The Terrible Girls

by Rebecca Brown

  But the real blow came when others started following in your defective footsteps. They said if you, who’d been a founding member of the resistance, if you who lived in the very hut where the resistance met, decided to skip off and join the other side, why shouldn’t they? Why shouldn’t everyone?

  The few of us who stayed with the resistance didn’t try to tell those fickle, flighty girls what else your leaving had required, what you’d hacked off, what you had carried away.

  Lord Bountiful is erecting statues of himself all over the city. Not only in the lavish mansions where they live, but also, as part of a scheme to beautify the ghetto, right in the dry, cracked patch of dirt they now call our common yard. They’ve installed an audio-visual program in the elevator to work. We have to watch this show, which purports to be the history of our liberation due to Lord Bountiful’s benevolence, twice a day. The story is, of course, a crock of crap. At first we few remaining die-hards froth at the outlandish claims, but after a while, we’re actually rather amused by the childlike, mine’s-bigger-than-yours mentality of Lord Bountiful. However, most girls are too tired, and too defeated with despair, to be critical. They just nod, glassy-eyed and mute at the degrading lies we’re told about ourselves.

  The statues Lord B commissions are very big. There’s him charging on his noble steed. And there’s him trampling someone under the feet of his noble steed.

  Do you recognize the girl beneath the hooves? Can you see beyond her pulled-back lips, her wild eyes, her hand clutching out at nothing? Do you recognize, dear Lady B, whom you betrayed?

  But you were never good at subtleties. I bet you won’t figure out the statues he’s erecting are nostalgic. They’re his attempts to reassert what used to be his power. He’s not a growing boy anymore, but a shrinking, slow, old man. A lot of things he used to do to show off and to prove he could, he can’t do anymore. He doesn’t have the appetite he used to have, and he would rather not be bothered if things can be avoided. He doesn’t go prowling anymore. The pictures of himself in Bountiful Times are all retouched. His paunch is whited out, his jowls are tucked, his hair is given color.

  I doubt you’ll understand this Lady B, but as he mellows out and gets a little flabby and a little scared, I realize that he and I may not be as entirely unalike as I had thought we were, and I feel for old Lord Bountiful a kind of fondness. In short, dear Lady B, that fat old man is no longer the enemy.

  You are.

  In the hard old days the underground resistance would have produced a special rush edition – glossy? four-color spread? an advertising insert? – to rip the lid off the secret cover-up of Lord Bountiful’s demise. But not anymore.

  There is no gang of girls here anymore; there’s only me.

  Don’t think I’m boasting. I’m not the last one left because I am more true to what we once believed than everybody else. No, not at all. In fact, I’ve given up my politics. I fight no more and hope no more and I no more believe that someday all of this will change, and Truth and Justice and blah blah blah. And frankly, to have given up my girlish hopes is a relief. I don’t feel guilty anymore that I’m not working hard enough. In fact, I don’t work on that old junk at all these days. I’ve turned the printer and the xerox off, and the cover of the typewriter is thick with dust. I’ve heard, in fact, that this old stuff is just as obsolete as ol’ yours truly. But I don’t care. I’m not out to change the world anymore.

  But unlike the rest of our gang, who, when they gave up their politics gave up their reason to be alive, and had no choice but to lie down in the street and wait to be trampled, I’ve got a reason to postpone my end. Yes, something keeps me from dropping to my wrinkly knees for those stampeding stallions: You.

  Each day when I wake up, I think, today may be the day! And even if it’s not the day, each day makes me more happy, and I count each day that brings me one day closer to that true Someday when you come back to me. That’s why I stick around, why I haven’t donated the last bits of me to the Madame Bountiful’s Wax Museum of Old Revolutionaries, Glue Factory and General Emporium just yet; I’m waiting for you.

