Stacking in Rivertown

by Barbara Bell

  When the ghosts got me, they whispered. For Violet, they screamed. I worried over her and found myself waiting for Ben to say, go down to Violet now. She’s ready again.

  She didn’t speak a word for a month after we brought her up, and early on, she began to creep onto my mattress after the plays and curl up next to me.

  Our sleeping arrangements were slim. We each had a mattress with sheets and blankets. And we all slept in the same room. Ben didn’t mind if we screwed and moved around one to the other. He encouraged it. But he didn’t like it if any two started pairing off. That was reason for a whipping. So I tried to keep Violet off me for her sake. She was a persistent little animal. That’s what she was like then, a rabbit or a puppy. So I’d sing to her and she’d go to sleep.

  This time, Ben didn’t interfere. He used it on me, knowing I was getting attached to her. He’d even let me out to take Buster for a walk on my own sometimes. He knew I’d come back, that I wouldn’t leave Violet alone with him.

  In the plays, if Ben wanted to get me worked up good and pushing on the straps, all he had to do was to start whipping Violet.

  Ben made her go in the box more than any of the rest of us, and he made her beg for her food. He’d sit in the big recliner with her plate on his lap. She’d have to plead for each bite.

  I couldn’t stand to watch it.

  In that long weekend I was spending with Ben, I remembered more and more about Violet. I thought I heard her voice among the ghosts. But I couldn’t remember what she looked like. I did remember her lips, her breasts, and how silent she was then.

  When I wake up, I’m in warm water. My eyes are still taped, but my arms and legs are free. A boy is behind me in the tub, leaning me back against him, my head on his shoulder. They make over me, cleaning the welts, washing me.

  You got the ghosts? A girl asks.

  Yes, I say.

  He said you would. He said they come back on you fast.

  What day is it? I say.

  Saturday.

  Still Saturday? I thought I was dead. I thought I was gone past Saturday, past Monday, past all the days passing.

  Shh, one of them says. Shh.

  The welts burn.

  You got a play coming, says the girl. They’ll be here for you soon.

  I can’t, I say.

  Shh. Shh.

  They feed me then, a bowl of mashed potatoes. Ben remembered. It was all I could ever eat after a really hard play.

  Now a gag is pushed in my mouth.

  They lift me out of the tub and dry me, then tie my hands in front. They put a collar on and lead me out with a leash. I’m taken into a room where my favorite couple is waiting.

  “Poor dear,” the obnoxious woman says, running her hands over the welts. If I had a gun, I’d shoot her.

  “We must move on,” Ben says. “She has another appointment after you.”

  I’m convinced Ben is trying to murder me with sex.

  They fit me into another contraption, this time with me hanging upside down. In the middle of the play, the goofy guy says to me, “Nasty little scar.”

  Funny, the things you notice at times like these.

  Appendectomy, I’d say politely if my mouth were free.

  I’m hearing more than the ghosts now. I’m hearing Kat. She’s talking to someone about a knifing. A deep cut. I’m on a gurney, not strapped to it (a new experience), but I can’t move.

  The lovely couple wind down their activities on me.

  Why don’t you keep her, they say after they’re done. We’d come once a week. It’s not that far.

  She’s got a husband, says Ben. The police, you know.

  Too bad. They sigh. Too bad.

  They should both have lobotomies.

  Ben ushers them out and leaves me upside down. The ghosts move in. The lights come and go. They spike.

  That’s the way I stay for a long time. When they come to get me out, I can’t walk, so they drag me back to the dog cage.

  Ben has never done me this hard.

  He wakes me up at some point and takes my arm. He wraps a rubber tourniquet around, patting up a vein. I hear him flip a syringe. I feel the stick. The smack speeds into me.

  I’m off in la-la land.

  Rivertown was our own fairyland. It had grave markers of all shapes and sizes, and buildings with columns and odd creatures carved inside. In Rivertown, we had a whole world of characters, of angels and sad women holding folds of their clothing, of men on horses, a soldier clutching a flag. On either side of the entrance to one building there were two little gnomes, and some guy named Gilbert put in a statue of his dog.

  Jeremy would have approved.

  Yes, the wealthy of our fair town lavished money on their sorry deaths.

  In an old, forgotten corner back near a grove of mimosa, we found a statue of a little girl. She was the only one smiling in the whole place. Beloved daughter, the plaque said.

  Mandy and me called them our people, and got to dressing them up if we found an old cast-off jacket or dress in one of our Dumpster runs. Mandy stole Miss Summers’ hat. We put it on the head of a very sad woman looking to the side.

  Somebody was always coming and taking off our little additions to the cemetery. Dishonoring the dead, they said. Defacing the tombs.

  The tooms, Mandy said.

