by Sarai Walker
The beleaguered staff of the Bessie Cantor Foundation for Peace and Understanding stood in a circle nearby, trying to avoid the accusing stares of some of the neighbors. The owner of an Italian restaurant on our block was particularly incensed. It was the middle of the lunch rush when the evacuation order came, and so businessmen and women were sitting on the curb, plates balanced on their knees, trying to shovel penne and spaghetti into their mouths without spilling anything on their tailored white shirts.
Stopped at the light, a taxi driver shouted: “What’d Jennifer do now?”
“This ain’t nothing to do with her,” a cop shouted back.
Though it was only our block of Thirteenth Street and the one directly behind us on Twelfth that were closed, the chaos spread into the surrounding areas. The traffic on Sixth Avenue backed up, pedestrians and drivers stopped and gawked. It was New York street theater: the potential for disaster, which no one wanted to miss.
“The idea of a bomb threat is nonsensical, isn’t it?” I crunched the last of my cone.
“What do you mean, hon?” Verena was wearing jeans and a T-shirt bearing the name of the Baptist Shakes, an all-girl punk rock band from Georgia.
“If the big one ever comes, do you think they’re going to warn anyone in advance? Why would they want to blow up an empty building?”
“They’re just lunatics,” Marlowe said. “Making threats is the aim. The police take it seriously because they have to.”
“But aren’t you afraid that one day the house next door might actually blow up?” The women of Calliope House had lived with the bomb threats for so long that they seemed to forget there was the possibility of a real explosion, one that was likely to kill us all.
I stood up and paced in front of the bench. No one seemed interested in addressing my question, so I didn’t pursue it. I supposed that the threat was better left at the back of the mind, where it could be ignored. Living at Calliope House was a choice that each of us had made, and we knew the risks. No one was forcing us to stay there.
“Speaking of lunatics, why did Julia stay over last night?” Marlowe asked. She and the others looked at me. I wasn’t prepared with an excuse.
“She . . . wanted to ask for advice about her book, the Austen exposé. She’s writing a chapter about Kitty.” The lie came easily, but I hated telling it. I didn’t want to be on Julia’s side.
“Did she say anything about Leeta?” Marlowe asked. “I planned to talk to her, but had to leave early yesterday. I’d like to interview Julia for The Jennifer Effect.”
“I asked her about Leeta, but she clams up as soon as her name is mentioned.”
A New York Daily truck rumbled past us, the message on its side enticing us to “Read the New York Daily for the latest on Jennifer.”
“Did you hear what happened this morning?” Marlowe said at the sight of the truck. Every morning there was something new, and I was glad to move on from the topic of Julia. Marlowe explained that video game companies had been warned to stop producing games that featured women as sex objects and victims of violence.
“Aww, what are all the kiddies gonna play now?” Rubí said. “Half the fun of childhood is learning how to splatter a prostitute’s brain with a baseball bat.”
Sana read from an article on her phone: “In the wake of the threat, several gaming companies have seen their stock fall.”
Marlowe shook her head, marveling, and handed Huck to Verena while she scribbled some notes. Verena held the sticky baby out in front of her.
“This morning I read about a bunch of teenage girls in Texas who’ve been traveling around to strip clubs,” Rubí said. “The girls hang out in the parking lot and when the men go inside, they slash their tires and break their windows. The police chief in one of the towns said that his force didn’t have the manpower to deal with an uptick in female offenders.”
Sana leaned over and whispered in my ear: “He’s talking about women like you.” I elbowed her away, not wanting the others to hear what she was saying. Sana was the only one who knew about my recent activities.
More NYPD trucks arrived, so I knew we weren’t going to be allowed back home anytime soon. I was being deprived of lunch and growing hungry and cranky, the ice cream cone not keeping my hunger at bay. I picked up my shopping bags. The long strap of my satchel crossed my chest, weighing on my shoulder because of the brick I still carried with me. “I’m off,” I said. “I have errands to run.” I’d been so busy sending books and emailing Kitty’s readers that it had been several days since I’d spent an afternoon roaming the streets, but that’s what I needed to do. Julia’s visit had left me with excess adrenaline. I loved Calliope House, but I needed to get away for a few hours, to escape being enclosed.
