The Rust Maidens

by Gwendolyn Kiste

  But I couldn’t go home. Not yet. I looked back toward the Carter house. There was a figure standing there on the crooked porch. Kathleen. I walked toward her, and she came down the sidewalk to meet me.

  Beneath a garish streetlight, we stood together in silence. After a moment, I glanced down at her nervous hands, shaking in the chill of the night. A constellation of tiny scars dotted her arms, each mark the shape of a lit Marlboro Light.

  “It’s why I left,” she said when she noticed me staring. “It’s why I told her to leave too. To drop out of school and come to Chicago. Come to me.” Her face twisted in recollection. “But someone needs to be here for him, she’d said. Like he was ever there for us.”

  I peered across the street toward Dawn’s house. All the lights were off.

  Kathleen wiped a clump of tear-soaked hair from her cheek. “I should do something.” Her eyes, those dark eyes just like Lisa’s, just like their father’s, gazed into me. “Right?”

  “Whatever you want,” I said, fidgeting. “She’s your sister.”

  I didn’t think of what this plan would be. Not for the rest of the night, when I couldn’t sleep, and not the next day when an ambulance, now quiet and brooding, brought Dawn home, the reverse of that night after graduation. From the top of the treehouse, I tried to catch a glimpse of the mewling infant that had stolen her freedom, but all I managed to see was a flash of Dawn’s stringy blonde hair before someone ushered her into the house and yanked the blinds closed.

  ***

  It wasn’t until two days later, when the afternoon edition of the Cleveland Press thumped against the front door, that I knew what Kathleen was scheming.

  There it was in a back section, printed in bold, dark letters.

  beware the rust maidens: mysterious illness strikes denton Street neighborhood

  I should have guessed. She was a writer, so naturally, her solution was to write about it. How she could betray her own sister with such a kitschy headline was inconceivable to me, but that wasn’t the worst part. It was where they filed the article: in the News of the Weird section. Our neighborhood had become a punchline, a throwaway joke, and now everyone knew. Doctors, and strangers, and those who wouldn’t care about what happened to them. Invaders, reading these words with their late-day coffee and secretly planning their own trip to Denton Street to get a look for themselves.

  And I’d been the one to encourage Kathleen to make this happen. I was the one who called her, the one who helped to turn their suffering into this. I’d tried my best to fix things, and like always, I’d only made it so much worse. I was exactly what Mr. Carter accused me of being: the girl who was nothing but a troublemaker.

  Me. My fault.

  FOUR

  They arrived at dusk. Some came by car, others on foot, and one group—invasive as kudzu vines—even chartered a bus. Polaroid cameras tucked in fanny packs, they stalked along the road, those who wanted a glimpse of our neighborhood’s unmentionables, pretending to be long-lost relatives searching for an address, all the while snapping pictures and whispering with one another.

  We gathered on the porch after dinner and watched them violate the neighborhood.

  “They’re only nuisances,” my father said, puffing absently on a billiard pipe, as though girls on Denton Street had always changed into monsters and out-of-town interlopers had always sought them out.

  Jacqueline sat with my mother, and the two of them played a game of checkers. I tucked myself in the corner behind the swing and tried not to sob.

  None of us talked about the strike. My father’s picket duty was finished for the evening, and that was that. When he came home, you could practically hear him slap the dust off his hands and call it a day.

  This was the great lie we invented, that we could actually escape ourselves. I’d learned at a young age how outsiders saw us during strikes. Labor union members with cardboard signs, arms looped solidly together, the faces of our fathers and brothers and uncles creased and contorted in cries of righteousness. These were the front-line moments that won photographers national awards and made the covers of Time and Newsweek.

  But these weren’t our usual moments during strikes. Our usual moments were all monotony, all waiting. Families unmoored and silent, the rhythm of our days stolen from us. The long hours between, as the weight of our predicament settled heavy on our shoulders and our futures became enormous, accusing question marks. Nobody wanted to photograph us like this, the four of us on the porch, smoking a pipe or playing checkers or screaming as loud as we could without making a sound.

