When you are not with James, you find yourself spending more and more time in an odd little trinity—you, Keisha, and Maggie, who, you are coming to find out, is one of the funniest people you have ever met.
Maggie’s parents are allowing her to do spring semester through a homeschool program, with the agreement that they’ll discuss over the summer whether she’ll return to Garfield for senior year. Other than working at her aunt’s nursery a few days a week, Maggie is a total homebody. She reads a lot, and she’s started getting into manga. She says her parents think it’s a good idea for her to just unwind and remember what sort of stuff she actually likes.
“It’s weird,” Maggie says. “I’ve been in school since I was four, and before that I was in day care, since I was a baby. Other than weekends and holidays, or when I was sick, I can’t remember a time when I had a day on my own schedule, you know? Just, wake up when I wake up, no alarm or anything, and eat when I’m actually hungry instead of when it’s time to eat? It’s super luxurious, and I love it.”
Maggie likes to lip-synch and she thinks bowling is way better with bumpers and she is obsessed with astrology and she says people who dip everything in ranch dressing are “monsters.” She pulls her hair up into a bun and lets it down at least three times in an afternoon and she likes yoga and she thinks queefing is “hilarious.”
She comes over to hang out at your house, walking over two miles from her place to get there. Sometimes when you get home from school, you find her in the kitchen with Mémé, munching on cookies and the two of them laughing together over some video Maggie has pulled up on her phone.
This, more than anything, is what surprises you. The friendship between Mémé and Maggie. You’ve barely ever seen Mémé with someone else—in a way, Mémé has always been yours alone.
Maggie starts volunteering with Mémé at the library on Wednesdays, and she takes home some of Mémé’s sourdough starter to try making bread of her own. She knows where you keep your tea strainers and the little teaspoons Mémé likes to use to stir in cream. Mémé even tells Maggie about her alter ego, the pen name she uses as a romance novelist. “A novelist’s job,” you hear her telling Maggie one afternoon, “is to be a careful student of human nature. Of power. Of attraction and repulsion. The writer’s job is to pay attention. And to not shy away from the best and the worst. To reveal truth, in lies.”
You could be jealous. You could resent this sharing of Mémé—after all, it’s not like you have relatives to spare—but you don’t. She has new stories to share with you, funny little things about what Maggie said or the new Ethiopian coffee place they tried together after their shift at the library. But this is only part of it. It’s as if the more Mémé expands into her friendship with Maggie, the more Mémé there is for you.
People aren’t pastries, divisible only into quantifiable sections. Maybe they are more like sourdough—indefinitely full of potential, able to share again and again, only to rise and grow and fill each space.
One day after school, you find Maggie and Mémé sitting on the floor of the front room, legs crossed, eyes closed, meditating. When you come through the door, Maggie’s eyes snap open and she grins. “I’m so glad you’re home,” she says, untwisting her legs and standing. “Meditating is boring as shit.”
Keisha comes over a lot, too, and she keeps up a pretty steady stream of questions when it’s just you and her, wanting to know more and more about everything—about what your strength feels like when it comes with your period, and how fast do you think you can run, and how did you know how to fight a wolf, anyway? They’re questions you don’t have satisfying answers for. But when Maggie is there, the three of you could be any three friends hanging out together, laughing and making jokes about each other and having fun.
And when it’s the four of you—when Keisha, Maggie, and Mémé fill all the other seats at the round kitchen table, when dinner is before you and candles are lit, when their faces glow in the quivering light, you feel this electric hum of energy circling the table, you feel yourself bigger and brighter in their reflections of you.
“We’re like a coven,” Maggie says one night.
“I’m the crone,” says Mémé.
“No,” says Maggie. “Don’t say that.”
“It’s not a bad word,” Keisha says. “A crone is an elder woman. She’s the keeper of wisdom. Crones used to be revered and respected above everyone else. But when the church grew powerful during the Inquisition, they started to distrust the old women. Crones were tortured and killed, the stories people told about them changed. Instead of being powerfully wise, old women in stories became powerfully evil.”
“Like wicked witches,” Maggie says.
“Exactly.”
“Well,” Maggie says to Mémé, “you’re not wicked. But you are a witch. We all are.”
You can tell this pleases Mémé, who offers her left hand to Maggie, and her right hand to you. Across from her, Keisha links hands with you and Maggie, too, and the four of you form a circle.
“Our coven,” Mémé says. And then, “I see you here, my sweet girls, and I know that you are more together than you are apart. Bisou, you’re the hands. Keisha is the head. And Maggie, the heart.” She says, to you, “Can you forgive me, dearest one? For keeping you to myself for so long?”
Tears prick your eyes as you nod, and the four of you squeeze hands, an electric pulse that circles around and around again. It’s in your kitchen, and with these women, that you have something you didn’t know was possible, something you didn’t know you needed.
That is how it goes, with more evenings spent together than apart, as the days grow longer, stretching toward spring.
III
The first time James kissed me
he asked me first
if he could
and I said yes
The last time
you kissed me
I don’t remember
I was so young when he took you
I used to pretend
That I didn’t remember anything
I used to pretend that the past
Was in the past
But each month
The moon grows
And I grow with it
And I’m making a promise
I’m making you a promise
I can kick
And scream
And bleed
And stay right where I fucking am.
