Myrtle of Willendorf

by Myrtle of Willendorf (retail) (epub)

  She’d turned me into a kabuki dancer. Well, no, I didn’t look like a kabuki dancer, but I didn’t look like myself, either. My skin was of a uniform gardenia color, except for two regions of pale pink where my cheekbones must surely have been, and my lips, which were crimson. Jada had been subtle and cunning with Royal Twilight, and my eyes appeared large, dark, and, I dare say, beckoning.

  I was an image of luminous beauty. As was only fitting, Margie would have pointed out, since it was my moon time.

  “Wow, Jada, uh, thanks.” It occurred to me that it might have been more polite of me to look at Jada when I was speaking to her, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the vision in the mirror.

  Jada jumped up and touched her toes in midair. “Hooray!” she cheered. “I knew you’d like it! Let me do your makeup for the opening, please? Pretty please?”

  Jada did a walkover and, with complete control, stopped just short of her big mirror, then dropped down before me in the lotus position.

  “C’mon, Myr, you have to. It’s not just your art you’ll be showing on Saturday. You’ll be on display, too. Don’t you want to look good?”

  Quiche Cups

  I decided to have another quiche cup. Sam made these little quiches in mini-muffin tins. Each quiche was about the size of a quarter. They were delicious. I’d had about $2.50 in the first hour of the opening.

  Horton’s had been transformed. No longer a mere sandwich shop, it was now a stylish art gallery. Where once there hung Thidwick and Bartholomew Cubbins posters, now there were two dozen or more paintings, prints, drawings, and collages. A few sculptures stood on columns that looked suspiciously like tall stools draped with tablecloths.

  A large dozing cat painted in blue and green acrylics shared wall space with a series of watercolor studies of indigenous mushrooms. A carved wooden mask scowled and seemed to be looking sideways at the lithographed landscape beside it. “Satyrsfaction” fit right in, even if I didn’t.

  I leaned against the wall behind the buffet and watched Sam bring a quiche-laden tray through the crowd. He wore tapered trousers and a coat with tails. Except for the pearly satin stripes on the legs, the whole tux was seashell-pink. A gold watch chain glittered at his waist.

  Sam placed the tray on the cloth next to me and puffed air into his mustache. “Whew!” he said. “‘Starving artist’ isn’t just an expression. These folks are eating like Sneetches at a marshmallow toast!” He beamed.

  “They sure are enjoying your hospitality,” I said. “Why don’t you let me help out in the kitchen. I’ll make sure the buffet is well stocked.”

  “Oh, no, I told you before––people love to meet the artists at these things. C’mon, I’ll introduce you to …”

  “Sam!” a throaty voice cut in. “You have got to tell me about this monstrous needle!” A woman about Sam’s age grabbed him by the arm. She was a summer, so her fuchsia halter top looked great. She led Sam in the direction of “Opiate of the Masses.”

  I picked up a quiche cup and brought it with me into the bathroom.

  Horton’s ladies’ lounge could accommodate only one lady at a time. I bolted the door behind me. It was my fifth visit that evening. The other four had been primarily for the purpose of killing time. I didn’t know anyone at the opening but Sam, and he was too conscientious a host to spend all his time with me. While he was circulating or replenishing refreshments, I divided my time between the buffet and the bathroom. I examined the construction of the stall, played with the soap dispenser, and read the directions on the hot air dryer.

  I looked in the mirror and checked my makeup. Not bad. Royal Twilight neither clotted nor caked. I had applied just the right amount. Jada hadn’t been home when I was getting ready. She must have forgotten her commitment to the makeover when Goat came back to town.

  After searching the sublet for Jada and failing to find her, I realized I was on my own in dressing for my debut. Oh well, at least there would be no chance of Sam’s ominous hint coming true at the opening if Jada wasn’t even there.

  I had changed into clean bluejeans and a black cotton smock with full sleeves and ruffles at the cuffs and neck. It was the fanciest thing I had that still fit. I was still growing. True, I’d been 5’4” for about a year, but I weighed about twelve pounds more now than I had at the start of the summer. The smock was just the thing for an artist who was a growing girl. I went to Jada’s room and flapped my sleeves in front of her big mirror.

