Megan Lindholm - Cloven Hooves

“Well, she said she was going to, so make sure you do.” Candy turns back to the mirror.

This may be the opening Sissy has been waiting for. She slams her book and sits up ramrod straight, her face going rocky with righteous indignation. “She did not. She said you could ask Evvie nicely, and that sure wasn’t nicely. I’m telling.”

“Go ahead. Who cares? Not you, for sure. You don’t care what people think of our family. Look at Evvie, for crying out loud. Look how she runs around. Susan Adams told me that Kerry Pierce asked her if Evvie was a girl or a boy. He couldn’t tell by looking at her. No one could! Look at her! Last time Jeffrey was here, she was running around in that same shirt, and I swear the same dirt on it. He’s going to think that’s the only clothes she owns!”

“She’s just a little kid!” Sissy jumps to my defense. “Leave her alone. She can’t help how she looks!”

“Maybe not, but she could at least be clean. Look at her! Mud on her knees, God knows what on her chin, her hair full of twigs, probably from shitting in the bushes somewhere. Like a little animal.”

“Whose fault is it that she couldn’t use the bathroom?” Sissy demands.

I don’t say a word. I am looking at myself in the mirror, over Candy’s shoulder. It is a large dresser mirror, and I can see nearly my entire body. I stare at myself. I cannot remember the last time I studied myself in the mirror. I suddenly see what it is about, why Mrs Haritsen hates me, why I eat my lunch alone. I suddenly see the raggedy dirty jeans and the shirt with the elbows out. I think of what I wore to school on Friday, the green pleated skirt with half the hem dragging out, the yellow blouse with the little flowers on it that has a coffee stain on the stomach. I wonder why I have never thought about it before, why I have seen everything else so keenly and never myself. I wonder why my mother lets me run around this way, and then I know. She doesn’t have the time to worry about it. Squeaking wheels get oiled. If I don’t demand new clothes, a trip downtown to get my hair cut and styled, money for hand lotion and nail polish and new socks, new shoelaces, jeans that aren’t hand-me-downs, I will never get them. The money is already stretched as tight as it will go. Thank God for one child who doesn’t nag and whine and beg. I think of Sissy’s new nail polish, Candy’s white mohair sweater, Kimmy’s new Barbie doll camper, and I know that it should have been mine, my new dress, my new jeans. But what I don’t demand I don’t seem to need, and if I am content, no one will jar me from it.

I come back to the room and they are still fighting, my sisters, screaming at each other, ostensibly over me, but actually over Jeffrey. “You don’t care about anyone’s feelings, not Evvie’s, not mine, no one’s, as long as you get what you want!” Sissy is saying, and tears are running down her face.

“That’s not true. You know that’s not true. It’s not my fault that Jeffrey liked me better, and it sure isn’t my fault that Evvie looks like a pile of barfy rags!”

I snatch up Sissy’s book from her bed and I let it fly. It’s only a paperback, it shouldn’t matter, but when it hits Candy in the face she screams, and even before the book is all the way to the floor, I can see the blood rushing out of her nose. She screams again, air bubbling past the blood from her nose, the blood that is falling on her white mohair sweater, and then I am gone, up the stairs, eeling past my mother as she comes down, making my escape before she knows I am the culprit. I grab a knife and a small bucket from the kitchen as I dash through it, trusting they will help me buy my way back into her good graces when I return. Rinky picks up on me as I race out the door and attaches himself to me like a sidecar. We careen down the lane and across Davis Road. And into my woods.

The path under my feet is hard, bare earth, beaten out by my own feet, and I fly along it, jumping fallen logs, veering around boggy spots. I could run this in the dark, I know it so well, and frequently do. It is fairly clear at first, as my path follows an old grown-over survey cut, but then it gets to the slough, still full of water this time of year, and I veer off, paralleling it, crouched over to run down an old rabbit trail, ignoring the branches that snatch at my hair and clothing, going to earth like an animal, fleeing into deeper forest. I run until I am sure I won’t be able to hear them call me, even if they send one of the boys up to stand by the mailbox on Davis Road and yell for me. Then I stop and drop, panting, onto the deep moss. Rinky gives me one sniff, to be sure I am all right, pushing his cold black olive nose against my cheek and into my ear, and then goes off on his own business, whatever that is. I am alone with my images of Candy’s blood bubbling over her mouth and onto her sweater. Dark red blood, clashing with her nearly auburn hair. I can’t remember that she has ever had a bloody nose before, at least not one from getting hit with something. I know she will blubber for at least an hour, and Jeffrey is due to pick her up in only half an hour. I am betting the blood won’t come out of the mohair sweater, even if they soak it in cold water and put meat tenderizer on it. Well, I reflect savagely, at least I won’t be around to humiliate her when Jeffrey does come.

My small bucket is beside me on the moss, the short kitchen knife inside it. I pull my knees up, start to rest my chin atop them. Then I stop and look at them. Muddy, where I knelt down earlier today when I was roughhousing with Rinky. And torn, so that my knee, too, is dirty, and showing through the rent denim.

So? So.

I cannot forget the grubby, unkempt kid I saw in the mirror earlier. That is not how I’ve been imagining myself, all this time. I think of myself as me, as looking like me. I’ve been seeing myself in terms of what I can do rather than how I look. Runner. Stalker. Tree climber, ditch jumper, mushroom hunter, game spotter. I had no clear physical image of myself. I’ve only seen the view from my windows. I never thought to wonder how I really looked, to others.

It was bad.

And yet a stubborn part of me doesn’t want to yield, refuses to rush home and wash up, brush my hair, put on clean clothes, and nag my mother for new clothes and new shoes. A part of me says, tough for them. Maybe I’ve only discovered this today, but I suspect they’ve known it all along. All along. They haven’t done right by me, and even if I never knew it until now, they knew it all along. So let them live with it. If they’re embarrassed by my looks, too bad. That’s how I am. And if they’ve never cared enough to come to me kindly, to gently help me change, then screw them. I’ll look this way. Always. Forever and ever and ever. And let them be ashamed. I won’t ask for new clothes, for new shoes. And if they offer them, I won’t want them. Not ever.

I close my eyes, imagining how horrible it would be if I went home and my mother and sisters had gone out and bought all new clothes for me, new shiny shoes, a coat with no teethmarks on the sleeve, jeans with knees in them. And if they gathered around me and brushed my hair and cut it and curled it. And then I went to school. And everyone would see the big change in me, and they’d gather around me and ask me questions. “Where’d ya get the new dress?” “Are those new shoes?” “I like your hair that way a lot better.” “You really look nice.” And I would have to smile and let them sniff me over. It would be admitting that I had been wrong, had been unkempt and shaggy. It would be admitting that they had been right to feel sorry for me all this time, to be disgusted by me all this time, to ostracize me all this time. It would be surrender. It’s too late. It’s gone too far, I can’t even surrender now. Not if I want to survive as me.