The Terrible Girls

by Rebecca Brown

  She speaks sentences from phrase books. In eleven languages she can ask when the next train leaves, is the water pure, where she can find a room. I know these phrases in only my own tongue, but many dialects, all rich.

  You tell me, You are flexible, you’re free. You wander many countries. You chat with all the natives. You move in and out of customs like a snake.

  I protest, I say, You just don’t know. This is the country I return to. I say, You are the country I return to. Insistent, I say, My home is not my home. You don’t understand my freedom. All I have is papers. I tell you I am terrified of waking up in no man’s land, my papers stolen, no one left to claim me or to understand my speech. My nightmare is that I’ll be trapped without a phrasebook or a tourguide, without a map to your land or to mine.

  You say, But that is freedom.

  I say, But that is fear.

  The only way I can look is forward or back.

  I keep coming back to you. Everytime I leave, you say you know I won’t return: I do. I come and come again to you. Each time I bring you more folk songs and tales from abroad. I think that’s what you want from me. When will you believe I want to come back? When will you believe that I would stay?

  You tell me “stay” means something different in your land. It’s not a simple cut and dry translation.

  Sadly, wisely, we avoid all talk of idioms. We do not mention syntax or semantics. We don’t talk about variant readings, hidden meanings or the foggy subtleties of pun. We avoid the meanings of double entendres. Because we know, though we try desperately to deceive ourselves, that it is a matter of semantics. The language that we know means something real. We pretend we only know what we say. Language is the only thing that lies.

  I’m afraid I think that what you want are my amusing stories from abroad. The next time I come back, I’ll bring a slide projector, a carousel, some books, a pile of pamphlets, a stack of postcards for the fridge. I’ll show you reams and reams of photos, some rare exotic artifacts, and talk about the habits of the natives. I’ll bring you a goat from South America, a camel from the desert. I’ll bring you a rickshaw and a pocket of pearls and a shell from Bora Bora. I want to present these things to you, to lay them on the mantelpiece. I want you to keep them. I’ll become a curiosity, exaggerate my mannerisms. I’ll be a parody to charm you. When will you believe these words and maps, these anecdotes are what I give, the way I’m trying to ask you, let me stay?

  This is not what sustains her here. To keep her I must send her out. She is not happy still. There are ways she is that here would be a fool. We know the ways that we could not survive. Loving difference causes pain. We love what is different to possess it, to be whole. We want to be everything. The problem is, we can’t. The problem is, the differences are different. Water and flame, brilliance and night, longing and fulfilment of desire. What keeps us moving is what keeps us sad, what keeps us moving is the want to be unforeign, whole.

  Some words we try to translate just don’t work. We can’t agree. What you see as my freedom, I call fear. What I name strength in you, you label fear. I have to remind you of the beautiful cadences in your speech, the way your phrases fall like tides and rain and fog. You tell me mine’s like lightning and like fog. Neither of us believes the other.

  Will I get homesick or the travel itch? Will you get tired of being patient with my lack of fluency in your language? Your lessons with me cut into your life. You’ll wonder is the payoff worth the effort.

  You insist that I’d get bored; you’re right. You tell me you’d get irritated; you’re right. The fact is, we are different. Our union is a sharp specific point, the few words we’ve translated, the tiny border crossed.

  I want to make true promises. I want to say when I’ll be back. You hand me my passport, give me my worn Berlitz, and take me to the station.

  In the train station, we stand apart, our bodies puzzled by distance. When I reach to hold you goodbye all our words rush up and out of me. I’ve forgotten how to speak. I touch your lips. I know this is a custom, is it yours or mine? Do you know what it means? Through the greasy yellow window on the train, I see you. You’re leaning against a post and you are smiling. Your lips are mouthing words that I can’t understand. I try to focus but I can’t see. Are you trying to say you love me or goodbye? I start to raise my hand to you, then the train jolts. Did you see what I meant to do? Do you know this means I love you? Do you know this means I love you?