  Behind me, and reflected large as life before me, were Jada’s myriad tubes, jars, and boxes of cosmetics. I don’t know what came over me. I felt drawn as if by some sinister magnetism to Jada’s vanity table. I plundered her store of lotions, creams, and powders, applied them to my face, and set out for the opening.

  Ninety minutes later, in Horton’s bathroom, I looked upon my makeup job and called it good.

  Blam-blam-blam! Someone wanted to knock down the door to the restroom.

  It must be her moon time, too, I thought. I opened the door and faced the assailant.

  It was Jada.

  “Oh, hi, Myr! You look great. We got held up so I couldn’t meet you at home first, but we came here right after the movie. Seth and Julie are here, too. Go say hi; I’ll be right out.”

  She stepped past me and closed the door, leaving me back out in Horton’s dining-room-turned-gallery. It happened that “Satyrsfaction” hung on the wall opposite the door to the restrooms. I could see Goat, Seth, and Julie gathered around my drawing.

  Interesting acoustics in Horton’s; I could hear their conversation from where I stood. But that might have had more to do with their volume than with the way sound traveled in the room.

  “So, Goat, you’re an inny!” said Julie.

  Seth asked, “Myr did that? How’d she get you to pose for it, buddy?”

  “Looks like she got every detail,” Julie observed.

  “Man,” said Seth, “she even got your pubic hair! What is she, a nympho?”

  “No! She’s a psycho!” said Julie.

  “I always thought she was a lesbo,” said Seth.

  “She’s a nympho-psycho-lesbo!” Julie shrieked.

  It was only ten steps to the door. I took them and was gone before Julie’s shriek finished reverberating.

  Blue Salt

  “The word ‘lesbian’ is derived from the island of Lesbos, where the poet Sappho lived almost three thousand years ago. Sappho was so inspirational a poet and thinker that women flocked from all over to study with her. They formed a vital artistic and intellectual woman-centered community. Today the word has an added sexual connotation, but it still means someone who loves women.”

  Margie paused in her reading and placed her term paper on the coffee table in The Den. It was neatly printed on ten pages of the unbleached 100% recycled paper that Bobbie made us all use. In the style prescribed by our English teacher, the words began halfway down the first page.

  ETYMOLOGY & SUBVERSION OF THE PATRIARCHY

  By Margie Martin

  6th Period English

  Mr. Sprenger

  Superimposed on these lines of black print was a scarlet letter F, Margie’s grade on the paper. Page two bore a ghost F where the ink from the grade on page one bled through. Mr. Sprenger had no doubt ruined his felt-tip applying the pressure necessary to make such a mark.

  It was Friday evening, not the usual time for our coven to convene, but Margie had called an emergency session. Sheila was unable to attend. She was home nursing her daughter through the latest in a long series of ear infections. “Perfectly normal for babies her age,” according to Sheila’s sources. Thus it fell to me and Bobbie to rally round our leader in her hour of need. Bobbie had even postponed a date with her vegetarian beau.

  We had spent a portion of the meeting chanting incantations over salt and trying to dye it blue. Salt and the color blue, Margie explained, were both symbols of the Goddess, so blue salt would be very symbolic indeed, just the sort of charm needed in the current crisis.
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br />   Unfortunately, none of us had mastered the technique of mixing salt with food coloring. We quickly ran out of dye and had only a small saucer of blue lumps to show for it. I crumbled them as they dried.

  Bobbie shoved aside the salt box and reached for Margie’s paper. She flipped through the pages. “No typos, no spelling errors,” she said. She turned to the last page. “You put twenty-two books in your bibliography. We only needed to list ten. I can’t believe he’s not giving you any credit for this.”

  Margie lit a vanilla candle and shook out the match. “He said that if I turn in a new paper on a ‘more appropriate’ subject by next Friday, I can still salvage my grade.”

  Bobbie rolled the paper into a tube and smacked it into her hand. “You only have one week to do a whole new paper? We were given a month to do that assignment,” she said.

  “It’s nothing short of religious persecution,” I said and snorted to show my disdain for Mr. Sprenger. Kooky or not, Margie had worked hard on that paper. She deserved better than an F.

