The Blue Girl

by Laurie Foos

  Like she was dead? he whispered.

  Yes, I said, like she was dead.

  Dead man’s float, he said.

  Once I had her and she was floating along with me, I could see Mom crying at the edge of the shore through the water splashing in my eyes, and Magda, too, and Libby and Rebecca and Caroline, they were all crying when I flopped her down on the sand, on her back. Everyone was crying except me, me and the blue girl, because she wasn’t breathing. Maybe right then, she was really dead.

  I was about to tell him how I pressed my mouth down on hers and took in a huge breath, the biggest and longest breath I ever took, and for a minute I just held it in, all that air, kept it down inside my lungs and I was never going to let it go. I was about to tell him how huge I felt with that breath inside me, how everything expanded, not just my chest and lungs but everything: my blood, my nose, my hair, and all the things deep inside that I’ll never see. I was about to tell him the best part, how when I breathed into her mouth I felt as if I just kept getting bigger, as if I could somehow keep expanding forever. But then I heard Buck’s breath slowing, and I kept the rest of the story for another night—a night that might never come, because every time I’ve told him this story, he’s always fallen asleep, and always at the best part.

  Mom has been driving us to school lately. She always drops Buck off at grammar school first, and then winds through town the long way, past the woods, the woods that lead to where the blue girl lives. She never looks at me during that part of the drive, but I know what she’s after. I know she wants me to talk about her. I know that’s what she wants, but I know that if I stay quiet, then she won’t ask.

  This morning, when we get to school I hunker down in my seat watching the others file in, kids I’ve known all my life in this stupid town, kids whose mothers don’t drive them in a station wagon and talk about the kind of nonsense that comes out of my mother’s mouth. Although maybe I’m wrong, maybe they all talk the way she does, I don’t know. I like to think other mothers are different, not like mine, staying up late, baking strange pies that she keeps in the refrigerator and says she’s saving for a bake sale that never happens. You know, I’ve lived in this town my whole life, and I don’t remember a single bake sale, not even for band uniforms or books for the school library.

  Are you staying after school today? she asks as I gather up my backpack and unlatch the seatbelt that’s been choking me the whole ride.

  I shake my head, and she says, Well, I just want to tell you that we’re having chicken tonight with baby carrots and squash. You know that squash is your father’s favorite.

  I don’t know this. If anyone asked, I’d have to say that I couldn’t name any of my father’s favorite foods, or his favorite colors, or his favorite anything.

  I thought Nerf balls were his favorite, I say over my shoulder as I close the door and walk away. Maybe you should bake some Nerf balls. He might even eat them, I add.

  She opens her eyes wide when I say that, and looks at me as if she’s about to reach over and slap me. Part of me wishes she would. Part of me wishes she’d hit me in the face, in the cheek, right here, right below my eye and next to my nose, right where the blue girl punched me.

  But of course she goes home to de-bone her chicken and do whatever it is she does during the day. Tonight we’ll sit at dinner, heads bent over her squash, listening to my father swallow. Maybe she’ll bake more of the pies with the chocolate and the sugar and the things she thinks we don’t see. They seem to make her feel better, those pies, and I don’t want her to feel bad, I really don’t. It’s not my fault that she’s the way she is, or that my father is afraid of the television, or that I was the only one who wasn’t afraid to save a girl that everyone thought was dead. Or maybe it is.

  In biology we’re studying the epidermis and the three layers of skin that coat our bodies. Caroline and Rebecca and I sit at a table together so we can both copy Caroline’s notes. I don’t really need Caroline’s notes, or at least I didn’t used to, back when I still slept at night, and Rebecca tries to be dumb, because she thinks being both smart and pretty are too much. The guys in our grade all lean against their lockers and make a big show of watching Rebecca walk when we pass by, and Caroline and me, too, but only because we’re with Rebecca. Most of the guys are still tan from the summer, but it’s not an improvement, and the teacher, Mr. Davis, makes Greg stand up and uses his freckles as an example of whatever it is he’s trying to teach us.

