Beautiful to the Bone (The Enuis Trilogy #1) (3 page)

CHAPTER THREE

I washed away Nemo’s blood but not his disbelieving eyes. His death was my fault plain and simple. I
was
bad luck. Demons followed wherever I showed my face. I caused misery, just like momma said. Momma was the expert.

In my dreams I saw bloated bodies bobbing in brown water —Nemo, Hully, the old witch
Solveig Trollkjerringa
and other faceless people— distended bellies, hands, feet and cheeks bursting like ripe fruit, gulls and ravens riding them, pecking as the skin popped, split open and peeled back.

But a promise was a promise. I needed to make good on mine to Nemo, even as it gave me the jitters. And at some point I had to make the Johanssons pay. I was sure of that. I bided my time.

My first Experiment & Observation was with my 7
th
grade classmates, comparing the classical standards of beauty. Mrs. Petrick, our English teacher, read us Greek myths because she said many Greek and Roman myths were the basis for how we lived our lives and related to each other. Which gave me the idea. And maybe I’d finally make a few friends.

Photocopying images from Papa Karl’s encyclopedias, I created posters contrasting the Greek Aphrodite —goddess of beauty, born out of sea foam and worshipped as the goddess of the sea— with Venus, the Roman goddess of beauty, the famous painting with her hair blonde and long as her body, born out of a seashell. For the girls, I pulled images of both the Greek (bronze) and Roman (plaster) statues of Adonis. Both naked. Roman Adonis bigger, in
every
way.

At recess I sat quietly on the school’s low stone wall, the poster headline 'Pick the most beautiful, win a prize.’ The other 7
th
graders always avoided me, but with a prize at stake they took their chances. I took mine.

Del Green approached. “Hey look, the beast runs a beauty contest.”

His buddy Smitty jumped in. “Eunis, you mind turning away while I vote, I just ate lunch.”

And Angela, the youngest of the Johanssons, added, “With a nose like yours, can’t you smell what I’m thinkin’?”

Laughter.

I tightened.
Stay on purpose
. “You want a prize or not?”

In a landslide the boys voted for Venus. Del summed it up. “She ain’t that hot.”

“Then why Venus?”

He leered. “Can see more skin.”

Most of the guys avoided Adonis, but those that observed him claimed
they
had the bigger package.

The girls’ vote was closer, bigger beat bronzer, but I had a smaller sample because Irene Kelmer with the wandering eye —the
second
ugliest girl in our class— asked me, real loud, “Did your parents lose a bet with God?”

She got laughs from a couple of girls. That started it.

“Yeah,” said Christian Hames, “but God didn’t give you the hooters he gave Eunis.”

“Shut the hell up.” Mandy G. shoved Christian.

Then Barbie, Christian’s girlfriend, shoved Mandy. “Maybe if you had tits you could put hands on your own guy. Or maybe the other way round.”

That’s when Mary Bakke raised her sweatshirt to flash Mandy, three other girls jumped in slapping, and Irene spit in my face. I’m told I kind of snapped. I can’t remember exactly, only that I must have shoved her. Hard. I wasn’t sorry; she had it coming.

She fell backward over the stone wall and started screaming at me. Next thing I knew, Mr. Price, the junior high Principal, shut me down. “Eunis! What do you think you’re doing?” He grabbed the poster and crushed it closed.

“It’s just research.”

“Inappropriate! Nudity! Lewd behavior!”

I wore jeans and a blue work shirt, buttoned up.

A few kids got detention,
plus
the drawing for the prize —a couple of Momma’s old issues of Star and People magazine— never happened. The kids hated me even more after that.

Mr. Price called Momma to pull me out of school and Momma saw the four confiscated naked bodies. She went ballistic, tossed the poster and ballots into a small bonfire of accumulated garbage long overdue for burning. She threatened to lock me in my room for a month if I ever humiliated her like that again. Sounded pretty much like the status quo to me. I got a busted lip and a week’s suspension from school.

