Life of the Party

by Olivia Gatwood

  for just myself. there is no phone number i call

  until the new owner answers, i do not see his shoes

  at my front door. he had been big for a long time.

  he had not loved me for a long time.

  had he called my name in the post office

  or shopping mall, his voice, deep and round,

  no longer in the pitchy flux of adolescence,

  the song i remember—had he called my name,

  before turning around,

  i would not have known it was him.

  [under her bed, the babysitter had miniature equestrian stables, a whole, tiny world beneath her sleeping head—hay barrels, grooming stations, saddles, & a racetrack. a dozen plastic horses. the babysitter knew them all by breed: thoroughbred, arabian, appaloosa, mustang. and she knew them all by the names she’d given them herself—horse names—boundless & sensual. i spent so long lying on my belly on her carpeted floor, peering into the pint-sized universe that i couldn’t afford, even in its diminutive state, that i forgot the babysitter rode real horses in real life, wore tight tan pants with knee-high leather boots, guided the gallop through the dirt & won the cerulean ribbons that lined her walls. once, we went to see her ride at the state fair. no one in my family could find her amongst the twenty-five identical girls in helmets, perched atop the beasts’ backs but i knew. i could tell by the way she pressed against the stirrups & stood up just slightly off the saddle, bent knees, head forward; she was perfect. the other girls were timid. the other girls may as well have been riding the aluminum ponies on a carousel. the babysitter spoke in stallion tongue, whispered in its twitching ear, go faster, faster, faster, now jump.]

  WHEN I SAY THAT WE ARE ALL TEEN GIRLS

  what I mean is that when my grandmother

  called to ask why I didn’t respond to her letter,

  all I heard was, Why didn’t you

  text me back? Why don’t you love me?

  And how can I talk about my grandmother

  without also mentioning that if everyone

  is a teen girl, then so are the birds, their soaring

  cliques, their squawking throats,

  and the sea, of course, the sea,

  its moody push and pull, the way we drill

  into it, fill it with our trash, take and take

  and take from it and still it holds us

  each time we walk into it.

  What is more teen girl than not being

  loved but wanting it so badly

  that you accept the smallest crumb and call

  yourself full; what is more teen girl than

  my father’s favorite wrench, its eternal loyalty

  and willingness to loosen the most stubborn of bolts;

  what is more teen girl than my mother’s chewed

  nail beds, than the whine of the floorboards in her house?

  What is more teen girl than my dog, Jack,

  whose bark is shrill and unnecessary,

  who has never once stopped a burglar

  or heeled on command but sometimes

  when I laugh, his tail wags

  so hard it thumps against the wall, sometimes

  it sounds like a heartbeat, sometimes I yell at him

  for talking too much, for his messy room,

  sometimes I put him in pink, striped polos

  and I think he feels pretty,

  I think he likes to feel pretty,

  I think Jack is a teen girl

  and the mountains, oh, the mountains,

  what teen girls they are, those colossal show-offs,

  and the moon, glittering and distant

  and dictating all of our emotions.

  My lover’s tender but heavy breath while she sleeps

  is a teen girl, how it holds me and keeps

  me awake all at once, how sometimes I wish

  to silence it, until she turns her body and

  the room goes quiet and suddenly I want it back.

  Imagine the teen girls gone from our world

  and how quickly we would beg for their return,

  how grateful would we be then for their loud enthusiasm

  and ability to make a crop top out of anything.

  Even the men who laugh their condescending laughs

  when a teen girl faints at the sight of her

  favorite pop star, even those men are teen girls,

  the way they want so badly to be big

  and important and worshipped by someone.

  Pluto, teen girl, and her rejection

  from the popular universe,

  and my father, a teen girl, who insists he doesn’t

  believe in horoscopes but wants me to tell

  him about the best traits of a Scorpio,

  I tell him, We are all just teen girls,

  and my father, having raised me, recounts the time he found

  the box of love notes and condom wrappers I hid

  in my closet, all of the bloody sheets, the missing socks,

  the radio blaring over my pitchy sobs,

  the time I was certain I would die of heartbreak

  and in a moment was in love with a small, new boy,

  and of course there are the teen girls,

  the real teen girls, huddled on the subway

  after school, limbs draped over each other’s shoulders

  bones knocking, an awkward wind chime

  and all of the commuters, who plug in their headphones

  to mute the giggle, silence the gaggle and squeak,

  not knowing where they learned to do this,

  to roll their eyes and turn up the music,

  not knowing where they learned this palpable rage,

  not knowing the teen girls are our most distinguished

  professors, who teach us to bury the burst

  until we close our bedroom doors,

  and then cry with blood in the neck,

  foot through the door, face in the pillow,

  the teen girls who teach us to scream.