  “That’s why we need to make this charm,” said Margie. “Without the protection of the Goddess, Mr. Sprenger might as well burn me at the stake.”

  “What you need is a couple of faggots,” I said.

  Margie nodded. Bobbie looked appalled.

  “It’s in the paper,” I said to Bobbie. “Read it.”

  “You read it,” she said, but she was talking to Margie.

  Margie took the paper from Bobbie and unrolled it as if it were a sacred scroll. She read aloud, “The word ‘faggot,’ used today mostly in a pejorative sense, should not be considered an insult but an honor. Faggots fought and died for their beliefs. During the sixteenth century, when witch burning was at its height in Europe and women were being tortured and burned in the hundreds of thousands, some men spoke out against the witch hunts and in defense of their mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters. The patriarchal system that supported the hunts made sure that these men were silenced. They were burned along with the accused women, thrown on the fires like bundles of sticks. Kindling tied in a bundle was commonly known as a faggot. This name was given to these early rebels against a patriarchal culture.”

  Margie had discussed her paper with me, but this was the first time I’d heard it word for word. I was so absorbed by her dramatic reading that I had been unconsciously dipping my fingers into the blue salt and licking them. My fingers were blue. My tongue and teeth probably were too. This had to be either highly disrespectful of the Goddess or some way of mystically melding with her. I didn’t ask Margie which; she was reading her conclusion.

  “… and it continues to this day. Any time people threaten the patriarchal hierarchy, by being politically outspoken, physically strong, or spiritually independent, they are called ‘lesbians’ or ‘faggots,’ with the implication that these are dirty, sick, shameful things to be.”

  Margie didn’t even look up at us when she finished reading. She just placed the paper face-down on the table and sifted blue salt over it in a spiral design.

  I glanced at Bobbie. She smiled uncertainly.

  Margie sniffed.

  “Margie,” I said, “are my teeth blue?”

  I bared my teeth, and Margie looked. “Myrtle! Have you been eating the Goddess-crystals?” she asked. She looked alarmed.

  “It’s very spiritual.” I said, “Try it.”

  Margie licked her finger and pressed it into the saucer. She held up a salty blue fingertip and, with her other hand, pushed the saucer to Bobbie.

  Bobbie licked, dipped, and passed me the salt. I followed their example, and we all three sat, blue fingers pointing toward heaven.

  Margie intoned in her ceremonial voice, “As these crystals dissolve within us, we meditate upon the qualities of the Goddess. As we taste the bold flavor of this gift of the Earth, we concentrate on recognizing the Goddess within ourselves.”

  That said, Margie put her finger in her mouth and withdrew it with a pop. So did Bobbie. So did I. Mystical women’s spirituality meets vaudeville.

  The Land of Counterpane

  It’s when the backs of your eyeballs hurt that you know you’ve really done it. Mine hurt. I’d done it: consumed ten quiche cups, three chocolate chip cookies, a roast beef sandwich with mustard, one dill pickle, and most of a cheese enchilada. At least binge drinkers get the fun of piecing together memories of the night before and extrapolating the story of what happened from the fragments. Binge eating doesn’t affect the memory.

  My memory was sharp. Nympho-psycho-lesbo. That Julie had me pegged. I’m a nympho-psycho-lesbo all right. No fooling her.

  Hadn’t I memorized what Goat looked like without his shirt? Typical nympho behavior.

  I propped myself up on my elbows. The backs of my eyes flamed.

  I must be psycho. No one but a psycho goes to sleep in a bed full of garbage. I sat up and looked around me. The land of counterpane had been developed by the fast food industry. All up and down among the sheets were bags and wrappers from last night’s feast.

  A piece of waxy orange paper concealed the end of an enchilada. The cheese was cold and hard. I nibbled at it and investigated the contents of a paper bag by my pillow. Three cookies and a coconut doughnut. It had been the last doughnut in the shop. They threw it in when I bought half a dozen cookies.

  My bedspread was at the foot of the bed, wadded up and topped with a big red paper cup. I reached for it and slurped up the last few drops of Coke. There was nothing lonelier, I reflected, than the sound of a straw sucking the dregs of a warm, flat Coca-Cola.