  On May Day, we stole the ribbon off the pole, winding it all over the people of our special town. Our people were pleased. They almost looked to be smiling, even the sad lady whose face was turned to the side. She had been even sadder since they took back her hat.

  After that, sadness reigned. Mandy got appendicitis. About two years later, our two-room burned down. Mama forgot and left the hot plate on was my guess. Vin got me out. Mama never woke up.

  Daddy was dead drunk out behind the live oak. Vin and me sat alone and watched the place go down to ashes. Nobody came. We found Daddy the next morning.

  I’ll never forget his face when he stood looking at that pile of ash. It pretty much broke him, and he kept drinking from then on. Vin and I slept by the river while it was still warm, then we moved to Rivertown. After that, I can’t remember too well except that Vin left. If we did happen to run across one another someplace, it was like we were embarrassed. I got to sleeping under an overhang of one of the little houses between two columns.

  I found myself bringing back extra groceries from the Dumpsters and leaving a bag at the feet of one of the gnomes. It looked like Mama, so short and fat. And I dressed the little girl. I kept her in hats. I hung buttercup bracelets around her neck.

  My memories of the next few years are like the fog that hangs thick on the river below Rivertown during the winter rains. But I do recall hitching rides on highways and riding in big trucks. I got turned around sometimes, but always in my head I had a dream of a home. I was looking for a better life.

  As I come back from the beauty of smack into ugliness, somebody is saying my name. I’m lying on my back on a cool floor, my head propped on a pillow. The tape is still on my eyes. My hands are still tied in front. The junk has my skin twitching like the gnats are doing me in.

  Beth, Ben says. He strokes my cheek and opens my mouth, squirting in some Gatorade. I choke, swallow.

  Enough Ben, I say. You win.

  Poor Beth. He squirts in more Gatorade. I missed you so much. After you were gone, things weren’t the same.

  You knew where I was. You could have gotten me.

  I waited for you. I knew you’d call. You can’t live without me, Beth. I know you the best.

  Yes, I say. Yes. What about Violet? When did she go?

  A long time ago. Don’t worry about Violet. She’s happy now.

  Stacked in Rivertown, I think. High and low.

  Ben kisses me. He feels my throat, my breasts.

  The boys come and help me up. They shower me, then lead me through hallways and down stairs. They sit me in a car. The door shuts and the car starts moving.

  Someone works the tape off my
eyes. It appears to have fused with my skin. After it comes free, I can’t see right away, but sense that it’s Ben next to me. He cleans the goo off my face with some nasty-smelling liquid and unties my hands. We’re in the limo again. On the seat across from me is my bag with my extra clothes.

  “Get dressed,” he says.

  My hands shake. The shit he shot into my vein whipped my ass. I dress, the feel of the clothes making me crazy. I can see that we’re winding through the maze of streets with houses way too big for the people who live in them.

  “What day is it?” I ask.

  “Monday. About nine in the morning.”

  He hands me a Social Security card. At the top is my new name, Katherine Benson. That’s a cute touch.

  “You’ll get another piece next week,” he says.

  The car pulls up in front of my house.

  “The limo will be waiting for you outside of Penn Station. Five o’clock Friday.” He kisses me again, both hands on my throat. I can take a hint.

  I don’t know how I make it to the front door on two feet. Once inside, I collapse. I crawl to the kitchen and chug a quart of orange juice, taking three Valium. Then I drag myself up the stairs to my favorite closet, curling into a ball on the floor and dropping into dreamland.

  3

  Violet

  Something wet is in my eye. I punch it, a bit of the berserks.

  “Honey!” It’s Jeremy protecting his new terrier-type mutt named Mitzi.

  I roll onto my back. Jeremy’s trying hard to look cheerful, but I can see it’s a strain.

  “What happened to your face?” He reaches to touch me, but I grab his wrists.

  The skin around my eyes is raw. “It’s a rash. I used to get it all the time when I was a kid. I find that if I lie down in a closet, it helps.”

  “And your lip?”

  “I tripped. You know how these book things drive me nuts. I get clumsy, and then I get this rash, and I have to sleep in a closet.”

  “It’s okay, honey. I understand. I know what you’re going through, and I’ve taken care of everything.”

  I tense.

  Jeremy kneels beside me. “I found you sleeping in this closet with your face looking that way. That made me a little worried. So I called Helen, you know, Jerry’s wife, the psychiatrist? She said not to worry, just a nervous breakdown. Women have them all the time. So I set up an appointment for you. Tomorrow at ten.”

  I’m having jetlag or something. I just flew in from the dark continent of Ben to the little Balkan state of Jeremy.

  “An appointment.”

  “At ten. She’ll call me and let me know how it went so you don’t have to worry about it. Why don’t you come out of here?”

  He grabs my shoulders to help me up. God, the welts burn. I convince him that I’m feeling sick on top of having a nervous breakdown, and I slip into bed. He goes off to heat up some soup.