  In this way, perhaps the Rust Maidens were an almost welcome relief in early June, a distraction from our own very real problems.

  Within an hour of the newspaper arriving on our porches, all the housewives had invited each other over for tea so they could take turns reading the article aloud. The story confirmed that only girls were affected. Nothing else was quite so clear. What was causing it, or the identity of the other Rust Maidens, was unknown. Kathleen had managed to bribe a nurse at the local hospital and learned that a total of three patients had been cataloged away under special case files. None of the girls were named in the article, but I knew that meant Lisa plus two Jane Does. Or, at least, Jane Does to me. A girl was never a Jane Doe, not really. She always knew her own name, even if the world didn’t.

  “And anyhow,” my mother said, apparently continuing a conversation she was having with herself, the first half of which the rest of us weren’t privy to, “it’s just a weird illness. That’s all those girls have. Stitch them up and let’s move on.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yes, because whenever I come down with a cold, my bones always rust away.”

  “An exaggeration, I’m sure.” My mother hopped a black token over three of Jacqueline’s red ones. “Those girls are just playing it up for the attention.”

  I buried my head in my hands and said nothing else.

  At eleven o’clock, as my parents watched the nightly news, I walked Jacqueline home. We stood outside her house without speaking.

  “It isn’t your fault, you know,” she said finally.

  I shook my head. “I was the one who called Kathleen.”

  “It would have happened anyhow,” Jacqueline said. “People eventually would have found out.”

  “Maybe.” I hesitated. “How about Monday morning?”

  Jacqueline squinted at me. “For what?”

  “For leaving,” I said. “I haven’t found the college bond yet, but I’ve got a few hundred dollars saved up. That’ll last us a little while.”

  Her eyes went dark. “Phoebe, I don’t know.”

  “If you don’t want to leave—”

  “I want to,” she said. “I’m just not sure. What if it doesn’t work?”

  “What if staying is worse?”

  She nodded. “We’ll see what happens,” she said, before squeezing my hand and disappearing inside her house. I counted and waited until the lights went on upstairs in her bedroom. She waved at me behind the curtains, and I waved back. There was a comfort in that light, in knowing she was there. I would sometimes glance out my own window in the middle of the night and see that light glinting down the street, and I would feel the tug of home, of happiness aching inside me. Nothing in the world could hurt me as long as we were both here.

  I turned and started back down Denton Street when a figure swam into the edge of my vision.

  “Hey,” someone in the shadows said.

  Part of me was certain it was a Rust Maiden, or all of the Rust Maidens, here to wave their long bandaged arms at me like the accusing fingers of Death. To claim me as their own. I held my breath as the figure came into focus.

  Clint loitered on the porch of the abandoned house next door, steadying himself against the railing with one hand and holding a half-empty bottle of Jim Beam in the other. He didn’t know about the hidden key. We never told him. Anytime he wanted to get away from his parents, he came here, but he couldn’t get inside. Just
like he deserved.

  With a smirk, he plodded unevenly down the steps and came nearer to me. Up close, he looked the same as he always did, a little ragged but mostly none the worse for wear. I wondered for an instant if anyone had bothered to tell him about the Rust Maidens, or if he had bothered to care when they did.

  “How’s Dawn?” My voice wavered, not entirely certain I wanted the answer.

  Clint shrugged. “She’s doing her best to recover, I guess.”

  He guessed. Fury surged inside me. What did I ever see in him? I should have always known I could do better than this careless boy next door. Poor Dawn. If only she’d known that too.

  “And the baby?” I asked.

  “My responsibility,” he said and chugged from the bottle. “Dawn’s on bed rest, doctor’s orders, so her parents expect me to take care of Eleanor.” He let out a rueful laugh like a cat puking. “As if I know how to breastfeed and change diapers.”

