I had to protect the world from me, from the possibility that the Pervent would come out and I couldn’t stop her, that something would happen to trigger her off, like the trouble with Mr. Howard, and I’d be powerless to stop her.
That was it. That was the truth that grabbed me in the middle of the bridge and if it had been higher, I would have jumped off. But there was no point; it was too low, not even as tall as the high-dive at the Golf Club pool, and the worst thing that could happen would be I’d get a mouthful of scummy river water and catch some yucky virus, which was not the point. I didn’t want to be sick, I wanted to be gone.
I ran to the water filtration plant and hid in a clump of bushes, holding my knees to my chest and rocking myself, just like Ruthie. I suddenly wondered if something bad had happened to Ruthie, if that was why she was so strange, why she stuffed birds and wouldn’t go out of the house and rocked her bed against the wall like a bulldozer. What if what happened to her was something I’d done, what if I was already a Pervert, but didn’t know it, what if I’d blocked it all out but had already gone all over North Bay, hurting little girls, doing horrible things to them, to my own sister! She was a pain in the butt, but I would never hurt her, I loved her, even if she was a weirdo.
Mother always said it was all my fault Ruthie was an oddball, and maybe she was right. “It’s all your fault, it’s all your fault,” Margaret began chanting and I couldn’t stand to think about it; it was too much and I started to cry, helplessly, not knowing what to do. “I don’t want to be a Pervert,” I sobbed, “I don’t want to hurt anyone, I don’t want this to be my Fate.”
“Help me, help me, help me,” I heard myself chanting as I rocked. Then suddenly I stopped. Help me? Who was that? Where did that come from? “Help me!” a tiny voice cried and I shook it off. That wasn’t me. That was no part of me, I told myself. I don’t need anybody’s help for anything. I would never—N-E-V-E-R—ask for help, not ever. “Help me,” the voice said again and Peggy’s eyes appeared, two bright blue circles growing larger and larger. “What do you want?” I shouted at the eyes. “Get away from me!” but they hovered there in the bushes and I wondered if this was it, if I’d crossed over that invisible line between the real world and the Twilight Zone and at any second Rod Serling would appear and haul me off to the loony bin. I covered my eyes with my hands and prayed that Peggy would go away, that she’d just go back to whoever she belonged to and leave me alone. But when I peeked out through my fingers I saw not only her eyes but all of her. I was so surprised I dropped my hands and stared—Peggy wasn’t a little girl, she was just a baby. Just a tiny, naked baby girl waving her chubby little arms madly in the air as if she were trying to push something away. Suddenly, I seemed to be watching a movie, and I saw her on a brown tweedy couch, just like the one in our sunroom that I hated so much. She was crying and kicking and her eyes just kept getting bigger and bigger as she watched something coming towards her. She kept making noises, as if she wanted something, and suddenly I saw what she saw: a bright blue knitting needle, coming at her, pointed right between her legs, and I screamed and jumped out of that bush like a rocket and ran for home. “I don’t know any Peggys!” I shouted as I tore down the street. “That kid is not me! She’s somebody else’s kid, she is not part of me!”
“You’re making it up, you’re making it up, you’re making it up,” Cotton Mather shouted. “None of this happened.” I fled home, thinking how upset my parents were going to be when I didn’t show up at the booth, but I couldn’t help it. Daddy’s feelings would be hurt and Mother would be sad, and I was sorry about that, but I had to get away. It was best for everyone. There was something very, very wrong with me, something horrid. Nice girls didn’t have visions of babies being jabbed with blue knitting needles; good girls didn’t have a bunch of weirdo personalities locked up in a secret chest of drawers; innocent girls didn’t pee their pants every time they walked home from school. Grandmother was right, I was born bad and I had to run away. I’d go home and get my bathing suit and my raft and paddle my way to Canada and escape to the tundra, where the world would be safe from me. If I made it across the Lake, fine; if I didn’t, that was fine, too. Dead girl or outcast, what difference did it make? The important thing was to make sure the Pervert in me didn’t get loose.
I tore through town, keeping my head down, flying through the Park and down to the railroad tracks, along the river, past the cement plant, racing home on instinct. I had to get home, I had to get away.
When I got there, all the doors were locked, even Donald’s, and Goober was running around to all the windows, barking at me to come in, but I couldn’t get in and I had to get in, I had to, I was turning inside-out and I had to get in the house before I went crazy. Oh, God! I thought as I saw Goober climbing up on the couch, wagging her tail and jumping. What if I hurt Goober? Maybe I’d better not go in! But then I realized that even if I did try to hurt her she’d just bite me and that would be OK. Dogs were better equipped to protect themselves than little girls.
I started pounding on one of the window screens, furiously until it finally collapsed and I crawled in and fell on the couch and then the strangest thing happened. I got up on my hands and knees and started rocking, just like Ruthie, rocking and rocking and crying so hard Goober started howling, but I couldn’t stop. I just kept right on rocking, as if I were trying to make the couch break through the wall and out into the backyard, rocking and rocking. “Don’t think about it, don’t think about it,” I chanted as I rocked, but I couldn’t help it and I got up, as if I were in a trance, and went to Mother’s corner of the couch and took her knitting bag and grabbed all the needles and started jabbing them into the couch as hard as I could, pulling on the tweedy material and making it rip like long wounds, pulling the stuffing out and jabbing the needles in, crying and jabbing and shouting, “I HATE YOU!”
THAT was the last thing I remembered. The next thing I knew, I was up in my bed and Dr. Keller was standing over me with a needle, getting ready to give me a shot.
