The Terrible Girls

by Rebecca Brown

  You’re dancing now. Your mouth is open and laughing and you carefully pant as you glance up at your handsome partner. Your dance card is full. Another of your duties as Lady Bountiful is to entertain the troops. So all the up-and-coming officers and all the old and honored statesmen get a turn with you. You press yourself in their arms like you were everybody’s one and only. You’re pressed to one of these officers when you feel a tap on your shoulder. At first you think it’s this booted hunk making an advance. You giggle and make yourself blush and then, a well-practiced coquette, you halfway cover your face with your fan and, with calculated ineffectiveness, pretend to push him away. You feel the tap behind you again. It isn’t him. It’s someone behind you. You turn. You stop smiling. It’s a coffee-cart girl. You’ve always hated these lowly girls who’ve been brought up from the mines. You snarl at her. But you remember your manners quickly enough to flutter your thick blue eyelashes at your officer, Oh do excuse me.

  What the hell do you want, you snarl at the girl.

  Lord Bountiful would like a word with you, Ma’am. She nods curtly.

  Oh do excuse me, dahling, you wink suggestively to your date, When Lord Bountiful wants me, I can’t say no.

  You put a good two feet between yourself and the coffee girl and twitter off. You try to sail gracefully from the ballroom, hoping the chandeliers you move beneath will nicely set off the diamonds in your tiara. You nod at the courtiers and sycophants who wisely avoid looking down at your limp. The only one who doesn’t return your plastic smile is the surly, square-jawed coffee-cart girl. She follows you through the palace, past the side rooms where the canapés and duck and salmon and caviar finger sandwiches are laid. You’re starting to sweat, you want to rest, but the coffee girl says, Move it.

  You hobble past the card rooms and the billiard rooms and the library which contains all – and only – the back issues of Bountiful Times. You heave yourself up the stairs and through the galleries of the private quarters where Lord B likes to have you. At the end of the hall, where you have never been before, you stop. You don’t know where to go. You hate having to exchange words with the girl, but you ask her, So where the hell am I supposed to go now?

  She jerks her thumb up the skinny grey stairs that lead to Lord Bountiful’s secret tower. You’ve never been here and all of a sudden you feel a little queasy. You hesitate.

  Up, grunts the girl. Her arms are crossed like a mud wrestler’s. She’s not a girl to take her duty lightly.

  You snort at her in a superior fashion, then gather the skirts of your party dress, taking care to conceal your lump, and slowly start to climb the stairs. The dark grey walls are lit every few feet by flickering candles. The higher you get, the fewer candles there are. The corridor is dark and cold. It’s damp as you approach the landing, and so dark you can’t see the door. You stop on the landing.

  You’re supposed to knock, says the girl.

  You bite your lower lip.

  You know how to knock, she says, Knock.

  You lift your dainty, manicured hand and fold it into a flimsy, incompetent fist. You tap your knuckles very gingerly.

  There is a knocking at the door.

  You’re surprised when he responds so quickly. You can’t believe he’s even heard your wimpy tap, but he roars, Come in! He’s been waiting for you.

  When you hear his voice you gulp. You look at the coffee girl and smile, suddenly friendly. She’s turning away.

  Hey, you whisper to her, Where you going?

  Back to work, she says outloud.

  You shush her, then catch yourself and smile like you and she are old buddies. Hey pal, you whisper conspiratorially, help out a friend in need, will ya? Get me outta here? You clutch at the lump that’s loosening in your skirts.

  The girl smiles at you like she’s known you for a long, long time, reaches behind you, turns the handle of the door and pushes you in.

  Don’t leave me, you whisper to her. But she’s closed the door behind you.

  The walls of the vast dark panelled room are covered with hunting trophies. You see the heads of deers and boars and hogs and pigs and rats. And at the far end of the room, above the desk he’s sitting at, is a head you can’t see clearly enough to identify the species. He sits behind his wide oak desk and smokes a fat cigar. You press yourself against the door.

  Somebody didn’t come, he grunts, no longer the suave, distinguished gentleman who took you in his arms so long ago.

