Gingerbread

by Helen Oyeyemi

  Shut up. The Gingerbread Girls were held down, their pigtails knelt on until they stopped struggling. Then the farmstead girls pinched them, pulled flesh and fat away from their arms and thighs and stomachs, and flicked it back into place. For a long while they didn’t speak, just stuck their hands right inside the Gingerbread Girls’ clothes and pinched them hard. Harriet looked up through the web of skeletal hands and into the eyes of one of the girls who was pinching her, trying to see if the girl was giving vent to anger or fulfilling curiosity or enjoying this in any other way, but those eyes told her nothing. The only thing Harriet would later be able to liken the pinching to was a beauty treatment given by a masseuse who was at the end of her shift and had already checked out mentally. Another girl placed her foot on Harriet’s cheek and rolled her head back and forth in the mud. She seemed to be doing this so Harriet couldn’t maintain eye contact. Laugh, the girl said. Let the grown-ups know we’re getting on.

  But they can see we’re not getting on. There are security cameras, Harriet said, pointing. There, there, there, there, there, and there.

  The farmstead girls waved at the cameras one by one, waved cheerfully, with both hands. Laugh, I said. Flaky-nailed fingers slid up the legholes of Harriet’s knickers, into the armholes of her vest. Pinch, pinch, pinch. And Harriet laughed until she hit the happy note that released her head from football duty. One by one, the Gingerbread Girls giggled for dear life. The farmstead girls would probably have gone on administering pain by the thimbleful until the grown-ups were ready to see what they’d wrought, but Dottie’s nose erupted, and it was their turn to be harrowed and perplexed, most of all by the fact that she kept up her squeaky laugh throughout. They fled.

  After the farmstead group left, some cameramen arrived to film a documentary on Clio and the Gingerbread Girl Power phenomenon. Dottie missed out on TV stardom, laid up in the infirmary as she was, and her friend’s “Violation of the Gingerbread Man” game just wasn’t the same without her. The director of the documentary seemed to be under the impression that the Gingerbread Girls were a charity organization, that they had been rescued from neglect. How to explain that Clio had rescued them from her own neglect of their parents? And anyway they weren’t confident that their current situation was a truly protected one. Their countryside counterparts came to chasten them for accepting treats, probed their bodies, and it all just ran along as part of the security-camera feed. Clio had seen what happened and said, “Agricultural peoples, you know,” and “Child’s play mirrors such powerful traditions . . .” The pinching reminded her of a fertility rite she’d seen abroad. The matrons and the older Gingerbread Girls no longer feigned comprehension as Clio ruminated aloud; they’d found that she liked a look of puzzlement better.

  Abroad. Clio would always say “abroad” without naming a specific country; she’d never been anywhere. Interestingly (to Harriet), Clio Kercheval wasn’t trying to fool anybody when she said things like this. She made no secret of being overbearing and having her eye on the money. In spite of everything—and there was a lot—Harriet did not dislike this woman, who was open about her requirements that the girls be healthy, good to one another, kind to those who sought their approval, and fond of her at all times. Clio was no liar, at least not in the sense in which Montaigne presents the act of lying as that of gainsaying the testimony of one’s own knowledge. On the contrary, Clio never held back from full avowal of what she knew. But there was a problem with the information she was acting on—very little of it was true. Being neither mad nor sane, Clio Kercheval was just going to keep juggling her priorities at the same time as saying things like, “Oh, you girls were like celebrants in a fertility rite I saw abroad,” and she was going to drive all her charges around the bend without the slightest blip in her own peace of mind. The director of the documentary had had cameras on Clio and Harriet as they talked without microphones, and being a connoisseur of the violent facial twitch, he got his sound team to mic them up and asked Harriet if she had anything to say to fans of the Gingerbread Girls. Harriet put her hands on her hips and fitted a smile over her teeth like a gum shield. And what did she say? She wouldn’t watch the footage back even if you paid her, but it was something along these lines:

  Come and see us! Look, but don’t touch. We’ll always be here. We’ll never grow up, and we’re forever grateful that you picked us.

