The Terrible Girls

by Rebecca Brown

  Up here is just the mouth, there’s only flecks, but further in –

  I know what’s there, I snapped. Where’s the way out?

  She pointed to a door-sized opening behind me. When I turned to look, I could see the white dry desert outside.

  She handed me the cup again.

  In the open mouth of the cup, the water looked black. I couldn’t see the bottom.

  I knew how what was brought up from the ground was brought. I’d seen the earth gouged open, and the maimed and broken miners dropped down every day. I knew about the charred black bits of bodies buried underneath the ground.

  What did you have to do to get that? I nodded at the cup.

  All I had to do was walk. It’s easy to get. You don’t have to do anything terrible.

  She nodded to the corridor in front of us.

  It’s not a mine. It wasn’t blasted open. Drink that, she said, I’ll show you.

  I didn’t know if I believed her, but I was thirsty. I took the cup and drank.

  She tied a cord around the flashlight so it could hang around her neck. She tucked the backpack in the corner. She took my hand. Stay near me.

  The corridor was only wide enough for one. I walked behind her, so close I heard the swish of her shorts and smelled her skin. From behind she was lit like a silhouette, the white of her flashlight surrounding her.

  She led me down inside the earth.

  The path was level, about as wide as an outstretched arm. But even though I was close to it, I couldn’t see what it contained. Sometimes she ran her hand, with mine inside, along a part of the wall and let me feel, between the layers of crumbling earth, the hard smooth streaks like marble. Sometimes she stopped so abruptly I almost bumped into her, and cupped our hands over something round and cool.

  Further in, the path got thin. The earth felt cool and damp. The air was still. The light around her skin condensed into a gold metallic border. When the corridor started descending and zigzagged back and forth, and when she felt me trying to pull away, she held me tighter. We’re almost there.

  The corridor dropped sharply, we were running, then suddenly we were splashed with cold. We were in a pool. The water stung when it found my cuts and scratches, but it was soft and slippery as I splashed it on my face. Nothing was floating on the surface. She waded in front of me, the black line inching up her thighs and the small of her back. The light she’d hung around her neck bobbed with her steps.

  Hold this. She lifted the flashlight off her neck. As she stretched her elbow up, the light cast a huge shadow of her on the wall.

  When I took the light she dipped her face and then her whole self in the water. I cast the light on the opening to the path where we’d come in, then slowly shone it around the shiny walls. The pool was small. I could see the water level on the wall rise and fall with her movements. In the wall opposite where we’d come in I saw another opening.

  When she saw me wading towards it, she came with me. She climbed up the bowl-like curve of the pool then helped me up. We stood in a giant, high-domed room. I shone the light on milky walls and opalescent doors and pearly curtains. There were gold and white and coral-colored cones and solid icicles. I saw the shapes of a frozen horse and a silent bird and a cold, unblinking profile. I saw an arm, stiff, hard and white. I saw a fist arrested in a blow.

  What is this, I whispered as if I was afraid I’d break a spell.

  The ones that hang down are stalactites, and those – she pointed down by our feet – are stalagmites. Both of which are calcite deposits.

  No, I pointed again. Don’t you see —

  I know you think they look like things you see above the ground, but these were here before those things. What you see above the ground are transient imitations of these constant things.

  I looked at them and touched them with my hand and tried to shake them but they would not move.

  They don’t change, she said, Or only do so so slowly you couldn’t notice the change unless you lived a couple thousand lifetimes. These caves were formed before we were, from heat inside the earth. Molten lava shifted and exploded. When the lava cooled it solidified into walls. Water condensed and cracked the solid rock to make the openings that led us here. The shapes you see are formed from water too. It drips through the roof of the cave and when it evaporates, it leaves a mineral deposit, and they build up to shapes that make you think of what you see above the ground.

  I shook my head. It was hard to think so differently.

  Listen.

  We both held our breath. Everything was silent. Then from a far-off place we couldn’t see, we heard, so quiet we almost missed it, the sound of a drop of water.

