wo
dresses hang clumsy, big, stained dark, twisting from the antique
picture-shelf nailed to the brown pineapple wallpaper. Shelf juts
out like a bully's jaw. Shelf bruises shoulder, neck, legs, rains
ancient photographs in sharp glass frames if you bump into it.
Then mama comes running and bruises you more.
The dresses are waiting to be dry cleaned.
Mama won't let you put just one at a time into the dry cleaning
bag.
You have to wait. Stains darken and you yellow
like a bruise.
There's a stain eraser in the dry cleaning
kit. You press the fabric against a paper-white foam board and
rub and rub the nozzle of the stain-eraser bottle against your
dress until the stain is gone.
I mean until no one can see it. It's still
there.
Stains fade but they're always there. Just
hid better. You get real good at hiding them. Like scars.
at first they're angry, red, flaming hot.
Then they pinkin to a little white line.
Sometimes scars are straight.
Sometimes they're jagged.
Sometimes scars are in the shape
of someone's initials carved
into your ragged breast
You better hope your skin heals those lines
off like stain eraser else no one will marry you.
Certainly not him,
Lands!
What's a man want to give you a ring for
when you got his initials carved in your breast ?
It's just like that thing people always say
about buying cows and free milk.
I won't repeat it.
The funny thing is that blood stains aren't
the worst. You can get blood out lickety-split with Hydrogen Peroxide.
Fat stains are the worst
Deep, dark, greasy stains on dresses . On
souls. Fat girl's always a fat girl even when you become thin.
You remember the revulsion in people's faces, the way the boys
mooed at you at your first dance. You look at yourself in every
mirror, store front window, puddle, toaster disbelieving that
the girl you know you are isn't staring back at you and there's
this pretty little doe-eyed liar in the reflection. She's some
kind of beautiful disguise only real cause she has your skin.
She's a human Stain eraser. She does it with
lipstick, a tuck of waist, eyelashes darkened with Cover Girl
from the drug store. She's pretty.... You're pretty now.
You know that intellectually like you know that ghosts aren't
real. But you're still scared to go to the bathroom at night.
And you're still scared the Fat girl will come back. She'll slip
past the mask and take over your perfectly sculpted lying doe-eyed
facade.
and boys will moo at you
but not because they want to buy the cow.
Boys have a sense. They know she's there
lurking below the surface. They know the fat girl shape of your
soul. They'll fuck your mirage, make you think you've got them
tricked and they'll marry you and bring you home roses from work
and save you from your day-job. But then they ask you to do something
for them. A little thing. Like pay for their gas because they're
coming to see you. And next it's something else like being "sick"
on your birthday. And then they carve their initials into your
soft white mounds. You look in the mirror and there's this boy's
initials glowing red on your tits like some kind of perverted
graffiti. And you think "Surely he loves me. I wouldn't let
him do this to me if he didn't love me."
But really it's kind of like a dog pissing
on a fire hydrant. The dog doesn't love the fire hydrant any more
than Neil Armstrong loved the moon when he thrust the American
flag deep into its dust. It's the conquering they love. It's the
claiming of the virgin soil. After it's claimed, it loses it's
charm. And then the boy goes home, reads a book, plays a video
game
And you're still dripping blood thinking
"love me, love me, look I'm bleeding for you."
The blood is soaking through your dress,
ruining the pretty silk.
No big deal though.
Not anymore. Not like when you were younger
and idealistic. Now you just sigh,
turn, go back to the medicine cabinet and
your Hydrogen Peroxide. You watch it fizz out the worst of the
blood. And you hang your dress on the shelf in the hall
with the others
to be dry cleaned.
[END]
© Adrienne Williams 2002