  Unless it was the sound of those creeps saying, “Nympho-psycho-lesbo!”

  I sighed. If a thin, bejeweled woman with exfoliated skin and outfits selected to properly complement her seasonal coloring had drawn that same picture, would they have called her a nympho?

  No, they’d probably write her up in their alternative newspaper and purchase the drawing for their newsroom. Goat would probably dump his dancer girlfriend and fall madly in love with the artist who had captured his image so perfectly.

  Well, that wasn’t what I wanted anyway.

  What I wanted was a doughnut.

  I picked up the bakery bag, but instead of opening it, I crumpled it up and threw it at the door.

  The bag hit the door, burst, and rained cookie crumbs and stale doughnut bits all over the carpet. A piñata, aw shucks, and it wasn’t even my birthday.

  Psycho. Maybe they meant psychic. I sort of thought I might be telekinetic. I mean, I broke that jar of tea without even going near it. And last night, when I came home, the back door blew wide open before I even reached it, which was lucky, since my arms were full of packages. Margie said it. Goddess-energy can influence the physical sphere. Well, that was nice for the Goddess, but right now I didn’t even have the energy to influence my physical rear. It wanted to stay in the bed, and I wasn’t in the mood to argue with it.

  I lay back down and pulled the sheet up over my head. I closed my eyes. I opened my eyes. I pushed the sheet away and gasped. I couldn’t breathe under there. The mustard smell was overpowering. I noticed I had gotten mustard on my good black smock. There was a duck-shaped yellow blob drying in the middle of my chest. I swear, every shirt I owned had a stain on the chest, just at the level where my boobs heaved out to catch the food as it fell. Quite a few of my shirts had stains on the tummy, too.

  I wondered which stuck out farther, my boobs or my stomach. It had been a close contest for a number of years. I took off my smock, getting a good whiff of mustard as I pulled it over my head, removed my bra, and studied my torso.

  The boobs definitely stuck out farther, but it wasn’t a fair measure. Half my tummy was confined inside my jeans. I took off my jeans and sat back down, letting my tummy roll out over my knees, like the tides drawn by the moon.

  I slapped the surface of Lake Tummy Flesh and watched it ripple. The boobs rippled too. They didn’t stick out nearly as far as the stomach, but rested upon it. The shoreline shifted
as I brought my left foot up and bent over it.

  The big one, the one who went to market, if memory serves, was ready. I bit through the nail and pulled. The state I was in, no wonder I lacked finesse. I tore too fast and too hard and took a morsel of cuticle away with my toenail.

  I wrapped the edge of my sheet around my toe and held it, rocking back and forth. It hurt; sure it hurt, but it was a comforting pain.

  As long as I was thinking about my poor throbbing piggy, I didn’t need to think about Goat or Jada or Seth or Julie or Sam or “Satyrsfaction” or fleeing from Horton’s into the night and waking up with a headache in a bed full of garbage.

  Takeout from Deli U came in strong bags of opaque green plastic. There was one by my leg. I let go of my foot and grabbed it. I opened it, leaned over, and was sick.

  Rascally Bastards

  Even my lax standards of housekeeping wouldn’t allow me to keep a bag of puke in my room. I put the warm, round sack into a bigger bag with my enchilada end, Coke cup, bakery bag, and other mementos of the previous evening.

  I kicked at the laundry scattered around the floor. What to wear? What was the appropriate dress for a jaunt to the outdoor garbage cans? Should I wear the gold taffeta? The black silk? The lavender mohair? No, I’d wear the gray terry cloth. I put on my old bathrobe, cinched it up, and went downstairs with my bundle.

  I missed the dorm. I had so much more privacy there. I’d be going back in the fall, to another randomly assigned roommate. Jada had signed up to share Julie’s high-rise apartment next year. But until I got back to McLeod Hall, with its formal and informal codes of dorm behavior, I had no reasonable expectation of privacy. I couldn’t assume that on an early morning shortcut through the kitchen, dressed only in a bathrobe and underwear, carrying a bag of squishy waste, I wouldn’t meet anyone.

  “Hey,” said Goat. He was seated at the kitchen table, enjoying a nutritious breakfast of baked beans and Mountain Dew.