“What kind of errands?” Sana asked, suspicious.
“Mailing books,” I said, giving the shopping bags a jiggle.
“And what else?”
“Maybe I’ll do some shopping.”
“You mean you’re actually going to pay for something?” She said it in a playful tone, but there was bite to it. Marlowe, Verena, and Rubí looked up at me, confused, but I slinked into the crowd.
I mailed the packages of books from the post office first so I wouldn’t have to carry them around all day. The woman behind the counter stamped the envelopes, the name of a girl printed on each one. I wondered if Leeta was planning to write to them too, and if so what she would say, but email was probably tricky when you’re on the run from the police.
After the post office, I ate a late lunch. My body was no longer accustomed to waiting for food, and I finished my cheeseburger in four big bites, then ordered another. Outside the restaurant window, I could see V— S— across the street, with the enormous poster of the lilac negligee woman, only this time she was wearing a pink bustier and stockings, her bare ladyparts shielded by the squeeze and tilt of her thighs. Bonerville. They could have put the poster over the doorway and the woman could have spread her legs, welcoming all of Manhattan inside.
I stared at her while finishing my second cheeseburger, then left the restaurant, feeling the heat of the animal protein on my breath, tasting it on my lips. Standing before V— S—, I really wanted to steal that pink bustier. I was feeling jittery with energy that I needed to burn off somehow, and I felt like doing something reckless. I liked writing to Kitty’s girls, but I missed the high that came from action. I walked back and forth on the sidewalk, considering my options. The cover of the New York Daily—with the faces of Leeta, Missy, and Soledad—popped up around me on the side of a truck, on a newsstand, in the hands of passersby, a swarm of black-and-white insects that I wanted to bat away so I could see clearly, so I could breathe.
I decided I couldn’t return to the scene of my original crime, so I settled on a cosmetics store a half block away, a three-story extravaganza of face paint. Inside, I discovered a store that looked like a spaceship, with domed ceilings and bright lights and what seemed like an alien female staff, their hair wrapped tight in buns, giving them instant facelifts. It was like being in the Beauty Closet again, only Julia and Leeta were missing. I waited for an opportunity to slip something into my satchel, anticipating the rush that came with it, but there was a security guard watching me, as if she had a sixth sense. Pretending to be interested in a display of blushers, I picked up a compact of pink powder. I had always associated blushing with shame and embarrassment.
“Something to brighten you up?” A female voice pierced the drone of the spaceship. The saleswoman, wearing a white smock, was plump, a standout among her colleagues. Still being watched, I decided to buy something rather than steal. It would be an act of solidarity with the plump woman.
“What’s the opposite of brightening up?” I asked. I caught sight of a display of eyeliners in shades of black. Leeta black. “I’ll take the darkest one of those.” I asked the woman to apply it for me right there in the store. She directed me to a stool, where I sat as she circled my eyes, but when I looked in the handhe
ld mirror she had given me, the circles weren’t thick enough. “More,” I said. She circled my eyes again, adding another layer, but it wasn’t enough. “More.”
“Are you sure?”
“My goal isn’t to look fuckable. The look I want is Don’t fuck with me.”
She laughed nervously, unsure if I was crazy. “I’ve never been asked for that before.”
When she finished ringing my eyes, I asked to see dark lip-glosses. I picked through the small pots until I found something that appealed: Darkest Plum. I paid for my items, then applied the gloss with my pinkie, covering the taste of meat that had lingered on my lips. The saleswoman held up the mirror again and I admired my transformation. “I think it’s important that makeup reflects the true inner self,” I said, repeating a line I had once read in Daisy Chain.
On the bus heading back to my neighborhood, more people than usual stared at me. I decided I would wear the eye makeup every day.
