You Let Me In

by Camilla Bruce

  “They wish they had a girl like you for themselves,” said Pepper-Man when I complained about the latter. “Who would not want such a sweet princess with such long, thick hair perched on their knee?”

  “I think they look angry, not wishful at all.”

  “Trust me, Cassandra—they only want you for themselves. They want to suck you dry as it is, all that golden light right down their throats. That is why the woods are so dangerous for girls such as yourself, you never know what creature of ill intent is lurking. Some of my brothers keep girls’ braids in their belts for show.”

  “Not you, though.”

  “Not I—I only need my Cassandra, and I will protect you, always, from the dangers of the woods. They may snarl and they may snap, but they will never taste my princess.”

  Only he did that: taste me—but he liked to show me off. It made me feel special, the way he treated me, the gifts and the kindness, the secrets we shared. The kisses and words that told me he cared. I almost forgot about the pain sometimes, floating on his words.

  When he pushed those soft, sweet cakes between my lips, I almost forgot that it hurt.

  VII

  “Have you ever thought about the possibility that you might remember these things wrong?” Dr. Martin once asked me.

  “I remember them as they were,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. I was still new then, and unused to our sessions. The chair in his office was large and soft; I often felt like I was drowning in it. My feet didn’t reach the floor. I think the chair was meant to comfort us, the strange and troubled youths who went there, but to me it only felt intimidating, as if sitting in that chair meant to lose control. I gave up all hope when that chair grabbed hold and held me captive in its soft lap.

  There was an oaken desk in there, but Dr. Martin never remained behind it while we talked. He was sitting before me in a more sensible leather chair, his notebook balancing on his knee, pen bleeding blue through the neatly printed lines. His chin was covered in stubble, his hair gray and wispy. His eyes were kind enough, though, when he looked at me.

  “Sometimes”—Dr. Martin was looking into my eyes—“something happens that is so horrible, so painful and confusing, our brains take charge and rewrite.”

  “I don’t know what you mean by that.”

  “Let’s say someone hit you, someone you trust. Maybe the memory of that incident is so hard to carry that you pretend that it was someone else who delivered the blow—or you don’t remember getting hurt at all … The mind is a funny thing, you won’t believe the things it can do if given the chance—”

  “I know you don’t believe that Pepper-Man is real.” I looked down at my black shoes, the white stockings. “None of you do. My mother in particular.”

  “It’s hard to believe in something you cannot see.” Dr. Martin used his patient voice.

  “Doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

  “Doesn’t mean it is—even if you think so.”

  “Are you calling me a liar?” I shifted as well as I could on the soft seat.

  “I think you are an editor. I think you have learned to rewrite certain parts of your story, and I suspect there is another truth to the tale.”

  “You are wrong,” I told him. “Everything I tell you is the truth.”

  * * *

  I had first met Dr. Martin after a long and grueling summer where puberty had hit me, hard and cruel. Mother and I fought over the smallest things, and the china plates often went spinning through the room. She had threatened to send me to a “special doctor” for years—threatened so often that I ceased to believe it would ever happen, but I suppose the flood of hormones was the last straw. Those I take no blame for; it’s just nature, such as it is. But it made everything worse. Worse by far.

  I would think back on this time of ceaseless fighting later, when I was the one who had to fight—in vain—to make a teenage girl see reason. It’s as hard as catching a slick fish, the way she skitters and twirls out of reach.

  I guess it made me understand my mother a little better, how our quarrels could drive her to tears and wine. Unlike my mother, though, I didn’t have the money yet to pay for someone else to handle the problem. No, I had to deal with my daughter on my own, and not even a barrel of wine would have been enough to take the edge off my misery.

  Young girls will do that to you. They will drive you mad.

  * * *

  You know very little about your cousin, I suppose. The subject would have made your mother uncomfortable, and Olivia never liked to discuss uncomfortable things. If she did speak of it, she would doubtlessly blame me and call me a bad mother, amongst other unpleasant things. At least I always strive to keep my girl happy and safe, which is something our family has never been any good at.

