by Marnie Vinge
Birdie Hauer was another name that I didn’t let myself say aloud or think of too often. I had tucked the past neatly into a pocket of my subconscious where I was more than happy to allow it to rot and fester so long as I didn’t have to look at it.
Never mind that the stench of emotional putrefaction wafted out of my pores and infected every relationship I’d had since that time in my life.
I realize that I’m holding the remote in a vice-like death grip. I lay it down on the coffee table and run my hands over my face. It’s hot, and I need to cool off. I stand from the couch.
“You okay?” Philip asks.
“I know them,” I manage, gesturing to the television.
“That cult guy?” Philip laughs.
“Yeah,” I say.
“You’re high as fuck, aren’t you?”
I say nothing.
Philip shrugs and folds his arms over his chest, having finished off the joint. I notice the roach sitting on my glass and marble coffee table. Annoyed, I sweep it up with my hands and take it to the trash can.
In the kitchen, I realize the last of the wine is gone. I’ll have to go to the liquor store again. And something else dawns on me: Birdie is in a great deal of trouble.
I go back to the couch, unable to relax in spite of the THC in my bloodstream. The news has moved on to a story about an animal rescue organization, so I put on a documentary, not even really noticing what it’s about. I zone out, staring at the images on the screen but seeing nothing but the reels from my own past cycle on repeat.
IONE
7 YEARS AGO
I stood, shielding my eyes with my hand, and looked up at the Cherokee gothic building that loomed in front of me. The mid-August heat was like a blanket pulled out of the dryer prematurely: hot and muggy. Sweat congregated at the small of my back, and a light breeze picked up, cooling my spine for a moment. I had one class left in the first week of the penultimate semester of my senior year—Writing the American Novel with Dr. Tom Wolsieffer.
Dr. Wolsieffer had a reputation in the writing department. There were whispers about the parties that he threw. Affairs that involved both adjunct faculty that didn’t have the clout to refuse an invitation and undergraduate students who wouldn’t have wanted to turn down the opportunity to see their professors outside of their natural habitat. There had been rumors throughout my time at the university about the things that went on at the parties. I chalked most of the wilder whisperings up to urban legend. I had no doubt, however, that there were professors in the department that were less than scrupulous with their more intimate student interactions.
More than anything, I was curious and wanted to meet the man at the center of the rumors of a student-professor affair. The girl that he’d allegedly carried on with had left the University of Oklahoma the previous spring in the middle of the semester and transferred back home to Kansas State.
I pictured an older man, probably in his late fifties. A slight stoop would make his gait somewhat awkward and would make me wonder what any young female student would see in him. It had to be the power, I imagined.
Despite my overactive imagination, Dr. Wolsieffer’s reputation didn’t concern me. My mission for the year was to get in, get my degree, and get out. I planned on returning for graduate school the following year. It’s when we are most certain about our plans that they become most malleable to the forces of the universe.
I glanced at my watch and jogged up the stone steps into the building. Ivy snaked up the brick façade, hugging snugly to the sides of the building like a stick-tight child holding tight to his mother as she attempted to leave him somewhere he didn’t want to be. Inside, students scrambled to get from one class to another on time. Late in the afternoon, this Thursday evening class met from 4:45-7:30. A long stretch of time to be with one professor. Classes of this sort always seemed to create a disproportionate sense of camaraderie within the student population. It was like being subjected to the same form of torture for an extended period of time. It forced you to believe you had things in common when you might not have thought so in regular classroom situations. It fostered an intimacy with professors that other class formats didn’t. But most of the creative writing courses were structured this way. It created a close working relationship between professors and students. Stockholm Syndrome might have been a more appropriate classification.
I scurried down the hallway and into the small classroom housing my final class for the week. Students that I recognized populated the rows of desks beginning at the wall and moving forward to the front of the classroom. Only one seat remained. Front row, between two girls. One of whom I recognized as Samantha Adler, a student with whom I’d shared several classes. The other girl, however, was unfamiliar to me.