“Oh, no you don’t!” I screamed and I got so hysterical he put it away and said, “All right, all right, Maggie, calm down,” and made me take some pills.
“You’ll be just fine,” he said but that was a laugh.
He went out of my room and closed the door, and I could hear him walking downstairs with Mother. I crawled out of bed and made my way into the Black Hole and got under the eaves so I could hear what they were saying. I looked through the crack and saw the couch stuffing lying all over the floor and Goober running around, sniffing at it, as if she were trying to find me in it.
Pretty soon they all came out: Dr. Keller and Mother and Daddy and Grandmother, and I could hear them whispering, as if somebody had died and they didn’t want to disturb the ghost. I heard the door close and then Mother’s high heels clicking across the floor. I watched her bend down and pick up some stuffing and I could see her back shaking and I felt bad, for making her cry.
“I’m sorry, Marion,” Daddy was saying, “I guess maybe you were right. I guess we will have to send her away to school.”
“Reform school, I hope!” Grandmother crowed. “You’re certainly not going to let her loose at a decent school, are you?”
“Oh, Kay, go to hell,” Daddy said and I almost cheered. Grandmother sputtered and then clomped out of the sun-room and Mother said, “Oh, Robert, it’s so frightening. What do you think got into her?”
He said he didn’t know. Maybe it was a delayed reaction to the thing with Mr. Howard. Maybe it had been tougher on me than they thought.
“Robert, people will think there’s something wrong with her!” Mother cried.
“No, there’s not!” he said but even I knew there was something wrong with me. Nobody would admit it because if there was something wrong with me it must be someone’s fault and nobody wanted to think about that.
Daddy said everything would be OK; they’d take me out of McKinley immediately and start looking for a school for
me. My heart leaped—well, at least I won’t have to finish my stupid hero paper, I thought.
“It’s not the end of the world,” he said, telling Mother I could come home on holidays. He leaned over and started helping Mother pick up the stuffing and she started crying again. “May God forgive me!” she wept and Daddy took her in his arms and comforted her and said, “There, there, Marion, don’t worry.” I didn’t know why she wanted God to forgive her—I was the one who attacked the couch and ripped it to pieces, you’d think she’d want God to forgive me for ruining her sofa.
“Oh, Robert, Robert, it’s all my fault,” she said and he said, “Don’t be silly.” I think she wanted to talk about it, but he wouldn’t listen. “The past is past,” he always said. “It’s better to let sleeping dogs lie.”
“Oh, Robert!” she cried out and he just stood there, not asking any questions, not wondering what she was talking about, just letting sleeping dogs lie. “Time heals all wounds,” he said, sadly, patting Mother’s back gently. “Time heals all wounds.”
But no it didn’t. All time did was create space. It moved the wound further and further away, but it was still there, as tender as yesterday, and all you needed was one reminder, one little pin poking into a distant scab, for the pain to come screeching back.
I felt terrible for making them all so unhappy. Maybe it was a good thing that they were sending me away; they could probably be happy without me around to stir things up. I was getting very tired. I crawled out of the eaves and went back to bed, pulling the covers over my head but leaving a crack so I could look out my window at the cherry tree. Daddy planted it on the day after I was born. “So you can grow together,” he said and I wondered if there would be trees and a Lake where they were sending me.
I didn’t want to get sent away, but there was nothing I could do about it and it was bound to happen sooner or later. It could be worse. They could be sending me to Lapeer; they could easily have me locked up with the loonies in some bleak windowless ward where they’d forget all about me. They’d fill me full of drugs or give me a lobotomy or something and then they’d let me out, when they’d taken all the parts of my brain that made me human, and send me home, where I’d be placid and dull, but safe. I’d be the loving daughter my parents always wanted and I’d marry some pharmacist or something, someone who needed a shattered woman, a woman who wouldn’t talk back and make demands, reasonable or otherwise, and I’d have his children—children I couldn’t handle, because having no spirit myself how could I meet theirs? They’d cut out my memory and, in a way, that would be good, because they’d cut out all my parts, but it would also be bad because I’d be a zombie. And that would be that. The end of my story: a lobotomized housewife, passively pushing my cart through Kroger’s, pausing at the cereal section and trying to remember whether Junior preferred Cheerios or Lucky Charms.
Compared to Lapeer, boarding school didn’t seem too bad. Maybe if I went away I wouldn’t get into trouble so much. There would be nothing to remind me of my past and as long as nobody touched me, I’d have nothing to fear; as long as none of my teachers came after me with pointers, I’d be fine. Maybe I could start over, just like I wanted to, but without having to kill myself to do it. I could have friends again and do skits in the Talent Show and maybe even run for class president—Pittsfield for President! Why not? Why not?
I started feeling a little hopeful as I felt myself drift off to sleep. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all, I thought; I could go away and be myself and nobody would be chasing me around telling me how evil I was. Nobody would know my secret. I’d lock it away in my chest with all my parts and leave it here, under the eaves, and I’d go away and just be me, Maggie. No more Cotton Mather, no more Margaret, no more Sarah, no more Trixie, no more Katrina, no more staring frightened Peggy eyes, just me, me, Maggie. Maggie “Sweet Is My Middle Name” Pittsfield. I would be sweet, I’d be sweet and good and kind and loving and I’d even be polite.
I looked out at the cherry tree and thought about George Washington and how he never told a lie.
“Well, maybe I’ll be polite,” I said and pulled the covers over my head.
About the Author
Rebecca Stowe was born in Port Huron, Michigan, and currently lives in New York City. This is her first novel.
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