  Please don’t use that, Clio asked the cameramen, director, and everybody else on set. I mean . . . an unschooled country child coming out with these phrases in English . . . our patrons won’t know what to think, they’ll have fears we haven’t been honest with them . . .

  Harriet had spoken so fast that few non-native English speakers would’ve been able to understand what she’d said, but nobody on set asked her for a translation. A cameraman played Harriet’s outburst back for Clio: But doesn’t it look wonderful? She’s like a little fallen angel speaking in tongues! Harriet did a long-distance money count, adding up the banknotes stuffed between the mattress she slept on and the bedframe. Wouldn’t she regret it if she left without adding to them? She thought she’d regret reining herself in more. She clapped her hands and slapped her knees, turned toward Clio and then away, a derelict soul in a pink-and-white petticoat. The cameras kept rolling.

  Look but don’t touch. Look but DON’T TOUCH. Don’t touch, don’t touch.

  The words were scuttling out of her mouth quicker than she could crunch down on them. One handclap per syllable. Remember, Clio, remember decay, remember that cockroaches ate your lovely gingerbread mansion, clicking their mandibles as they gnawed away the floor beneath them. She ran at Clio with her head down, but Clio made no retreat, and when Harriet thought to discomfit the woman by other means and wrapped her arms around her waist, Clio didn’t recoil. She rested her chin on the top of Harriet’s head.

  If only Gretel was this affectionate, and this fond of studying the English language! Yes, let’s cuddle, overtired little girl. You’ve had a long day. All your days are long. Don’t film this, please. Yes, sorry, I do understand we’re going to run into difficulties if I keep . . . can they have their dinner first and start again in an hour?

  Up in the dormitory Zu and Rosolio made garters the girls could wear beneath their petticoats. Let them come, let them come from the farms and try to pinch us again, Rosolio raged as she sewed. Who the fuck did they think they were dealing with? From now on we’re all carrying gingerbread shivs, OK?

  You said it, Ros.

  That’s how it’s got to be.

  Zu’s was the only voice of semi-dissent, and she spoke without dropping a stitch: Violence isn’t the answer, but I’ll make the shivs pretty at least.

  * * *

  —

  THOSE WHO REMEMBER that I said an unpleasant event was accompanied by a pleasant event might be thinking that the pleasant event had some sort of symbiotic link to the unpleasant event and that this is why it’s worth entertaining foolish hopes even in the midst of having a bad experience that then gets retold to you as a good one. There are several fine verses concerning Hope, including two that tend to come to mind whenever I hear the word. Both are the work of poets named Emily who were alive around the same time, so you can’t even say that one was channeling an Age of Pessimism. In one poem, hope is a wild, stubborn thing with feathers that darts into the lyric to be caressed on the understanding that nobody will try to tame it. In the other poem, hope is clammy and clinging and plays toxic mind games: Like a false guard, false watch keeping / Still, in strife, she whispered peace / She would sing while I was weeping / If I listened, she would cease. When you endure some poison in the hope that it’ll give rise to its own antidote, on what terms does that hope come to you . . . ?

  Anyway, in this particular case, the unpleasant event and the pleasant event had hardly anything to do with each other, so the jury’s out. Harriet got the wrong idea at first too. She was summoned to Clio’s office later on the very evening o
f the pinching incident, and, thinking that she was about to be banished, she only went downstairs after she’d stuffed all her pay packets into the pockets of the quaint patchwork coat that was part of a Gingerbread Girl’s outdoor uniform. She remembered to knock, and Clio called, “Come in.” The proprietor of the Gingerbread House was shrugging herself into her own coat—a fur one.

  So you’re Harriet? I mean—that’s your name?

  Yes.

  I should’ve known. Well, let’s go.

  Go where?

  Home with me, to dinner. Gretel said she wouldn’t leave me alone if I forgot this time.