What I learned: Beauty may change with the times, but the trends don’t render the previous beauties ugly. Oh, and showing skin helps. Just not
my
skin.

***

A warm amber light —the only light of the day in my cellar bedroom— was thrown on the tiny wash basin in the corner, and above it
inserted
into the wall, was a mirror on which the late afternoon sun shined, illuminating dark, silver oxidizing stains —caused by moisture and condensation, research I discovered as I continued my rule of reading one encyclopedia page every day. But I was full of books, what about the real world? What about what I read in Momma’s magazines? What about
that
real world? What about people and the strange things they did? Like the “Black Widow,” 23-year-old Pamela Ann Wojas in New Hampshire? Momma read everything about her. “Fascinating,” said Momma. She killed her husband. With her 15-year-old student lover. Why would she do something like that?

Anyway, whether it was the wet Minnesota weather or steam drifting from the tap to the mirror that caused the mirror’s disfiguration, I never found out. But its disfigurement was a
reminder
, it taunted me, and if I could have I would have removed the damn thing. Instead, over it, I taped a scrap of thin muslin tablecloth dotted with yellow marigold I found stashed in the shed.

“I’m up to here with my life.” The stone basement chamber absorbed my words. Safe, but useless. Research couldn’t be accomplished simply crouched in the corner surveying my bunker. “I gotta get out.”

The teenage fantasies I’d sprinkled around the room —the Michael Landon and Andie MacDowell photos, and The Little Mermaid poster— had lost their charm. Out of time. Only the news clipping with its rare photo of Jane Goodall talking in a circle with African teenagers still seemed relevant. She was saving monkeys, sitting and watching, staying out of the limelight.

At dusk, wind leaked into my bedroom, lesions in the windowpane. The light socket swayed. Upstairs Momma huddled into the mossy couch, wary of the wind, of me, what lived inside both the wind and me. Dread. It was contagious.

The foreboding was barely audible at first, the wind choir quietly humming. Restless, like me. The chorus rose and fell, filling my room, wailing and warning. The gypsy wind, well traveled, where did it come from, where was it going? Did it start in Minnesota and end up in some exotic place like Hawaii? Comforting trade winds? Or come for us, Moroccan and dry? An Indian monsoon, still whetted by tidal waves? A South American williwaw, fresh from sinking ships?

I shivered in the corner. “Give me a clue, I gotta get out of here.”

It lasted all night, only the darkness protecting me. And there was my answer: darkness.

***

The auditorium speakers blared a rap/R&B song:

I sense there’s something strange in your head

And you can’t get it out

It’s heartless, aint it

A poisoned starkness, that’s the thread

Are you schemin’ on me

Are you dreamin’ on me

Will I fall for your dark screamin’ charms

The crowd screamed for me to do it again. Swathed in darkness, just the two holes into the light, I raced across the court, rolled, bounced, cartwheeled into a back handspring, and vaulted myself into the air before gliding (like in water) into a split ten feet from the stands. Nuts! They went nuts! Cheered; shrieked; applauded. Coach Westmore smiled and clapped too. Hands on hips watching me. Did he get my note?

“Go, go Beavers!” The crowd on its feet. The cheerleaders at the far end of the court padded toward me. Would the coach let me use his new gadget? Two in the whole school, the perfect research tool. Was The Beaver enough?

I jumped to my feet. More shouts of encouragement. “Beaver, Beaver, Beaver!” Stands full all around: watching, cheering, the team,
me
. All those people
with
me, almost at my command, but they didn’t see me. Ideal. My whole body alive! Free! They loved me. They loved The Beaver, my oversized tail and head, my eight-inch eyes, my giant bucky teeth.
I
raised their energy, controlled their flow with
my
movements. To the right, hands up. Their hands went up. Spread “V” for victory. They mimicked me. Smiles and stomping on the bleachers. They felt great. I felt great. And maybe coach felt great.