Everything cycles. The moon; your own rhythm; the seasons. Luck, too.
Since the day that Maggie found the picture in her locker and decided to leave school, it seemed her luck had improved. There have been no more “gifts,” and no more texts, either, from Graham, who, as Keisha pointed out and you and Maggie both agreed, was probably the owner of the dick in the picture.
And there have been no more letters to the editor, either, which makes Keisha think that probably Graham was the anonymous writer of these, too. Maybe her response shook him, or shut him up. You have gone online to research “incel,” and Keisha wasn’t wrong about it being the stuff of nightmares. Page after page of entitled, whiny diatribes written by men—mostly young, mostly white—who call themselves “involuntary celibates,” “incels” for short. Basically, guys who can’t get laid and are really, really angry about it. Guys who feel entitled to sex. Young men who feel cheated and wronged by their sexless lives and the girls who aren’t interested in them, and who won’t shut up about it. But the one in your school has, it seems. For the moment.
It’s March when Maggie’s good luck ends. Turning the corner to your street, hood up against the frigid air, you find her sitting on the porch. Her eyes are red and swollen, and she clutches an envelope in her mittened hands.
It is cold, and you’ve walked as swiftly as you could from the bus stop. Just past four in the afternoon, the sky, heavy and gray, is turning. She shivers, sitting there on your porch, and when she sees you coming up the path and stands, it is as if her bones are stiff with c
old.
“Hey,” you say, “what’s wrong?”
“There was something in my mailbox,” she says miserably.
This is the same Maggie who, just days ago, laughed endlessly at a video of an orangutan kissing and cuddling a kitten. She made you watch it seven times. Today, Maggie looks as though she has never laughed, and like she will never laugh again.
“Do you think it’s from Graham?”
Maggie shrugs, a halfhearted, empty shrug, as if it takes too much energy even to lift and drop her shoulders.
“Come inside.”
She waits as you twist the key in the lock, she follows you into the house. You feel the weight of her behind you, just standing there, as you squat to loosen your boots, then kick them off.
You hate Graham. That’s all you can think, all you can feel. How much you hate him, even before you see what he’s sent.
Turning, you hold your hand out for Maggie to give you the envelope. It’s large, light brown with a little brass clasp. There’s no stamp, or address; just her name, Maggie Williams, written in a blockish script.
“This was mailed to you?” you ask, handing it back to her.
“It was in my mailbox,” Maggie says. “Hand delivered, I guess.”
Imagining Graham pulling up to Maggie’s mailbox and slipping the envelope inside feels like an extra level of violation.
Maggie follows you into the kitchen. She’s still shivering, so you set the envelope on the table and start the kettle. Maggie watches as you spoon loose tea into the pot and pull cups from the cabinet. When the kettle screams, Maggie pulls her mittens from her hands and brings it to the table. She pours a stream of steaming water into the pot over the fragrant tea leaves. You clamp down the lid, she returns the kettle to the stove, and you slip a trivet beneath the pot. She and you move so smoothly in the kitchen, no words needed, a pas de deux, and you can feel her relaxing—not all the way, but it’s a start, as you go through the familiar motions together.
Maggie brings the sugar bowl from the counter, then slips into her regular seat at the table. Thunder growls, deep and menacing. You pour tea, amber and steaming.
Sometimes it takes Maggie a while before she’s ready to talk. You know this. After a few sips of tea, she pushes the envelope across to you.
With something like dread, you fold up the arms of the envelope’s brass clasp and pull open the flap. There’s a big, folded-up piece of paper inside, and as you pull it out you see it’s riddled with rough little holes. Unfolded, it’s a green-shaded woman dressed in shorts and a tank, pointing a handgun, and marked all over with numbers: an “8” on her forehead; a “7” on each of her breasts; a “10” on her stomach; a “6” on each hip. Her lips are tilted up in a smile. She is shattered by bullet holes. Scrawled across the top is one word: MAGGIE.
You trace your fingers across the front of the target. From this side, the edges of the holes are smooth; underneath, on the plain-white backside, they petal out, rough and jagged.
“We’re calling Keisha,” you decide, and you don’t wait for Maggie to agree before you find your phone.
Keisha doesn’t answer, but she texts right back. Studying. Call later?
You respond, No. Come over now.
A moment passes, no more, before she answers, Okay.
It is as if the downpour brings a flood of people: first Keisha joins you and Maggie. She listens as Maggie explains about the envelope, and you notice that she doesn’t touch it—your prints, and Maggie’s, too, are all over it, probably fucking up any prints Graham might have left—and she asks Maggie, “Do you still have that photo?”
Maggie shakes her head. “I threw it away that first day. I didn’t want it in my house.”
Keisha sighs, but she doesn’t say anything else about it, just, “Maggie, I think we need to tell the police about this.”
“About what?” It’s Mémé, coming through the garage door into the kitchen, arms full of groceries.
“Hey, Sybil,” Maggie says, and you all move to help Mémé with the bags.