  Your mother has doubtlessly told you the stories about me. How I got into fights at school and enacted strange rituals at home—how people were afraid of me. After the death of Tommy Tipp, I know these stories flared to life again.

  Strange how people never forget the wounds inflicted in their childhood.

  Even before I met Dr. Martin, Pepper-Man had left very little room for anyone else in my life; I had not one friend, no playmates or confidantes. Even when he wasn’t present, Pepper-Man was there, coloring my world in twilight shades. His world was a dangerous place for a little girl, violent and cruel despite all its wonders. Faeries are no fit company for the living; touching them taints you like a disease. I grew like a pale fruit in the shadows, small and bitter, never getting enough sun—but I grew. I didn’t shrivel up and die; didn’t fall from the branch and crash to the ground. I was a white apple, a moon-colored pear, a toxic green plum the size of a coin. Grew strange and crooked, but there was life, flushing my veins with rich red blood, enough to sustain more than one.

  Olivia, though, she was a child of summer, golden wheat and heavy blossoms. Her birthdays were always splendid affairs. On her tenth, my mother and Fabia set the table in the garden. White tablecloths and vases filled with flowers adorned the large table beneath the oaks. Because Olivia loved it, Mother had brought out the best china: the one with painted pink roses and tender golden rims, each plate accompanied by a small silver fork. Olivia and her gaggle of friends would use them to dismember the strawberry cake, sponge and jam, whipped cream and berries, and ply their soft, round mouths with the mess. Not me, though. No cake for me.

  Mother had tried at first, tried to convince Olivia her sister had a natural place at the table, but Olivia would hear nothing of it. She said I was a nuisance. I made her friends uncomfortable. She said they were afraid of me, those braided, frilly girls.

  “Cassie will ruin everything,” she told Mother. “She always does.”

  My mother, as always, was not hard to convince. Olivia usually had her way with her, being the golden child. And maybe—just maybe—Mother found it more convenient too, to keep me away from the party. Maybe—just maybe—she worried that the girls would go home afterward and tell their parents what I’d done, if I’d laughed out loud at nothing or whispered to the air. They were afraid of me, sure, but we didn’t have many lunatics in S—, and the fear was often mingled with a wicked fascination.

  They liked talking about me—a lot.

  “You don’t want to sit at the table with all those little girls,” Mother told me. “You’re a young woman now, and Olivia and her friends are just children. You wouldn’t enjoy it much.”

  And she was right, of course, but that was beside the point.

  So there I was, rejected, high up in the apple tree with Pepper-Man. I remember I sat on a thick branch, legs straddling the wood. I picked leaves and ripped them in half between my fingers, smelled the strong fragrance as the greenery came apart, then let the pieces fall to the ground. I could see the party between the branches. See the decorated table, the girls clad in white, pink, and blue, fluffy bows tied at their necks, hairbands in their hair. I wore a dress too, but mine was checked in shades of red. Red and angry—like my
heart. Pepper-Man sat on a branch above me; his feet made circles in the air.

  “You can have the best cake at the mound,” he said, “sweeter and softer by far.”

  “I don’t want the stupid cake.”

  “Whatever you want, then. Just tell me what you want and you will have it.”

  “She does look like a princess, doesn’t she?” I was looking at my sister, seated at the end of the table, wearing a new blue dress. Her red braids shone in the sunlight. Father was down there too, taking pictures of the assembly. Ferdinand, banished from the girlish event, slunk behind the flowerbeds and dismantled a yellow tulip with his fingers. Fabia was blowing up balloons.

  “What sort of a princess is that, truly?” Pepper-Man shifted on his branch. “A lonely girl trapped in a gilded cage? Better to be free, like you are, free to be a princess of the mound.”

  “I don’t want anything of Olivia’s,” I said—lied.

  “She will be a miserable adult,” Pepper-Man mused, and was absolutely right, as you both well know.

