by J. A. Rock
You can, I have noticed, find the whole idea of princesses fairly stupid, and yet think of no better way to tell someone she is perfect than by giving her a crown.
But really what I wanted was to show her that I was kinder now. That my desire to be feared had given way to a desire to be more admirable, at least in her eyes. I’d spent a fair portion of my life taking, but I could now see the appeal of doing the opposite. Could imagine that it was its own sort of power, to do murder on somebody’s heart with a gift.
I completed my ridiculous crown, and I kept it stored in the closet inside the left shoe of a pair I’d outgrown but refused to give away. I was unsure whether to wait until Christmas to present it to Alle. Then one day, as I hurried from lessons, ready to change and prepare for work in the kitchen, I passed a group of younger girls. They were whispering and glancing at me, and one called Etta Bowen smirked as I approached. I’d have liked to stop and demand to know who she thought she was. But I kept going.
Then Etta said, loudly: “Yes, when she came here, she was a hophead. Snowed out of her mind.”
I was used to girls being too frightened of me to be cruel—even the younger girls, who knew me by reputation only. But now I felt lost. I didn’t want to lash back, but I couldn’t let this girl get away with speaking to me like that.
“Reckon she’ll end up like the cook here,” Etta went on. “No man wants a junkie for a wife. ’Specially not an ugly one.”
I managed to squeeze past Etta, bumping her too hard with my hip, and I ran upstairs to my room. I took out the gnarled crown I meant to give Alle and twisted it, breaking off the charms until eventually the yarn braid came apart. I sat there for a long time, and was late to the kitchens—though Tamna acted as though she hadn’t noticed my absence. She handed me glass jars of corn, the bright kernels floating in cloudy brine, and I whacked the lids on the counter’s edge until they popped off.
I remember Christmas that year. Officer Grenwat and Denson put up a small tree in the reading room, and a present for each girl appeared underneath it. Bitsy and Kenna and I drove Denson crazy but made her laugh with our raucous renditions of Christmas carols. Even Alle joined us once for an “O Come All Ye Faithful.”
Walter raced around the orphanage, and nobody seemed to mind. It was decided a group of us would go into town to hear Bessie Holmes sing in her divorced women’s choir, but the night of the concert was deemed too snowy, and so Bessie went to Rock Hill and sang alone. At the time, I didn’t mind missing the concert; I was having great fun throwing snowballs at Kenna out in the yard. But now I wish I had heard Bessie sing.
On Christmas Day, after a corn-drenched meal I had helped Tamna prepare, Denson gave me a little hand mirror. I wanted both to keep the mirror because it was from her and to smash it, because she clearly didn’t know me at all. I had no desire to look at myself; I was not some silly girl who would gaze obsessively at her own reflection. Then I saw the image on the back: a woman with purple skirts and dark hair whirling around her, holding a curved sword high above her head.
I don’t know that Denson gave gifts to any of the other girls. She put her hand on my shoulder as I gazed at my mirror. “I thought of you,” she said softly.
I wished then that I had a mother. That Denson was my mother. That all the love in the world was mine for the taking. I think our wishes often get as muddled as dreams. In our wishes, people are their better selves and walls lose their permanence, and no matter how heavily we populate our fantasies with friends, with family, with lovers—we are ultimately in them alone.
Later that night, Alle and Bitsy and Kenna and I headed downstairs to meet Miss Ridges for a Dark Tale, but I stopped to listen to a ruckus in the dining room. I peered in through the open door and saw Van Narr and Officer Grenwat polishing off a bottle of wine. Van Narr was slumped in a chair, and Grenwat perched on a table.
“A house!” Grenwat exclaimed. “How can she afford one?”
“She’s been saving for years.” Van Narr took a swig from the bottle. “Got herself a little cottage in the heart of Rock Hill. Don’t know how much longer she’ll stick around here.”
“Ah well. Never could tell w—” Van Narr belched. Silence, then they both laughed. “What went on in that head of hers.”
Say a name, I urged them. Up ahead, Kenna had turned to look back at me. She mouthed a question, and I waved her on.
“A cottage.” Grenwat shook her head. “She’s going soft in her old age.”
