Katherine Dunn - Attic

Strolling past the gas station on the corner — their tires in foil wrapped blue and gold and red from under a car on the hoist — grab a gold tire and roll it down the sidewalk giggling crazy with excitement — wheel it on down looking for cops — waiting to be chased — getting good at rolling it like a hoop with just a kick on either side now and then to steer — turn into his yard where they are all sitting around — all very cool — nonchalant — they oohing and you wild thing you — don’t know anybody with a car so peel off the foil to save for something — Byzantine reliefs maybe — and ditch the tire in an alley — Dunlop 12 ply Blue Ribbon Blah!..

In the five-and-dime can’t see over the counters with her — see the red thimble — plastic knobby — just fits — put it on and tap things with it — lips and teeth and wish I had two to click against each other — wander out with her — why where did you get that you little thief march right back in there and give it to the man and apologize — penny thimble — I didn’t even notice I’d taken it — big noise and hits — the shame…

Drugstore book racks — need a book a day at least — three thin ones — too far to the library — heavy — always overdue — little ladies in pale green uniforms inventory hair spray — perfume — Kotex while I’m putting books in my purse — in my armpits — Agatha Christie — Nero Wolfe — James Bond — candy bars in pockets — have to lay off M & Ms — they rattle too much — an extra eyebrow pencil up my sweater sleeve and buy a deodorant — go out to the car and drop the stuff — back into the supermarket for cookies and cigarettes and chocolate-covered cherries — buy milk and then tool back home to turn the heat up and sit with the rain outside — with my feet up reading trash — eating trash — drinking milk straight from the carton only pouring it into a glass when I want to dunk cookies in it…

Girls League Cake Sale — high school cakes by girls in coordinated sweaters and skirts — ribbons holding their hair — dozens of pairs of shoes — their proud bras and girdles mocking my brother’s cast-off tee shirts in the locker room — they study typing with old Birdsing and wear ribbons in their hair — bake cakes for the cake sale from scratch with boiled frosting that slump in the middle and cave on the side — patch it up with frosting and candy drops — hide them on mother’s best cake plates behind screens in the cafeteria — I ducking class as usual — hiding stink bombs behind the encyclopedias in the library — sneaking through the halls with my five-button Levi’s swishing between my legs a cake under each arm — stacking them carefully in my locker on top of stolen books behind the Life Magazine picture of Bertrand Russell like a baby eagle his fierce fuzzy face on the scrawny neck — hide for the rest of the afternoon in the conference rooms in the library listening to Jake in his chemistry room gas mask searching for the stink bombs and cursing — thinking of him fumbling with the pear-assed librarian from the grade school — all the time rehearsing my lines for if I’m caught — when the final bell rings parading down to the boys’ locker room with a dozen cakes on a book cart to wait for the wrestling team to finish weighing in and come out famished after a month of making weight…

Putting jars all over school with slits in the lids and a little sign — Contribute to the Save Dunn Fund — and they all snickering as a joke or an insult dropping in pennies and nickels and I emptying the jars uncaring why…

Then a voice calls my name over the intercom and I leave the class sick and scared and go to the office to sit waiting for someone who wants to see me and spend enormous minutes rehearsing cool lines I know I’ll never use because always when they catch me whether I’m guilty or innocent I cannot speak and feel so very tired and they are always angry and they are always so personally offended and you sink back into something so tired but you rehearse the lines anyway for the waiting and the school nurse comes and invites me into her little office with eye charts and says she has had several reports that I suffer from body odor and she knows I wouldn’t want to offend anyone and it’s a particularly difficult problem in the winter what with wool clothing and I sinking in shame nodding yes I see go cringing back to class not looking at anyone and wondering hating whoever it was that did this to me.

All this was before Dogsbody when I still thought I would grow up to be a boy and wanted to — to be a man and free so it wouldn’t be dirty and I could love men — and in the big field in back of the house that went over hills and the stream came through and the blackberries were heavy and sweet purple hot on your lips in the summer and you could hide by only lying still in the long grass and no one could find you — not even she shouting Katherine when she was angry — and someone came to me there — would park his car on the far far side of the field and come on long legs his young arms waving above the grass and I would meet him in the grass and pull him down we both laughing and wrestling till the grass lay around us like deer had been there but would stand tall again in the morning and we would lie there all the long afternoon in the sun my long legs in the faded dungarees beside his long legs in faded blue and touch gently and dream together of pagodas and the Orinoco and we together in a small boat on a summer sea out of sight of land and our innocent touches and how lascivious we would be and children and how hungry I begged him to take me then — I ripped at my clothing and knelt in the grass begging him please touching his knees and his belt and coaxing and hungry and he would not and the sun was warm on me — the grass was sweet beneath me and he would not and the Queen Anne’s lace bowed over me and he would not — he made me put my clothes back on and sit quiet like a child till I was calm and then he went away through the grass. In the morning I crept out and walked the miles to his house through fields and on railroad tracks barefooted and threw pebbles at his window to apologize — they invited me in to breakfast pancakes and honey and my mother came screaming the gravel spurting under her wheels to tell them to keep their filthy boy away from me and screamed all the way home I beside her about my filth and I went away that night and never went back.

I am sitting with my head down — they are yelling at me — she is yelling — the noise and her feeling so strongly make me tired like I had cried for a long time and I sink further and the yelling goes on until I almost speak to stop it — I wave my hand to stop it not noticing the knife in it and suddenly there is blood and she is falling and the noise stops but I have made a mess — like when you’re thinking at the table and the milk spills and it’s a mess though you couldn’t say how it happened and they all act as though you meant it.

Nobody pinches or looks. We walk in dead paneled halls to the courtroom, I and I don’t know who. Can’t remember. Can’t see the place. Last night they wanted to put my hair into pink rollers foam with little white plastic sticks that bend if you push them but you put them in your hair and your hair bends. My hair hangs below my ribs and if I pull a lot of it tight and touch it in the way it grows it feels like the satin ribbons in the books. When I brush it over my head in the morning in front of the windows the white light goes through and the hairs fall down like a veil so thin and shining orange with gold and green lights and it’s frothy and soft and tickles and so pretty. My nose below where it broke — when I close my left eye with my left side to the window in the morning and look cross-eyed over my nose with the right eye the light is gold and rainbows are on my nose. Dorothy spent hours brushing each of her long curls around and around her fingers the curls so long around her whole soft hand and down beyond the wrist and Mac said If it weren’t for you and Jean says If I look like a beatnik the judge will give me a hard time. But I won’t. They want to bend the hair but I say No no thank you and wash it for a long time in the shower with yellow soap and the hair beneath my arms and between my legs and that is so ticklish and invisible on my legs and arms all the hair and notice how the freckles are almost not there and everything is soft about me who used to say I’m fleet of foot and high of jump! in fourth grade with five-button Levi’s and sneakers above the ankle and thick beneath my feet and made balloon trips in the cherry tree above the brindle bull and ate all the pet rabbits the year we kept moving to keep Brother out of the war and almost flew off the lumber pile any number of times.