Women of Consequence

by Wolos, Gregory;

  

  Off the highway, they headed due west along a narrow tar road. Weeds grew in its cracks. The dry land, the sparse brush, the gullies and arroyos, the distant hills and cattle fences looked the same as they had from the Interstate, but Leonard felt different, as if the scene had swallowed them, and they were seeing things from the inside. He wondered how difficult it would be to engage the four wheel drive. The Escalade’s owner’s manual was in the glove compartment. Would they have to ford a river? Would there be a border patrol that shot first and asked questions later? He sneaked a look at Mindy. She had picked him, something no woman had ever done before. Though they weren’t pirates, they shared something. They were pioneers of modern survival. Leonard had been rejected as a sperm donor, but Mindy had given him a new purpose: she was an incubator in need—an entrepreneurial incubator—and he was a deliverer.

  “Here is good,” Mindy said when the road cut through a sandy stretch along a dry creek bed. Leonard slid the SUV to a stop, the tires crackling and shushing. Mindy still toted the gun, but Leonard doubted she’d force him to follow her while she went off to squat behind a bush or outcrop. She probably wouldn’t even ask for the keys. After she did her business, they’d plan the crossing—from north to south, right through the southern outpost of the Meximo Army.

  But Mindy didn’t budge. “I think I just saw an animal in distress,” she said, staring straight at Leonard, her face as cold and flat as a china plate. “I did. Definitely. Down that empty creek bed. It was limping.” Leonard peered past her, to the right and left. There wasn’t a sign of movement, and he could see for miles. “It was a burro, I think,” she added. “Probably escaped from a ranch. Poor thing. A burro or a mule. What’s the difference?”

  Leonard focused on the gun, which seemed to have woken up and taken an interest in his chest. Mindy braced it on her belly next to the phone. He choked the wheel. “A mule is the offspring of a horse and a donkey,” he said. “Mules are sterile.”

  Mindy shook her head. “I meant what’s the difference what it is? You’ve got to investigate, right? You’re the Emergency Vet.” She started a deep breath, then cut it short. “Doc, there’s no Mexico City. I couldn’t drive that far in my condition. But we’re less than an hour from the border now, and my associates are going to meet me when I cross. I’ll flash your passport card. Believe me, nobody’ll give it a second look. We kind of resemble each other, in a way.”

  Leonard’s thoughts unspooled—he felt light-headed.

  “No contractions yet,” Mindy said. “I don’t need insurance anymore. But it’s been nice talking to you. What I would like now is for you to get out and walk down the creek bed—off the road a ways, please. Leave the keys. Just right there in the ignition, thank you. This is a beautiful vehicle. Real value.” Mindy gazed up and down the road. Leonard noticed for the first time that her eyes were the color of lilacs. “Let’s go, Doc. Think of that suffering creature out there. Who’s going to investigate if you don’t?” She gestured with the gun. The phone hummed, but she ignored it. “Go on—open the door and step out.”

  Leonard lost his balance as he swung the door open, staggering as he set his shaking legs on the baked ground. Fresh tar oozed from the cracks in the road. The air above it shimmered with heat in both directions. His cheek muscles tightened, and he held his hands out to his sides as if he’d dropped something. His gaze swept across the terrain to the horizon. There was no injured animal.

  “Which way did you see it go?” In spite of the dry air, his voice came back to him as if he was underwater.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Mindy said. “Just start walking. And don’t look back. That way, I guess, off the road. Hurry up.” As he shuffled around the Escalade, Leonard heard the passenger window whine open. He kicked up dust on his way to the creek bed and glared at his feet: his brown moccasins looked new—when had he bought them? Where? He passed rocks and pebbles striped with glitter. When he was a kid, he would have collected stones like them, pretending they’d make him rich. Maybe it had been a hundred years since anyone had looked at these. Maybe they’d never been noticed by a soul.