  MY MAN

  i never knew anything about him

  except for what i saw—

  not his last name

  or where he’d gone to school—

  just that he was a man

  with a legal ID

  & facial hair, a man who spoke

  often about my age

  as if it were a personality,

  dedicated a song to me called fifteen

  & played it while he drove me home,

  dropped me off at the next block

  to avoid my father, posed as a painter once,

  though he was a painter,

  but to get into my bedroom,

  i’ve hired him to do a mural, i told my parents,

  & my mother insisted we leave the door open

  to air out the fumes, but we didn’t.

  instead, we fucked on the plastic sheet

  & got dizzy, never finished the wall,

  for years, an outline of my name

  in mediocre graffiti—i think he went on to have a child

  with a woman his age, i think he wrote me once

  about some band that made him think of me

  & i asked his daughter’s name,

  but before that, i know someone

  must have warned me

  & i must have defended it

  the way a teen girl would, some flaring

  loyalty to her ageless wit,

  & besides that, he had

  an apartment & called me his baby.
/>   i liked standing in the kitchen

  while he watched me from the living room,

  i liked waking up before him & walking

  to get sandwiches, i liked to make sure

  he was fed. yes, these are all moments

  i remember but also moments

  i am watching from the outside in,

  peering through cracked blinds

  in the hallway of an apartment complex

  into a room with no furniture

  where a girl lies on her back,

  a man sitting next to her,

  watching her as if he is trying to predict

  the ways she will grow into herself—

  if her stomach & skin will get tired,

  if he will leave her when it does—

  & she is saying something i can’t

  make out, something i can only

  imagine, maybe about the future,

  how she can’t wait until she’s old

  enough to move out & come here,

  how she thinks the sink is the perfect

  size to give their baby a bath.

  MANGO SEASON

  It is mango season, and Jenna is straddling a branch,

  plucking the wet, yellow muscle from the sprig.

  If it’s timed right, it shouldn’t take more than a two-finger

  tug to release them from their stems, and we always time

  it right—check back every day after school until the tree

  is freckled with a perfect gold—one of us, whoever’s blisters

  have healed to callus, will scale the trunk and do the tossing,

  while the other takes the task

  of catching each one before

  they hit purple against the ground.

  Today, I am at the base, waiting for Jenna to shout

  You ready? and toss sun after sun from its sky. I have

  a near-flawless track record—almost never have I let one slip

  through my hands—I pile them up next to a protruding root

  until all that’s left are green leaves, and this is where

  I wish the story ended, our bellies bare, shirts pulled

  up to our chests, cradling our lumpy harvest,

  as we flaunt our way back home.

  You might ask why we need seventeen ripe Julie mangoes

  between the two of us—rawboned girls with kneecaps

  that could slice fruit—we don’t. We just want to win

  at the boys’ game, the boys who swarm like coyotes,

  who play football barefoot atop thorns, who break

  each other’s noses and ribs and windows, who will break

  ours if we pick their blooming trees bare, but we don’t care,

  we get out of school before them and will collect the fruit

  before them and will dig our teeth into the flesh of it

  before them, bury the seeds so there’s no proof

  that we did it except the sticky pulp around our lips.

  We aren’t afraid, but we are. Jenna says they see us

  as kids now, but the beatdowns will be different when

  they don’t. There is a special hatred reserved for women

  and women alone. She says her brother warned her

  that something is changing. They talk about your legs,

  he said, a nick in the glass before the crack begins to spread.

  Today, before Jenna can make the leap and meet me

  on the ground, the boys are home early and hungry—

  find us yellow-handed and don’t take so much

  as a minute to say thief before their nails are buried

  in my biceps, and Jenna can’t save me, can’t use her

  brother’s name to spare me this time because he is here,

  his button-down split just a little lower than normal,

  as if to coax a chest hair with the sun, and silent.

  Jenna has never told me the wrong thing to do.

  She told me which trees are a home for fire ants,

  Don’t climb them, which pads will make me stink,

  Don’t use them, which girls will cut my hair in my sleep,

  Don’t love them, and she was right, every time.

  Today she yells, Just do what they say, while I’m dragged

  from view and she stays trapped as the rest

  of the boys pace beneath her feet.

  They take me to an abandoned police station.

  The one near the dumpster where I once found a litter

  of puppies and when I got caught feeding them,

  a neighbor lady put them in a garbage bag and threw

  them in the back of a dump truck. Back here,

  the grass is forgotten, slick and cold against your thighs.

  Back here, everything and everyone is forgotten

  except me. I am the star of the show. I am sitting

  in an interrogation room while they decide what to do

  with this harvest they pulled in the form of a girl.