  Pardon me? You use your meekest who-me voice. You flutter your eyelashes, forgetting for a moment he’s too far away to see.

  You sent an invitation to somebody who didn’t come, he says. Who didn’t you tell me about?

  For once, you’re speechless. You shrug, hoping the shoulder of your wonderful dress will slip enough to show your smooth white skin and coax him to forget his anger. But Lord B is not moved.

  It wasn’t me, you say with your righteous voice. It must have been that awful flashlight girl, stealing an invitation to send to one of her hoodlum chums.

  He crosses his arms. The flashlight girl loathes these kinds of do’s. She’s in the kitchen playing poker with her pals.

  Well, I must have forgotten, you lie, But I have the guest list in my room. I’ll go have a look at it and let you know. You smile as innocently as you can.

  Lord Bountiful slaps the armrests of his chair. He’s about to shout, but he clears his throat instead. He straightens his tie and sits back in his chair. Fine, he says, Perhaps you’d like to run to your room and bring the list back to me?

  Why, sure, you stutter, not quite believing he’s letting you out of his sight so easily.

  Behind you the door is opening by itself.

  I’ll be back in a jiffy, you chirp and slip out of the room.

  When the door creaks closed behind you, he rubs his hands.

  You don’t go to your room, of course. You know that whatever you tell him about your secret guest, he’ll finish you. You can’t go back to him. But you also know that wherever you go in his house, they’ll have their eyes on you. As they also will in his city. He owns the world. There’s no place you can go where he hasn’t posted his guards. There’s no place you can get away.

  Well, maybe one. A place so low and grimy and gross and poor the guards don’t like to get their boots messed up by going there. It’s the place you belong, Lady Bountiful.

  You’re coming back to me.

  You stumble down the steps. You’re tripping over your disgustingly costly ballgown. You’re trying to calculate how long he’ll give you in your room before he comes to look for you. You wonder how far you can get before he and his guards mount up and gallop after you. You limp through the galleries of the private quarters. Your burden seems heavier as you run. It rubs against your skin beneath your skirt. You don’t stop at your room, you tumble down the stairs. You hobble past the library and the billiard room and card rooms. You go down the skinny ladder to the bowels of the building – the beery, steamy, sweaty smelling kitchen. The shelves of which are piled high with bones of chicken and duck and cow and sloppy, finger-licked bowls of avocado and onion dip. On the floor are tubs of melting ice and empty booze and bubbly bottles. There’s plastic garbage bags full of empty cans and a couple of overindulged coffee-cart girls trying to sleep the party off. The flashlight girl and half a dozen of her pals are ignoring the mess and ignoring the jobs they ought to be doing. They’re sitting around a card and bottle and ashtray covered table playing poker. You cluck and start to scold the disobedient girls, but you remember why you’re here.

  You hobble to the flashlight girl. Let’s go, you order, I’m leaving.

  The flashlight girl ignores you. Gimme two, Lulu, she says to the dealer. Lulu is wearing a – stolen! – pillbox hat. But you don’t notice this.

  Pardon me, you snort to the flashlight girl, I don’t plan to go there on my own.

  Say what? shouts Lulu. The ghetto blaster perched on top of the deepfreeze is pumping out The Greates
t Hits of Marvin Gaye, Volume One and it is difficult to hear what people say.

  Two, the flashlight girl repeats, and she thrusts up two fingers at you. Her pals laugh at her gesture. Lulu deals her a pair.

  You shift your bag beneath your skirt and kneel down by her. I’ll give you a million, you say, I’ll make you rich – I’ll never – Don’t let me go alone, I’ll never, I’ll always —

  The flashlight girl brushes you away. Her buddies laugh at the transparent promises you never keep.

  It takes you a minute to register that you’ve actually been turned down. You push yourself off the floor, heave your burden up and make a beeline for the servants’ ladder.

