The Rust Maidens

by Gwendolyn Kiste

  I scoffed. “You mean like right now?”

  With a snarl, he took a step out the door.

  “Nobody wants you around, Phoebe. Not me. Not your Aunt Betty.” He paused, savoring his next remark before he’d spoken it. “Sometimes not even your own mother.”

  A low blow, and a well-placed one, but no way I’d let him know that.

  “It’s okay.” I smiled and wished him dead. “If I waited until I felt invited, I’d never go anywhere at all.”

  My hands quivered with rage, and I let the brown paper bag slip from my grasp. It landed with a thud on the splintered porch boards. Now I was the one who advanced. A single step toward him, and then another. His face went ashen, but he didn’t fall back.

  “How is she?” I demanded.

  “She’s fine.” His shoulders broadened, blocking the doorway. “There’s nothing wrong with my girl.”

  “He’s right.” A figure swathed in a moth-eaten afghan appeared behind him. Lisa, smaller than I remembered her. “I told you last night, Phoebe. I’m fine.”

  But nothing about her looked fine. Her face wan, she was withering away right in front of me. I wanted to move toward her, to rescue her from this place, to wrap her in a blanket that didn’t stink of nicotine and regret, but I hesitated for just a moment, and that moment was precisely what her father was waiting on.

  “Now get,” he said, and the door slammed in my face.

  I stood defeated on the slanted porch before picking up the bag of groceries and trudging back down the steps. Again, I told myself this wasn’t my fight. Lisa wasn’t even my friend. She never had been. But then, she’d never been anyone’s friend, and maybe that was the problem. Besides those anonymous calls, nobody ever cared enough to bother with her.

  But there was someone who did care. Kathleen would want to know if her sister was in trouble.

  At the end of Denton Street, I dropped a handful of coins in the payphone and stood baking in the sun beneath the white bell logo on the blue booth. The operator transferred me to Chicago, and the newspaper transferred my call to the proper extension.

  It only rang once before she answered.

  “This is Kathleen Carter, Chicago Tribune.” I could barely hear her over the hubbub of the office. The rustling of papers, the click-clacking of a typewriter, the silent calculation of her beats and sources and word counts brimming beneath the thrum of her voice. Just because she answered a call didn’t mean she stopped working. I imagined her holding the rotary phone in one hand, and the whole world in the other.

  “Hello,” I said, still stunned that she’d picked up.

  “Yes, who is this?”

  “This is Phoebe Shaw, and I’m—”

  “Phoebe Shaw.” She repeated my name like a curse. “You know my sister.”

  In an instant, the background noise of the office fell quiet, and everything about her shifted, her voice now strange and sharp and afraid.

  “Is she okay? Is Lisa okay?”

  “I don’t… I’m not sure.” I expected more lead-up than this, more time to formulate what to say. Now I was cornered by my own doing. “Something happened.”

  A long, anguished pause. “Something with my father, right?”

  “Maybe.” My heart twisted, as I wondered if I’d terribly miscalculated, if I should have left Kathleen out of it, at least until I knew more. “Honestly, I don’t know.”

  There was a single exhale on the other end of the line, before she said, composed as before, “Thank you for calling, Ms. Shaw. I’ll be there tonight.”

  The phone clicked, and the drone of the dial tone filled my ears until they ached.

  I hung up, not expecting Kathleen to make good on her promise. Plane rides were expensive, and always a hassle to book. It would probably be a week before she finally managed to get back here, if she came back at all. Denton Street was filled with nothing if not good intentions.

  ***

  When I got back to my house, the brown paper bag heavier than before, Jacqueline was already there, rocking back and forth on the porch swing.

  “Hey, you,” she said.

  “Hello.” I climbed the stairs, grateful to see a friendly face. “What are you doing in enemy territory?”

  “Mom’s working late tonight.” She hopped off the swing and started toward me. “She said I could come over for dinner.”

  This wasn’t so unusual. Anytime Aunt Betty had a swing shift at the store, she permitted her daughter to dine at our house, so long as my father was there to monitor us and keep my bad influence in check.