  I take a train and then another train and then a bus and then a plane. I catch another bus, a cab, a train. I try to backtrack, circle back. I’m trying to throw something off my trail. Because I want a miracle. I want you to find me. I keep looking back, in rearview mirrors, over my shoulder, through fog.

  At borders they check my passport, crumpled, stamped with my history. The nation of my origin is blurred, buried under colored marks of countries I’ve forgotten. And of yours.

  At customs I declare these goods: three nights of love, a champagne cork, a picture in a garden. Two walks, a four day conversation, memories of hands. The scent of our flesh on my clothes, a memory of red. Some syllables that I can’t spell, the tension in your thighs. The feel of hands, a sound of breath, the texture of your skin above your eyes. The magic feel of twice blessed flesh. The cold grey light of morning on your spine.

  In this newly foreign country I’ve called home, my countrymen look different. I’ve forgotten how to say hello. I wake up at the wrong time, suffering jetlag.

  I dream sadly and with longing of our transport. I long for you, I long for when we shall pass free through one another’s homes. But this is a dream from which I awake.

  I wake as if I were with you. I leave this narrow bed and walk streets I remember only dimly. I try to read the roadsigns and recall my native language, my own tongue.

  In your land, it is morning. You’re making tea and going out to work. I wander the darkened foggy streets alone, pretending in the dark half light I’ll see you. The sky here now is foggy orange, the false light of the streetlamps.

  I’m lost in a city whose name you can’t pronounce; I think it is my own. Your country’s maps spell this name differently. Will you recognize the post mark? Will you recognize my hand? Who’ll translate the maps for us? Do you know this means I love you? Do you know this means I love you?

  JUNK MAIL

  I GET ALL THIS junk in the mail. It bothers me. The audacity of anyone to think they have the right to cram their shit into my mailbox. I throw it away.

  On the other hand, it is about the only thing I ever get. Other than bills, the odd postcard from people I know on fascinating vacations, late Christmas cards, letters from my aunt in Wichita Falls. Letters I would forward to you if I knew where you were: “No Longer at This Address.” Not much, in other words, worth writing home about.

  So I toss it into the pile that continues to grow, daily, by my desk. Someday I’m going to throw it all out together or make a bonfire, something severe and beautiful. Meanwhile it gets to be a mess.

  I hate the thought of it. Obviously everyone in my apartment building is subject to the same invasion. People all over town, all over the country, the world. Just think of the waste – the paper, the person-hours, the effort the postal people go through toting it around. Think of their blisters and sunburn, their aching shoulders. Think of the money stores pay those damned fools to design and package and disseminate this shit that no one wants to buy, that no one even wants to know about.

  I think of warehouses upon warehouses, acres of the same Pay’N’Save booklets with detachable coupons, the billions of Safeway flyers advertising pot-roast specials through Friday, the special trial offers from New Times, the Christmas in July sales at Fred’s Easy Mart, the slick magazine formats from god-knows-where with three color printing of bronzed baby shoes and plates with the Presidents’ faces. I think of how much more room there’d be in the world without it. I think of fields and open air, a different and more easy kind of room.

  It
’s not just the excess that makes it bad, but excess without reason. The bottom line, what it all boils down to is: I don’t want this shit.

  Have they ever asked? Do they think I’ll believe their impossible promises, their idle threats: You May Already Be a Winner, Order By Midnight Tonight?

  But I wonder.

  I begin to glance at them. Gradually at first. Never more than one per batch, and only the interesting looking ones. I start opening some of the glossy ones with the really with-it graphics, the fat ones that feel like they contain a free sample inside. I open these clandestinely, tossing the rest of them into the ever widening pile by my desk. I feel almost furtive, until I remind myself that my interest in this is purely academic, research so I will know exactly what to say when I finally get around to writing the huffy, indignant and scathingly articulate letters to the Boards of Directors of these companies that plague me, when I finally tell them, with great finesse and sharp and righteous wrath, that my mailbox is not just anybody’s into which they and their sleazy bulk-mailing morons can ram anything they feel like, yours sincerely, etc., etc.