  That’s when I thought someday I might believe her.

  She taught me how to read the land. And where to dig for roots and find pure water. She found the things we needed to survive in hidden places. Where I saw just a dusty gulch, she showed there’d run a river. Where I saw rutted barrenness, she showed where crops had fed a vital city. She picked up rough red rocks and told me, “Brick – a wall.” Then “Glass – a window.” “Hard earth – where the dead are laid.”

  Thus we approached the outlands of the city. The farms had stopped producing and the houses had fallen down. But some of these old homes had what we needed. When she decided to approach, we did so cautiously. We had to avoid setting off undetonated mines. Outside the door of the place she picked, she’d find me a spot of shade and make me rest while she went in to scavenge.

  Before she went in any house she paused outside the door. She lowered her head and closed her eyes. After a few seconds she lifted her head and slowly, as if she was responding to an old and infirm host, pushed the door open and entered. Sometimes I heard her walking around inside these ruined houses, opening cupboards and slowly climbing stairs. She never kicked through things, but turned them over carefully. When she came out she brought a couple of unbent cans of food, a flashlight battery, a cup.

  When I didn’t need to rest as much, she brought me inside and taught me how to search for what we needed. I stood behind as she bowed her head and pushed open creaking doors. She tested the steps before she ascended, and ran her hands on banisters whose balconies had disappeared. I stared at curtains flapping over empty panes and furniture that had been overturned and smashed. We made gloves out of rags and masked ourselves to filter out the dust that we unsettled. She gave me the army knife she found and showed me how to coax open locks and untie what was bound. I wore the knife on a rope around my neck.

  We poked through the wreckage with sticks and we moved stones aside, exposing in the ground beneath the near-decay of barely living things. I tried to look away but she insisted that only by searching the low, unlikely places could we find the goods we needed to survive.

  When I got strong enough to scavenge on my own, we split up into separate routes. So while she sifted through the pantry, I rifled through the den’s remains. I liked looking through things myself. Sometimes I didn’t tell her what I found.

  And then one time she came upon me thus.

  We’d come to a broken down mansion. She’d gone to look in a basement and I’d climbed upstairs to a giant ballroom surrounded by unbelievably intact French windows. From the ceiling hung what was left of a chandelier. The sunlight through the windows threw odd flecks of light against the walls. The floor was a mess of broken tables and empty bottles and fallen plaster. As I walked through the room I kicked up dust. I was coughing, my eyes were stinging. In the rising dust I could almost see a crowd. I felt pressed in. I felt them moving around me. I needed air. I picked up a brick and heaved it through a window. Glass shattered. I threw another and another, and even after there was plenty of air, I kept throwing things. The gritty texture in my palm and the pull of the muscles in my arm and the zinging sound of the bricks in the air and the sharp crisp sound of the breaking glass made me feel great. I was leaning down for another brick when there was a voice behind me.

  What are you doing? />
  I dropped the brick and spun around. She was so small in the great double doorway to the ballroom, and with her ragged clothes and tattered pack, she looked like a beggar girl.

  What are you doing?

  I – I scrambled for an excuse. Breaking windows.

  Don’t.

  I wanted some air.

  There’s other ways of getting it. This place may have what we need to survive, but it isn’t ours. You should watch what you help yourself to. Here —

  She handed me a couple of cans of food she’d scavenged.

  The part that’s wrecked was wrecked by someone like you.

  I wanted to deny that but I couldn’t.

  She looked around at the jagged glass.

  Do what you want but I’m not going to stay and watch you.

  She turned around and left.

  I watched her leave from a window I had broken. Outside the house she looked back up to where I stood. I didn’t wave down to her. She looked back at the way we’d come. She hesitated, then tightened the pack securely and continued walking towards the city.

  I found her that night by the fire she’d built. I sat down just outside the circle of light made by the coals. From time to time one of the coals burst into flame. The sky looked thick like it was filled with dust. No stars were visible.

