The Guineveres (36 page)

Those girls in the hallway—the ones who told me my lips were so big it'd take an entire tube of lipstick to put on one application, or the ones who pulled the rubber band out on the days Daddy braided my hair, or the ones who quacked like a duck when I walked by because they said my feet angled out with each step—they sneered as they walked by, clutching their books to themselves like they were trying to cover something up, probably their tiny chests that hadn't begun to grow, not like mine. As they passed by, I smiled as broadly as I could, laughed until I shook, gestured wildly so they'd know I was just fine without them, just fine with the attention from the boys that they wanted for themselves.

But everything changed on the day I brought to school the ring Daddy had given me, slipped it on my finger once I got on the bus. The other girls asked me where I'd gotten it, asked if one of those three boys had given it to me. “You know, they're just trying to see which one can get you first,” they said, but I pretended not to hear, instead thumbing the ring round and round. It was a little too big, and I had wrapped twine through it a few times so it'd fit me better.

That day—the same day I wore Daddy's ring to school—those boys asked me if I wanted to go to Stanley Park after final bell. They gathered around my locker, slung their arms around my shoulder, said it was the shorter one's birthday, and, well, wouldn't it be nice to help him celebrate? At that point, some of those girls, those mean girls, nasty girls, walked by.
Quack, quack,
one of them said. She was the ugliest one of them all; her nose tipped up at the end, which gave her a horsey look. “Why, yes, I'd love to,” I said, leaning into those boys, thumbing Daddy's ring. “But I have to catch the bus,” I said. “Oh, don't worry about that,” they said. “We'll get you home,” they said—and they shared a glance that was so short I could have imagined I saw it in the first place. I smiled gratefully, hooked my hands through the cousins' arms, and smirked at those girls as we turned and headed for the door.

We could have walked to Stanley Park, but one of the cousins said we'd take his car instead. “Hate to make a pretty girl like you ruin her shoes in the fields,” he said. I thought about how angry my mom would be if I came home with muddied shoes, and I agreed. The boys didn't take the straight way to the park, which was just a few blocks from the school. Instead, they drove down residential streets named after presidents: Lincoln, Garfield, Jefferson, Wilson. One of the freckle-faced twins pulled a bottle of bourbon out from under his seat and passed it around. I took a long swig but began to cough, and everyone laughed, even me.

We finally pulled into the park; I saw some other kids from school sitting on the swings, smoking cigarettes. They didn't look up when we drove by, and we kept on driving. “Where are you going?” I asked, Stanley Park fading into a point in the distance. The cousin in the driver's seat said he knew a better place to go. I sat back and looked out the window, watching the presidents' streets go by again: Wilson, Jefferson, Garfield, Lincoln.

It seemed like we drove for a while, but the bourbon had settled into my head, making me feel calm and relaxed. The dark-haired boy next to me sat quietly, gazing out the window, then back to his hands that he wrung in his lap. “Happy birthday,” I said to him. “Yeah,” he said back. “Yeah, it's happy?” I said, trying to be funny. “Yeah,” he said back again in a droll voice.

The car finally came to a stop in a place I didn't recognize. “Everybody out,” the driver said. He turned toward the backseat and said, “That means you, birthday boy.” We all got out, but there wasn't much to see, except a pair of stone steps that led up to a bridge. “Ladies first,” one of the cousins said—not the one who'd been driving—and he put one arm behind his back and extended the other like a waiter balancing a dinner plate in his hand. I began to ascend the stairway. The steps were set unusually far apart, and I was afraid the boys could see up my skirt as I climbed, so I pinched the material at my hips to cut the slack. When I got to the top, I could see a train yard down below. On the far side of the track stood a stack of wooden pallets, and on the side closest to us, some upturned milk crates were set in a circle, centered around an ashy mound. “That's where we're going,” one of the boys said, then nudged me from behind. “Let's go back,” I said. “I don't like this place.” “Oh, don't be a fraidycat,” one of the cousins said. “You don't want to ruin someone's birthday, do you?” the other cousin said. “No,” I said, but I might have just been thinking it.