  * * *

  —

  SO HARRIET SAW some sights after all, albeit through the rose-tinted windows of Clio’s limousine. She saw the gates of the zoo and the gates of the science museum, the gates of the presidential palace, the gates of the national opera house, and the gates of the national art gallery and sculpture park. She saw all the notable church, mosque, temple, and synagogue gates too. Gates and gates and treetops rising out of the courtyards within. The traffic jams gave her ample time to take it all in. There was a riverside walk famed for its breathtaking beauty that had a gateway too, with mosaics depicting the path in each season. Druhástranian gates reward close inspection. Their designs are usually so intricate that they serve as sparkling microcosms of what you’d see if you went in, which most people didn’t because they had shopping to do and also there are too many uncontrollable variables at play when engaging with cultural artifacts. Casual walkers were far outnumbered by the maintenance teams who cleaned every inch of pavement and glass in sight and made sure the gates looked their best.

  And there was Gretel, walking out of one of these gates and along the pavement with six friends, all in school uniform. Two of the friends were aristocratic-looking boys. One was chubby and debonair, the only schoolboy Harriet saw who wore a cravat in place of a school tie, and the other was svelte, with a steely glint in his eyes that might make you think twice about challenging him to a duel. So these were the types of boys Gretel had something to say to. The farmstead boys hadn’t got a peep out of her, though she had smiled at the ten-year-olds a couple of times. The girls Gretel was with had tracksuit bottoms on under their skirts and sported a variation on that trendy city hairstyle—two puffs on the tops of their heads rather than one. Those whose hair didn’t have natural puff must have been using some sort of filler. The limousine idled along at about the same pace as the group was walking. Clio and Harriet watched quietly—they watched and waited—when would she notice them? It took some time—she was engrossed in conversation, after all, one hand tucked into the blazer pocket of a bespectacled girl who looked as if she was named Enid. Gretel’s other hand was tucked into her young dandy’s coat pocket until she bent to pick up a huge sycamore leaf that was so freshly fallen it hadn’t yet been cleared away. This was then presented to the svelte boy as a gift. He accepted it but threw it over the next gate they came to, and nobody was more amused than he was when the leaf flew back and plastered itself across his forehead. Harriet shrank down in her seat in case she could be seen from the outside. In this lot’s presence her already somewhat timid claim to Gretel’s friendship would vanish altogether. Her money was tearing the lining of her coat pockets; that’s how heavy the rolls of notes were. But they couldn’t even begin to buy her the charisma she’d need to face Gretel’s companions. She felt Clio’s deeply comparative gaze on her and braced herself for unfavorable remarks. But Clio only said: She’s spotted us, and there was Gretel on the street corner, waving goodbye to her friends and flagging down her mother’s limousine as if it was a taxi. She climbed in beside Harriet and placed half a lottery ticket in her hand. Since it’ll be Thursday tomorrow, she said.

  Clio, Marcus, and Gretel Kercheval’s home was an inversion of the garishness to be found over at the gingerbread house. There was hardly any furniture, no pictures on display, and no lamps overhead. Strings of tiny lights ran along the bare floors and down the gray walls, and fado played from camouflaged speakers. This was all because of Marcus. It wasn’t just that he preferred open, low-lit spaces; he and Clio were funneling all their spare money into various ventures of his and inventions he was developing prototypes for. He was extremely good-looking, but the real factor that allowed him to boss Clio about was being in his early forties while Clio was in her early fifties. He made dinner, interrupting his chopping and stirring to argue on the telephone about dates and deadlines and fines, and even then he still found time to ask Harriet all about herself and compose a droll little jingle with the key words she and Gretel told him. He played the chords on his guitar, and when he sang along, he made Harriet sound like . . . a really good idea that was more likely to fall through than it was to succeed, but nothing ventured nothing gained, so on to the next one . . . ?

  Harriet just put her head down and ate. Marcus’s cooking was so much tastier than seven months of gruel that she couldn’t talk about or evaluate anything else while the food was in front of her. Clio didn’t eat dinner, but she did sit at the table with them, taking pills, sipping bone broth, and reminiscing about delectable foods she’d eaten when she was young and “could afford to eat such things.”

  Marcus noticed a new addition to the pill menu and picked up the bottle so as to have a closer look at the ingredients. I hope you don’t think any of this is going to turn back time, he said.

  No, these ones are more or less preservative. Haven’t you seen the ads? An after-school detention concept, with a grizzled headmistress type shouting: NOOOOO WHINGING—YOU’VE HAD YOUR FUN AND THIS IS WHAT YOU DESERVE NOW THAT YOU’RE OLD!

