The Terrible Girls

by Rebecca Brown

  I hold you steady on my back with one hand while my free hand lifts the latch of the gate. Rust cakes on my skin as the gate creaks open. I carry you into the yard. My feet find the remains of a path through the spiky grass. I carry you up the swaybacked wooden steps. The paint on the porch is chipped. The front porch swing is broken, one chain snapped so half the chair lies on the porch, the other dangles like someone hung.

  When I knock on the door, your hand tightens around my neck. I lift; the heavy iron knocker against the door and drop it. You whisper something I can’t hear.

  I knock again. After a few seconds, I try the doorknob. The door gives. It hasn’t been latched. I push it open. I carry you over the threshold. I blink to adjust to the darkness. When I reach my hand to find a light, you whisper, No—

  But I can’t see—

  Sshh! You put your hand over my mouth. Put me down.

  I can’t see where to put you. I can’t see anything.

  There’s a couch over there. You point.

  I walk a few feet on the creaky floor. You put your hand over my mouth as if you can stop the floor from squeaking. Your palm is sweaty. I bump into something. I squint down and can barely make out a settee. We’re in an alcove off the entry room.

  Down, you motion with your hands.

  I take you off my back and set you down. I’m about to sit down next to you, but your fingers against my chest stop me.

  I need to put my feet up, you whisper, Get a stool. You point in the dark where I can’t see.

  I follow your directions and trip over the stool. I bring it back to you and put your feet up on it. I start to sit beside you, but you shake your head no. I look at your face; skin grey, lips black, the tops and bottoms of your teeth between your slightly open lips, white.

  You don’t say anything so I try to sit again. I put my hand on the back of the settee behind your shoulder. I hear something.

  I look up. When my eyes adjust, I see a banister, a second story hallway. From where I stand in the alcove, I can only see the bottom of the banister. The floor of the hallway is lit from the side, moonlight coming in through an upstairs window.

  When I look at you, you’re not looking up where the noise came from, you’re looking at me.

  There’s a shuffling sound. I freeze. I’m afraid to whisper. I move my lips silently to you: There’s someone in the house.

  I hear the shuffling and look up again. I see a pair of slippers, the bottom of a dressing gown. I hold my breath not knowing if we should give ourselves away by asking mercy, we’re only here for temporary shelter.

  I look at you. You haven’t looked up where the noise came from; you’re still looking at me, apparently unafraid. I wonder if you haven’t heard the noise.

  There’s someone in the house, I whisper.

  You put your finger to your lips, Sshh.

  The slippers upstairs shuffle again.

  Get out of the house, you whisper to me.

  I look at you, not believing you want me to abandon you.

  I – I can’t run, you whisper, pointing to your feet on the stool. You’ve got to go.

  I’m so happy you want me to escape. You’re thinking of me. This is a sign that shows me that you love me. Now that we’re away from where we used to be, you can.

  I won’t leave you, I whisper earnestly. I close my eyes and reach for your hand.

  I’ll be all right, you mumble, pulling your hand away.

  When I open my eyes, I see you less; the darkness of the room has gotten darker. When I look up, the figure upstairs is blocking the moonlight in the hall.

  Get out.

  I’m about to declare all my undying – when the person upstairs clears their throat. I gasp, then try to hide my fear. I look at you.

  Your face betrays no fear.

  The voice from upstairs says, Is that you?

  Your face shows no surprise. Go, you whisper to me.

  I look upstairs again. The slippers are facing us like this person is trying to see where we are. I start to pick you up and carry you away. Your arms are strong when they push me off.

  Is that you?

  You open your mouth in a way you never have for me.

  That’s when I realize it is not me that you’re about to answer.

  I grab your chin and turn your face to me. Whose house is this?

  You lower your face.

  I yank it up again. Whose house did you make me carry you to?

  You close your eyes.

  Tell me goddammit.

  I don’t hold you hard enough so you can’t get away, but you don’t pull away. You want me to ask you again. You want me to think I could get it out of you.