It was beautiful what they didn’t identify, what they couldn’t see. If Dr. Childress had seen me, if he’d been inside The Beaver suit with me, he’d have said what nice dimples like crescent moons, but by then he may have been dead.

The second-half horn blasted, basketballs smacked the floor. The teams filtered onto the court. The crowd still buzzing. A championship so near. My time was up. Or just beginning.

Down the ramp, to the boiler room where I usually changed and secretly slipped out of the building. Only I went left into the boy’s locker room, along the aisle of lockers. “Eriksen . . . Perez . . . Johansson!” Friggin’ Johansson, so proud of his long blond curls. Ready to celebrate the championship in front of all those cameras and adoring admirers after the game.

I opened the locker and, on the top shelf, just like I’d scouted, was his shampoo/conditioner. One last look around. On the court above, a ref’s whistle and the crowd booed. “It’s the least I can do,” I whispered. I replaced his old tube with the one I brought, the one filled with Nair, the hair remover. Let him shampoo with that. Let him rub it in good.

When the triumphant team came filing out of the auditorium to meet the town, the press and the cameras, cheers went up and flash bulbs illuminated the night, the team surrounding me, The Beaver. I made the “V” for victory. More flashes. Night became day. There was no Tommy Johansson. His senior glory buried, forever.

Coach Westmore came over to me and gave me a hug. “You’re on,” he said. “I’ll leave you a key tomorrow. The Principal gave thumbs up for all your hard work. But Sunday only. Then we’ll expect the key back. These are some of the first computers in the state. It’s only good for research, so I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Coach, coach,” said the reporter from
The Pioneer
, “can we get a shot of you with The Beaver?” He hugged me again; I was on my way.

***

Even from outside the farmhouse, my bedroom appeared dreary, having been a root cellar for the original owner back in the early 1920’s, then a storm cellar before the one window, single light bulb and small washbasin were added. It sat below ground of the clapboard building, and with such steep steps that Momma rarely came down. When she did it usually meant trouble.

I descended the worn wooden stairs, sweaty. The Beaver’s neoprene smell overrode my own odor and clung to my t-shirt.

“She gives me the creeps,” I remember Carly saying to Momma. Neither Carly nor Lyle wanted to sleep in the same room with me. “She’s bad luck.”

“I wanna be with
her
,” Lyle said clutching Carly’s sleeve. “Carly and me.” She pushed him off. She fought it, fought it hard. She wanted to stay in the room at the top, but she didn’t want to share it.

She and Momma argued over the territory, pie tins thrown, cabinets slammed, fear palpable. Carly in a frenzy, pointing at me: “Creepy spirits,” she said. “Just look at her!” Momma’s face contorted. Wraiths worming in
her
head.

In a fit Carly knocked two candlesticks to the floor. Momma was going to give it to Carly, and I’d get Lyle in the cellar.

But Momma looked at Lyle cowering in the corner then at me, all the while Carly screaming about demons. Anyone could see Momma feared for him, being the littlest and the one with the least gumption. How could he wake up or go to sleep seeing my grotesque face, and how would he stand up to my constant, troubling energy?

So by saying nothing, by letting Carly have her fear-mongering spotlight and Momma her spook superstitions, I got the cellar solo. The smallest room, but at least I had it and my doubts to myself.

“You know what’s so terrific being The Beaver?” Still flushed by my success, I let down my hair and plopped on my small bed. I waited for the springs to stop squeaking and the wind to finish its incantations.

“I’m fluid, like when I sneak to the lake. I can go anywhere. Well, maybe not the boys locker room when they’re changing.” Unfortunately. “I wish I could have seen Tommy Johansson’s face as his hair fell out in his hands.” It wasn’t enough but it would have to do. It would have to do.

Music drifted down through the floorboards from the living room, Johnny Cash, and then Lyle lifted the needle off the record, strumming the chords and singing.
“I don’t like it, but I guess things happen that way.”