We couldn’t imagine and then we couldn’t believe, even when we saw what was happening to the two great beaches, the pretty canals, and all those cool cafés along the river. The first signs were innocuous – anglers grumbling they couldn’t catch their limit, lifeguards competing for fewer jobs, and restless, sedentary children, the cafés on the waterfront complaining of the smell. But aside from a few old radicals who crawled out from under their rocks for the express purpose of babbling at us about these omens, no one gave these signs a second thought. And in fact, the warnings spouted by those archaic resisters from the underground actually contributed to our ignoring of the signs. We’d never liked listening to their puritan tales about the bad old days, the awful prophecies about the days to come. We didn’t like their cheaply xeroxed flyers and their tacky tracts and the uncool designs of their posters. And we positively hated the holier-than-thou way they pointed at us, the arrogant show they made of their mutilations. They rambled on about a past that made no sense to us and accused us of not remembering our heritage. We dismissed their palsied waving of their scarred and gnarled hands. We turned up our dance tunes to drown out their ragings on about the sundering, the yellow sky, the bed of dust. But when they started moaning about babies stealing from mothers’ mouths, and mothers selling babies for a cup, and sisters denying and lovers betraying and hacking and leaving and burying, that was the kind of talk we wouldn’t tolerate. We gave them a choice: either Get out or Get out. And besides, we sneered, Wasn’t it about time they heeded their own warnings? Shouldn’t they make their great escape while they still could?
We let them pack while we scrambled around for the choicest seats from which to see them leave. They walked a desolate, slow migration, along the river’s edge. They cried out to us to stop our fiddling and go with them. But we sat in the waterfront cafés, beneath the white-and-green Cinzano umbrellas that had always made us feel like movie stars, and sipped our drinks (which, to be honest, we had noticed were starting to get a bit skimpy). We fanned ourselves with copies of the tacky tracts they’d given us but that we had not read. They looked so dowdy clunking along in their sensible old maid shoes, their mannish overalls and ratty sweat-shirts. Their faces were black with sunscreen and their haircuts were unbelievably passé; they never changed, they didn’t keep up with the fashions. They stooped beneath their overloaded packs, their tin cups rattling like lepers’ bells. We shouted Good Riddance and laughed Good Luck. And the one or two of us foolish enough to wave goodbye discovered, when she went to pick up her drink again, that one of her smiling neighbors had helped herself to it.
When the rationing began, each of us expected someone else to obey the measures. Everyone pretended to abide – we still respected appearances enough – but no one did. Everyone expected her more susceptible, gullible neighbors to make the sacrifice. Everyone assumed this odd aberration was a passing thing, would soon reverse, and we’d enjoy again the luxuries we thought were ours by right. We’d never had to do with less, we certainly didn’t plan to start to now. So it was only after the fountains stopped, and after the grass turned brown, and only after the taps were dry, and when the bed was empty, that we saw our city might not be forever as it was.
Then suddenly we were desperate, and suddenly we discovered that our talk of generosity, of everybody’s welcome right to everybody’s good, was just the thoughtless, idle chatter of spoiled girls. We forgot the pretty promises that we’d all made when we’d all been so easily in love. We’d only pledged all our undying because we thought we’d never die. But then the soft, wet, open others’ mouths which once had rendered us so blissfully, so breathlessly incapable of saying anything but Yes seemed to become voracious, deeper than a mine, and in ruthless competition for the poor rare drops we all so sorely needed.
We started lying about our needs, exaggerating our handicaps and pretending we had nothing we could spare. We hid what we had from our neighbors, then from our mothers and sisters, and finally from our precious, adorable babies. What we were one time smug enough to call our “universal, new and revolutionary love,” we learned was only as sure – no – less – than our inconstant river.
Nobody wanted to see it go. We didn’t want to admit what we were losing. Everyone stopped going out. Everybody stayed inside and huddled around her puny hoard. Though we’d never had a police force before, a guard was established to enforce the rationing. But these new civil servants only used their jobs to steal for themselves. Some of us tied ourselves to our canteens or tubs or bags so they couldn’t carry off our tiny savings. But it wasn’t long before even these most desperate measures proved useless against our former loved ones. They insisted we part with what we’d saved and they persuaded us. How they persuaded was: with hack saws and with cleavers and with knives. They brought their shovels and dug at us. Most of us were so afraid and tired and weak, and so horrified at what we had become, that we did not resist. The only ones who weren’t completely shamed into inaction were the gangs.