“She’s an odd one. Always h’ssss loved that scrappy beast, T. Ballard.”
Grenwat raised her glass. Van Narr raised hers, and they clinked. “To Riley Denson,” Grenwat said.
“Riley Denson,” Van Narr agreed.
They drank.
Alle and I were sitting on Rock Point’s side lawn, watching the prison. It was nearly spring, and I was stripping the petals from an early-blooming flower. “My sister and I used to pretend we were detectives, solving murder cases.” I showed her the flower. “The key to every case was always a flower. Pinned to the victim’s lapel as a calling card, or trod upon by the killer’s boot.”
It wasn’t true; Rachel and I had seldom played games like that. But now that I thought about it, I wished we had, or I wished Alle and I would.
Alle’s fingers brushed mine as she took the flower. “I didn’t know you had a sister.” She rolled the stem between her fingers.
I nodded. I hadn’t thought about Rachel or Auntie Bletch in a very long time, but I was surprised by how clearly and quickly they came back to me. “I ruined her wedding.”
Alle cocked her head. “You’re not going to tell me any more than that?”
The story of the wedding was one I’d never told anyone, not even Denson. And I was damned glad I hadn’t told Denson, at whom I was still—unfairly but bitterly—furious. A cottage in Rock Hill? And when did she plan to tell me she was leaving? “Do you really want to know?”
“Yes.” Alle looked at me and twisted her mouth to one side. “Please.”
And so I began.
My sister had an outdoor wedding. She had no money beyond what Auntie Bletch could spare, and Marc’s family wasn’t much for frivolity, so the decorations were simple: Gold lights, wound around the rail of the back porch of Marc’s family farm. A long wooden table covered in a clean white cloth. On it, a roast turkey, a huge bowl of salad, a plate of rolls, and three different casseroles. And a cake—not tiered and decorated, but a single layer vanilla cake with Happy Journey, Marc and Rachel in pink letters.
I wasn’t jealous, exactly—I had no desire to be married, especially to someone as bland as Marc. But I was, perhaps, thrown by the attention Rachel was receiving. I didn’t see what the big accomplishment was in hitching yourself to someone and borrowing his future for your own. I was fourteen; I had no strong opinions on love, but Rachel and Marc’s utilitarian partnership seemed sad to me—barren and ill-fated.
There were only a handful of people in the wedding party. Three pairs of bridesmaids and groomsmen would walk down a makeshift aisle in the backyard and stand by the well that would serve as an altar. The guests sat in mismatched chairs chattering and eating. Auntie Bletch, by this time quite frail and reliant on a daily cocktail of pills to function, sat by herself in a wooden chair that tilted precariously on a grassy incline. My sister’s friend Marie tried to prop up a sagging petal on one of the lilies in her bouquet.
I was standing at the food table, wrapping appetizers in a napkin for later and eyeing the turkey, when Marc came up to me. “Pretty dress.”
I turned, startled. He was staring at the neckline of my pink gown. My breasts had recently gotten quite large, and I was uncomfortable with the way they swelled against the bodice. His stare annoyed me, but I wasn’t afraid.
“I don’t normally wear dresses.”
“You should. You look nice. These look nice.” He tapped the top of my right breast with one finger, as though pointing out an important clause in a document. Then he cuppe
d his whole hand around it.
I stared for a moment at his hand. Then I shouted. Everyone turned. Marc jumped and yanked his arm away. I scanned my audience. “He touched me! My . . . He touched me where he oughtn’t.”
A few murmurs, and one woman laughed. I heard Auntie Bletch say, “Thera!” Rachel looked horrified. She turned from me and strode toward the house. After a moment, everyone else went back to what they’d been doing.
Marc grinned at me and gave my backside a swat. “Naughty girl. Telling on me.”
I hit him. I felt the bones of his nose cave under the heel of my hand. Damp flecks on my face. He shouted and put his hands up to his nose. Blood poured between his fingers, running in mangled ribbons over his lips and down his chin. Everyone turned. Most of the focus was on him—people were yelping and murmuring and rushing to offer handkerchiefs. But some had started to look at me.