I nodded at Samantha who greeted me with a smile. We exchanged pleasantries and I was painfully aware that no one was speaking to the new girl. I turned to say something to her but stopped. Engrossed in her notebook, she was scribbling something down. Perhaps a fleeting idea that had come to her or maybe a kill list. I hoped for the former.
Moments later as I chatted with Samantha, the classroom grew quiet. I noticed movement from the periphery of my vision—someone walking into the room—and thought it was another student. Still finishing my account of the summer vacation I’d taken with my mom, my voice was the only one that resonated in the room.
“Fascinating tale, Miss…” a smooth and quiet male voice came from my left—the front of the classroom. I turned to see a man standing at the podium. He wore gray fitted trousers and a button-down shirt with a suit coat over it. Much more formal than the majority of the professors in the writing department. The way he trailed off with his sentence indicated he wanted my last name.
“Larsen,” I said, turning to fully face the front.
He was handsome. A strong jaw peppered with stubble met with messy hair that terminated at the nape of his neck in a wave. It dawned on me that this was Dr. Wolsieffer. He was younger than I’d imagined—maybe late thirties—and far more attractive than I’d pictured when I’d heard rumors of a student-professor affair the spring before. I’d pictured an old letch, not this.
“Miss Larsen,” his lips curved into half a smile. The ease with which he smiled separated him from us. His position in the university certain, he didn’t need to impress us. Dr. Wolsieffer was the dean of the creative writing department, and somehow, I’d never seen him until now.
My eyes followed his long fingers as he thumbed through the paperwork pulled from his briefcase. He found what he sought—the attendance sheet—and began calling names. When he got to mine, he looked from the sheet and back at me. His eyes lingered on me just a little too long. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat before he moved on.
We spent the majority of our first lecture going over the syllabus with Dr. Wolsieffer stressing the importance of not getting behind, as the final and only grade for the course was the first draft of a novel, the prospect of which both terrified and excited me. I hadn’t written a novel. I wanted to, of course. But there was a part of me that wondered if I really could—if I could finish something so grand.
He released us early. Several girls straggled as the rest of us poured out of the classroom. I chuckled to myself, imagining that each of them had their sights set not on finishing a novel, but on becoming the next object of Dr. Wolsieffer’s fascination. Even as I laughed, I couldn’t shake the image from my mind of his eyes locked on mine for that moment during the roll call. My legs moved quickly, trying to outpace the version of events in which my professor was attractive and interested in me.
Outside, I stopped. Ignoring one of the central tenets in the Don’t Get Raped handbook, I looked down, unaware of my surroundings, and dug through my purse for a pack of cigarettes that I’d purchased before driving to class. A nasty habit that I’d picked up and couldn’t seem to put down, I wasn’t proud of it. I looked up, trying to be a wary, world-wise woman. I couldn’t find the pack. I jammed my hand further
into my bag, rearranging every item I came in contact with. Still, no luck.
Frustrated, I tried one more time. This time, I looked down, addiction making me care less about safety and more about my next fix.
“Looking for something?”
I looked up, startled. The girl from class—the one I didn’t recognize—stood on the sidewalk in front of me, a lit cigarette between black fingernails. I glanced at it.
“I bought a pack of cigarettes before class. I guess I put them down in the car before I walked over here,” I said.
“You can bum one from me,” she reached into her bag and brought out a pack of menthols and a lighter. She popped the package open and shoved it towards me.
“Thanks,” I plucked one out and put it to my lips. She held up the lighter and I inhaled.
“What do you usually smoke?” she asked.
The grimace on my face had betrayed me.
“Turkish silvers,” I said.
“Good choice,” her smile revealed a gap between her two front teeth that struck me as charming, like something nameless yet familiar.
“So, what did you think of him?” I asked, curious to see if the new girl had heard any of the rumors, or perhaps hoping that she knew more about them than I did.
