline lining of a fluttering skirt. Fran felt her breath catch. Watch me! the ugly child mouthed. Watch me! He swayed and swayed, and Fran found herself swaying too.

  Grant you feathers, murmured her lips.

  Grant you wings.

  Grant you light and wind and helium.

  Grant you cloud and moon and star. The vacuum of space. The infinite distances between lover and love.

  The child sat on his burlap and pushed off.

  And somewhere inside, Fran grew wings.

  She flew away.

  2. Margaret

  Red lips invite trouble, when trouble requires an invitation. Which it usually doesn’t. Margaret knew that trouble hid under dirty rugs and scratched coffee tables. It lurked behind heavy drapes like in old vampire movies. It gathered in great clouds like pollen in the spring and fall and settled like dust in between.

  Margaret stood in front of the mirror painting black around the eyes, muting acne scars and fresh pustules with muddy makeup, and crafting a false beauty mark at the hollow where her chin met her neck.

  She wore pink lips to school, black lips to visit her grandparents, and red lips for everything else. She wiped Vaseline across her small, white teeth to prevent stains—like a barrier against blood on crisp new sheets. The color of the lip is significant, Margaret knew. The color matters.

  Margaret’s teacher, for example, was terrified by a red lip. He pulled at his earth-tone tie until his face went red, then purple, then green. He stammered and hesitated before shooing the girl away.

  Pink, though. Pink was a different story.

  Two weeks with pink lips. Only two. By then he was weak and trembly, his fingers fluttering gently as they grazed her neck.

  They found him the next day. Heart attack. Hard-on. Pink lips. Really, who’s to say? Margaret offered no opinion.

  Her mother snored in the next room, her new boyfriend at her side—also snoring. The room stank of liquor and sex, and Margaret wrinkled her nose as she slipped inside.

  Margaret intended the black lips for her grandfather, but it was her grandmother who, somewhere between the tuna casserole and the Cool Whip surprise, began to nervously run her fist through the porcupine spikes of her black-and-white hair. And shiver.

  “I was a Girl Scout once, did you know,” her grandmother said. Margaret curved her black lips into a grin. She slipped her supple fingers into her grandmother’s rice paper hand, felt the old woman’s soul leak out in a long, slow sigh as she leaned inexorably in.

  Grandmother still wore her oven mitts when they found her. Black lipstick on her mouth.

  Borrowed time, people said.

  Margaret crawled in between her mother and her mother’s boyfriend. Her mother slept openmouthed, wet breath catching in her throat.

  It’s only a matter of time, her mother had said earlier that day, as she checked the fit of Margaret’s new bra. Her thumbs lingered on the dense, round breasts as though checking for freshness. Every Tom and Dick’ll want a taste. A kiss, I mean.

  The boyfriend had leaned in the recliner, his hands occupied by a cigarette and an icy highball glass. But his fingers itched. Margaret could tell.

  A kiss is a dangerous thing, the boyfriend said. I feel sorry for the poor son of a bitch. Won’t know what’s hit him until it’s too late. Still, he said, dragging deep on his cigarette, not a bad way to go. He had given Margaret a full-handed smack on her rear as she passed.

  Margaret leaned over, placed a hand next to each of his shoulders, peered into his sleeping face. Too late for you, she whispered in the dark. His face was calm, his jowls slack. The stubble on his chin stood at attention. His lips were full and slightly parted, the corners twitching with each breath. She licked her lips.

  Too late.

  She licked her lips again. Tasted musk and cinnamon, and oh god, salt, sweat, and lemon juice, and oh god, grass and wheat and meat and milk. Tasted youth and birth and decay.

  She licked her lips again. Felt her body shudder and buck. What is it, she wondered, about death that makes us feel so alive?

  3. Estelle

  Reginald curled his body up the length of the radiator pipe. Winked one yellow eye. Winked the other. He tested the air with a quick flick of the tongue.

  “Mind your own business,” Estelle said, returning the gesture, though she knew he wouldn’t notice.

  Estelle sat at a desk with one hundred and two different file folders on the surface—all color coded, labeled, and stacked neatly according to year. This is what she had been told to do. To prepare. They don’t look out for your best interests, so don’t expect it, her friends said. They care about numbers and procedures and forms. They care about quotas. If it were up to them, they’d swallow you whole.

  “They can try,” Estelle chuckled, as she pulled Andrew and Arnold from their hiding place in the bottom drawer and draped them heavily on the ground. They lifted their flat heads and gave her twin looks of indignation before sliding across the floor and under the upholstered chair.

  The young man appeared in the doorway. He had long, white hands, tapered fingers, narrow hips. A blue suit and a blue tie and a haircut both severe and modern.

  “I see you’ve been busy, Ms. Russo. I appreciate your work, but I assure you it was not necessary. I’m top in my field.”

  He remained in the doorway. From his position on the radiator pipe, Reginald tasted the air. He leaned closer and unhooked his jaw.

  “No, no,” Estelle said firmly. Reginald pulled back, chastened.

  “Oh, yes, I assure you I am,” the young man said. “May I come in?”

  “Please do,” she said, winking one yellow eye.

  He sat on the upholstered chair, resting his briefcase on his knees. Estelle stood. Her body was long and supple. She slid like oil across the room to the chair opposite the young man. Offered a slow, mesmerizing grin. Flicked her tongue.

  Arnold unfurled from underneath, elevating hungrily behind the chair. Robin, Mae, and Chavez peeked their heads from the grooves of the couch cushions.

  “No, no,” Estelle said again.

  “I’m sorry?” said the young man.

  “Nothing,” Estelle said, winking her other eye. Arnold sniffed and slumped to the floor, while the other three retracted without commentary. The young man glanced at the floor, but saw nothing.

  “Lo
ok,” he said, “it doesn’t really matter what you have organized in what file. I’ve already seen it. How you’ve slid under the radar for as many years as you have is a mystery to me, but it doesn’t matter now. There are consequences.”

  “Nibble, nibble, little mouse,” Estelle said. “Always nibbling on the things that aren’t yours.”

  “The government,” he said primly, “is not a mouse.”

  The new brood woke and came tumbling out of the hole in the wall. At a hand signal from Estelle, they fell upon one another and played dead, as they had been trained. Diana, Elizabeth, and Eleanor glided in through the open door and moved regally toward the guest. Their golden eyes glittered like crowns. Estelle breathed deeply through her nose, flicked her tongue again. The young man smelled green and young. Like tight fiddleheads before they unfurl. The budding of spring. The tang of green apple on the tongue.

  “Who said anything about the government?” Estelle said. “I’m talking about you.” She leaned in. “Little mouse.” She unhooked her jaw.

  Gagged.

  Gulped.

  Swallowed him whole.

  4. Annabelle

  “My father says I can’t play with you anymore,” the boy said.

  Annabelle shrugged. “He’s not the boss of me.”

  “He says your mother isn’t raising you right.”

  “Could be,” she said, squatting on the ground. She spat on the bare dirt. Drew with her finger.

  “He says you’ll grow up just like her. He says the neighborhood doesn’t need another one.”

  Annabelle drew a picture of a house with a sun and a heavy cloud. She drew a man inside with a woman. The man was on his knees. The woman had her head tossed back.

  “He says you’re all the same. He says I’m not supposed to chase a dirty skirt.”

  Annabelle drew heavy drops coming out of the cloud. She drew a flood that bent beams and rotted floors. She drew swollen banks and ruptured dikes and water that would not be bound. She drew a broken house tumbling down the river and floating off to sea.