“Heavens, Thera!” Auntie Bletch stood, nearly falling over. “What have you done?”
Marc pinched his nose, but it wouldn’t stop bleeding, and when he took his hands away, his nose was off center. Rachel ran over to us, dirt flying from under her white slippers, graying the hem of her dress. “Oh, oh no,” she said, taking Marc’s face in her hands. It surprised me, that she was willing to get his blood on her dress. But she held him as though nobody in the world existed but her injured boor of a future husband.
At the reception she ripped her veil off and went to cry behind some trees. And when I found her, white gown puddled around her hips, face streaked with cried-away makeup, she said savagely, “You couldn’t have just kept your mouth shut?”
I don’t know why it works this way—that we blame the one who shatters the illusion, rather than the illusion itself, or ourselves for buying into it. What ruined that day for Rachel wasn’t that her lying sister told tales and grabbed the spotlight. It was that she believed those tales. She knew her husband was an ugly man inside and out, and she still hoped for a decent future with him.
I returned to the yard, furious and hurt. One of the groomsmen was getting ready to carve the turkey. I walked up to the table and shoved bird and platter onto the ground.
It should not have brought me so much joy, but once you’ve stood in front of a crowd with power rolling over you—through you—with secrets and meanness junked up in your passages like a virus, your mind concussed and your heart out of the picture, it might be easier to understand.
I kicked the turkey like a wet, fleshy football. The crisped skin split and the meat spilled out. I kicked it again. People got out of the way and rust-colored bones sprang from the flesh. Rachel arrived and shrieked when she saw what I was doing. It was rude and cruel, but it was one of my most satisfying moments, to kick the shit out of my sister’s turkey and watch her cry. I had no desire to hurt her; I only wanted to answer her ignorance, to repay her compassionless moment with one of my own.
Auntie slapped me later. She made me stand still for it too; it wasn’t spontaneous and skillful like slapping in stories. She had to take aim. Her arm was trembling, and she was clumsy and clubbed half my ear. I let her do it because I felt a rough batch of guilt rising inside me. I wouldn’t apologize to Rachel, though.
I still haven’t. I didn’t tell Alle that last part. About the joy I took in hurting my sister, about my refusal to apologize. I lost the words I needed to make her understand the way fear becomes pain, becomes the need to cause pain. But knowing what I know now, I doubt she needed me to explain this.
She stared at me after I finished my story, her dark eyes tracking mine. “I’m sorry for you.” She shook her head with a worldly sorrow I envied. “That shouldn’t have happened.”
I wasn’t sure if she meant Marc touching me or me behaving as I had.
“It took a long time.” Her childlike voice was strange against a backdrop of guarded ferocity. “But now I’m not afraid of anything.”
I didn’t believe her, and I wanted to know what she had been afraid of before. I looked at her and wished we were under a blanket together. I wanted to be her worthy hero and worthy opponent and I wanted to her to think that I had grown and hardened since my turkey-kicking days. I was suddenly very ashamed that I’d told her about Marc’s hand on my breast.
“Neither am I,” I told Alle.
I lay back in the grass, unable to look at her anymore. Shame is perhaps both a form of self-pity and a form of loneliness. In the heat of embarrassment, it’s possible to believe you are the only one who has ever felt such guilt, such a profound understanding of what an impossibly evil thing the self is. It feels good to be martyred on your own terms. It is a bit like being sick and wanting someone to bring you soup. If you’re guilty enough, someone may have mercy on your kicked-cur soul. Someone might ease you from the worst of your darkness.
Alle settled next to me, her hair brushing my temple. There was a jitteriness, almost a buzzing in my chest. I had always wanted her to like me. But part of me wished to be adored like a painting—admired for my inscrutability, loved only as a very carefully decided-upon version of myself. And part of me wanted to be loved for what I truly was—afraid and unsure and in awe of a girl who made me feel less alone.
Alle took my hand. A gesture familiar to both of us, but it made my throat tight. I ran my thumb over her knuckle and stared at the sky. I thought about that time Auntie Bletch and I had held hands on Main Street. The whirling of the lights and people and the jingle of the bells on the shop doors and the whistle of the train. The sense that if I let go, I might get lost in all of it.