I was close to home, but stopped at a bakery to buy a treat for the road. As I made my way over the crosswalk at Seventh Avenue, munching a cherry turnover, I passed a bike messenger who was stopped at the light, checking his phone. He began singing “Big Girls Don’t Cry” and then laughed, a deep-throated cackle. I glanced over my shoulder. When he saw me looking, he sang his own version:
“Big girls eat pie.”
I turned around and walked back toward him, stuffing the end of the turnover into my mouth. “Do you think you’re funny?” A bit of pastry flew from between my lips.
“Miss Piggy,” he said, cackling again, clearly disgusted by me, the exile from Bonerville. If there’d been a trapdoor beneath me, he would have opened it and sent me into oblivion. As far as he was concerned, if I didn’t make his man parts happy, I had no reason to exist.
“Move it, lard-ass,” he said. I didn’t move, but stood so close to him that the tip of his front tire was wedged between my knees. I sucked a bit of cherry off my thumb. His little song had been intended as a drive-by, a shot fired into the anonymous fat girl as she crossed the street. It was intended to wound, but I wasn’t wounded. It was the intention that infuriated me.
The man was wearing metallic sunglasses and a helmet, which covered his head and face in a kind of armor. Only his mouth and chin were visible, and the skin I could see was sweaty and rough with stubble. I imagined kissing him, the stubble ripping my skin, streaking me with blood.
“I asked you a question,” I said. “Do you think you’re funny?”
The light turned green and I felt the whoosh of traffic around me, but I didn’t budge. “Get the fuck out of my way,” he said, but I wasn’t going to get the fuck out of his way. He could have easily ridden around me, but he wasn’t the type to back down when challenged, even if he had a schedule to keep. I squeezed my free hand into a fist, a wave of heat filling me from top to bottom, red moving up a thermometer.
“You wanna fight, big girl?” There was that cackle again. In that moment I hated him more than I had ever hated anyone. I reached my right hand into the satchel resting on my hip, the strap crossing my chest, and felt the brick inside.
“A fight is exactly what I want.” This sentence escaped my mouth as if someone else had programmed me to say it. Something had overtaken me, but I liked it. I grasped the brick hidden inside my satchel, moving my fingers over its dusty surface. The man’s face was covered in armor, but I could aim at his mouth.
Are you crazy? a voice inside my head said. It sounded like Sana’s lilt.
The man stood up from his bike and swung his leg over it. This is it, I thought. He lowered his bike to the pavement. He was wearing shiny black bike shorts and a tank top, his arms muscled and tattooed. Still I didn’t budge. I was willing to see this through, even if he punched me in the face and bashed my head into the concrete. Bring it on. I’d been punched in the face before during the New Baptist Plan and survived, but that time I hadn’t fought back. A fight is what I’d wanted these past few weeks. Maybe now I was going to get it. It’ll hurt, but it’ll feel good too.
A Baptist isn’t afraid of a little pain.
I gripped the brick, steeling myself. If there were butterflies in my stomach, some had broken free and were fluttering through me, pumping me up, urging me on. I wanted to open my mouth and release them in a roar. I pulled the brick from my satchel, but an arm came in between the bike messenger and me, the arm of a large black man.
“That’s enough,” said the man, who was wearing a security guard uniform. He seemed to be about my father’s age. A crowd surrounded the messenger and me on the crosswalk, which I hadn’t noticed from within my bubble of fury. The bubble popped.
The messenger held up his hands as if the police had told him to freeze. Big black guy trumped big white girl. He picked up his bike and got on it. “Crazy bitch,” he said as he rode away. He’d backed down, but I hadn’t.
I turned to the security guard, irritated. I hadn’t asked to be rescued.
“I’ve been watching you,” he said. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“That guy tried to insult me.”
“Better to just ignore him.”
“Says who?”
“Says somebody who doesn’t want to see you get your ass kicked.”
I was going to put the brick back in my satchel, but decided to carry it home in my hand. “I appreciate your concern,” I said in a petulant daughter voice.