  One notices a shower in the corner, a burgundy

  drain like rusting teeth and stained tile,

  and points me towards it.

  They take turns stepping inside—first a boy, then his tongue,

  then a boy and then his tongue—and yes, I said no—

  yes, I laughed to soften the blow, until the last one,

  the one whose fingers brought me here, brings forth

  Jenna’s brother, half-hatched boy who I knew

  so well, but now looks like a waning moon,

  and demands he press his face hard against mine.

  When I found the puppies, Jenna’s brother

  wanted to hold them, but wasn’t sure how. He squatted

  down next to me in the dirt and watched as I took each

  newborn into my arms. He seemed nervous, like he didn’t

  trust his own ability to be soft.

  So I took the infant and placed it

  in his cupped hands, taught him to run his thumb from

  forehead to snout, to rub its belly, to place it

  back down in the soil

  with the rest of the litter when it started to squeal. When

  a younger boy wanted to try, and reached

  for the dogs with a fast

  and heavy hand, Jenna’s brother smacked him away.

  Let her teach you, he said. Let her teach you first.

  II.

  I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out;

  and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.

  —VIRGINIA WOOLF

  MY GRANDMOTHER ASKS WHY I DON’T TRUST MEN

  If you have a son, how will you love him?

  She is pacing the living room,

  while the Thanksgiving Day Parade

  plays behind her, a montage of inflated

  cartoon bodies, floating slow

  down 6th Avenue, smiles

  painted onto their faces.

  I consider not responding.

  I consider explaining that I can love him

  and not trust him. I consider saying that I won’t

  love him at all. Just to scare her. Instead, I say,

  If I am ever murdered, like,

  body found in a ditch, mouth

  stuffed with dirt, stocking

  around my neck, identified

  by my toenails, please don’t go

  looking for a guilty woman.

  When my father and I go for a jog

&n
bsp; on the arroyo and he runs ahead, leaving me

  alone with my breath and an empty trail,

  I keep running—but now, from something.

  When I cross a coyote drinking from the ditch,

  I am relieved it is an animal. When I see him,

  my father, stretching against a tree, I scream

  at him for leaving me alone. He grabs my shoulders

  as if to shake my loose parts into place.

  What are you afraid of? he asks. Why are you so afraid?

  I don’t know why I’m doing this—

  playing show and tell with the times I’ve walked fast

  in the dark. Maybe I see myself in the worst of it.

  Maybe if I can imagine myself in the shallow

  water, you should too. Maybe I am tired

  of hearing people talk about the murder

  of girls like it is both beautiful

  and out of the ordinary.

  I ask the hotel attendant

  to put me in a room near the elevator.

  I listen to my best friend breathe

  on the line while she walks home.

  Sometimes I search “woman’s body found in”

  when I visit a new city. Then, I learn her name.

  Her age. Where they found her—under a baseboard,

  limbs folded into a closet. I learn her hobbies—

  that she loved to sing. I watch the security footage

  they discovered of her last moments, I watch her move

  and breathe like the rest of us. I watch her look

  over her shoulder three times

  before walking out of view.

  I know my fear better

  than I know

  my own body.

  THE BOY SAYS HE LOVES TED BUNDY BUT DOESN’T LAUGH ABOUT IT

  After fingering me in a dorm room at a school neither of us attends, the boy says he loves him—the man who resembles my father, wearing a butter-yellow sweater, awaiting the electric chair, hot-shot scholar in the business of burying girls. But when he says it, the boy doesn’t add that he also likes craft beer, he isn’t on a podcast or at a party, he isn’t explaining necrophilia to a room of girls, he is whispering—he lets it creak up the doorstep of my neck and sits up, hides his face, hunches at the edge of the bed with his back towards me. He whimpers, chants a prayer to his naked thighs—Maybe it’s in me, maybe it’s in me, maybe it’s in me to do it too. The boy has a girlfriend named Wren or Willow, who today resized the ring he gave her three months ago and, right before this moment, FaceTimed him to show off how the rose-gold now hugs the neck of her skinny finger just right. I stood on the other side of the phone, blowing cigarette smoke into his face while he talked. But now, the boy has lived five minutes past being inside of my body and he is crying on a twin-sized cot, he is telling me she won’t let him choke her, not like you do, he is saying, you’re what I’ve always wanted. I place my hand on his back and move it in a small circle, I ask him about his childhood, if he ever thought to hurt a rodent. I am not concerned, I just live for a good reckoning. The man at the edge of my bed is afraid of himself, which makes me not afraid of him. I get on my knees behind him and lean my chest against his back. I put my mouth at his sideburns and let my warm breath spill onto his cheek. I love him too, I say, I think about him all the time.