  While I’m alone, I start planning like there’s no tomorrow. The stakes have skyrocketed. I can’t believe I was so stupid as to call Ben.

  Jeremy returns and worries over me, patting my head. I’m thinking I’ve got to get out of this place fast. And I’m sick to death of feeling like I’m one of Jeremy’s mutts.

  Of course, later on he’s horny. Lucky for me, he likes to screw in the dark. I don’t think I could explain the marks around my back and chest. As he’s pumping me, I wish for once that I did have a gag, so I could scream my lungs out.

  The next morning, after Jeremy has taken his happy face and departed, I log on to my computer. I’m worried that Jeremy might start rifling my things now that he thinks I’m going loony. So I bury the file I’m writing in the middle of an old disk.

  I make two lists. The first list is called “In the Taurus.” Underneath that I write: new clothes, new sunglasses, wig, CDs, money, new IDs. The other list is called “In the Porsche.” Beneath that one I write: Clarisse Broder IDs and purse, switchblade, black hooded jacket, garage key for the Taurus.

  Pleased with this, I type in the things that I have to get done this week, adding at the bottom to delete this file when I’ve completed my tasks. I don’t want any posthumous discoveries.

  I shower and paint on a heavy coating of makeup to cover my suspiciously rectangular rash. The phone rings. It’s my agent so I pick up thinking that otherwise, I would have to call her back. I hate making phone calls more than I hate answering them.

  “Time wants to do an interview,” she says, her voice filled with triumph.

  “God,” I say.

  “Thursday. And they’re going to want to take pictures.”

  I must have been some terrible shit in my previous life to deserve this. “I’ve got a rash,” I say. “On my face.”

  “Oh.”

  “The doctor said it would clear in three weeks. Couldn’t we do it then?” I guess I don’t hate lying so much after all.

  “I’ll have to call you back on that.”

  “Fine. You’re a dear.”

  I fire up the Porsche and make a side trip while on my way to my great psychiatrist appointment. I go to see Bob. You know, of Bob’s Guns.

  While in there, I pick up a Smith and Wesson Ladysmith, the one with the wood grip (so appealing to women). I buy a body holster so that I can keep it next to me. Then because I’m in a shopping mood, I think what the hell, and spring for a twelve-gauge shotgun to boot. It’s like Christmas in July. Picking out bullets reminds me of going through a Toys “R” Us.

  I lean over the counter so Bob can see more than my cleavage.

  “An Uzi,” I say to him, certain that more firepower would be an aid in my present circumstances. “Full automatic,” I add, having done my research.

  Bob’s eyes are fixed on my breasts. I let one of the straps of my dress slip a bit to the side.

  “Sorry, babe,” he says, his eyes wide but sad, and his hands clutched beneath the counter. “No can do. Major illegal weapon. You want to land me in jail?”

  I slide around to the end of the counter and slip my dress strap farther down so he can see the real thing. I stare at his crotch. “But you know somebody, right? I’ll pay. Cash.”

  He rubs his hand over my breast. I unzip his pants and reach in.

  He starts breathing heavy. “There’s a place in South Philly. I have their card.”

  I hear the door open and shut behind me. He looks over, his eyes half open. I stay where I am and keep it up as the other shopper browses in another part of the store. Bob is quick about it. I zip him up and pull my strap back in place.

  He slips me a card.

  “Don’t tell anybody where you got this.”

  “Not a word.”

  I pack my new purchases into the Porsche and rip into the city to make my shrink appointment.

  “Jeremy said you were hiding in the closet,” she says.

  “I wasn’t hiding. I was sleeping.”

  “Why in the closet?”

  “Seemed the best thing to do.”

  She scribbles something down on her pad.

  “When did you first begin this behavior?”

  I fidget, trying to think back.

  “As a child?” she ventures.

  God, you’d think they’d come up with something new every once in a while.

  “I didn’t have a childhood.”

  “Everybody has a childhood.”

  “I’m pretty sure I didn’t.”

  She keeps probing here and there for some tidbit, some clue to my dementia. I’m beginning to think of her as a persistent poodle, which suddenly makes me wonder about Jeremy, who plays poker with his Harvard pals on Sunday afternoon. I get this sudden flash that maybe he’s screwing Helen instead.

  Go for it, Helen.

  “So how did you meet Jeremy?”

  “I had an appendectomy. We met in the hospital. I have a scar right here.” I make a motion with my hand.

  “Couldn’t be,” she says.

  “That’s what it was.”

  “I
t’s on the wrong side. An appendectomy scar would be on your right side.” She smiles at me, having won a point.

  I ponder this information. “Maybe my appendix was on the wrong side. It wouldn’t be the first time I was backwards in some way.”