  “I bet that cake is good, though.” It was all very confusing. I loathed her and all she had, and yet … I leaned forth on my branch to get a better view; listened to the happy girls’ chatter that filled the air. “Smile,” my father rumbled as he aimed the camera. Olivia cocked her head and grinned at him, lifted her braids from her shoulders to let them fall down her chest. Wanted them to be visible in her birthday pictures.

  It was then that I saw a shadow creeping slowly across the lawn, shaped much like a slug, with a gaping maw and lantern eyes. The sight of it made my entire body go ice-cold. Though I’d already seen a lot in my life, I had never seen something quite so vile. My grip on the tree branch tightened as it slowly moved toward the party, aiming for Olivia’s chair.

  “Pepper-Man, what is that?”

  I heard him shift above me. “Cousin,” he sighed. “That is a cousin of mine.”

  “But what is it doing here?”

  Pepper-Man paused before answering. “They do like little girls, especially the happy ones. Happy little girls are like cake to them; like wine and sweet herbs, sugar from a china bowl. It must have heard them laughing in the woods, and now it is here, hunting.”

  “That is not good.” I was genuinely concerned all of a sudden. “Can’t you chase them away?”

  “It will not listen even if I speak. I would not have either, if someone wanted to keep me from you.”

  The girls laughed and hugged each other while grinning at Father’s camera. I shifted uneasy on the branch, could hear the sound of my own heart thumping loudly in my chest.

  “Your cousin can find another girl to snack on. One of us sisters being food for faerie is more than enough, don’t you think?”

  “Why this sudden need to protect her?” Pepper-Man’s voice was puzzled. “I thought you loathed Olivia and wished for her to share your fate.”

  No. “I’d rather she remained her own snotty, happy self.”

  “What do you want to do, then?”

  “I want her to be unburdened.” The threat to her had awakened something: a strange and unfamiliar need to nurture and protect. “We were friends once. We used to be the same, once upon a time.”

  “No.” Pepper-Man spoke in a soft voice. “You never were the same, but I will help you.”

  * * *

  That was why I was in Olivia’s room that night. In that other white bedroom, a neat and uncluttered twin of mine. That was why I stood there on the white carpet, holding Mother’s scissors in my hands. They were ugly, those scissors, big and shiny. Mother used them to cut fabrics. They were the sharpest ones we had.

  Olivia was sleeping soundly, head on a lace-edged pillow. She was full of cake and lemonade, and never expected to be visited in her bed.

  I approached as quietly as I could, and silently thanked Mother for the thick white carpet that swallowed all sounds. I listened to Olivia’s sweet breath; the quiet sighs she emitted in her sleep. Wondered what she dreamt of, the tangerine-marzipan girl, who’d so rudely been targeted by a devourer of happiness. Did she have bad dreams, dark and dangerous, or did she still dream about sunshine and strawberry cake?

  When I was quite done looking at her, I carefully lifted her braids off the pillow and held them in my hand, silky and red, thick and heavy, then I took Mother’s scissors and snipped them both off. It was very easy; the blades cut through the hair like a silver spade in cake. The braids loosened from her scalp and hung like dead snakes from my palm.

  “Come,” Pepper-Man said from the doorway. “Dawn will be here soon. If we are to complete the ritual, we must hurry.”

  “Sure,” I whispered and gave Olivia’s sleeping form a last, lingering look. She was still sleeping soundly, hadn’t been disturbed at all. I was good at being stealthy. I still am.

  Pepper-Man and I tiptoed down the stairs to the living room, where I disposed of the scissors behind an embroidered pillow on the couch. I got the matches from the mantle above the fireplace and borrowed a crystal bowl from a side table. Then Pepper-Man and I went outside through the patio doors, out into the garden. The table out there was cleared by then, no china plates or silver forks were left. A piece of gift wrapping was the only evidence of the party, clinging to the base of an oak’s wide trunk. I placed the crystal bowl on the ground and put Olivia’s braids in it. Pepper-Man sprinkled the hair with herbs.

