The Blue Girl (2 page)

Take her home
, someone said—Libby, I think it was—even though we did not then know where she lived. Magda and Libby fled in their minivans, with their daughters strapped in the passenger seats next to them, while Audrey dragged the blue girl into the back of our station wagon and sat holding her hand. Even then I wanted to caution Audrey not to clasp her hand too tightly, since we did not know where this blueness originated. I feared infection, the girl's odd blue skin leaking into my daughter's flesh, soaking it with—poison? I looked back at them in the rearview mirror and tried to speak, but Audrey said under her breath,
Don't, just don't
, and I stayed quiet the entire drive, not sure where I was going or how I might get us back. I heard Audrey's whispers and the slush of the girl's breath, and I turned when Audrey told me to, passing the school and the liquor stores and the traffic lights that remained green even though I wished that they would turn red and make us stop. If we could just remain still for a minute, I thought, I could turn in my seat and see my daughter's face as it had been when she was nine, before she began to hate me, before this
blue girl had come to town and almost drowned before our eyes.

Somehow Audrey knew where she lived. For a long time my friends and I had wondered where the girl had come from, where she and her family—if there was a family—had taken up residence. Some of us in the town had tried to find her at night at one time or another, but in the darkness she had always eluded us. We always seemed to lose her at the town limits, and each time, breathing anxiously in our cars, we decided to go home. But obviously Audrey had been successful, I realized, as we turned down a wooded road I'd never driven down in all the years we had lived there. The trees leaned in as if to encompass us, and when I looked up through the sunroof, I couldn't see the sun through the heavy branches, no matter how hard I strained.

When we reached the end of the road, I stopped and turned off the ignition, but then for some reason I started the car again, at the sound of her wheezing. Audrey didn't seem to notice. She opened the back door, took the girl's hand, and walked her up a gravel road that led to a house I could make out only in shadows.

Wait for me here
, Audrey said, and I nodded slipping on my sunglasses. She did not look back at me as she drew the girl close to her side, her arm about the bony waist,
and lumbered toward a grove of trees in the distance. I saw Audrey limping from the feel of gravel stabbing at the bottoms of her bare feet, and I leaned out the window, wanting to call to her to take her shoes, to tell her that the soles of her feet would tear, but I knew she would not listen, and so I did not speak.

I sat in the car and stared into the space where the trees met and watched my daughter move beyond the trees, the white stripes of her bathing suit disappearing. I closed my eyes and listened to the whir of the motor, trying to block the memory of the gurgle of breath that had come from the girl's mouth. I could still hear that breath, even as I held my hands over my ears to block out the sound.

I knew I should not have let my daughter go into that house alone, that I should have been there beside her as she presented the girl to whomever was there to claim her. It should have been me that the girl huddled against, not my fifteen-year-old daughter who knew so little of the world and yet had done what I'd been unable to do.

We no longer speak of the day the blue girl almost drowned. Now that the children have gone back to school, Magda and Libby and I drive out to the lake on Tuesday nights, after the children have gone to sleep, after our husbands have come home and eaten the dinners we have so adequately
prepared. Nothing seems out of place, we make sure of that. Magda bakes chicken cordon bleu, Libby steams rice with vegetables, and I roll meatballs and simmer the sauce that Buck loves to let drip from his mouth. Some nights Audrey takes her dinner to her room and watches television in the dark, because we can no longer turn on the television in the living room. In July, when the lake still swarmed with summer people, my husband, Colin, decided the television was about to explode and sat crouched in front of it for three weeks. There had been a flash one night from the screen, a signal that scrambled, and Colin screamed that we were all in danger. Even when we turned the television off, he could not be convinced. When he could not get up from his crash position, I called the ambulance, and Buck and Audrey watched their father get taken away. Now he does little but play games of imaginary basketball. He throws a Nerf ball that once belonged to Buck at a hoop screwed to the top of the door frame. We leave the television off, as we promised him we'd do.

Colin no longer speaks to any of us. I know I should talk to Audrey about her father's endless games of imaginary basketball, about her friends, about the blue girl, about the troubles I know she is carrying, but I also know better than to press her. And so, on Tuesday nights I wrap the moon pies in aluminum foil and tell myself that I will be able to
save my daughter—that I will be able to save all of us—once all the secrets have been eaten, digested, and somehow done away with.

On the nights that we go to visit the blue girl, we leave our cars parked on the side of the road and walk through the dark woods without flashlights. We have found that we prefer the darkness. On this night, Magda pulls up ahead of me and turns her headlights off, while I open my car door slowly, listening to the crinkling of the aluminum foil in my hands. Magda wraps hers in a linen napkin that she leaves at the foot of the girl's bed. I hear Magda's footsteps coming toward me and meet her at the edge of the road, where we wait for Libby, who is always the last to arrive.

The smell of the marshmallow cream is overpowering. I kiss Magda's cheek in the dark and ask her if she smells it, too.

Yes
, she says.
This time I used a whole can
.

I sigh and lean against her. We never speak of the secrets, only the moon pies we have made, and even then, we are careful not to reveal too much. I talk to no one about Colin or the television, the hospital ward and medication, the games he now plays in the living room. We do not talk about Magda's son Greg and Libby's Rebecca, who have begun to sneak away in the night and touch each
other in the spaces we have only recently forgotten. And of course we do not talk about Ethan, Libby's son who speaks in a strange voice and is bussed to a school outside of town. Magda's secret tonight seems to be an important one, a large one. Even in the dark I can tell that Magda has been crying.