  I shifted on the sidewalk, and Clint studied my face before he leaned in closer. Maybe it was on purpose, or just an artless swaying of the body, the embarrassing result of too much whiskey. I shivered and inched away from him. I should run, but I wanted to know more about Dawn and what had happened at the hospital. About why they’d taken her away.

  But as I stood there, the words didn’t come. How could I form the question that needed to be asked? Is the mother of your child a monster?

  “That’s a pretty name,” I said finally.

  Clint threw back another shot of whiskey before smearing his hand over his wet mouth. “What is?”

  “Eleanor.” I stared at him. “You just said your daughter’s name is Eleanor, didn’t you?”

  “Oh, that,” he said and rolled his eyes. “Not my first pick. I wanted to go with Linda. You know, after Linda Ronstadt.” He hesitated, waiting for me to agree with him, but when I said nothing, he added, half under his breath, “Dawn thought Eleanor sounded more timeless or something.”

  I backed away. Nearer to the street. Nearer to home.

  But Clint wouldn’t let me go that easy. He swayed again, this time closing the distance between us.

  “Maybe you can come over to my house later,” he said. “We could hang out.”

  His hand was on my arm before I could stop him. Not a gruff touch, but light and inviting. Like a memory. Like the first time. Now I remembered what I saw in him: the possibilities, the thought of a night not ending alone, here in a neighborhood that knew loneliness all too well. That almost made it worse, the reminder of what a fool I’d been to want Clint, to ever consider him as a way out.

  “Your girlfriend’s in trouble.” I yanked my arm away from him. “Don’t try to get me in trouble too.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said, as I turned back to the street. “I doubt you’ll ever get yourself into the kind of trouble she’s in right now.”

  In the dark, I walked home alone, thinking of what Clint’s words meant for Dawn. For what she’d become, or was becoming.

  What any of us girls could become.

  ***

  The rest of the week, I stayed awake every night, packing what I could and silently making plans. Calculating tolls and gas prices and mileage. The Impala could take Jacqueline and me anywhere. To the moon. To the stars. To safety. By Sunday, I was almost ready. That was when the worst of them arrived.

  Government men.

  We weren’t sure if the three of them were CDC or FBI or some other arcane three-letter acronym that stood for “Not Your Business,” but here they were, in the hideous flesh, the men of the dark suits and darker glasses. You couldn’t see their eyes behind those tinted lenses, and sitting on the lawn out in front of the church, my pale dress smeared with grass, I almost wondered if they had eyes at all. Or if they had souls, either.

  We knew what they wanted: to study the girls. Maybe to take samples from them, or just steal them away to a lab somewhere. All of this done on behalf of the people, even though they’d somehow forgotten that girls were people too.

  Earlier that morning, the men had come to the corner store immediately upon arriving in Cleveland, so Aunt Betty made her round-robin calls to everyone on Denton Street, including my mother, warning us of the impending invasion. She also learned the men’s names, which she shared liberally, as if calling them by their proper monikers would bind their power, the DC Rumpelstiltskins. Not that it helped us any. We couldn’t keep the older two straight.

  “I think the taller one’s Jeffers,” I said as we watched him stalk across the lawn.

  Jacqueline shook her head. “No, that’s definitely Godfrey. The shorter one with the blond hair is Jeffers.”

  She and I went back and forth like that for a while, less because we cared which was which, and more because it gave us something to do. Anything that made us forget why they were here.

  None of us, however, had trouble remembering the third.

  “Adrian,” Aunt Betty had told us. No last name, not that he even needed one, not with that ridiculous wannabe Cary Grant face of his to buoy him through the formalities of life. You could almost hear the collective sigh of the neighborhood girls as he smiled and introduced himself to everyone. His dark glasses off now, eyes bright, knowing his power but pretending not to.

  “The young dumb one,” I said, scoffing.

  Jacqueline laughed. “You would say that.”

  I scowled as the church bell rang and he scurried across the lawn. “What does that mean?”

  “It means he’s your type, Phoebe.” She grinned. “He looks like a good time and trouble.”

  I turned away, a flush burning my cheeks. “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “We won’t be here much longer.”