“Maggie’s stalker is rearing his head again,” you tell Mémé. Maggie has told Mémé in general terms why she left school—the way the other students treated her, and that a boy was sort of tormenting her. She hasn’t gone into specifics beyond this, probably seeing her relationship with Mémé as separate from all of that. But now, as Mémé stares down at the shooting target, unblinking, Maggie tells her story backward—the target, and before that, the picture, and before that, the condom, and all through, texts and calls from Graham, asking for a date, pushing for a date, angrily demanding a date.
“It was stupid of me not to save the photo,” Maggie says, her fingers tracing the table’s wood grain. “I just—I didn’t want it in my house.”
“Do your parents know about all this?” Mémé asks.
“I told them some of it,” Maggie says, “a while ago. They knew I wasn’t happy—that’s why they let me do this semester as homeschool, because of all the gossip, because I was so stressed all the time. But I didn’t tell them the specifics. I didn’t want them to worry,” she says. “And also—because it was just so gross. And I felt—I don’t know, I guess I felt ashamed.” And she’s crying, and Mémé takes her in her arms, and you watch, helpless, as this person you have grown to love suffers, and there is nothing you can do.
When Maggie has calmed, Mémé says, “Maggie, we need to call your parents. You need to let them in. Let’s not keep the secrets of bad men. What do you say?”
And Maggie nods, and pulls out her phone.
As you all wait for Maggie’s parents, you put together a meal—reheated squash soup, arugula salad, fresh bread. By the time they arrive, it is full dark, and the rain has nearly stopped. You hear the doorbell and watch from the hallway as Maggie answers it.
Their names are Renée and Richard. They are dressed in suits, and they each have a straight crease, as if from worry, between their eyes. His hairline is receding; her hair is worn flattened against her head and pulled straight back into a low bun. When they see the shooting target on the kitchen table, Richard’s eyes fill with tears, and Renée’s hands tighten to fists.
Mémé insists everyone eats, and everyone insists they are not hungry, but still Mémé serves up bowls of soup and passes around the bread and salad, and everyone but Renée has something. Renée cannot stop pacing, her high-heeled shoes tapping an angry rhythm into the floor.
“Renée, honey, please,” Richard says, but she ignores him.
They are divided about whether or not to call the police. Richard wants to; Renée is not so sure. “They’ll find a way to say it’s Maggie’s fault. Maggie doesn’t need that kind of help.”
“There’s one officer I know,” Mémé offers. “Not well, but well enough that I think we can at least count on him to listen. And I have his direct line.”
At last, Renée nods. Mémé pulls a slip of paper from the drawer by the fridge, and she dials the phone hanging on the wall. You can see from where you sit that the paper has his first name—Alan—printed neatly in block letters—above the number.
He answers on the first ring. You can’t hear his side of the conversation, but you hear the up and down of his voice—the warm, surprised tone with which he answers her call; the pivoting into receptive listening when she explains why she is calling; an abrupt goodbye, and then Mémé replaces the receiver on its hook.
“He’s coming right over,” Mémé says, and not twenty minutes pass before there is a knock on the door, and Officer Scott comes into the kitchen followed by a younger, female officer, the one from that day in the woods. Her badge reads VASQUEZ.
And everyone is gentle, and kind, and also angry with the heat of a thousand fires. Officer Scott takes the target as evidence, and Officer Vasquez writes down everything Maggie shares—it spills now like a fountain from her on this retelling, the envelope in her mailbox, the picture in her locker, the condom—and as she speaks, she chokes, and cries, and Officer Vasque
z waits while Maggie’s parents embrace her, their faces full of sorrow and rage in equal measure. Maggie tells them too about the texts she’s been getting from Graham, and Keisha pulls up digital copies of the letters to the editor the school paper has printed, points out to the officers that the first letters of the words in the signatures spell incel.
“We take this sort of thing very seriously,” Officer Vasquez tells Maggie and her parents.
“We’re sorry this happened to you,” Officer Scott says. “We promise we’ll be on top of this.”
Finally, they take their notes and the target, and they ask Maggie and her parents to come to the police station the next day to fill out a report.
Mémé walks the officers to the door; Officer Vasquez goes out first, but the other one—the cop with the crush—hangs back. He says something to Mémé. You strain to hear him, but the kitchen is still full, the atmosphere more relaxed now, with Maggie and her parents laughing at something Keisha has said.
It looks serious, though, whatever Officer Scott is telling Mémé, maybe something about Maggie and what’s going on with her . . . or maybe not. Maybe they are talking about something else.
And then, they leave. First the officers, then Maggie and her parents, and then Keisha. After you’ve shut the door behind Keisha, you turn to Mémé. “That policeman,” you begin.
“Mm-hmm,” she says, and she pushes her thumb against her forehead, in the place Maggie has called “the third eye.”
“What did he say to you before he left?”
“Oh, nothing, dearest, nothing. He just wanted to thank me for convincing Maggie to reach out. That’s all.”
Her hand returns to her side. She looks tired in a way you are not used to seeing. It unsettles you. Then she smiles, but she is far away. Leaning in, Mémé kisses you good night. You return her kisses, first on one cheek, and then the other.
Red Hood Page 19