  “Keep going!” Mindy’s voice sounded as if she were just a few feet behind him, but he’d walked at least thirty paces. He shivered a breath. His shadow leaned away from him, and he watched it pass over larger rocks and the shriveled bushes that would become tumbleweeds when they broke off in the wind. A half-hope rose in his throat—maybe Mindy didn’t mean to shoot him. She wouldn’t have to—she was going to Mexico. His elbows brushed his hips; he regretted never having learned to walk proudly, and he tried to stand straight. But he didn’t want to march. He waited for an instinct to tell him to run. The Escalade started, and the drone of its engine rolled out to him. This would end up no worse than a desertion, he reasoned. He’d need water.

  What if Mindy’s water broke? What if, as she lowered her smudged lid and tightened her finger on the trigger, she suddenly exploded? The water would gush between her legs and flood the upholstery. Her dress would be soaked. Contractions would begin. Driving would be impossible, and she’d need her insurance policy once again. She’d call Leonard back to the Escalade, but he would plant his feet in the dust, fold his arms over his chest, and wait. Until she begged. Time would crawl by. He’d outlast her. Where are your associates now? he might chide. Leonard would have to deliver the baby.

  There might be complications. The newborn, a fine boy, would slip into Leonard’s steady hands, but Mindy, lying back on the reclined passenger seat of the Escalade, might hemorrhage uncontrollably. He’d drag her bloody and unresponsive body from the car while the infant squalled. Leonard would cover the young woman—she’d either be dead or the next worst thing—with brush and rocks and sand. Then he’d drive south overland while the phone buzzed with orphan messages and all of nature drew toward Mindy’s body. Scavengers, sun, and wind would pick her clean until her bones merged with the country.

  The boy belonged as much to Leonard as to anyone. Years in the future, Leonard would share with the handsome child the true story of how they came to live in their villa. The Meximo invasion would have dissolved all borders, but Leonard would faithfully describe the world as it had been: he saw himself flipping through a picture book, lingering over each illustration, pointing out details.

  But each turn of a page was a scuffed step into the plain, and, as Leonard edged further from the SUV, a question rose like a monument—would he hear the shot before he felt it?

  Cherish the Muffin Top

  Becca opened one of the hard lemonades they’d brought for the Saturday night party the GPS couldn’t locate. They were looking for a farmhouse ten miles deep in the dairyland outside of campus. She took a sip and offered the bottle to Danielle, the driver, who waved it away. Katie, lounging like Cleopatra across the backseat of her own Toyota, waggled her fingers for the drink. She always surrendered the wheel when the three roommates drove to parties because she liked to get high before they started out.

  Becca opened a second lemonade. “I’ve seen that barn. We’re lost, we’re going in circles. We’re going to die.”

  “This isn’t The Blair Witch Project.” Danielle let the car glide to a stop in the middle of the road. “I need to know where the shit we’re going.”

  “Re-dy-recting,” Barry, the Australian GPS voice, insisted. “Re-dy-recting.”

  “You can’t just stop,” Becca said. “We’re going to get rammed from behind.” She looked back over Katie into the darkness framed by the rear window. “Some farmer is going to smash into us with his hay wagon.”

  “I’ve got the flashers on.”

  “A ‘combine.’ Isn’t that some kind of farm thing?” Katie yawned. “We’re going to get crushed into a bale by a combine.” Night air spilled through their open windows from ghost meadows riotous with crickets.

  “Where are the stars?” Becca asked. “You’re supposed to se
e millions of stars out in the country.”

  “It’s cloudy. I smell rain.” Danielle folded her arms. “I don’t want to be driving out here in a downpour.”

  “Re-dy-recting—”

  “Shut up, you bastard.” Danielle choked the wheel at ten and two, lifted her foot from the brake, and the car lurched forward. “This was the last party. There’s supposed to be a bonfire. Why don’t we see a bonfire?”

  “We’re screwed,” Becca said. “Some cult will murder us and chop us up and spell out a message with our body parts—‘CONGRATULATIONS, CLASS OF 2014.’”

  “Let’s give up.” Katie squinted at her wrist where she’d inked the party’s address. “Gerber Road? Did we see a Gerber Road?”

  “There isn’t any Gerber Road,” Danielle slowed the car again, this time coasting to the side of the road. “You wrote it wrong.”