The gangs of girls marched into where we lived like they were welcome. (And, to be fair, they had been once …) They knew from how they’d known us then where we kept what was dear to us. They knew where we hid our special secrets. But the sweet things we’d once said to them now mattered less than nothing. The terrible girls took anything that might contain a drop. We could hear them persuading, “Oh darling, please, just once, I’ll never ask you again, I’ll never – just a drop. Don’t you remember the things you said, don’t you remember what you did?” And then we’d hear this poor old frightened dame break down, in sentiment and terror and in the stupid, stupid hope that if she would cooperate, the terrible girls might spare her tits: They didn’t.
At any time, at night or in the middle of the afternoon – they had no shame, they didn’t even close the door – we could hear them going at it. We’d hear them beating and tearing at some poor wretch’s scant reserve. And sometimes too, because we also had no shame, we’d peek through the blinds of our houses and watch them going at it. We’d watch them drag our neighbor into the street, or watch them have her in her private quarters. We’d continue watching until she had been had to see what they cast off from her – a sleeve, a chunk, a thing sucked dry.
Sometimes some poor parched desperate maid who couldn’t stand it any longer would leave her house to see if she could buy some. I’d hear her container bang against her leg as she hobbled down the street. But before she got too far from where she lived, they’d set upon her. I’d see what she carried snatched from her, and then her hands. I’d hear the slapping and tearing and teeth. The girls fought over what they stole – we’d never known we had such teeth and claws! – and they consumed, insatiably, all they could cram into their guts. They sold dregs for outrageous sums. A cup of it would buy a child. Then less—a spoonful, thimble, drop.
There was no defense against them, no defense against ourselves. We sat at home alone behind closed doors and hoped and prayed the terrible girls wouldn’t find us.
I was among the last. Not because I was strong or brave, or because I had convictions. But because I was very good at waiting. And also because, unlike so many of my fellows, I didn’t have that great pride of place that kept one on the right side of the river.
I knew I couldn’t get far with what I had and I knew I couldn’t go fast, my body was wrecked. But one night I snuck away from where we’d lived. I slid the silk sheets off my skin and tiptoed through the gallery and down the stairs. I weighed so little my feet were like air. I slipped out the front door and snuck along the street. I hid in openings and alleyways and I kept to the dark. I slunk past the place where the fountain had sprayed and crossed to the abandoned ghetto on the other side.
In a shabby hut at the end of a far-off alley, I hid. I closed the door behind me tight. Inside the hut was an obsolete old printer and stacks of yellowed paper. In a corner was a tattered mat. I lay on the mat to wait.
I woke when I heard them clattering down the alley. I got off the mat
and went to the door. Through a crack in the door I saw them. The gang was small and the girls in it were scrawny, not as powerful as they had been once. Some of them swung empty sleeves and some of them were limping.
Though there wasn’t much of me, the girls had come to this old part of town because they were desperate.
I sat as quiet as I could behind the door. I knew I couldn’t hide forever but there was no place else to go. My only hope was that I might outlast them.
I sat as quiet as I could inside. I didn’t move. But there was the sound of my breath; I held my breath. But there was the beating of my blood; and I could not hold that.
That’s how they found me.
There was a knocking at the door.
I didn’t answer but they knew I was there.
Hello, one of them said, It’s me.
The others giggled.
I’ve brought you something.
She hit the door with something. They put their hands against the door and felt me inside. I couldn’t hold them out. They busted in.
They pinned me down with their hands and knees. They trampled me.
When they’d torn me apart they let what was left of me fall. I curled up, pulling my knees to my chest as if I could contain what there still was of me.
They fought over it. They snatched it from each others’ hands. Some of them put their mouths on it and others yanked it away. I heard it slip between their hands. They became so intoxicated with the fight that after a while they neglected what they were fighting over. When one of them dropped it, I pushed it beneath the mat. They were so busy making their ludicrous threats: Would you like to step outside to settle this? They didn’t notice. I was relieved when they went outside.
I didn’t yell at them. I didn’t call them traitors or stupid bitches because I knew they hadn’t enough to keep knocking each other around the way they were. I was happy to let them do what they did to each other. I was happy to hear the soggy sound of them beating and kicking and trampling the fucking shit out of one another.
It was a long time before I could sit up. I sat up carefully, trying to hold what remained of me together. I looked out the hole where the door had been. There were stains on the ground where they’d fallen. But the terrible girls were gone.
Inside the place I’d hid was wrecked. I crawled to the corner. I lifted the edge of the mat. Beneath it, like the wallflower ignored at the fancy ball – Oh what the terrible girls had left.