“Full of himself,” she said. “Probably coasted by most of his life on his looks. I bet mommy and daddy had money. Not to mention the fact that he’s a man in a system that rewards men for existing.” She took a drag.
I mulled this over as I let smoke roll off my lips. Her directness was rare, and it resonated with me. There was truth in what she said. I nodded.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Birdie,” she smiled again, revealing that gap.
We smoked the rest of our cigarettes together and it became a routine. I brought my own the next time, but we made a habit of standing on the sidewalk and hashing out solutions to the problems women faced in our world. There was something about Birdie. A steadfastness, maybe. It was the way she never backed down on her opinions. She was a fighter. I got to know her over the coming weeks and months, and she became my best friend.
Our bond was quick, like the glue that holds on a fake nail, and perhaps just as fragile. A female friendship in its infancy is something to be nourished and nurtured, but Birdie overwhelmed me in the way that a wildfire sweeps through open prairie. I hoped that maybe part of her passion would rub off on me.
One night, in class, we each shared a piece of writing. The class quickly descended into a colosseum-esque blood bath in which sides were taken and favorites were picked. I shared something that got mostly praise, but when it came time for one of the guys to speak, he tore it apart.
“It’s weak,” he concluded after a two-minute diatribe about why my writing sucked. “It’s like you wrote this five minutes before class started.”
Some in the class snickered. Others gasped. Dr. Wolsieffer didn’t intervene. Unlike other professors, he didn’t mind when the class devolved into a game of favorites and emotions ran high. He was like a wolf-watcher at Yellowstone. His job wasn’t to save the elk; it was to observe the kill.
“Remind me,” Birdie spoke up. “Bryan, right?” she asked the guy. He nodded. She went on. “Why don’t you share what you brought with us?”
Bryan looked at Dr. Wolsieffer. He shrugged and nodded.
Bryan cleared his throat and began to read his piece. It was centered around an intensely unlikeable protagonist that was inherently misogynistic. Alcoholic, abusive with his family, addicted to his work. It was bad, I thought. But Birdie wasn’t looking for technique. She was looking for a chink in his armor.
People commented, once again forming cliques that would stay strong throughout the semester. Some favored Bryan, while others didn’t. Finally, Birdie spoke.
“I guess you expect us to pat you on the back for stringing two sentences together coherently in spite of the fact that this is garbage.”
Dr. Wolsieffer didn’t stop her.
“I mean, let’s look at the part where he’s talking to his wife. Page four, I think. Where he says, ‘What are you gonna do about it, little bitch?’” Birdie paused, waiting for everyone to turn to the page. “Where did you come up with that?” she asked with a smile.
Bryan shook his head.
“You hear that a lot growing up?” she asked.
The class went silent. The tension gained a pulse and Bryan’s face reddened. Whether with embarrassment or rage, I couldn’t be sure. I wanted to disappear. Whatever anger he felt seemed to melt into shame. He cowered to her like a beaten dog. She smiled sweetly at him.
“Enough,” Dr. Wolsieffer finally intervened.
But when I looked up from the pages and into his eyes, they were locked on Birdie. He wasn’t appalled or angry. There was something in his eyes, though.
Admiration.
Unnerved by the entire experience, I was quiet when we smoked that night. Birdie filled the silence.
“I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t have done that, but it came out before I could stop it. This is a bad place—this world—and we have to stick together. I promise that I’ll always come back for you, even if it means hurting someone else.”
I was silent. I looked up at her. We’d grown so intensely close in the last few weeks that I wasn’t sure where we were fused and where we weren’t. But I knew one thing, I never wanted to not be on the same side.
“I want you to promise, too,” she said.
I loved Birdie. I loved her passion and her fiery personality that seemed to be inextinguishable. I loved her gapped teeth and I guess I even loved that piece of her—that jagged piece—that snaked through the middle and laced cruelty through her tongue.