  I imagine the guy on the other end of my very pointed and very personal epistle: a fat cat, the Chairman of the Board, a big beefy guy in a pin-striped suit, his college tie loosened, his sleeves rolled up, him chewing a soggy cigar and juggling fourteen conference calls from New York, L.A. and London all at once. He’s standing at the window in his 50th floor executive suite in Chicago looking out over the dim grey cityscape, his back to me. I see the back of his head, his bullish neck. Will he read his important private mail? Will he read my desperate message? I think he must. I see him sigh, his heavy shoulders rise and fall. I think he will. I see him turn, his thin and graceful neck. I think he already has. I see his cheeks, so high and fine. I think he has. I see his collar is loose, like yours. He has. I think he’s you. I see his nice brown eyes. He is.

  So.

  I know why I’m getting all this junk. It’s you – sending me a secret message, the only way you think you can get to me through all that is surrounding you, what you’ve built up.

  Darling, why don’t you just give me a call?

  I look through all of it. I search for your secret message in the fine print underneath the unbelievable offers, the 150 valuable coupons, Sizzling Summer Savings, and Dollar Day brochures. There’s nothing I can recognize of you right off. On the other hand, what if I really am a winner already? What if I order by midnight tonight? You want me to know this, don’t you?

  But I won’t get distracted. It could be a trick. It could be you wanting to see if I’ll turn my head as easily as you always did – I never did – if I’ll let my attention from you lag. Though I have never, ever forgotten what we’re up to, our true purpose here.

  I know there’s a message in the junk mail you send to me, a secret clue of what you want from me, a hint of how to find you. The catchy leaflets telling me about factory close-outs, final liquidations, about going-out-of-business sales, mean something clear about us.

  But you never will go out of business, will you? It’s just a new variation on your silly old offer-good-for-a-limited-time-only line, your standard order-by-midnight-tonight ploy. I’ve called. You know I’ve called. But your operators aren’t standing by your tollfree number to take my call.

  My last resort, and what I’ve always feared:

  To Whom It May Concern:

  It has come to my attention that I am still on your mailing list. I have tried, repeatedly, to be removed, but I keep getting this junk from you. Not even junk, just promises of junk. Shady offers. Computer generated responses: “Dear Customer, Thank you for your continued interest in our product line …” Don’t you read my letters? Don’t you understand? My mailbox is mine. You’ve followed me through three changes of address. I don’t know where you are. How do you find me? I don’t want to be on your mailing list. My mailbox is not just anybody’s into which you can ram …

  Yours truly, etc. etc.

  But still it comes. Just today – an offer to subscribe to a new long distance phone call system, the Sears Vacation Wear Catalogue For People on the Go, 25 per cent off on a pair of season tickets for a theater we only went to once.

  How can I express to you how desperately I want to be left alone, to be free of your recycled goods cluttering up my mailbox, my desk, my house? I don’t give the Post Office my change of address card, but you’re so clever you keep finding me.

  I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to play your own trick back on you. I’m going to send it back to you. Though nothing you have ever sent has included your return address, I’m going to find you. On your own turf, wherever that is, the space you said you needed.

  See, here I am, walking to the P.O. Can you hear me? I’m sliding gracefully into the blue tall shiny “out of town” box, resting sweetly against the soft flat backs of a hundred sleepy travellers like me.

  I imagine myself a bird. I imagine myself in the belly of a plane, jostling with other packages and letters, calm sweet letters from moms to kids, tense letters from overseas lawyers. I imagine sleeping next to a dewy-eyed love letter, breathing in the perfumed scent of love.

  I’ll slip in through the gorgeous slim mail slot in your exquisite new apartment. I’m thin and lithe and cool and dry and sharp.

  But of course I’m only dreaming that. As if I could fit into an envelope.

  No, I’m afraid the only way I’ll get back to you will be hard. I’ll wrap myself in styrafoam peanuts, tape shut my mouth and eyes, my waiting body. I’ll send me back to you, my love. I’m coming back to you.

  It isn’t just an ordinary box I’m in, but I don’t notice this until I wake up in your tender arms again.