  In the middle of the night I thought I heard her say something. I went to listen but she was still asleep. She’d kicked the blanket off. When I kneeled to tuck the blanket around her, I saw her as I’d never seen her before. Her hands and arms were scratched, her shoulders were bruised. Her face had wrinkles it hadn’t when we’d set out. I saw it was hard for her to go to the city. I didn’t know why she was doing it. I put her unresisting arms beneath the blanket.

  I was covering last night’s fireplace with dirt when she woke up. When she started to put the bag on her back, I said, I’ll carry that.

  She helped me put it on. She turned my body away from her. I felt her shift the weight to me. The pack was against my back but I felt the soft folds of the blanket inside it. The cord she tied around my middle had been rubbed smooth by her hands. The first few steps I stumbled, but I adjusted quickly to the weight. The bag fit me as if it had been made for me.

  Both of us carried it after this; we traded it back and forth.

  It was late when, far in front of us, we saw a house.

  We can spend the night there, I said.

  She didn’t say anything.

  As we got near the house I saw the roof was still intact. We won’t even have to put up the tarp.

  We will.

  No, look, we’ve never seen a place so whole.

  I know.

  When we got to the fence of the house she stopped.

  Aren’t we going in?

  She shook her head.

  But we’ve been walking so long. I tried not to sound impatient. It’ll be dark soon.

  It was already getting dark.

  Can I have the pack?

  I slipped it off my back. She put it on the ground.

  We’ll need the flashlight inside.

  No.

  I didn’t want to argue with her.

  You go in.

  Without you?

  She nodded.

  Why don’t you rest in the house. I’m sure there’s somewhere to sit.

  No.

  She lifted the latch of the gate. I stepped into the yard.

  Long dry grass grew over the path. The windows of the house looked whole and most of the blinds were drawn. The swaybacked wooden steps creaked when I stepped onto the porch. The chain of the broken porch swing dangled like someone hung. I paused at the door the way she always did before she went inside a house. When I tried the door knob, it gave. I blinked. It was light inside. The furniture was upright and neat. There was an open landing upstairs and a hall. In the dining room in front of me the table was set. Before I took another step I was, like Goldilocks, imagining the clear pure well, the full-stocked pantry, comfy bed upstairs, the windows that could keep away the cold. I turned to go tell her we should stay here for a while, but when I did, I heard something from the living room. The door was ajar. I peered in and saw the grey-blue flicker of an old TV, and facing it, their backs to me, a couple of high-backed easy chairs. On the arm of one was a newspaper, and on the other I saw a hand.

  I pushed the door open and went in the room. Over the top of the chair, I saw the back of a head. I heard breathing. I stepped in front of the chair.

  It was you.

  You were asleep. Your mouth was slightly open. Your breathing was not as sweet as it had been. Maybe it was the glasses having slipped down your nose that made you breathe like that. You didn’t used to have them. But I think it was something else. Your face was fuller, you’d gained some weight and your skin was not as firm and tight and smooth as it had been. Your other hand was limp on the knitting in your lap, and your feet, in plain grey slippers, were perched on a footrest.

  I sat on the edge of the footrest and looked at you. You were, despite how you had made me wait, and made me wait for nothing, and then, despite how I tried to forget and then to stay away from you, and despite the true and awful secret I had kept of you, still, still, to me most terribly, almost forgivably, beautiful. I sat on your footrest in front of you and as I watched you sleep, I was afraid you would, yes, you still could, open your pretty brown eyes and your lovely, sleepy, innocent-seeming mouth and tell me what I longed for you to say. Though I wanted you to, and knew you wouldn’t, I still feared you would. And I didn’t want now for you to persuade me to not go to the city.

  The knife I wore around my neck swung back and forth between my shirt and my sweating skin.

  I could have done it then, I could have, while you slept so pretty and so unaware in the living room, slipped the knife out of my shirt and hacked your heart right out of you.

  Did I sense someone at the window, looking in? Waiting for me to come back out and go?