“Rachel’s pregnant now. Auntie Bletch wrote me.” Auntie Bletch hadn’t written me, and probably never would. The scabby bat was probably dead. Though Rachel might well have been pregnant. I rarely knew exactly why I lied, except that it felt good sometimes to see how easy the truth was to pull aside, how easy it was to hang something else in its place.
“Oh.”
I turned toward her suddenly. “Do you ever think about having children? Someday?”
Her mouth curved up slightly on one side. “Depends on what happens.”
She was always saying things like that. I don’t know. Depends. I don’t know. I watched a barely there puff of cloud in the sky. “I always feel bad for mothers. I’d hate to stand around with some squally thing hanging off my tit.”
“Well they’re not hanging off your tit forever.”
“Yeah, I know that.” The buzz moved into my throat, forced it tighter. I turned away, but there was no escaping—I was crying in front of her, and I could feel her watching. “I don’t hate children. I don’t know much—” I just barely stopped a sob “—about them, and I don’t know’f I’ve got the patience for them. But I don’t h-hate them.”
She squeezed my hand. “That’s like a lotta people, then.”
She didn’t understand. “I can’t be a mother. Look at me. I’m gonna leave here with no money, and I can’t . . .”
“Thera. You don’t have to worry yet. Denson, Rollins—they’ll help you find a job.”
I opened my mouth to denounce Denson as a traitor, to tell how she planned to abandon us to go live in a cottage in Rock Hill. Stopped myself.
Maybe I do want a child. A daughter. Maybe I want to take care of her when she’s sick, and tell her stories—the Dark Tales—and I want her to love the wickedness of them. And if they give her bad dreams, she can climb in bed with me.
If I had a daughter, I wouldn’t ever leave her. And I wouldn’t tell her to keep her mouth shut if something hurt her.
I took a deep breath. Saw the darker swirls in the gray space above me—sometimes the clouds seemed to grow on the sky like ivy. “What if I’d be a decent mother? But I won’t ever know.”
“I think you would be.” She kissed my cheek.
There are perilous cracks in what we know. And a deceptive smoothness to all that we don’t. I didn’t call it love then, what I felt for Alle. But it swept beyond friendship, beyond sisterhood, and it felt like the kind of adventure I crav
ed.
“I feel sick when Rocky Bottom talks to you,” I muttered. “I really do.”
Her lips looked full and soft, and I wanted to lean over and kiss them. I didn’t want to be shy or delicate. I wanted to know what it was like to ravage a body with a misguided admiration for it. To know that skin got in the way of the truth of the person, and yet that truth, that soul, was untouchable, and so you had to settle for skin. “He’s only lonely.”
“Well, I wish he’d go bother someone else with being lonely.”
“You want to fight with me, Thera?” Her voice was quiet, but there was a firmness to it that stilled me. Her long neck was elegantly arched, and the curve of one breast was visible under the thin fabric of her dress. She crossed one arm over her body and brushed my temple with her fingers. I could see every pore, the slight lines that formed when she gave me a closed-lipped smile. The folds of skin where her neck twisted, the sway of each black curl that hovered around her face. “Don’t you think you do enough fighting?”
“Not nearly,” I whispered. If I had any sense, I’d fight this. This joy, this hope that made a warren of my mind, that flashed through me quicker than I could follow. If I had any sense, I wouldn’t need her.
I went to chapel on Sunday with Alle. The staff had organized trips to town on Sundays for girls who wanted to go to church. Alle went most weeks, but I’d never been. I wore my black trousers and Kenna’s yellow blouse, and I felt like a banana going bad at the bottom, but I liked that my shirt almost matched her shawl. She seemed distant that day—chilly and distracted.
I hadn’t realized the coming Tuesday marked the anniversary of the end of the Minotaur’s reign. The preacher was a black woman with white hair and liver spots all up and down her like the world had rained blood on her. She said Darwull, the architect who’d built the labyrinth, had spent nearly three years designing it. He had put it on the promontory, both to keep it away from the town and in the hope that the beast wouldn’t see it and destroy it before it was done.