  I grinned. “But dinner’s not for, like, seven hours.”

  Jacqueline shrugged. “I guess I’m here early, then. Also,” she said, and all the light left her face, “I thought maybe we could talk.”

  About last night, no doubt. About Lisa.

  “How do you think she’s feeling?” Jacqueline asked, the two of us sitting together on my bedroom floor.

  “I wish I knew,” I said.

  We wouldn’t look at each other. We just stared at our laps, quietly inventing reasons why Lisa was unraveling.

  Outside the window, a kid shouted in the street, and a chorus of children giggled in refrain.

  “This could get bad,” Jacqueline said, and her eyes flicked up at me. “What happens when the housewives find out about her?”

  The thought of this chilled me. All of our mothers had been itching to send Lisa away for years. That was why they made all those anonymous calls. Always for her own good, they claimed. Maybe it would have been good for her to be away from her father, but that wasn’t the only reason people worried. They also fretted and gossiped about how strange she was, always babbling nonsense and wandering the neighborhood at all hours. Now they had the perfect excuse. With her body oozing gray, they might send her to a hospital, and we’d never see her again.

  “We should get out of here,” I said. “Just for a little while. Just to avoid problems.”

  Problems like watching them put Lisa in an ambulance, the same as Dawn. Problems like waiting around and fearing if we stepped out of line, if we were strange like Lisa, then we could be next.

  Jacqueline interlaced her fingers and leaned against the green Berber carpet. “That would be nice,” she said. “But how, Phoebe? We don’t have anywhere to go, and we don’t have any money.”

  I smiled suddenly to myself. “That’s not true.”

  Somewhere, hidden in this house, was a government bond that was supposed to go to my college fund.

  Or Jacqueline and I could use it for something else. To get out before it was too late.

  In my parents’ bedroom, we rummaged through dresser drawers and dusty cabinets and under-the-bed shoeboxes filled with 1975’s tax receipts. Though my mother was just downstairs in the kitchen, back already from the housewives’ pointless meeting, the radio was turned up loud with the afternoon’s latest news, dismal as always, so she couldn’t hear us, not even when an old cardboard box toppled from the top shelf of the closet and landed at my feet.

  “Be careful,” Jacqueline said, as a hundred nothing notes floated to earth like cherry blossoms.

  I stacked them back in the box, one by one, checking each, and cursing every time it wasn’t what we wanted.

  Next to me, Jacqueline searched through a stack of my life. Birth certificate, Social Security card, immunization records. All the proof you’d ever need of my existence.

  She shook her head. “I’m glad I don’t have to worry about things like this.”

  “Like what?” I asked, shoving a bundle of IRS papers back into the closet.

  “Colleges and bonds and a future.”

  My head snapped toward her. “Don’t say that. You have a future.”

  “Yes, one where I end up like my mom,” she said, and sat back, her hands suddenly idle. “That’s what always happens, isn’t it? We turn out the same as our parents.”

  I shuddered. “It isn’t always like that,” I said, and hoped I was right.
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  Jacqueline turned away from me and looked around the room. “Is there anywhere else your mother hides things?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said.

  I realized how little I knew about my own mother. Who she was, what she wanted, what she did when she wasn’t cooking and cleaning and playing the good homemaker. If I was going to turn out like her—which I obviously wasn’t—I didn’t even know exactly who I’d be.

  Then her voice carried up the stairs to me, as if I conjured her.

  “Phoebe,” she called. “I need your help with dinner.”

  “We’ll look for the bond later,” Jacqueline whispered, and I grabbed her hand as we headed down the stairs to the kitchen.

  ***

  A quarter after five, my father came home, years older than when he left, and we circled the dinner table. All of us together, my parents and me and Jacqueline, munching on the Sloppy Joes that were supposed to fix everything. But with silence clotting thick in the air, nothing here was fixed. Instead, it felt as if everything had only just started to break.

  “Phoebe,” my father said, and I perked up at his voice. “Will you have time this weekend to help me change the oil on the Impala? It’s past due.”