  I’m ready for you now. I’ve finally kicked away the last of my confusion. No more do I wake up in the middle of the night suffering those unguarded moments of doubt and wonder, What if I was wrong, Perhaps it wasn’t as bad, It couldn’t have been as bad as all that. No, now I am quite sure, quite absolutely sure, it was. It was worse, Lady Bountiful. Now I know certainly, more truthfully than any truth I ever knew before, that every thing you ever said, each thing that ever came out of your pretty, pretty mouth was a terrible lie. Now my regard for you is pure. Now I can count, and not lose count, the days and the drops and the beats and the breaths until you hobble back to me and beg me to take back the bag and let you in.

  You’ll come to me so frightfully, You’ll say, I made a terrible mistake, You’ll say, I’m sorry, You’ll say, Forgive me, You’ll say, Let me in.

  Like hell I will.

  Some nights after we had finished printing that night’s edition, and after the other girls had gone, and after the equipment was quiet, and after the hut was very dark, and after the mat was very still, in that short, hard, dark black alley of the night, you wanted me. You wanted what I did to you and how I knew your body in the dark. You wanted to do what I let you do, the way I let you in. And there, inside, you told me things. You said things I believed. You said to me to hold you, Hold me hard. And after you fell in me, but before you fell entirely, you said, Don’t let me go, Don’t let me go – You said things I cannot repeat, you said what I believed was true, You said, This is – You said, I’ll never leave – You said, Don’t let me go, Don’t let me go –

  I said, I won’t, I never will.

  You’re desperate to get rid of it. You’ve worn it underneath your skirts where it’s pressed so hard it prints against your skin. When you hear someone behind you, it makes you jump. You’re twitchy when someone makes polite conversation. Even the simplest questions like, Where’re you from? or What’s your name? or What do you do for a living? make you tongue-tied with shame. You’ve tried hard to get rid of it. You’ve tried to throw it away or push it down the disposal or flush it down the john or run it through the meat grinder. But it remains. It stays with you. It keeps itself so close to you. Like it’s inside. It carries you.

  Your toting it so long has made you limp. So now when you come back to me, your urchin girl not only holds the flashlight and your parasol, she also supports you by the arm. And when you go to Lord Bountiful, each night as you’re beholden to, you hide it in the clothes you drop beside the bed. You’re good at aiming what you slip from so it covers it, but sometimes, especially when he doesn’t want you to be thinking of other things, you hear the wind blow through the room and lift your silk gown up, exposing it, and you’re afraid. When you’re dismissed, when he is snoring, you slip out of bed. You slide back in your clothes, you press it close against you and you tie it hard and hope that no one sees.

  When I saw the flashlight girl alone, I opened the door. It was, after all, only a door.

  Hi. C’mon in.

  Thanks, but I gotta run. I’m only here to deliver this.

  She handed me a cream-colored envelope and waited. When I read it, I laughed out loud. Tears rolled down my cheeks. I looked up at her slender throat. Her collar bone was visible above a rip in her t-shirt.

  You know what this is? I asked, wiping the tears from my eyes.

  Her left cheek wrinkled when she smiled. Yep.

  You had sent me an invitation to: A Ball To Celebrate The Signing of The Declaration of Dependence. You’d handwritten a personal note at the bottom of the card; “Hiya! Please feel free to bring a ‘freind.’ Luvt’ see ya!” I noted your spelling error and the way you dotted your “i’s” with big fat empty circles. It was clear you had either lost or surrendered many of your faculties.

  Is she serious? I asked the flashlight girl.

  She nodded. Her bangs fell over her forehead.<
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  Jesus on water skis, I said. Does Lord Bountiful know about this?

  Nope, she said out of the side of her mouth. Her lips were a dusty rose color. I wanted to see her laugh.

  I widened my eyes like a bimbo and said, Gosh, I haven’t been to a party in ages. And never to a ball.

  She smiled with half her mouth.

  I put my finger to my lips, like you, and cocked my head. But – whatever will I wear?

  She laughed.

  I didn’t send back the RSVP, but neither did I send the girl back empty-handed. I filled her compact, soft-skinned arms with a complete set of back issues of our posters, flyers, manifestoes, declarations of independence, etc. I sent you an archive set, including some signed copies, even though you probably didn’t appreciate their value. What I sent you explained, point by point, and crime by crime, and death by death, what the regime you joined is guilty of.

