Machine

by Susan Steinberg

  and the temperature of the water;

  the position of the moon;

  were we to measure the alcohol in the body;

  and were there pills in the body;

  were there hands on the body;

  Don’t be crazy, they say;

  Don’t be like that, they say;

  were we to dust the dock for prints;

  were we to dust her skin for traces of hair, for traces of other skin;

  were we to trust my older brother;

  were we to trust his asshole friends;

  and our tyrant fathers;

  and our weakass mothers;

  and all the younger girls;

  were we not this tight-knit group;

  were we not this pleased with our fancy selves;

  and our circular drives and our heavy gates;

  and our terraces and our lawns;

  but we’re only performing tight-knit group;

  our souls despise each other’s souls;

  and we don’t even believe in souls;

  but were our fathers kind, our mothers kind;

  were the neighbors kind and their asshole kids;

  were we not always standing on the dock in the spot where she last was;

  were we not always standing in that spot to understand that night;

  or to understand the girl who drowned;

  to feel everything she felt;

  our mothers say, Stay away from the dock;

  they think they still can save us;

  but the body shapes I see in the water;

  and the ghost sounds I hear at night;

  and the stories they all tell over drinks;

  everyone saying she was trashed;

  everyone saying she slipped and fell;

  You know how she was, they say, as if a person ever can know;

  then the power of the word was;

  and the subtext before we know the word subtext;

  and a look before we know how to read those looks we’ll see again and again;

  our mothers shaking their heads and saying, What a waste;

  our fathers, at times, with nothing to say, at times, with too much to say;

  then it’s, That knockout in her underwear;

  it’s, That knockout out of her crazy head;

  That knockout sinking like a stone;

  And that’s what happens when you drink, they say;

  And that’s what happens when you fool around;

  and when you walk like that;

  and when you look like that;

  when you look good enough;

  when you look good enough to what;

  there are nights we watch my brother and his friends on the dock from up in the trees;

  after they leave, we sit on the dock and stare out across the water;

  one night, we waited for the sunrise;

  not for any reason other than we were up and it was next;

  when she appeared, that night, we jumped;

  she was standing all crooked, holding her shoes;

  she was looking for her friends, she said;

  and had we seen her friends, she said;

  you’re thinking ghost, but this was before all that;

  it was the real her coming from somewhere;

  and who knows what she’d been up to;

  what asshole guy she’d been with;

  perhaps my brother’s friend;

  we used to like him too;

  we used to fuck him all the time;

  but we’re done with him now;

  we’re done with them all;

  and they’ll pay so big someday;

  they’ll wake someday with guilt around them like a cage;

  and they’ll remember the details of that night;

  and the details of her face;

  and the words she said before she fell;

  but there’s no point in building her character here;

  no point in building the perfect girl you always want;

  so here’s any girl holding her shoes;

  any girl looking like some kind of ghost;

  any girl pointing to the sky;

  like your sister saying, Look at the colors;

  your sister saying, Look at that;

  we didn’t look long at the colors;

  we knew what the colors meant;

  we knew about light and waves;

  so we just looked at her body;

  like anyone would have done;

  and it could have been us, then, holding our shoes;

  it could have been us, nights later;

  and do you think we would have been pushed in too;

  do you think we would have been held in too;

  do you think we would have been flailing too and thinking stop, and thinking you guys, you motherfuckers, then not;

  do you think we would have felt that point at which you just give up;

  you stop performing for guys, for other girls;

  you let your hair go bad;

  you let your gut go big;

  then it’s only water and always water;

  or do you think we’re too good for that;

  do you think we’re just too smart;

  do you think we’re just too rich;

  we swore we would never be like her;

  to our mothers, our fathers, we swore it and meant it, but look;

  just look at us pushing against the guys;

  look how fucked up, how fucking hot;

  so imagine a day they’ll stand in a spot on the dock where we last were;

  they’ll shake their heads, say things about us like what a fucking waste;

  when we ask for details about that night;

  when they catch us listening at the doors;

  Get lost, they say;

  Don’t spy, they say;

  It’s not spying, we say;

  it’s a full-on investigation;

  we’re conducting experiments on the dock;

  we like to see how long we can stand on the edge;

  we like to see how hard we hit the water when we fall;

  we prefer to fall in backward;

  to watch the sky move farther away;

  to brace ourselves for cold;

  to feel the slap against our backs;

  to time how long we can stay underneath;

  we sometimes hold each other under;

  we’ve learned to kick away;

  we’ve learned to swim to under the dock;

  we press our mouths to between the slats and breathe;

  this is only about survival;

  about how to survive when it’s us going in;

  about how to save our sorry selves;

  so we need to know the exact time of;

  the temperature of;

  the velocity of;

  the height from which;

  the phase of the moon;

  the weight of the body;

  the weight on the body;

  the weight of the water pressing down;

  but there’s nothing more to say, they say;