I swore, I vowed, and I have always kept each vow I’ve ever made, that if I ever laid eyes on one of the terrible girls again, I’d do the same true unforgivable thing to her. This was the greatest desire, the greatest desire that I have ever known. I longed to skewer those little rat’s-assed bitches’ asses up. I longed to string up the severed parts of them and watch them rot. But I knew if I achieved this true desire of my heart, I wouldn’t be able to live with what I’d done.
So I had to get away. I had to get away from where I might be able to do what I wanted to them. I tried to pick up what they’d hacked from me but I was weak and it was very heavy. I couldn’t carry it. And so I left it.
I tried to hide it, to protect it. I wrapped it around and tied it tight and put it where, when they came back, and I knew they would, they hadn’t gone far, they hadn’t gone more than a few hours walk from the city, I put it where I prayed they wouldn’t find it. I dropped it down. I covered it. I left no sign. I left it in the dark. I left the city.
We came back to get what you left, she said.
There’s nothing here. I didn’t know if I lied.
There is. You left it here. You buried it. Tell me you buried it.
But I couldn’t tell her what I did.
Take this off, she said.
I loosened the tie of the pack. She lifted it off my shoulders. I felt the sudden coolness of air on the sweat of my shirt. She took the pack off and set it on the ground.
We have to clear this junk away.
We stood in the ruins of where I had lived. Nothing was left whole. There were piles of brick and rubble. There were rags and charred black bits. I felt as weak as when I’d left.
She insisted, We have to clear it away.
We dragged the wreckage aside. When the ground was clear she listened. I heard nothing. She slowly walked to a certain place. She squatted down. Her hands began to make slow circles in the air above the ground. I stood behind her and watched her hands. She kept the circle of movement constant then lay her hands on the ground.
Here.
She started digging. I heard her fingers scrape the surface then the dry dirt crumble. The back of her neck was tight. Her arms were tense. She opened the earth and reached down in and lifted earth out. The dirt she pulled up was pale, then further down it got dark where it was moist. She tossed a bit of rope in the pile of dirt. Then her hands got something. She tried to pull it but it wouldn’t move but she kept pulling. She kept her hands around the thing that would not move and made it move.
I flinched away. From the corner of my eye I saw her digging an opening like a trench around what she’d discovered. Then she was tugging.
Help me.
I didn’t.
It’s yours, she said.
She was kneeling on the ground. Her head was lowered. I didn’t look at what she held but I saw her trembling arms. She was trying not to drop what she uncovered.
Why do you want it? I asked her.
Her back dropped. She struggled to hold it. It was hard for her to speak.
I wanted you to love me.
She was trying to lift it but she couldn’t.
Help me.
Look at it, I said, though I didn’t look. It’s been down below so long. It’s changed. It won’t be what it was again.
I know, she said, Help me.
I thought she didn’t understand me.
I can’t love like that again, I said, I can’t love you like that.
She held it still. I know that now, she said. But we came here to get it. It’s yours. And I want how you can.
She tried to pull it up but she could not alone.
Help me.
I didn’t know how but I wanted to do what she wanted. I kneeled beside her on the ground. I didn’t look at it but I put my hand under hers and helped her move it. It was hard to lift. But our hands together removed it from its burial place.
We lay it on the ground.
I didn’t look at it but I saw on the ground around it patches like leather that flaked off.
Take off your clothes.
I pulled them off. My back and stomach were wet with sweat.
Lie down.
I lay my clothes on the ground then I lay down. I felt chunks of earth crumble beneath me.
Close your eyes.
When I closed my eyes it was as dark as underneath the ground. I heard a familiar scraping sound, but it wasn’t that, it was her scraping away what remained of the bag. I could hear her hands, I could almost see them pulling apart the last of the skin of the bag.
My skin was cold. The air was dry but I was sweating; her hands would slip.
I heard the moving of her hands, the mystery of her patient preparations.
She said, Believe this telling of the tongue:
There is a sundering of blood
There is the carrying of loss.
There is the burial in earth.
There is the waiting in the dark.
There is the laying on of hands.
There is the opening of flesh.
There is the light within the body.
There is the resurrected heart.
And though my eyes were closed and though it was the starless night, I sensed a light was over me, right where she was, but in that light was a loss of light, a shadow, over me. Then I felt it lowering, then something cold against my skin. I felt it slipping on my skin and weighing down, then I felt an edge of something sharp, again, against where what had been hacked out of me was hacked.
Ther
e was something against my body, there was an opening, a blaze, there was the heart.
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The Terrible Girls Page 13