  And did you sense me near you?

  You must have. You opened your brown, brown eyes. You gasped.

  Hello.

  You hesitated … Hello.

  You turned to look at the living room door to make sure we weren’t being seen. I looked outside; a shadow had passed the window.

  What are you doing here?

  I’m looking for something.

  You put your hand over your mouth. Very quietly you said, There’s nothing here.

  I looked around your TV room and saw your favorite vase, but not your trophies, not your atlases. The wall above the mantel was empty. It seemed true what you said.

  What did you do with it?

  You took a deep breath. You faltered. Now you were careful with your words; I lost it.

  You weren’t lying now. I looked around again to see if I could see what made you different. The wall above the mantel was empty but on the mantel were some little ceramic figurines, peasant children and dogs and birds, like something you’d ordered from the back of a magazine. There was a sampler made from a kit on the wall. The hardbacks on the shelves were book club books. You lived in a quiet, ordinary house.

  Why did you do it?

  I don’t know.

  Then you said, like you were asking me for a kindness, you said, I’m sorry. You said it again, I’m sorry. You looked away from me. I’m sorry, I’m sorry it can’t be undone. I’m sorry.

  You didn’t deny it anymore.

  Please, you said, Please —

  I heard in your voice how afraid you were. You looked at the door to the dining room. You were waiting for someone.

  When I saw how you were waiting, how you wanted to stay and not to be left, then I believed you knew what you had done to me.

  I stood up to leave. I stumbled as if I’d dropped something. You reached out to steady me but I pulled myself up. You placed your knitting on the chair and picked up your cane. You walked me to the door. We walked quietly so we wouldn’t be heard. Now I could hear the clatter of pla
tes in the kitchen. When you opened the front door, I heard a voice from the kitchen.

  Is that you?

  You didn’t answer.

  The voice sounded concerned the second time, afraid you were leaving. Is that you?

  You tried to sound comforting. Yes, yes I’m just coming.

  I walked out the door. As I was pulling it closed behind me, I felt your hand on mine.

  Where are you going?

  I’m going back to the city.

  You started to say something else, but what you said was Goodbye.

  When I closed the door behind me I felt you put your hands against it. Were you trying, with your hands, to touch the last thing of your house I’d left? We turned away from our separate sides of the door together. You walked with your cane to the dining room and I walked down the steps. I heard the scraping of chair legs on the floor, the clattering of silverware and plates, and then your common, ordinary voices.

  I ran from the house through the unkept yard. The flashlight was shining beyond the open gate. She’d opened the gate to wait for me.

  I’m sorry, I said, I didn’t get anything.

  Wasn’t anything there?

  Not what we needed.

  She laughed with relief, Thank God. Her hand was on my arm.

  Suddenly I wondered. Did you know whose house that was?

  She nodded.

  Why did you let me go in? I could have hacked —

  You didn’t, she said, You won’t.

  After that night we came to the ruined city.

  The river that had borne the ruined city had run dry. We crossed the dry bed coughing dust. The city walls had fallen and the gate was gone. The lines on our skin got grey with ash. The sky was yellow. Nothing moved but us.

  There’s no one here.

  There used to be.

  Then I told her what I had denied about the city I’d not left entirely:

  There were lots of us. It was a huge, thriving city. There was always traffic and there was this wonderful fountain everybody used to drive around in convertibles with the windows rolled down. It was always warm and sunny and we always sat at outdoor cafés. And everyone knew everyone and we never locked our doors. The windows were always open and even if you weren’t out, you could hear your neighbors passing in the street and talking. Sometimes parties went on until dawn. Nobody had to wake up early and nobody had to work. We walked around in shorts and sandals and showed off our tans and our healthy skin and the firm tight muscles we got at the gym and our smooth, tough, flawless hands. At night we could end up anywhere and be, if not positively welcomed, at least politely tolerated. We couldn’t imagine that the city hadn’t always been the way we took for granted.