“You better watch yourself,” the man called after me, but I ignored him and hurried along toward Calliope House, high on my encounter with the guy on the bike. When I opened the door, I was anxious to tell someone what had happened.
“Where’ve you been?” Sana asked, coming down the stairs. I was breathless, my face flushed.
“I almost just got into a fight with a bike messenger.”
“What are you doing with that brick?”
“I’ve been carrying it around with me.”
“Give me that,” she said, snatching the brick away. She was still being prickly, just as she had been during the bomb threat, so I moved past her and went into the kitchen. I lifted a carton of apple juice from the top shelf of the fridge and poured myself a glass. Sana had followed me and watched me gulp it down.
“Nice eye makeup,” she said.
“Thanks. I had a makeover.”
“Have you seen yourself?”
I bent over and looked at my reflection in the microwave. The black eyeliner had bled beyond its borders. “Raccoon eyes,” I said. Kitty had written a whole column about it once. I used my fingers to wipe off some of the greasy makeup, as black as a tire’s skid mark.
“Do I need to worry about you, Plum?”
“I’ve never felt better in my life.” It was the truth.
“Plum—” she started. I held up my hand, knowing what was coming, but Sana wasn’t deterred. I knew she’d been saving this up and now it was flooding out: “You’ve been through a lot . . . You’re not used to living without Y—— . . . You’re upset about Leeta . . .” and on it went.
“I feel alive now in a way I never have before. I thought you were happy for me?”
“We’re all happy for you, but how many times could you have been arrested in recent weeks?”
“Several.”
“What were you doing with that brick?”
“I fantasized about smashing someone with it, but in reality it’s not so easy, I guess.”
“Are you even listening to yourself right now?”
“People count on us to be passive. They deserve to be punished.”
“The haters outnumber us by a large margin. Are you going to smash them all?”
This wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I’d been enjoying my high, but Sana had extinguished it with her incessant scolding. I missed feeling high. In its place was agitation.
I excused myself to go to my room before our exchange could escalate. I’d save my anger for those who deserved it. I still wanted a fight, but not with her.
In my
room, I took off my heavy boots and tossed them into the corner. My tights were dirty from touching the bike, so I brushed them off, moving my hands along the curves of my calves, feeling their bulk. It felt good to touch my body. It centered and calmed me.
I peeled off my tights and unbuttoned my dress, which was sweaty under the arms and down the back. I took off everything else and climbed into bed naked, enjoying the chill of the sheets. I breathed slowly through my mouth, placing my hands on my stomach to experience the movement of air through my body, keeping a rhythm. My thoughts were zipping around in my brain. Unable to corral them, I kept focused on my breath.
Sana didn’t know what it was like to be numb for so many years and then to feel again. Before quitting Y——, I’d been like a lamp that was broken, but now I was switched on, emanating heat and light. There was pleasure in feeling strongly. Even an emotion like rage could feel good—it was almost cleansing, the way it made me feel alive.
I ran my hands over my body, playing with my nipples, placing my hands between my legs, exploring. I wasn’t like those women on the screens in the underground apartment, who had sanitized slits between their legs. Between my legs was a handful of flesh and hair. While on Y——, I had masturbated a couple times a year, but it was never worth the effort—all that stroking for a tiny pop at the end. Now merely rubbing my fingertips together aroused me. Without the drugs, my body was alert to touch.
Since I didn’t want to be fuckable anymore, I focused on how I felt inside, not how I might have looked to an imaginary someone. I was anchored in the sensations of my body rather than living outside of it, judging it. Sometimes I thought about sex with a partner. Rubí went out all the time and offered to fix me up, but I wasn’t ready. That step would come in time. I was content to be alone for now, to become acquainted with the body I had never liked to touch. I rubbed myself, the whole messy handful between my legs, my hand bringing me closer to what I wanted: pleasure and release.
I slept for a little while, then went downstairs to make dinner, feeling mellow and balanced for the first time that day. Rubí was sitting at the kitchen table with a glass and a bottle of tequila.