  We’re all laughing at Greg because Greg’s not even supposed to be in the class since he’s a year ahead of us and because Greg is making faces at Mr. Davis when he isn’t looking; Mr. Davis, who lives out of town and never gets any sun. I’m drawing circles in my notebook as big as Greg’s freckles and lean over to watch Caroline writing “epidermal pigmentation” in big letters across the top of the page. I write it down too, because if I know one thing, and I don’t really know all that much, I know that whatever Caroline writes has to be important.

  Sometimes I want to ask her about my father’s brain, because Caroline knows a lot about the brain. Once, at a sleepover at my house, she told me all kinds of things she knows about the brain, about the stem and the synapses, the things that make Ethan so slow because his are all broken. I wonder if my father’s synapses are broken now, too. I reach over to write a note in Caroline’s notebook when I feel my breath go cold in my throat. Cold. Like hers.

  Mr. Davis calls on Caroline because he knows she’s the only one worth calling on. I think he must feel sorry for Caroline having a brother in the same class, a brother who failed his class last year. He hardly ever calls on me or Rebecca, and if anyone has a brother they should feel sorry for, it’s Rebecca, but she doesn’t feel sorry for Ethan because to her, he’s just her brother, not someone to be pitied. I understand that. I think about my dad, and I remember how I feel at night when I’m alone in bed and I smell my mother baking those pies in the kitchen and the smell of the marshmallow seeps under my door. I think of those nights when I see blue in the insides of my eyelids, when Buck doesn’t come to tell me his dreams or ask me to tell my story one more time. And I admire Rebecca for not feeling sorry for her brother, but I can’t help feeling just a little bit sorry for all of us.

  What about the girl? Caroline asks Mr. Davis. The one who lives out by the lake. The one who’s supposed to be blue?

  Rebecca drops her pen on the floor, and I can hardly breathe. Everyone turns to look at Caroline, but she doesn’t look away, she just keeps staring at Mr. Davis, who’s gone whiter than any of us have ever seen him, white like someone who’s about to pass out right then and there.

  Rebecca grabs my hand under the table. It’s O.K., she mouths to me, but I know how not O.K. it is. My hands are cold, but Rebecca’s fingers feel hot against them. Mr. Davis is saying something about the girl—that she’s just a rumor, an idea, that girls with blue skin don’t exist and certainly don’t live in this town and that if we know what’s best for all of us, we should study for the test. I look up at him for just a minute, and he looks away as I think of the water on my face and the feel of the girl’s lips when I was breathing into her as hard as I could. I try to remember how it felt to take in that breath and hold it, and then give her that breath, and how good it felt, how big. That feeling is gone now, though, and I can’t get it back no matter how hard I try.

  Magda

  TO WATCH A GIRL DROWN IS A TERRIBLE THING. TO watch her being revived is even worse. To watch a girl stay blue even after she breathes again, this is the worst thing I can imagine.

  In all my years at the lake as a child, I never saw anyone drown; I never saw anyone fall into a deep pocket or even cough up swallowed water. In that lake I learned to swim, when the water still looked like glass. I taught my own children to swim in that lake when they were babies. Don’t be afraid, I said, as they kicked their little legs. It’s only water.

  I go over that day when the girl started drowning, over and over it, and still I can’t
think why I didn’t help. Why I didn’t jump in, why I didn’t swim out to her, why I didn’t even try. I’ve never been afraid of water, never, not for even a minute. I knew I wouldn’t drown. If there’s one thing I’ve known all my life it’s that I won’t drown.

  I used to be one of the summer people. Used to be, but no more. I stayed. Only a few of us stay, and I am one of them. I used to love this town when I was one of the summer people, but now it’s just a summer getaway town that becomes dull when the summer people leave, like any other small town with a lake not too far from a big city. Except for the girl, who’s made everything different, even the lake where I swam as a child.