  You’re obsessed, they say;

  We’re worried, they say;

  End of story, they say and tell us to go;

  End of story, we hear through the walls;

  but there’s never an end of story;

  there’s only the start, a night on the dock;

  and all the details we already know;

  and x for all we don’t;

  x for the one who touched her last;

  x for the one who pushed;

  and for her body now in the water;

  for her body held under the water;

  for her body filling with water;

  for her ghost on the dock on our wildest nights;

  for her ghost in our beds forever;

  for the scream stuck in your heads;

  and for what you’re about to tell us;

  and don’t give us your made-up shit;

  your knockout in her underw
ear;

  your knockout with her hair all wild;

  your fucked-up girl;

  your perfect girl;

  there’s no such thing as perfect girl;

  you need to stop lying to yourselves;

  you need to start looking at yourselves;

  you absolutely will get old and die;

  no, you won’t absolutely get old;

  Animals

  ; it’s the girl saying, I dare you, into my ear; it’s me doing whatever she says; it’s always me like some kind of child; it’s me like some kind of dog; Jump, she says; How high, I say; so obedient; so weak; it’s the pill we split in the washroom; and the world now flat like worlds in cartoons; and the grass sucking down in tiny holes; like a thousand mouths pulling us deeper in; and I would happily go there into the holes, my ears stuffed full of grass and dirt; and how pleasant it might be in the dirt, if nothing slithered through it; how pleasant to hide so deep below the ugly noise of this ugly world; but the woman has left her purse on a table; and the girl has dared me to take the purse; and how fucking high; as high as you fucking can; like this one night at the rides; it was us behind a trailer; it was two pills on her outstretched hand; it was a big pill and a small pill; I didn’t know what either pill did; and I remembered, then, a film we saw in school about drugs; it said not to judge a pill by its size; the big pill might look more dangerous; but it could be nothing, like a vitamin; it could make your nails grow long; but the small pill could make you crazy; it could make you try to fly off the roof of your house; that night, I took the small one; I chewed it up to make her laugh; I opened my mouth to make her laugh harder; but then the pill kicked in, and things got rough; and the night changed; and we’ll get there; for now, we’re standing on the boathouse lawn; we’re wearing dresses our mothers bought; we’re sinking in heels and wishing we were guys; there are people holding trays of food; it’s a party for my father; we’re celebrating my father; he’s done something impressive; he’s often doing these very impressive things; now someone on the other side of the lawn is clinking a glass with a knife; that someone wants to give a speech about my father; so my father now is walking to that side of the lawn; my mother is walking beside him; the woman is walking slowly behind them; the woman is closer to my age than my mother’s; I’m the only one, at this point, who knows about the woman; I’m the only one who saw them, on another night, in a washroom; I’m the one who saw the woman’s face against my father’s face; when I think of her face, I think I shouldn’t have seen her teeth; I think I shouldn’t have seen her eyes half-closed; I think the word animal when I think this; I think the words piece of shit; I swore to my father I wouldn’t tell my mother what I saw; what my father said I thought I saw; what my father said I didn’t see; and he made me swear on my mother’s life I wouldn’t say one word; but I don’t believe in the power of swearing on people’s lives; I don’t believe anyone is listening when I swear; or I do believe someone is listening; and I believe that someone knows I have no other choice; so there will come a night I’ll tell it all; I’ll make it a fucking exposé; and it’ll ruin my father; it’ll ruin my mother; it’ll ruin the woman; it’ll ruin the windows of our house; and the windows of our cars; and my reputation; my entire future; but tonight is a party for my father; it’s a perfect night for a party; the sun is setting behind the boathouse; and I’m more fucked up than I’d meant to be; so I’m creeping across the lawn; I’m sinking in holes and everything seems to be slowing down; everything could come to a stop right now; and what would we even lose; but the girl says, Go, and pushes my back; she says, Fucking go, so I go; she doesn’t even know whose purse it is; she never gives a shit whose thing it is; she always just wants the thing itself; she just wants the things inside the thing; but I want the owner of the thing; I want to own the owner in some brutal way; I want to own this woman in that way; so which one of us now is in charge; is it the one who dares the other; or is it the one who dares to do the fucking thing; I can hear applause from the other side of the lawn; my father will act like he doesn’t deserve it; my mother will hide behind her dark glasses; the woman will plan a life that will never be her life; and as the applause fades out, and my father starts a speech about himself, we reach the table, and I take the purse, and we’re running now to the dock; we’re screaming, and what can I say about this; just something about the girls we are; or the girls we have to be; so we’re spilling the purse out to the slats; the girl puts on the lipstick; I open the pack of gum; I stuff stick after stick into my mouth; and I feel so crazy doing this; and the girl looks crazy sitting there; and what have we become; just animals; just lower than dogs; and is there anything lower than that; the night at the rides I was too fucked up to walk; but we got on the dumbest ride there was; it was this boat-shaped thing that swung; and there was music playing from somewhere; and there were guys watching from the ground; and when the boat started swinging, I was laughing; but when it went higher, I said, Get me off of this fucking ride; I hadn’t realized the power of this machine; that it could swing straight up to ninety degrees; that every time at ninety degrees, I could feel myself slipping out of the seat; that every time, my whole ass lifted straight up out of that seat; there was a metal bar to keep us down; but the space between the metal bar and me was as big as I was; I could have slipped out through that space, and what; in the film we saw in school about drugs, a kid kept saying, I can fly; I was secretly hoping he would try it; I wanted to see him soaring; I hoped to feel that good one day; but not to feel that alone; from up high, you could see the other rides and you could see the whole boardwalk as lights; from up high, you could see people like the nothing specks they were; it was colder up high than down below; and the sounds up high were weird and wrong; and going down you felt your gut, just awful, sinking; I closed my eyes and could still feel everything around me; the girl was touching my arm; I could feel the heat from her hand; it felt like the worst thing in the world; like the very last thing before it all goes dark; then she screamed into my ear, Let go; she screamed, Let go of the bar; she knew I could have died like that; she wanted to bring me as close as she could; so I let go of the bar; so I think I prayed; I mean know I prayed to someone; I mean I was saying something to someone; I mean I was swearing to someone, begging for something, believing in something else; the ride eventually slowed, then stopped; we walked off, and the ground was shaking; all of the air was shaking; it was like finally, and I stood very still; and I waited for something that didn’t, that night, come; that didn’t, for some time, come; then we walked away like nothing; and the night went on; and the days went on; and now she’s lying flat on the dock; and I’m looking down and thinking how much I hate her; I’m thinking how much I hate; I throw the gum wrappers into the water; I throw the lipstick into the water; I throw the purse as hard and as far as I can; I take the wallet and leave the girl lying there, eyes closed, looking dead; walking past the boathouse, I hear the party still going on; by now the woman is frantic; by now she’s turning over tables; my mother tells me these details when she gets home; how the woman screamed in the face of every person holding every tray, Where’s my fucking purse; how much I wish I’d seen this; and had I seen it, I might have claimed it as my own; I might have clinked a glass and said to the crowd that the plan was my idea; I might have said that I pointed to the purse, that I knew the girl would dare me; and I might have said what I saw that night in the washroom; how she looked at me from over my father’s shoulder; and how much she looked like an animal; like the kind you see in the dark; and I might have said how hard she laughed; and don’t you love this detail; and don’t you love this woman; and don’t you love my father; and aren’t you impressed that I, of all the people, am now at the center of your world; so listen up; I want to tell you the end is near; I want to tell you to box your things; I want to tell you it’s going to hurt; I want to tell my mother, my God; but I’m too fucked up to deal with her now; so I go to my room and close the door; I look through the woman’s wallet; t
he picture on the ID looks just like the girl; it’s the hair, perhaps; or it’s the teeth; so I’ll give the ID to the girl; and the ID will never fail her; she’ll storm into the market; she’ll slam her bottles to the counter; she’ll take the ID from her pocket; she’ll look straight into the cashier’s eyes, get what she wants;