  It’s dark in here. I feel your smooth hands on my back. I’m curled inside this tiny box, tiny and crunched and bent, and you’re winding me up, turning a crank in my back. And every crank you turn gets me wound tighter, waiting, busting to spring. My skin tightens, about to pop. I feel my lips pull back. This box is metal, not the soft, light, giving brown cardboard I’d crawled inside at the P.O., but tin, painted outside with garish pictures of carousels, balloons and clowns with big red noses. I’m inside this little box and that crank is cranking into me tighter and tighter, tearing through my bright red and yellow and blue and green checked nylon top, my fuzzy orange wig with the silly exaggerated bald spot, my goofy bright red lips, and two bright cheery dots of my pink cheeks. And you’re still winding me tighter and tighter, and every twist you turn gets me more tense. I’m tighter, harder, smaller. My neck is arcing down into my chest. My bent arms squash into my ribs. My knees crush up against my sides. My face twists. I’m trying to scream, “Just spring me out, goddammit, let me go!” but my neck is crushed and I can hardly breathe.

  Above me, outside the tin-bronze colored roof, I hear you saying words I can’t understand. A chipper little circus tune tinkles along as you crank.

  When the crank is wound so tight that even you can’t crank it any more, when I’m so tight and doubled over, about to burst, that’s when we both breathe a breath that’s just alike. We hold it, then – pop! – I spew out from the lid, my arms shot apart like unconnected sleeves, little red bits of my fingers splatter like pimentos on the ceiling, my ribs cracked sideways, my torso gouged, my face split like a curtain.

  This is too much even for you. You realize, at last, that you don’t want this. You truly want to send me back. But who will you send me to now?

  So I start getting real things in the mail. Not just the idle offers that I have been.

  Boxes start arriving. I’m eager to unwrap them. I do it quickly. You’ve wrapped them carefully, almost lovingly. First in a plastic bag, then in tissue paper, padded with newsprint and styrafoam peanuts, all that inside a box, then wrapped with P.O.-approved paper and string. I think of you wrapping them carefully, and me unwrapping them tenderly.

  But, careful as you are, the packages get tossed around, and the fragile soft insides come soa
king through. I stumble to my mailbox each day in the hope that you’ve sent me back more. These packages contain: my hands, the soft part of my thigh, that wet red muscle hacked away from deep within my chest.

  Obviously, it can’t last forever.

  But somehow, even after you’ve sent back all I thought you had of me, there’s more. Where do you get this extra stuff? And how do I keep finding room for it?

  I imagine my whole apartment, my entire building, packed to the ceiling with these soggy boxes. The P.O. brings them so happily, efficiently, on time. It isn’t like them. They must be in with you. Now I believe, I truly believe that neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow, nor dark of night, will stop them or stop you.

  There’s just one way to get away. Further away than the Pony Express. Further away than anything: an island.

  So I see this island.

  I see myself. I’m floating above it like a silent, separate eye, no form or body, hovering in the air above a tropical paradise. It’s a tiny island from above, not more than a couple of miles across. It’s mostly sand – harsh, brittle, bright – a hard little nut of white in the perfect sea. I see jagged shapes where the sand juts into the blue-green sea. There are lagoons of water. The island is mostly sand, but there are groups of palm trees and coconut trees, some places that must be shady. And there must be caves, cool places hidden from the sun. And maybe there’s a hut I’ve slung together from palm branches and driftwood. And maybe there’s a soft place on the ground I’ve cleared away beneath a tree where I can rest. Because I’m on the island. Yes, that’s me. I’m the little shape I see below me, so tiny and sharp. I watch my movements and from this height, even if in fact they’re smooth and calm, they all look tiny and fast, nervous and twitchy as a rodent. I can’t tell what I’m trying to do from this height. I think perhaps I’m only trying to rest.

  But it’s so hard to tell from here. I don’t want to leave this distant, cool blue sky, but as soon as I wonder too much what’s going on down there, I get pulled down. I can’t help it.