  My parents came from Russia and made money in textiles. They told me, Magda, marry well, marry safe, forget happiness; there is no happiness in marriage. Although their marriage had been arranged, they seemed happy enough endlessly playing durak, but when they took their children to the beach to watch them swim in the quiet lake, they hoped we would meet the children of privileged people. They said the kind of people who could summer in a cottage were the kind of people we should know. I remember sitting on my mother’s lap while she rubbed lemon in my hair to bring out streaks, my brothers throwing stones into the lake to make ripples and how I liked to step into the largest ripple just before it broke apart. If I could only stay inside that ripple, I used to think, anything would be possible.

  Eventually I found a way to stay. I met a townie boy with long hair and gangly limbs who made me laugh. We danced in those ripples out at that lake, and in those ripples I got myself pregnant. My parents wept. They said, This boy will bring you no happiness, Magdalena, and I said, To hell with happiness, you said so yourself. Mama said, Said who? And I said, You did, Mama, you.

  Year after year, the town more grew increasingly dull. The summer people seemed to grow younger. The children grew. My parents died. My brothers said our parents had never seemed as happy as they had in their old age, playing durak and telling jokes in Russian. Meanwhile the townie boy became a man. He still keeps his hair long but no longer makes me laugh.

  One day toward the end of summer, when the children were fighting, Greg and Caroline—Greg the Boy, who helped keep me here, and sensible Caroline, who reminds me of why I stay—I left the house and drove out to the lake to throw stones. They skimmed the water the way my brothers had taught me when we were summer people, embarrassed by our parents’ English. When the ripples floated toward me, I went into the lake in my jeans and sandals and stood until the first big ripple broke through my body. Right after, the blue girl came from nowhere, and I thought, Now I have to stay.

  In bed at night when I can see traces of the townie boy in my man-husband, I sing, Tell me your secrets, I’ll tell you no lies. He smiles and says, You used to sing to me all the time. Do you remember? I smooth back the graying longish hair with my fingers, an old habit, and say, No, I don’t remember. What did I sing?

  Of course I remember, but there is such a thing as telling too much, Mama used to say. Some things you should keep inside. And so I do.

  Greg the Boy swears in the house. When I named him Gregorio and nicknamed him Greg, Mama took him in her arms and said, This boy will always be a boy, Magda, this Gregorio, this Greg the Boy.

  He has always been impetuous, this boy of mine, reluctant to take direction, even at three-and-a-half. Try to teach him to ride a tricycle, this boy knew better. But this swearing is new, fucking this and fucking that, and all of this grabbing he does. I don’t remember my brothers having mouths like his or moving their hands the way this boy does, but I think Mama was right about him. Greg the Boy.

  He comes into the house and throws his sneakers on the floor and says, That fucking blue girl, man, she is so fucking blue, how the fuck does someone get so fucking blue?

  This is the son who kept me here, who grew inside me and became this swearing, freckled, lanky boy who can’t keep his hands to himself. Such a boy this boy is, with fuck on his mouth. He wants a rise out of me, but I won’t give it to him. Mama taught me too well how to play along.

  I say, Listen, boy, this is no way to talk in my fucking house, and there are other girls you should be worried about. Leave the blue girl alone.

  I can play his game.

  He laughs and says, Ma, you are such a fucking gas.

  He walks about the kitchen with his hands moving around in his pockets, his head slung low like it’s too heavy to carry, like he hopes his head will snap off. I know the feeling. I am making the pies, baking the cookies for the tops and the bottoms, mixing in the chocolate, because we’re meeting tonight, and I need to assemble all the parts of the pies. I had never heard of moon pies before this, before Irene said we should visit the girl and bake moon pies for her. She called this morning and said, We need to go tonight, Magda, it’s Tuesday, don’t forget, and I said, Don’t worry, we’ll go, there is no way I can forget what day it is.

  Greg with his sloping shoulders and freckled hands thinks he can get away with standing in my kitchen while I make the pies, but I say, Get out of my kitchen, boy, you are failing biology.

  He says, How the fuck do you know?

  I say, I have my fucking ways.

  I get out the bowl and mix the vanilla and the egg whites and the marshmallow cream into the filling. He’s failed biology, this boy who kept me here, this boy who cannot understand cells when it was the splitting of cells that made me stay in this sorry town.