Libby arrives before we can say anything more, and I offer Magda the handkerchief from my purse and hold it out to her. She takes it and wipes her eyes as we listen to Libby's footsteps in the grass. We take each other's arms and head up the gravel road to the house. A rock embeds itself in my shoe, and I feel it moving along my bare toes, pressing in between and rubbing, but I close my eyes against the pain and continue to walk. When we are almost at the house, Libby stops and sniffs. I am thinking of her son, of Ethan, who must smell the pies and want them. I wonder how she keeps him away.

Oh my God
, she says,
how much cream did you two use?

I feel the rock dislodge itself as I shake my foot.

Magda sighs and says,
Don't even ask
.

Libby sneezes, as the smell of the filling covers us in a cloud. All at once we begin to laugh, covering our mouths to muffle the sound. I feel the laughter hiccup in my chest and then explode. It has been so long since I last laughed, I'm afraid I won't be able to stop.

When we finally quiet ourselves again, we walk, the gravel crunching under our feet. The air is cool now that summer is gone, and I wish that I'd brought a sweater to drape around my arms and shoulders, something to protect me from the chill I always feel when we approach the door.

It is Libby who knocks. We do not know how this was decided, but that first time we visited with moon pies in our tote bags, Libby was the one who had nerve enough to knock. It makes sense to me that she would be the one, that she would have the courage to summon, since she not only has the prettiest girl in town, the girl that all the locals want to touch, but also the son who rocks back-and-forth, who flings himself down on the floor, who is still so very much a child. She knocks softly, so softly it is almost impossible to hear it. Before any of us can think about knocking again, the door opens, and we step inside.

The house is dark, as always, and the old woman stands in her stocking feet on the threadbare rug. She looks up at us through her thick glasses and rubs her hands together, then nods to each of us, one at a time, and allows us in. She stands looking at us for a long time and then signals Magda toward the bedroom, leading her in while Libby and I stifle coughs from the stench of vanilla she has left in her wake.

Two chairs await us in the sitting room near the door that we came in, but we do not sit, even though the old woman pats a cushion. We shake our heads and refuse with tight smiles. The old woman shrugs, disappearing into a dark hallway that none of us has ever ventured down.

Magda is gone a long time. At first we hear only the creaking of the old floorboards in the house. There are no pictures on the walls, no cheerful flowers in vases, just the two chairs and the rug we stand on. I look around at the walls, and when I cannot look around anymore, I glance at my watch, but it is too dark to read the numbers. Libby nudges me toward the door to the girl's room. We step closer and wait.

It is then that we hear the blue girl's breath. It sounds like the water shooting up on the beach sand that day, the water that Audrey pounded out of her lungs. The sloshing grows louder, a sucking of breath and then nothing. A long choking gasp hangs in the air.

I hold one of the moon pies in my hand and look frantically at Libby, who drops her moon pie on the floor and runs toward the door.

No, no
, I whisper.
Don't go in there, not yet
, but Libby is almost at the door, and I have to grab her by the arm to stop her.

She's choking
, she says, and I tell her Magda will handle it, trying to move her back with me to the doorway, back toward the chairs and the rug and the way out.

As I back away from the door, I feel something squish under my left foot. I lean down in the darkness and pick it up, feeling the creamy filling in my hand, feeling Libby's secrets seeping out.

Don't touch it!
she says, but it is too late. The marshmallow cream sticks in my fingers. Libby wipes it away with a ball of tissues.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry
, I whisper.

She takes her fingers and pokes the moon pie back together, wrapping it back up in the napkin and holding it close to her breast.

When Magda comes out of the door, she says nothing. The choking has stopped, but the smell of vanilla fills the room. Magda heads out the door before we can say anything, and we sense the girl appear in the opposite doorway in her nightgown. We turn and see a smile broaden across her face. She sighs and points toward me, her finger glowing in the darkness, her whole face shining as if emitting its own light. I look back at Libby one last time as I feel her fingers close around mine, the filling squishing between our hands. The girl climbs into the bed and opens her mouth wide, wider than I have ever seen any
mouth open. Her lips and tongue are blue, and she smiles as I begin to feed her, slowly at first and then faster as she opens her mouth so wide that her jaw clicks.

She swallows hungrily, and when the last crumb is gone, she motions toward my fingers. I shake my head and move to get up, but she reaches out and closes her fist over my hand and motions toward her mouth.

That's all there is
, I whisper.
There is no more
.

These are the first words I have ever spoken to her. She tilts her head toward mine and leans forward on the bed, her nightgown slipping to reveal the blue pools in her chest, blotches that disappear into the stitching. She takes my hand and moves it toward her mouth, and before I can stop her, she is licking my fingers, her tongue twirling around my knuckle and then lapping at my palm. Her tongue is quick, darting in and out, and when I finally pull away, she sighs and leans back against the bed.

My hand is clean. All the way home, after waiting for Libby and walking back down the dark path to our cars, all I can think is how clean my hand feels, that never have I felt so clean.

Audrey