  At the front door, you try to convince the cloakroom girl that one of the coats is yours. Your run through the house and your panic has dishevelled you. You look like a used-up slut. The cloakroom attendant eyes you skeptically, but then decides to enjoy the spectacle of your wriggling into the meagre polyester shawl she throws you. When you ask her to call you a cab, she laughs and jabs her thumb towards the door.

  It’s wet and cold and dark outside, and your tattered ballgown and your shredded dancing shoes, your ornamental shawl, can hardly begin to keep the cold away. You shiver and, like a little girl wearing high heels for the first time, fall down the steps to the cab waiting at the bottom.

  The cabbie mistakes the way your mascara is smeared and the snuffly noises you make for those of a jilted call girl. He lets you hoist yourself into the cab and refuses to budge until you pay him in advance. You root around in the shawl and find, miraculously, in a concealed pocket, a twenty dollar bill. You thrust the crunched-up bill at him. He holds it to his flashlight to check it isn’t fake, pockets it, clicks his tongue. The horses lurch.

  Once the cab is clacking along, you pull the curtain aside and look back at the palace. Behind you, like a melting confectionery ornament, it shrinks. When you can no longer see it you drop the curtain. It’s dark inside the cab, and for the first time in a long time, you’re alone. You lean your head against the seat and sigh.

  I wish that, given this perfect chance, this perfect setting and perfect time, you’d think. I wish, against the backdrop of the cold black sky, you would reflect upon what you have done and have a flash of insight or of clarity. Perhaps it isn’t too late. Perhaps you could, perhaps … You don’t, not yet, but I still hope you will someday. Someday I want you to know what you did. But it won’t be today.

  You put your fingers to your lips. You cock your head the way you always used to do, to help you decide the most useful thing to say. The words come naturally to you. You only have to rehearse them once. Then you loosen the bag beneath your skirt and place it on the seat beside you. You pat it so it’s comfy then you lay your head on it – it’s warm – and then you sleep.

  The driver wakes you up.

  Out! he yells.

  You stick your head out the window. But we aren’t there yet, you huff, I paid you twenty bucks.

  I don’t go no further than this, girlie.

  I’m not a girlie, you snap, I’m Lady Bountiful.

  The cabbie turns around to look at you. In the rain your makeup is running and your hair is dripping down in knots.

  Right doll, the cabbie chuckles. Now be a good girl and get outta my cab.

  You press your back to the seat and cross your ankles and fold your hands in your lap like a matron who will not be moved.

  He leans down to open the door. Get out.

  You sit still, staring in front of you. He grabs the front of your dress – you hear it rip – and hurls you into the street. You fall down on the wet hard stones. He flicks his whip and off the horses trot. From where you lie you see the horses’ hooves with their heavy, metal shoes. The cab has left you outside the ghetto gate. You used to walk through this gate every day when you worked beneath the ground. Tonight, against the dirty wet sky, the gate looks thicker than you remember it. You don’t think why this is. You pick yourself up and walk through the gate. You walk back to where you used to live with me.

  You limp off balance from your skirt. And though it’s dark and you can’t see, you remember how to find me by the touch. I’m waiting for you. I’m sitting behind the door and I am listening. I hear you stumble against the garbage cans and slip on papers and I hear the dull whap of the bag beneath your clothes.

  Through the crack in the door I see you. You’re flushed and bruised and limping. You’re crying. You lean your body against the door. You press your open palm against the door. You’re trying to talk. I see your mouth move but you’re so exhausted you can’t speak. You lift your skirt. You cry as you untie, then remove, like a dismembering, the bag.

  You lift it. You press it to the door. It covers the crack. I can’t see you now. But your other hand is free.

  There is a knocking at the door.

  Though I don’t ask you who you are, you say, It’s me.

  I don’t say anything. For a minute you’re quiet, then you knock again.

  Behind you, past the alley, is a clacking sound.

  I’ve brought something for you.

  I don’t say anything.

  You have to raise your voice because the sound in the ghetto behind you is getting louder.

  Here it is. You hit the bag against the door. It makes a wet, thwapping sound. When you remove the bag to hit the door, I see through the crack. You’re crying hard. Your face is a mess of mascara, as blue as ink, as black as a mine. Your other hand isn’t knocking anymore, it’s scratching. Your hand is raw. The tips of your manicured fingernails are breaking.