  Katie stuck her pale arm over the seat back. “You read it. Should I get a tattoo?”

  “I vote for home,” Becca said. “We can bake brownies. We have the rest of our lives to meet people.”

  “Home,” Katie repeated.

  “Just home?” Danielle asked. “Okay—”

  “Then the Peace Corps. Whoa—” Katie rolled half out of her seat as Danielle spun the Toyota into a U-turn. “I spilled my lemonade.

  “Re-dy-recting.”

  “Even Barry wants to go home,” Becca said.

  Becca was the one who’d thought of the Peace Corps. An English major, she’d decided she needed some gap time and an accomplishment or two for her resume before applying to law school. One snowy January night she’d dreamed she stood in front of a group of blonde girls dressed in folk outfits with fancy stitching. Ukrainians, she knew somehow. Becca had the sense she was telling these children the most important thing in the world. She’d shared her dream with her friends the next morning.

  “I’m going to join the Peace Corps.”

  “Me too,” Katie clapped.

  “We’ll all three save the world,” Danielle said. “We’ll eat rice and beans and come home skinny.”

  Becca had patted her belly. “Not me,” she said. “I cherish my muffin top.”

  As it turned out, Katie was the one who’d be situated in the Ukraine, her college Russian deemed sufficient for all Eastern European placements. Danielle’s Spanish had earned her a spot in Ecuador. But Becca only knew French. “It’s a language for tourists and Canadians,” she concluded. “With just English, they’ll put me in Africa.” Where cute little Slavic girls were in shorter supply than antibiotics and agricultural know-how. “I’ll find another way to see the world,” she’d said, as her friends filled out applications, interviewed, and celebrated acceptances.

  Farmhouse party plans aborted, the three young women lounged in the living room of their flat. Graduation was a week away, and final exams had been taken and passed. Only Katie had work left, a project for her non-major art elective, “The Politics of Regret.”

  “I need an idea—” Katie sank into the living room sofa after smoking a fat joint. The grape wine she’d been gulping from a coffee mug had left her with a purple mustache. “It can be anything. The professor said last year a girl shaved her pubic hair and put it in a baby food jar. She got an A. Help me, guys.”

  “You want our pubic hair?” Danielle asked. She and Becca, seated cross-legged on the carpet on either side of the half-empty jug of Carlo Rossi, nursed their own mugs.

  “It’s got to be original. I can’t just copycat.”

  “What would your professor do with a jar full of pubic hair?”

  “Knit a tiny sweater,” Becca said. “For a mouse.”

  “For his dick,” Katie grumbled. “He’s a dick. Why do I have to do a project? Come on, guys—be helpful.” She twisted onto her stomach and buried her face in the sofa cushion. Her voice was muffled: “I’m not going to graduate, and it’ll be your fault, because you’ve got no imagination.” She raised her head. “No Ukraine. No nesting dolls.”

  “My matryoshkas,” Becca sighed, caressing the wine bottle as if it were a glass cat. “You don’t deserve them. You stole the Ukraine from me.”

  “Wait—” Danielle lifted her mug in a salute. “What about your dolls—your Barbies?”

  “What about them?” Katie’s features shrank into a scowl. “I told you you’re not allowed to touch them after you made them watch you have sex with Roger. That was sick.”

  “I washed them in Lysol. And I swear we didn’t use them.”

  “They’ll never be clean again,” Katie struggled onto her back and shut her eyes. “They were humiliated. I should never have brought them up here. They weren’t ready for college.”

  “But now you have to sacrifice them,” Danielle said. “So you can graduate. So you can get to Ukrainia.”

  “Ukraine,” Becca said, “not ‘Ukrainia.’ They’re in a shoe box under her bed.”

  “Nobody’s supposed to know that,” Katie whispered. “They hate you, too.”

  “If they catch you smoking pot in Ukrainia, they’ll send you to a gulag,” Danielle said. She turned to Becca. “Get some markers and scissors. Foil and tape, too. And a knife, the sharp one for bread. I’ll get the dolls.”

  “Oh my God,” Katie groaned without opening her eyes.