  “Of course.” I smiled, waiting for him to say something else, about how that car couldn’t make it out of the driveway. Then I would say it could reach the stars. Any star in the galaxy.

  But my father just stared down at his plate, mouthing empty words to himself and shaking his head, as if arguing with his stuffed cabbage.

  I wanted to keep talking. I wanted to do anything.

  The doorbell rang, and nobody moved to answer it.

  “I’ll get it,” I said at last, not really thinking it would be for me. But I was wrong.

  Kathleen was standing outside, not looking at all how I remembered her. The day she left Denton Street eight years ago, she was wearing a pressed blue suit, her posture finishing-school perfect, her hair slicked back in a tight bun. No doubt then that she was headed for anywhere but here.

  Now, in the yellow cast of the frosted porchlight, her face streaked with tears and her hair wild, she looked like one of us all over again.

  “Hello, Phoebe,” she said, sniffling. “Thank you for calling me today.”

  I inched onto the porch, and the humid June air twisted between us. I wanted to tell her how impressed I was that she got back to Cleveland so quickly, but she cut me off first.

  “There’s something I need to show you.”

  I inhaled a heavy breath and started to say something, but behind me, the screen door creaked open.

  Jacqueline glided onto the porch, her footsteps quiet, floating everywhere she went. “Phoebe? Is everything okay?”

  “You’re Jacqueline, right?” Kathleen stared at her and, not waiting for a response, added, “Good. Let’s go.”

  “Wait.” I reached for Kathleen’s arm, as she turned away. “What do you want to show us?”

  “Please come on,” Kathleen said, her eyes dark. “Lisa’s asking to see both of you.”

  She was already down the steps and to the sidewalk before I could argue.

  “Why us?” Jacqueline whispered.

  “I have no idea,” I said. But I knew we couldn’t ignore her.

  ***

  Breaching the Carters’ front door wasn’t a dare any of us in the neighborhood would accept eagerly. You might toy with a Ouija board or taunt Bloody Mary in a mirror, but nobody was foolish enough to enter that house, especially not at night. Especially not a few hours after you’d already confronted the patriarch of the property.

  Fortunately, their father wasn’t a problem at the moment. Sprawled and snoring on the couch in front of the TV, he’d rather leave his baby girl to rot in her room than interrupt his routine of self-pity and endless fifths of Mad Dog 20/20.

  “Come on,” Kathleen whispered. She guided us along the drab shag carpet, past ancient stains and her luggage dropped haphazardly on the floor. Pens and loose-leaf paper and a Canon camera, along with bottles of darkroom chemicals, peeked out through the open zipper. She’d come back planning to stay for as long as she needed, as long as it took to rescue her baby sister.

  Lisa’s bedroom was at the end of the hall, light seeping out the bottom of the closed door. You could smell it before you were inside. It reeked of stagnant water and earth and something unknown, something that seemed to have passed a threshold and returned. Something not alive.

  Inside, Lisa was sitting cross-legged on her mattress, waiting for us.

  “Hello again,” she said, her shoulders back, still draped in that same afghan. Though she appeared even smaller than earlier today, she wasn’t as tragic as I expected. The transformation had imbued her with an air of obscure royalty. For the first time, she possessed something so secret, so exalted, that none of us could understand it. A dubious queen of the unknown.

  Kathleen exhaled, long and slow, to steady herself. “Will you show them?”

  Lisa shrugged. “If they’d like to see.” She regarded both Jacqueline and me. “Would you like to see?”

  My lips parted, but I didn’t have a chance to answer.

  “Yes,” Jacqueline said, and the sharp edge in her voice chilled me.

  Lisa smiled and tossed her hair, withered and strange and not her own, out of her eyes. “Okay then.”

  She took her time. Later, I thought how she had all the moments in the world to waste, how we were the ones who needed to see, not her. She already knew what was there. Snapping her tongue, she gathered herself up and perched on the edge of the bed. Then, with steady fingers, she rolled up one sleeve. I was expecting more gray water to pour from her like a mysterious fountain.