My legs felt weak as I climbed down another set of stairs. With every step, I thought my knees might buckle beneath me. Although the sun was shining, the shade of the rail yard felt cold, and I pulled my sweater closer to me, thumbing my ring nervously as I did this. “Now you're going to give our friend his birthday present, aren't you?” the taller of the cousins said when we finally came to a stop. His squinty eyes looked even more squinty in the daytime, out in the sunshine when he actually squinted. “I don't have a present for him,” I said. “You're going to give him a kiss,” he said. “I want to go home,” I said. “Oh, she wants to go home,” one cousin said. “To her mommy.” I wanted to tell them that my mom was probably at that very moment sitting in her housecoat chain-smoking in the kitchen, like she usually did until supper.

I turned to walk toward the stairs, but someone grabbed my wrist and tugged me back. “Where you going?” the tall twin said. “The birthday boy just wants a kiss from the prettiest girl in the school,” he said, this time nicer.

I let out a deep breath, then walked toward the dark-haired boy, who didn't seem particularly eager for a kiss. But I wanted to go home, and I didn't see any other way. He was taller than me, so I had to stand on my tiptoes. I puckered up my lips and planted a peck on his cheek. “There,” I said. “Happy birthday.” The dark-haired boy didn't react, didn't smile or nod or move from his spot, like his feet were glued in the dirt. “You'll have to do better than that,” the shorter one said. His hair was a shade lighter than his cousin's, but they both wore the same crooked grin.

I turned toward the birthday boy, whose face showed no expression. I didn't want to kiss him, but I did. I kissed him right on the lips this time, my own lips suctioning against his like I was sucking blood out of a hangnail. His lips felt hard, moving against my mouth in a chewing motion, as though he wanted to eat me, or something. I'd kissed plenty of boys before, and I can tell you, he was no Casanova. I pulled away quickly, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, and smiled at him.

The taller cousin moved toward me. “I forgot to tell you it's my birthday, too,” he said. And at that point, I knew what there was to know: I was in trouble. The kind of trouble Daddy sometimes warned me about. The bourbon buzz quickly lifted from my head, and I started to walk backward in the direction of the stairs; I felt sick to my stomach.

I don't remember what happened next—or, rather, I do. I was in the dirt, with one of the cousins on top of me, pawing at my shirt, lifting my skirt up over me. “Stop,” I kept saying over and over; I was clawing at his shoulders with my fingernails, then my face was in the dirt. I tried to kick my legs, but I knew it was hopeless. So I lay there real still, pretending I was a movie star—like my mother in that glossy old picture of hers, the one Daddy gave me. I stopped resisting, and I let them do what they were doing to me. I wasn't in the dirt of the train yard; I was in a scene from a movie. My hair was pinned up in curls, and I wore makeup, and I was playing the part all movie stars wanted, only the part went to me because I could play it so well.

When they were done, the cousins moved toward the stairs. The dark-haired boy helped me up, and I tried to fix myself, but I was missing two buttons on my shirt. I climbed the stairway with poise, carefully, like I imagine a starlet would do on the set of her movie. I wasn't going to let them see me upset.

It wasn't until we were in the car again, driving past dirty houses and brown square lawns that I realized I'd lost Daddy's ring. That was the moment I began to cry. I tried to wipe away my tears so the boys wouldn't see them.

“Can we go back?” I asked. My voice was shaky.

“She wants to go back,” the tall cousin said, laughing.

Daddy was already home from work when I got there. He sat in the study, his drink resting on the arm of the chair. He opened his eyes when I walked in, saw my state, my missing buttons, the dirt on my skirt and beneath my nails. I started to cry. Daddy knocked his drink over, and didn't even bother to pick it up. “I lost my ring, Daddy,” I said. “I lost my special ring.” Daddy's eyes were bleary, but he pulled me toward his chest, and I folded myself into him. I told him what happened, how some boys had gotten rough. That's all I said—didn't have to give him the details because he knew what I meant. We stood there for a while, just breathing together, until Daddy stepped back, grabbed my shoulders, hard, and kissed me on the mouth. I didn't stop him, didn't know what to do. He was my daddy, after all.