  Tell me.

  You open your mouth as if you’re about to answer me. Instead you tell me, Kiss me.

  I hesitate.

  Quick, you say, Don’t wait.

  You know I will. Your holding out that kiss to me is making me make a choice which is no choice. I know there isn’t time for both, an answer and a kiss. The mouth closed with the mouth won’t tell. And you know I will kiss you, and in doing so, I’ll let you get away with never telling.

  I kiss you. A quick one on the lips; your mouth remains unopened.

  Your hands push me away from you.

  The steps creak upstairs. I look up between the banister legs and see the bottom of the housecoat, the slippers, moving. You turn me around by my hips and point my body towards the door I carried you through.

  When I don’t move, you stand up and push me. I gasp when I see you stand, your ankle cured miraculously.

  Disarmed by your apparent cure, I can’t resist. When you push me towards the door, I go.

  Behind me I hear your voices.

  Is that you?

  Yes, I’m just coming.

  You close the door behind me.

  I stand outside the closed door of the house. Inside I hear a miracle – you walking.

  I step off the porch. I look at the dewy grass and close my eyes.

  I imagine I see the legs that you said couldn’t walk, walk. I imagine I see you walking up the stairs, then down the upstairs hallway, through the door, into the room. I imagine you being inside the room. I open my eyes and look back at the house. It’s dark.

  But then, in the window of the upstairs room, the one I have imagined, a light flicks on, then slowly burns brighter: a candle. The light wavers, gold and slight, so I can see the shadows on the ceiling of the room. The shadows are of yourself and of the person of the house. They’re moving. I watch the moving shadows of the two of you together. Suddenly they break apart. One of the shadows stays still while the other, yours, moves towards the window.

  Your hand reaches up to the curtain. Your hand pulls the curtain partway closed, then hesitates as if it knows, because it knows, I’m watching. I wave to the hand but it does not wave back. But it leaves a small, thin opening where someone could wave through. I close my eyes and imagine your hand waving out to me. You leave that opening for me, a sign for me, a way of saying, Someday, if I wait.

  ISLE OF SKYE

  HELLO IS EASY. IT’S the same most places. And if not, a smile or nod will do. But then again, in some countries, a smile means sadness; and greeting is expressed with an open mouth shaped like the letter “O.”

  I come to your house and drop my bag. Hello, I say.

  Hello.

  I wonder what the custom is, have I forgotten. You feed me tea and show me through your house. In both our countries, people sit on chairs. They walk on carpet or wood or cement or tile. They cover their walls with paper or paint. They put vases and mementoes on the mantels. Your house is different than I saw on my last visit.

  In my country, you say, people live in homes.

  That’s like my country too.

  So far so good.

  You feed me tea. We talk about the miles and years between us. I pull out my Berlitz and smile, embarrassed when I have to look up your words. But you’re patient with me and that’s a
good sign. I try to take my time and not to rush. Sometimes I look up a word you don’t say, but just a word I’m thinking. I want to know how you’d think this feeling if you were thinking it yourself. Such as Desire, Longing, Want, Desire. I don’t ask you.

  The first time she left I knew she would not return. I was desolate. I did not want to remember her. I did not tell her. I forgot her. Which was possible because we’d never spoken. I had only my imagination to forget. She sent me postcards. She’d always travelled light. She returned suddenly and light. Carrying a Berlitz book and a passport. I was happy for the former. We sat down with it at once.

  We try to talk and think we do, but we are each afraid. We know when we say blue that we mean blue. But maybe when you say blue, you mean sky. And maybe I mean water. Maybe we don’t know to ask more than that. Maybe we don’t know there’s sky and chicory and Puget Sound. My eyes and navy uniforms. Maybe we don’t know there’s sapphire and moonstone and shower-wet slate, and that one shade from rain on oil. Maybe we don’t know there’s jay and powder, maybe we don’t know skies. There are different colored skies in Texas, Windermere, above the Isle of Skye. We have to know more to ask more. My country’s colors are these: tall green dark timber from Oregon; shiny black hard coal, Ohio; bright red crisp apples, Oregon; thick black fat oil from Texas; red dirt from Oklahoma; bright blue lakes from Seattle. New Mexico is dusty brown; Arizona, blister white. I don’t know yours.