  But it was so much worse than that. There was a deep gash, carved into the entire length of her arm. Not carved, though. This wasn’t done with a cruel hand. The skin had peeled on its own, withering away like she no longer needed flesh. Her body did this to itself, and it was worse than just a wound. Beneath the skin, in the place where her bones should have been, there was something long and corrugated and oxidized.

  Rusted metal. Lisa’s body was built of rusted metal.

  I stumbled backward, and Jacqueline nearly went with me.

  “A doctor.” I choked on the words. “We need to get her to a doctor.”

  “That’s the problem.” Kathleen’s jaw set, and she took a long time before she spoke again. “Doctor Ross was already here. I called him first thing. He said not to worry, that he was figuring something out. Like he already knew.”

  Jacqueline squinted in the dim of the exposed bulb. “Knew about Lisa?”

  Kathleen shook her head. “About the others.”

  I swallowed hard, and the room twisted around me for an instant before everything came into sharp, nauseating focus. The footprints leading away from the abandoned house last night. The footprints before graduation yesterday morning. And those were just the ones I knew about. For the first time in her life, Lisa wasn’t alone.

  “Who else?” I asked.

  Kathleen crossed her arms over her chest. “He wouldn’t say. He just told us to sit tight and wait.”

  As if Lisa could wait much longer.

  “What happened?” Jacqueline was kneeling in front of Lisa now. “How did it start?”

  “It was funny,” Lisa whispered in a sing-song. “You feel it inside your belly, twitching like a little worm. That’s the first sign. Do you have a worm inside you, Jacqueline?” Then she looked at me. “Or maybe you have one instead.”

  Eyes wide, I shook my head and backed away from the bed, toward the wall. Still kneeling, Jacqueline’s hand grasped blindly behind her, and I reached out and pulled her up off the floor. We stood together, staring at Lisa, not entirely certain what we saw.

  Then a voice cut through the silence, sharp and cruel.

  “Girls?” A guttural howl wailed down the hall. “Where are you?”

  At once, my whole body went cold. Not right now. Why did he h
ave to wake up right now? I couldn’t do this again. I’d been willing to confront Mr. Carter on the front porch in the daylight, but coming face to face with him at night and inside his own house seemed like the stuff of nightmares.

  Kathleen, however, knew exactly what to do. She must have been planning for this possibility. In an instant, she was across Lisa’s bedroom, prying open the window.

  “Go,” she whispered to us. “Now.”

  His footsteps were just outside the door, and we didn’t have to time to think about it. Hand in hand, Jacqueline and I climbed through and dropped to the ground. We didn’t stop, not until we were halfway down the block.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her when we were finally on the sidewalk in front of her house. Breathless, she nodded at me and tightened her hand around mine.

  But even then, we weren’t free. There wasn’t much time left. Dinner was done, Aunt Betty’s shift was over, and already I could see her dim figure coming down the sidewalk from the direction of the corner store. I’d have to leave Jacqueline soon. After everything we’d seen, I couldn’t stay with her.

  “If there are others,” Jacqueline said, “where are they? And what if there’ll be even more coming?”

  “We can’t worry about that,” I said, shaking my head. “We have to get out. Before it’s too late.”

  Aunt Betty’s silhouette was closer now, only six or seven houses away.

  “And go where?” A sob lodged in Jacqueline’s throat.

  The figure was right there, two houses down, almost close enough to touch. Almost close enough to swat me away.

  I looked once more at Jacqueline. “We’ll figure out something.” I clasped both my hands around hers. “I promise.”

  “Goodnight, Phoebe,” Aunt Betty said, and her hot breath prickled the back of my neck.

  “Goodnight,” I said, not to her, but to Jacqueline, who was already vanishing into the house. Aunt Betty slammed the door behind them and latched the deadbolt emphatically, just so I could hear it from the outside.

  Alone again on this terrible street, I blinked in the moonlight, my eyes burning. I counted to ten. This time, Jacqueline came to the window and waved goodbye. I smiled and waved back.