  “Are you sure this will work?” I asked, hoping I hadn’t scalped my sister for nothing.

  “It will,” he assured me.

  I struggled to light a match in the damp night. Pepper-Man finally helped me, took the matches from my hands and easily lit one. The match sputtered and spat, then it burned with a steady yellow flame. I don’t know what Pepper-Man sprinkled on the hair, but it all flamed up like old hay, twisting in the fire, emitting an acrid scent. When the fire died and there was nothing in the bowl but ashes, we brought the bowl with us back inside, up the stairs, and into Olivia’s room. She was still sleeping soundly, snoring softly, not knowing that her lovely braids were gone. Following Pepper-Man’s instructions, I scattered the bed with the ashes—a drizzle of gray on the starched white cotton—and let out a heartfelt breath of relief.

  I looked to Pepper-Man. “Is she safe now?”

  “Yes,” he whispered inside my head.

  “She should thank me, then,” I whispered. “But I don’t think that she will.”

  “No,” Pepper-Man sounded amused. “I dare say she won’t—not at all.”

  * * *

  I was confined to my room after that, of course. Imprisoned within those white walls. The door was not locked, but I was strictly forbidden to leave. I didn’t cry and I wasn’t angry, I just sat on my bed and drew pictures of me and Pepper-Man dancing in the woods or swimming in the brook. Sometimes I stood by the window and watched the feathered faerie who was building a nest in our apple tree. She looked very exotic, all green and red. She had been feeding from an escaped parrot, or so Pepper-Man told me.

  On my second day in captivity, I heard a soft knocking on my door. When I opened it, there was no one there, but a white cardboard box lay on the floor in the hallway. When I opened it up, there were cupcakes inside; soft and glossy with frosting. Chocolate and caramel, both my favorite kinds.

  I heard my father’s heavy steps walking down the stairs. The sharp scent of his cologne lingered.

  VIII

  Some girls take on a sort of crystalline quality as they near puberty; caught in that in-between place between child and adult. It’s the same quality that so entices the Humbert Humberts of this world. We don’t belong to our bodies—our skins. We either float somewhere high above, or are lost in a passion we don’t know; a stranger shown up at our doorstep, seducing us with fiery steps and unknown possibilities. We would like to dance that dance. We are terrified of it. We are little lambs and wicked lions.

  We don’t know what to do with ourselves.

  For me, the disconnection from my family had n
ever been more acute. I hated my mother. I hated the children at school. I hated their inability to understand me. I was growing a sense of self that hadn’t been there before.

  I think I still hated Olivia a little too, even if I had tried to save her. What had she done that I had not, to deserve it all, to be so blessed? We grew up in the same house, in the shadow of the same woods, but only I was haunted. It is hard for a little girl to grasp that fate can be cruel and unpredictable like that. Olivia danced and played in pretty dresses—I bled beneath my Pepper-Man at night.

  Sisters, but not really. She held the sun in her chubby little hands; I was left with the moon—ever changing, sometimes black.

  “Why me?” I asked Pepper-Man sometimes. “Why me? Why not Olivia?”

  He looked up at me with bloody lips. “You were here first, and I have grown used to the taste of you now. You let me in, and here I am, forever yours till the end.”

  They struck me, those words: I let him in. They haunted me for years. How could I possibly have let him in? I couldn’t recall ever having done anything like that. Was it because I was wrong? Was that what allowed him to slip inside?

  “And if I told you to leave,” I asked. “What would you do then?”

  “You would never do that.” Pepper-Man gifted me a sharp-toothed smile. “What would you be then but an angry little girl? It is too late for you now to be like your sister.”

  “Because I let you in?”

  “Because you let me in.”

  “And without you I’d be all alone?”

  “Who else would stand by your side?”

  He was right, of course, my Pepper-Man. Without the secret, I was no one, just an awkward girl whom everyone feared, even my own sister.