  Two hours later, Katie’s graduation had been secured: four modified Barbies and one Ken stood on the coffee table beside their sleeping owner. All but one wore an identifying sash.

  “Wake her up,” Danielle said. “Katie—wake up!”

  “Katie—” Becca whispered. She brushed her friend’s hair from her face. “We’ve finished your art project. You’re done.”

  Katie rolled to her side and blinked at the display with an open mouth. Danielle and Becca exchanged glances that dipped to the scissors, tape, and markers on the floor, rose to the dolls, then settled back on their friend. Danielle cleared her throat. She tapped the shorn head of the first Barbie. “This is ‘Iraq War Veteran Barbie.’ She had a leg and both arms blown off by an IED. We made her prosthetic hands and feet out of foil. That tiny letter poking out of her shirt pocket is a note from the military psychiatrist documenting that she’s also suffering from PTSD.”

  Barbie number two, a pony-tailed blonde, wore only a T-shirt. She held her head between her hands and leaned forward, staring at her legs: red lines streamed down her thighs and shins. Her feet were red. The sash slung over her shoulder read “Barbie’s First Period.”

  The next Barbie was dressed in slacks, a button-down shirt under a sleeveless sweater, and hiking boots. She wore glasses, and her hair had been cut short and teased into a ’fro. A pair of sashes crossed her torso like bandoleros and she wore glasses. “This one has two names,” Becca said. “‘Transgender Barbie,’ and-or ‘Transgender Bobby.’ You can pick one or use both.”

  “We should move Ken next to ‘Barbie’s First Period,’” Danielle said and shifted the dolls. Ken was naked except for the condom rubber-banded over his head and his name-sash. Red dripped from his smooth crotch and ran down his legs. His feet were as red as the Barbie he stood beside. “Ken-struation—” was printed on his sash, “a Hostage Situation.”

  There was one last Barbie. An experiment, Becca and Danielle had convinced one another during its reconfiguration. Their pièce de résistance. A risk—wasn’t that what art was all about? The ‘Politics of Regret’ had to mean something. But Becca couldn’t lift her eyes to Katie’s, and she nearly snatched the doll from the table.

  “This is ‘Breast Cancer Barbie,’” Danielle said quickly. “She doesn’t have a sash.” The doll was bald and naked. The plastic on her chest puckered around twin cavities opened where Becca and Danielle had sliced off her breasts. “We’ve given her a double mastectomy. And she lost her hair during chemo. But she didn’t make it.” A black X covered each of the doll’s eyes. Danielle laid the Barbie
in a cotton-lined shoebox. As the two creators sat back on their heels, Becca felt the sash with the doll’s first name against her belly flesh—it was crumpled inside the band of her sweat pants where she’d hidden it: “Katie’s Dead Mother Barbie.”

  “Tah-dah—” Danielle swept her hand over the display like a magician.

  Becca held her breath as she watched Katie pull herself upright on the sofa, still staring at the final doll. Her lips twitched, but she didn’t speak. And though Becca felt Danielle’s eyes on her burning cheek, she didn’t face her.

  Katie rose, tore her gaze from the dead Barbie, and padded down the hall to her bedroom.

  The next morning, when Becca woke with a dull ache in her chest that had little to do with a hangover, Katie was gone. She’d taken the dolls and left a note in their place: “I’m done. Will return to clean out my room and anything you two leave around after graduation. Split my share of the deposit. Thanks for finishing my project.”

  They might have seen her at graduation, arriving late in her black gown and cap to merge into the procession. They might have seen her sideling out of her seat, rows and rows behind theirs, after the speeches and proclamations. Had they seen her glide across the green quad like a windblown slip of charred paper?

  

  Gap time. Becca remained in town, alone, after graduation, moving into a basement studio in a neighborhood she was afraid to walk in after dark. A starved cat haunted her stairwell, probably deserted by the previous tenant. “I’ll get a job and prep for the boards,” she promised herself and her parents. “There’s an academic atmosphere here—it’s a college town.” But when sirens wailed down her street after midnight, and another gray dawn exposed the bars in her single window, Becca sometimes felt like her desire to stay hadn’t been a choice.