  I’m stumbling up the broad flat marble steps of the giant, wedding-cake-white mansion. I’ve found the joint by tagging along behind the fancy horse-drawn coaches and dark-windowed pimp-mobiles. I’ve slogged behind them and the mud has splattered my faded overalls, my holey sweatshirt, my worn-out work shoes. I’m clutching, in my battered hand, a copy of our manifesto. Flyers of the DISAPPEARED bulge out of my pockets. My fingernails are broken and black with dust. I know I’m not in regulation party dress, but if those arrogant snotrags try to deny me entrance to the house, I’ll shove my cream-colored invitation right up their assholes.

  I’m met at the door by a coffee-cart girl wearing white apron, black dress, dark tights, sensible shoes and a small white cap which actually looks more like a doily. She opens the huge, many-panelled fake baroque door. It takes her ages to open the thing, so I give her a hand. She offers me a shawl to cover my dirty work clothes, then tries a jacket, but I don’t take either. I wear my position proudly. She escorts me through the tux and gown festooned crowds. They stare at me, partly out of fear that I might be contagious, but mostly out of respect for the quiet dignity that shines forth through my humble attire. They part for me like the waves of the sea for Moses. Head held high, I march beneath the dozens of huge glistening chandeliers and by the exquisite trompe l’œil frescos on the gallery walls. But I don’t stop to glance at this junk; I know where I’m headed.

  The floor of the ballroom is marble, the ceiling is a giant dome and all around the edge of the room are small tables, each with a candelabra and a bottle or two of champagne, each with some baroness or countess or general’s wife or courtesan who’s managed, in a very short time indeed, to push her pudgy way up through the ranks. Each of these nouveau tarts holds her puny court with a circle of clean-shaven, uniformed, bobbing-headed boys. In the center of the room, as if they were being guided by the strings of a giant puppet master, hundreds of almost identical boy – girl couples dance. In the very center of the party, in the prettiest gown of all, attached to the handsomest young buck, is you. As I push my way through the dancers, each couple I touch stops dancing. They drop their hands, their eyes glaze over, they hang their heads in shame. Everyone’s stopped dancing when I reach you. The band stops playing. But you, you princess with your dream come true, have closed your eyes and raised your sticky blue eyelids towards your beau. Your escort is a movie star pin-up look-alike. I hesitate as I try to remember who he’s trying to imitate. When he sees me, he stops dancing abruptly. He gulps. He isn’t holding you anymore, but you keep swaying to music no one else can hear. Your limp is barely noticeable. You only stop dancing when you feel, beneath your dancing slippers, you’re stepping on the edge of his toes. You open your eyes. You see his white face, his quivering chin. You see him looking behind you. You turn. You see me.

  You gasp.

  Have you forgotten you invited me? Or did you only send that invitation on a whim, not dreaming I would actually show up? I know how you think, you silly bitch. I can imagine you sitting in front of your make-up mirror, because whatever you did you always liked to watch yourself doing it. I can see you put your finger to your lips as if it could help you think, and I can see you cock your head, and I can hear inside your head. I can hear you thinking how clever it is to invite me because of course I won’t come because I’ve always hated those kinds of do’s, but even if I had changed and wanted to come, you figure I won’t because Whatever Will I Wear? And I see you scribbling in your little girl hand, making those big fat empty circles above the “i’s” and misspelling words that any third grader should know. I can see what you did so clearly – and I wasn’t even there, was I? – so why the hell can’t you? You may have always liked to watch yourself, to see how pretty you can get in make-up mirrors and to see the way your body moves, but you never saw, you’ve never seen what you did.