  We share an interest in foreign tongues, the languages you need when you’re away. But you have never been abroad; I’ve always left my home. Maybe our interests are compliments, exactly polar opposites. Or maybe they’re just the same, two parts which once were intimate. We try hard to find out. We try to teach each other language.

  I asked her where she’d been and she was going. I knew that she was going. I pulled out the atlas from the bookshelf in my study. We sat on the carpet. She crouched down, kneeled on one leg, pulled the other leg up. She leaned over the two-page map and looked. She spaced both her palms out flat in the air and made a circle above the book.

  It’s a big place, she said. She looked at me and smiled. Then she pointed, I go here and then I go here. I watched her hand trace down the page. The distance looked so easy. I’ve got friends here, then I’ll go back here. Her finger moved to its left. Then in a couple of days I’ll go back here. After that, here. I watched the shadow of her hand on the page, darkening the places. She tried to tell me about the smells of pine and salt and outdoor nights. Her fingers traced the routes that she had travelled. She said this map showed firm high mountains, deep cold lakes, But all I saw was a colored page. She told me thick black knots were cities. I asked her to pronounce the names of cities where I’ve never been. She told me New York, Philadelphia, New Orleans. She said Seattle, Cincinnati, Portland. She said Dallas and Chicago. They sounded exotic. Did she try to make them so? The names were written in letters of different sizes, The route numbers were as big as other cities. The next page of the atlas showed a country they said was a tenth the size of hers. The pictures were the same. This was my first lesson in the sorrow of our distance. I don’t know if she knew.

  We go for a walk so you can show me your country. We climb to the top of your favorite hill which you tell me has a view of your valley. They’re long, low hills, yellow-brown and rubbed. They look tired and content. But it’s foggy and we can’t see anything beyond. You describe things that I must believe are there. I’d know more of a different thing if you’d shown me a map. You say, When it’s clear that’s the Gloucester valley. There you can see to Malvern. There’s a big outcrop of Cotswold stone, and a cliff where people climb. We walk to the other side. Here you can see the Birdlip hill. Over there would be the Severn. There’s a steeple there that’s tall and white and slim. I can’t see anything. You pull me to you facing straight. Behind you fog is rolling. Your hair and lips are dark against the pale greying sky. Your voice is slow, deliberate, printing deep inside me. There’s a rundown mill and a tiny stream and sheep are grazing below us. There’s soft wet brilliant hummock grass and sheep with thick brown wool. Smoke is curling from the chimney at the pub. There’s yellow stone homes and dogs and cars. There’s wet thick tufts of green. There’s soil and sky and cities. Your firm cold hands are on my shoulders. Your hair and lips are dark against the fog. You just have to believe me, you insist, This is landscape.

  When I feel your palms against my back, I do. There’s something like faith and something like light inside me. If you told me we were anywhere, we would be. I hope my words for “landscape,” “fog,” and “sky” are the same words in your language. I believe you.

  We’re sitting in your kitchen trading stories. In particular, your life story and my life story, the things that happened since my last visit to you. You ask me about my first lover and then my first love. I’m dying to confess. In broken phrases I explain, and hope you’ll see my floundering as the struggle of a foreigner with language. I hesitate with my Berlitz, trying to avoid your eyes.

  The difficulty, I decide, is just in language, the time it takes to find things in Berlitz. I know, I know, that in your country, as in mine, our needs come from our bodies. In your country, as in mine, surely your countrymen all need the same, to eat and sleep and love.

  In this pause I look at you. Here’s what I’ll remember: your dark hair framing your brightened face, every shallow wrinkle near your mouth and eyes. Your cheek. I want a map of these soft creases. They look like tiny deltas. Your eyes are hard and soft like warm ice lakes, the ones you’ve said are three hours north of your home. Then there is one moment when your lips part slightly.