“I promise,” I said.
I told her that I would always come back for her, even if it meant hurting someone else. Even if that someone else was me.
VANESSA
Vanessa stares at the extra pillow beneath Birdie’s head. Two support it. She could slide that bottom one out and place it over the girl’s face and press down, down, down until her body melts into Birdie’s and she snuffs the life out of her. The only thing stronger than Vanessa’s resentment for her husband’s mistress is the feeling that Tom is right: this unborn child is special—chosen—and it’s Vanessa’s duty to bring it into the world unharmed. And so, she chooses not to smother its mother. For now.
She prepares the change of bandages for Birdie’s injury. The girl’s shoulder is swollen and bruised. In days, if not hours, the dark lines delineating infection will spiderweb across her collarbone, embedding themselves inside her like a root system. With the more time that passes, the harder it will become to extricate them, just like grass overtaking a flower bed. Vanessa knows this because she was a nurse in her previous life. The life before Revelation Ranch.
Vanessa left everything behind for Tom long before he became the leader of this small faction of people. She left it all behind on the day that she said, Yes, I’ll marry you. Like so many other women, she had discovered herself too late, obscured from the sun by her husband’s lengthy shadow. She’d sought identity in Tom when she was younger, and she felt that she had found it at one time. But now something—a sleeping something that has woken after a long rest—stirs between them.
She sleeps alone in their bed while Tom sits up at night, struggling to pen a follow up to The Way. They became strangers to one another as Tom ascended into his new role and Vanessa descended into hers. When the people on Revelation Ranch have a problem to be solved, they don’t go to Tom; they go to Vanessa. She’s unafraid to do what must be done. She’s unafraid to get her hands dirty. Unlike her husband.
Vanessa uses what’s at her disposal. Some basic first aid items—antiseptic, bandages, sutures, and the like—and combines that with her more recently gained knowledge of herbal remedies. From the basket she pulls a mortar and pestle, along with a clove of garlic, a jar of honey, and some ginger.
She grinds the two dry ingredi
ents together and mixes the honey in slowly. When the substances congeal into a thick paste, she scrapes it out of the bottom of her primitive mixing bowl with a spoon. She needs Birdie to eat the remedy.
A week before, they used the last of the antibiotics for an infected cat bite perpetrated by none other than Tom’s favorite feline on the ranch, Peanut. Vanessa has hated the cat from the minute he situated himself at the foot of her bed for the first time. Now, she avoids him, feeling that when he looks at her, he sees beyond the surface.
With the paste on her spoon, she moves towards the bed. Birdie’s eyelids flutter in cadence with her dreams. Vanessa lightly touches her arm and Birdie gasps awake. She immediately groans, brought back to the pain of her injury. Her eyes yawn wide and roll around in their sockets, roving the room and searching for something to lock on to. They find Vanessa.
“Here,” Vanessa says. She puts the spoon to Birdie’s mouth.
Birdie looks from the spoon to her healer suspiciously.
“Don’t worry; it’s not poison,” Vanessa smirks.
Birdie reluctantly eats the paste. She makes a face.
To have Birdie at her mercy is something Vanessa doesn’t deny she’s fantasized about many times in the last few years. The girl has a spell cast over Tom. If Vanessa didn’t know better, she would say that Birdie had bewitched him long ago. So, to see her scared and helpless awakens something inside Vanessa’s soul that she imagines to be kin to the first predatory instincts that pulled us out of the ooze millions of years ago. She imagines that it’s the same instinct that allows a shark to interpret the stimuli of an animal struggling in the waves. Whatever it is, it keeps the smile as a shadow on her lips.
“Don’t worry,” Vanessa tells the girl. “My instructions are to make sure that you and the baby are just fine.” She sits on the edge of the bed.
Birdie is silent. Normally outspoken, the gunshot seems to have robbed her of her voice. Something that Vanessa wouldn’t be sorry to see go.