  Ghosts

  On rides to the shore, when we were kids, we sang a song.

  There were two versions of this song we knew.

  There was the version we learned from our father, and there was the version we learned, later, from kids at the shore.

  We preferred the version we learned from the kids.

  And we tried just once, at the end of a ride, to sing this version we preferred.

  We didn’t do this to anger our father.

  We were confused when our father pulled over.

  Cars were swerving around us.

  Our mother was screaming her head off.

  She was screaming things like, What in the world, and, Have you gone completely mad.

  My brother and I were like shut the fuck up.

  We said, Shut the fuck up, to our mother.

  And after she shut completely up, meaning after she’d given completely up, our father restarted the song the way it was meant, according to him, to be sung, and we sang.

  I can’t explain why we preferred the version we learned from the kids.

  Or why my brother, on a night we were driving around, sang it our father’s way.

  On that night, for the first time ever, we sang the song to its final line.

  Our father wasn’t with us that night, and our mother wasn’t with us.

  It was just us in the car, me and my brother, on this ride around the shore.

  There was an object my brother’s friends had dared him to get from a house on the other side.

  The object was a joke between my brother and his friends.

  It had become this joke because my brother had clung to it once when he was too fucked up to do anything else.

  So his friends had dared him to get this object and bring it back to the boathouse.

  Saying no to a dare wasn’t an option.

  Saying no meant you weren’t a good sport.

  My brother prided himself on being a good sport.

  But we were all good sports.