Daddy's kiss wasn't stiff like the birthday boy's; his mouth felt warm, like bathwater, and his lips moved only lightly. I don't know if I kissed him back. I don't. I can't say. I felt like I was in a movie again, only this time I was playing the role of a different woman, one who hurt in all kinds of ways that didn't even have words to describe them. Daddy was crying all of the sudden, and I was standing there, in the study, my clothes dirty and my blouse ripped, and Daddy's tears falling on top of my head like the first big raindrops of a coming storm. “Go change your clothes,” he said. “Before your mom sees.”

I didn't go to school the next day—or the next. At first my mom kept yelling at me to stop being so lazy, but then she got real quiet around me and hardly spoke a word. The following week, Daddy said we were leaving, just the two of us. I didn't pack many things. Aside from the ring I lost, I didn't have much I cared to take with me. I took a bag of clothes; I brought along with me that old photo of my mother. She was smiling into the camera, her eyes dazzling, her red lips parted slightly, just enough to show a sliver of teeth.

Daddy and I just talked as he drove. He leaned over and put his hand on my leg, resting it there as he spoke. I thought we might drive out to the old lookout, the one we used to go to when we lived across town. But we didn't. Instead we got on a highway, then drove down some winding roads lined with trees already losing their leaves. When we arrived at the convent, his eyes turned downward. He said he was sorry. He said he hoped someday I'd understand. Sometimes a man can't help himself, he said. Sometimes you love something so much you destroy it, he said. He kissed my hand and pressed it into his face. Love's like that, he said.

Daddy walked me up to the door, and Sister Fran was waiting for us in the foyer. I wasn't sad; I didn't know what I felt. The room smelled like bleach, and the marble floor shone, reflecting the light from the chandelier above. I could see my reflection in it. Sister Fran raised her thumb, pressed it on my forehead. “The joy of God is the innocent,” she said. “You shall be washed of your sins.”

When I turned around again, I watched Daddy walking toward his car, his head hung. He didn't look back, just got in the car and drove away, but that was okay. I knew he was hurting, too.

Sister Fran handed me my uniform, but before she could lead me out of the room, Father James appeared in the foyer, wearing all black, his collar digging into his neck, nicked from where he had shaved.

“Our newest girl,” Sister Fran said. “This is Guinevere.”

“Another Guinevere?” Father James said, surprised. Sister Fran nodded. Father James had a scar above his lip, shaped like a tiny bone, but he was young and not so bad-looking, after all. He had a strong brow, and a squared-off jaw that could have been handsome had he not been a priest. Right away I caught his eye, and I held his stare, not breaking it even when he extended his arm to greet me. I gripped his hand, his warm, soft hand, and I squeezed it lightly, but clung to that squeeze for just a moment longer than was probably proper. I'll admit to that. Father James blushed. “I'm glad you're here, Guinevere,” he said. Of course he was glad. After all, Daddy said I was the prettiest.

 

The Ascension

It rained for a week straight after Ginny left. Rain soaked the ground, and grass floated like rafts in pools of puddles and mud. The sky was a dirty canopy above us, one long sheet of granite-colored clouds. The Guineveres sat by the Bunk Room window during our free time, watching raindrops start and stop on their downward race toward the sill. We made a game of this, each of us picking which raindrop would beat the others, the winner feeling only mildly less apathetic after victory.

“Want me to braid your hair?” Win asked when boredom overtook us. Her eyes were ringed with dark circles the way they got when she wasn't sleeping well, which had the unfortunate effect of making her look cross.

“Nah,” we said. Gwen tried to do a handstand against the wall, and her skirt kept falling downward, revealing her beige underpants and the spidery wisps of hair that crawled out from beneath them.

“Being upside down for too long can cause blindness,” I said.

“Good,” Gwen said. “Then I won't have to see you two standing there looking at me like that.” Little veins bulged out of her reddening forehead.

“You'll be like Saint Lucy,” I said.

“Will you stop it with all that saint stuff?” Win said.

We felt a loosening among us, as if a pin had come undone, though we didn't admit it. When The Guineveres were four, we felt solid, like a square, and now, with only three of us, we were a triangle, easily tipped.