  Zygote, I say, shooing him with my spoon.

  He says, What’s that? And I say, You should know, my boy, you of all people should know, before you have one of your own. He lumbers out with his hands at his sides, his arms like puppets with the hands broken.

  After the filling is ready, I start melting the chocolate. This is the best part, the stirring of the chocolate as the bubbles rise up and then pop. I move my spoon around and around, stabbing at bubbles with the wooden handle. When I stir the chocolate, I imagine each dark brown bubble absorbing my secrets, one at a time.

  Are they secrets or little white lies, I wonder, and what is really the difference? Who’s to know when you break them into small bites and watch them disappear down a girl’s throat? I watch the chocolate bubbling. Tiny bubbles, my life in a pot.

  Tiny bubbles, I start to sing.

  Caroline shuffles into the kitchen. Her hair is pinned back in barrettes, an unflattering zigzag part in her hair that all the girls are wearing now. But when she came down the stairs this morning, she leaned down to show me her scalp and the butterfly clasps that held her hair back from her forehead and asked me how I liked it, I thought, Why make a fuss?

  Very much, I said.

  Tiny bubbles, tiny bubbles. I don’t know the rest of the words.

  As she leans against the sink with her arms crossed over her chest, the butterflies look trapped. Mama, you look so happy when you make your little pies, she says.

  I turn to her and toss her one of the broken cookie tops from the cooling rack on the counter. She’s getting thick at the waist, the Russian blood coming out in her with her heavy hands and squat legs. If only Mama had lived to see her grow up.

  I say, Who said anything about making pies?

  The cookie disappears inside her mouth. I throw another and another piece to make her laugh. Anything to keep her from the pies.

  Greg’s failing biology again, she says.

  The chocolate thickens. I stir and stir. The cookie pieces are setting on the cooling rack, not quite ready for their chocolate covering.

  I know, I say.

  What? she asks.

  Nothing, I say. Never mind. But I have my ways, you kids should know, I have my ways.

  Under the cabinet I find an oven mitt with faded sunflowers, part of a pair my mother bought me when I first got married. To bake bread for that blond boy of yours, she explained, but I’ve never baked bread for him, not once. I can cook, it’s true, but I’ve never liked it. Moon pies are all I’ve been able to enjoy.

  They are ready for
the chocolate, the cookie tops and bottoms that make up the pie. I let out a little whoop inside myself so Caroline doesn’t hear. She can’t have a mother whooping about the kitchen, it will give her ideas. The girl’s mouth appears inside my mind, open, with blue skin giving way to a pink tongue, like a cat’s, except without ridges.

  Are those for us? Caroline asks. I’m hungry.

  I am ever the disappointing mother.

  No, I say, and when she looks down at her sneakers and bends to tie the laces, I say, I’m making something special for you. These are for the bake sale, too sweet anyway, no good, they’ll rot those beautiful teeth.

  This much is true. If Caroline has one beautiful thing about her, it’s her teeth. They shine. As a child, her baby teeth always glowed. At the lake the summer people would stop me as I paddled her in the water and ask, How do you get your baby’s teeth so white?

  I’d say, Baking soda.

  They’d look at their own babies’ teeth with the milky film across them and squint their eyes at me.

  Something from the old country that I learned from my mother, I’d say.

  I never touched her teeth. What she brushes with now, I have no idea, but it’s not with baking soda, that much I’m sure of. What kind of mother would shove baking soda into her baby’s mouth?

  Caroline smiles when I mention her teeth and slides one of her barrettes off. Now, with just the one strand hanging loose, she looks so much softer, so much less severe, so much less like my mother.

  Mr. Davis made Greg get in front of the class today. I was so embarrassed, she says. And Audrey, I thought Audrey was going to cry when I asked why the girl out there is blue.

  The mitts feel tight around my hands. I set the tray on top of the oven to cool and think of Audrey sprinting toward the water, bone thin, pulling the girl out.