  And neither do you remember. You don’t remember you sent me an invitation and wrote a personal note to me: “… bring a ‘freind’!” But perhaps you’ll remember when you see my friends. For here they come. They’re breaking through dozens of pairs of fine French doors, they’re shattering glass onto the marble floor where it sprays as pretty as, though makes more of a mess than, champagne. And they’re swinging down from chandeliers and leaping off balconies and banisters and running through the long, long gallery and whooping like a jungleful of Janes. You remember the old gang, don’t you dear? You recognize each one of us whom you betrayed. We look the same old way we always have, we never change. We don’t keep up with fashions. Except we have changed, in one small way. We’ve traded in our let’s-try-to-relate-to-each-other-and-give-each-other-space diplomacy for sub-machine guns, uzis and some mini-nuke units we picked up cheap at a CIA garage sale. And we’re about to blow your candy-ass fairy tale to smithereens.

  You open your mouth, you’re about to cry. You’re about to tell me – again – that I don’t understand, that it isn’t what it looks like, that – but this time I don’t listen to your shit.

  No, this time your little girl pouts and your big girl lies are drowned out by the sounds of heavy artillery. The girls in the Big Is Beautiful club are rolling in in their tanks, knocking through your trompe l’œil walls like they were cartoons. We open fire, the girls and I, and blast the bleeding Jesus out of this house of ill repute you’ve clawed your way into. I’m hugging a hunk of a machine gun to my side, and as I rat-a-tat off round after round, my body shakes. I didn’t know a clip could hold so much, it doesn’t even take time to catch its breath. I feel the hard metal butt pound against my chest. My teeth are clenched and my hands are wet and I’m afraid my body is going to fall, but I don’t let me, I don’t let me, I want to see the full effulgence. But my vision starts to blur. Then all the sounds of shots and moans and cries and people begging no-please-yes get muffled. I’m not sure what happens next.

  Do I find that handy rope around your middle and do I tie you up with it and make you watch us tear apart each inch of this nasty pleasure playhouse where you live? Or do we not do you the honor of singling you out for attention, but merely splatter your innards against the rococo replica furniture with everybody else’s? Or do we allow you, only you of all your patten leather cohorts, to survive this spree? And do we then drag you back on your belly to where you used to live with us? Do we then make you kneel down on your skinned-up knees and do you beg us to take you back and let you be a girl like us again? Do we not let you? Or do we leave you at your house, and after we’ve eaten all the dip and drunk all the booze and after we’ve turned everything into a holocaustal wreck, say, Thanks for the fête! So long! and find our coats and our own ways to the door and leave you surrounded by overturned ashtrays and spilt drinks and torn up panties and crushed potato chips and wodges of skin and blood and peanuts ground into the carpet, and do we leave you to wonder how ever, oh how ever will you clean up this mess alone?

  I don’t know what we do because of course I don’t go to your silly party. Not even in my maddest, my most lucid, most inspired moments do I let myself consider accepting anything you offer me. Even something as pal
try and as much a sham as your offensive invitation. I know that any acceptance I would make of anything from you would give you enough to let you think I’m giving in to you. You need to think I’m giving in. You need to think I’m beginning to think how I’ve been towards you has been excessive. You want to think I’m going soft inside and thinking you weren’t as bad as I said you were. But you were, Lady B, you were revolting. You were terrible. Your were not forgivable.

  OK, maybe in my own small way, I’m as bad as you. Maybe it’s just as bad to be unforgiving as it is to do something unforgivable. Maybe it’s worse. Maybe you ought to be let off easy for merely being a weakling and a liar and an opportunist and a traitor and not very smart. Whereas, I know what I’m doing. I know exactly.

  Perhaps if I were still the good girl trooper I once was, I’d put aside my personal feelings and consider the larger issues. Maybe I should, but I’m not going to, Lady B. Not now, especially not now, when I know what the gift you want to give me is.

  Tonight you’re in your party dress. It is the prettiest, the most extravagant dress, the dress that shows you finally are what you have always longed to be: the belle of the ball. The dress was very expensive and the sturdy red threads in the seams no one can see cost someone dear. But you, who’ve never been good with figures, haven’t bothered your pretty head with learning the price of your party dress. Your dress is shiny, it dazzles so bright no one notices the hint of a limp in your dance step. And no one sees the lump beneath your skirt.