  Let me in.

  You still expect me to be fooled by your sniffles and apologies.

  You say, as if you’re telling me something I don’t know, as if you’re having a revelation, They’re after me.

  I could have told you long ago that this would happen Someday. I could have told you how you’d hurry back and say what you are saying now to coax me. But I guess I didn’t know all your tricks because what you say next – and for only the second time in our star-crapped lives – surprises me. So much I can’t even open my mouth to speak. You open your mouth and whisper, you whisper so sweetly it almost could sound true, you say, you say, I didn’t mean to leave you.

  Immediately, as if even you can’t believe what ludicrous syllables have sputtered from your blue-black mouth, you say again, I didn’t mean to leave you.

  What I don’t mean is to let you leave again.

  Behind you, up the alley, I see the eager, heaving bodies of the horses.

  I open the door. You fall inside. I catch you and the bag. You try to close the door behind you as if that could stop them, but I don’t let you. I keep the door wide open. I want them to find us like this. You try to stand, you try to leave, again, but this time I hold you so tight you can’t. I slap the bag across your neck and drag you and it over me. I feel the awful, familiar heat, the messy wet of the bag, and I feel you, whining and struggling beneath it, and still, still making excuses. You’re close to me, so close that when you stop chattering you hear, despite the noise of the stampede, what I’ve desired to tell you for so long: Look, look, you stupid bitch, here come the horses.

  This is how you’re trampled in my arm.

  DR FRANKENSTEIN, I PRESUME

  I AM IN MY bed and almost out, and almost where I can forget. But just when I’m about to fall, my loyal dark assistant is beside my bed. She shakes me awake. I see her masked face, pale as a moon. Her mouth moves underneath her mask. Doctor, she rasps, There’s going to be a storm.

  Then I’m in my boots, tucking my pj’s into my overcoat. My eyes are half-shut. I stumble through the dark, suddenly cramped and twisting hall of my condo. The walls start to melt like silly putty in fire. My neat framed prints of Erte and O’Keefe begin to shake. I fumble with the buttons on my coat. My loyal dark assistant tosses me my bag. We stumble out to a waiting cab. I hear the hum of the fuel-injected engine, the steel radials on the smooth asphalt. But between the
shifts of gears, I hear the neigh of horses, the clack of hooves on cobblestones. Beside me in the creaking cab, I see flashes of orange fluorescent lights, then the green of gas lamps playing on my dark assistant’s face.

  We rush through red lights without stopping. At this late hour there’s no one on the country roads that wind up to where we’re going. The buggy stops. I tumble to the castle in the rain. The giant wooden door creaks open in front of me. I push through the heavy beige doors of the emergency room. They swing behind me like that opening scene in the Dr. Kildare reruns. I run down the shiny hospital-green corridor. Bats fly in the tall gothic arches above us. I hear the crack of lightning, the roll of thundrous, though not entirely convincing, kettle drums, the hum of incandescent lights, my panting breath. I hear my loyal dark assistant’s rubber soles squeaking behind me.

  I throw off my coat and drop my pj’s on the floor. I want to fold them neatly so they won’t remind me of when I tore my clothes off in desire. But my loyal dark assistant hurries me, Doctor, Doctor, it’s time.

  My assistant helps me don my spotless-as-a-bride white gown. I scrub up until I’m pink and raw, my skin so soft it throbs. I slip my fingers in the tight, constricted gloves. My covered hands look ghostly, smooth. My head feels pinched in my doctor’s cap when my assistant pulls my hair back. I look like a nun. The mask is soft when it brushes my skin. My dark assistant ties me in.

  I walk towards the operating room, my hands held high, my white starched sleeves rolled up. My elbows press against the swinging doors. Inside, the ceiling, floor and walls are blindingly white. White light shoots down from a giant lamp. I hear the crack of lightning and look up. Thirty feet above us a skylight stretches towards the stormy sky.