  When you raise your hand to me, I hesitate. In my country, this means I want you. Should I search through my tourbook, The Ways and Customs of Your Country, to find out what this means? But if I do I’ll wreck the moment. Impulsively, I lunge. You pull me to you and when my mouth reaches yours, I think that I believe I understand you.

  We give each other lessons, repeat phrases back and forth.

  Blue is the sky above someplace.

  Blue is the sky above someplace.

  Desire is what you feel.

  Desire is what you feel.

  This kiss means this.

  This kiss means this.

  But no matter where we start, it’s not back far enough. We can’t explain “what you feel” or “this” or where is “someplace.” We need to learn the first words first.

  We try to get the basics. You explain mouth and thigh and knee to me. I define tongue and tooth and palm. You tell me what neck and breast and stomach mean. I say navel, leg and thigh. You give me the etymology of elbow and shoulder and back. I expound on fingers and flesh and thigh. You derive the roots of calf and rib. I trace back the sound of lip. You delineate the covert meaning of arm and ankle and wrist. I tell you mouth and breast and thigh. Every tongue is a foreign tongue. Your foreign tongue is mine.

  This night we take each other to new countries neither of us has been to before. We are exhilarated, awed and lost. There are no maps.

  I travel the cities from your knees to your thighs. My hands find avenues and lanes. This is a country road, a freeway, a round smooth cobbled street. Your skin has deltas, soft like silt. The earth moves, is shattered, comes together again. I find I’m not a foreigner when my tongue finds the warmth between your thighs.

  She refuses to be photographed, convinced she’s not a tourist. She talks about rates of exchange, conversion factors, post. One of the little expenses too many travellers don’t take into account, she says wisely, is what the bank will charge for their conversion. It’s a hidden cost, she warns me. I don’t listen.

  One of our hands is on one of our thighs. One of our tongues is on one of our breasts. One of our hands is on one of our backs. One of our feet runs up one of our calves. One of our tongues is on one of our necks. One of our mouths is on one of our ears. One of our hands is in one of our thighs. One of us breathes and one of us breathes.

 
Both of us learn this means Yes.

  Your back is strong and square and white. Your hands are smooth and tough. Your tongue is like an underwater plant. My hands begin to glow with sweet thick oil. Your eyes change color. Your hands are smooth and tough.

  We learn the meaning of the lack of sleep.

  We make up words that we can’t write or say, delicious, private, warm as thighs.

  She’s always travelled light and is proud of her travelling knowledge. She explains carefully how to pack her passport and her currency so pickpockets won’t get at it. She keeps her passport by the bed, within reach of our lovemaking. Sometimes when she thinks I’m asleep, I hear her reach for it, run her fingertips on its old leather cover and sigh something I can’t quite make out, I think another language.

  We whisper syllables and touch. Our tongues touch and part, make words on fingertips, phrases from the tips of shoulders to chins, whole sentences and paragraphs on breasts. Pages on thighs. I think this time we forget what we know; that language is the only thing that lies.

  This night we each wake from the same nightmare. Our stomachs are soaked in sweat. Neither can remember the dream. When I wake up I lunge for the lamp and put us in the light. She grabs for her passport. The room looks bright and bare as a bulb.

  Are you all right?

  Are you?

  I lean into her my arms around her. We feel the sweat on one another’s stomachs. She clutches her passport with one hand.

  Hold me, I whisper. She tries.

  I’m going to be ready, she says.

  I’m afraid she is. I don’t know where her pulse is racing.

  Because in the dark when she’s next to me, she whispers about transit. She says, It’s like being in between. You could go anywhere.

  I stroke her back and run my fingers down the soft bumps of her spine.

  I say, But you aren’t anywhere, are you? You’re always in between.

  She says, I like it right before you’re there, when anything could happen. I don’t ask if she’s lost.