  That does ring a bell. But how can I be in love with someone who’s susceptible to that kind of advertising?

  Oh, that’s easily answered. Self-sabotage, Marcus, self-sabotage . . .

  Harriet and Gretel cleared the table, and Gretel nudged her and said, “Go ahead,” then went and made sure neither Marcus nor Clio came into the kitchen before Harriet had finished licking her plate.

  Well—what now?

  I’ve been thinking, Gretel, it’d be great to just grow up all of a sudden. I mean, wake up tomorrow and just be grown up.

  Why? Gretel looked as if she thought growing up would be an utter fiasco.

  Well, I’ve got a favorite author.

  Have you? A Druhástranian? Who?

  No . . . Zola . . . Émile Zola . . . and as a grown-up I could do things like—like look up all the people who translated Zola into Druhástranian and take them out for a drink.

  You don’t have to be grown up to do that, Gretel said. We can probably do it tonight.

  Can we?!

  Yes, of course. Well, not all Zola’s Druhástranian translators, but one of the best ones, anyway. This guy Oskar Procházka. He taught my dad at university.

  They paged through Marcus Kercheval’s book of contacts after he and Clio had gone to bed, and Gretel dialed Oskar Procházka’s phone number.

  Hi, Professor Procházka, are you busy tonight? We’re two great admirers of yours, and we’d like to buy you a drink or two and thank you for translating Zola into Druhástranian. Is it OK if the drinks are nonalcoholic? We’re underage.

  Harriet heard the professor saying he was in recovery, so meeting for nonalcoholic drinks was perfect.

  Super, Gretel said, already unbuttoning her pajama top and looking around for something else to put on. Can you meet us at the Jedovna Café in an hour? Thanks so much! Ha ha, what do you mean you don’t care if this is a trick . . . my dad was a student of yours and speaks very highly of you . . . Marcus Kercheval . . . yes . . . see you soon. Please wrap up warm; it’s cold out.

  As she spoke, she undid Harriet’s pigtails and held up an oversized white shirt against her. Harriet retied her pigtails, did up her bonnet, and said, You wear that yourself. So Gretel did, with tight jeans, floral-patterned bovver boots, a long black cloak
, and a heap of woolen scarves. They went out of the residential complex arm in arm, Little Miss Muffet and a scarf model. They walked past Clio’s limousine, which should’ve been parked underground, so they went back and looked in at the window; Clio’s limousine driver was asleep on the front seat. Gretel banged on the window and said, What are you still doing here?

  Clio had told the chauffeur he couldn’t go home because Gretel would most likely be up to something after dark. He thanked them for waking him up. He would have got the sack if he’d lost track of them.

  So . . . where am I taking you?

  Professor Procházka was already waiting in a booth near the back of the Jedovna Café when they arrived. He was short and bald and wiry and had shed his outer layers of clothing to reveal a very comfortable-looking pair of flannel pajamas. He spotted his fans at once and waved them over. He was drinking Harriet’s favorite, cold tea . . . not iced tea, but hot tea that had cooled. They liked him so much. They liked the way he talked when he talked, and they liked his quiet when he was quiet. He was a little sad, weary perhaps, distracted by some problem he wasn’t sure mere time and industry could solve. He said Harriet and Gretel were doing him good just by sitting opposite him, and Gretel said he was easily pleased.

  He rubbed his beard. None of my students seem to think so.

  Harriet asked him if he thought Zola was a misanthropist. He said, Oh—er—a misanthrope? I can see how it seems like that. To me his stories are like bandits that aren’t interested in anything you’d willingly flaunt but demand you furnish them with all that’s hypocritical and cowardly and self-satisfied in you. You deny being in possession of such trash, of course—why would you admit such things to a stranger? Wouldn’t the strange brigand rather have this lovely diamond necklace instead? But it would’ve been better to own up, to just own up to it all, because the next thing a Zola story does is frisk you and hit you ten times for each flaw you denied being in possession of. It’s oddly . . . I don’t know the word for it. Someone who searches you for the things that secretly make you miserable and then forcibly takes them from you, at least for a while—there is a bit of misanthropy in that, in the searching. And yet . . .