  Jacqueline nodded, all the brightness gone from her eyes. “Do you have it all worked out, then?”

  “Close enough,” I said. “Even if we don’t know every detail, that’s okay. We can make it up as we go along.”

  After the service, I walked Jacqueline home, and somehow, the government men beat us there. Out of all the places for them to stay, they opted to rent the abandoned house next to hers. That might have been the worst of it. They’d stolen our party spot. Now if Jacqueline and I wanted to sneak a drink, we’d have to do it in my treehouse or on a late-night drive in my Impala.

  Not that it made any difference. We’d soon be gone from here. Then we could drink anywhere we wanted.

  Fresh off a shift at the corner store, Aunt Betty appeared at the front door and hauled Jacqueline inside, threatening me with a broom if I didn’t “shoo.” I rolled my eyes and started toward home.

  As I passed the house next to Jacqueline’s, Adrian emerged from the side door. When he saw me, he flashed a smile. “Phoebe Shaw, yes?”

  I hesitated, caught off-guard by the greeting. Then the truth settled over me, and I sneered.

  “You memorized all our names?” I envisioned him on the plane ride from Washington, poring over DMV photographs of everyone on Denton Street, learning our mothers’ maiden names and our heights and weights and anticipated majors in college. “That’s creepy.”

  He shrugged. “That’s my job.”

  “Some occupational requirements,” I said. “Must wear a suit. Must sort through mountains of useless papers. Must be a creep.”

  I expected him to snarl or insult me back, but he only smiled again. “It’s a living.”

  That grin of his lingered a moment longer, and I liked it more than I should. I hurried off without another word. Jacqueline was wrong. He was not a good time. Or if he was, I’d never know it.

  Trudging home alone, I made myself a list of promises.

  I would avoid him.

  I would avoid all of them—the government men and the tourists and the doctors with their stethoscopes and thermometers and scalpels they didn’t even know how to use, at least not on patients like the Rust Maidens.

  I would get out of here. We only had to survive another night, Jacqueline and me. Maybe I’d come back for school in the fall, if the
Rust Maidens were fixed by then, but if not, then we’d figure something else out. Maybe we’d build a bug house in Alaska and study what kind of creatures could live in the permafrost. That would be a welcome change from this place. And not much colder than a winter spent on Lake Erie.

  This would all be okay.

  The next morning, I gassed up the Impala and put my pittance of luggage in the trunk. My mother was down the block at one of the communal housewife meetings, and Aunt Betty was there too, already dressed in her smock for her next shift at work.

  I waited for twenty minutes after my mother left. By then, the tea and gossip would be flowing, and she wouldn’t double back. Now was my chance. This was when Jacqueline and I could finally escape. I crept down the block to Jacqueline’s house and knocked on the front door, almost as familiar as my own. I held my breath until she opened it.

  “Are you ready?” I asked, smiling, but instantly, I knew she wasn’t.

  There on the other side, Jacqueline stood with her shoulders slumped, still in her pajamas.

  “Today’s the day,” I said, the hopefulness waning in my voice.

  “I know,” she whispered.

  I gaped at her. “Do you need help getting ready?”

  She shook her head.

  My throat tightened, and I inched toward her. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” she said, but when I asked her to come out, she said she couldn’t. And she wouldn’t let me in, either.

  “I’m sorry,” was all she’d say.

  Then she slammed the door and vanished from my life. Just like that.

  FIVE

  The figure is still standing on the front porch. This is no mirage, no matter how many times I blink and wish it away. I close my eyes and try my best to remember where I am.

  Back home in Cleveland, in my parents’ almost-empty house.

  I open my eyes and look again. I tell myself I was wrong. It turns out I don’t know who this visitor on the porch is. She’s not one of the Rust Maidens, that’s for sure. She can’t be. It’s been too long, and they wouldn’t look the same. But my fingers shake anyhow, and I loop the chain across the door, pretending that little gold link will be enough to keep out the past.