Kate Zambreno - Green Girl

Such joy, such bliss, impossible to describe.

Agnes, Agnes.

What?

I forgot.

They are in bed together. A blanket is pulled on them. They are staring at the ceiling.

Everything has such amazing textures.

I know.

Oh, life, life, life.

Agnes moans softly to herself. Hmmm. Hmmm. Hmmm.

Ruth was filled with such violence, such sublime joy. Enraptured. She is enflamed. Such tenderness. Her teeth were chattering. She was feverish.

This can never end.

No, it can never end.

Please don’t ever end.

Don’t leave me Ruth.

Don’t leave me Agnes.

Oh, don’t leave me don’t leave.

They never wanted it to end never wanted it to end never never never wanted it to…

The next day. The depths of despair. Of dead and dread. All the joy has crept out of her body.

Ruth wakes up and it is evening. She has slept for what seems like days, slept like a leech stuck to her mattress.

Oh the noises, the noises.

40 % 50 % 40 % 50%

She cannot sleep with all of these noises. She reemerges into the night, into the city with its cruel eyes.

Look (don’t look)

Look (please don’t look)

Her sunglasses mirror the reflection of the seething outside, closing in on her.

Her only reflection is her image.

Two Bengali kids, cigarettes hanging on their lips, loiter in the doorway of the newsagent. She lowers her eyes modestly when she passes them, feeling them look her up and down. Always preparing for the gaze, averting eyes away from it, feeling it hotly. She buys chocolate, Sprite. The man behind the counter leers at her.

The kids harass her as she passes them again. You looking fine tonight lady. She ignores them. She passes through them.

The noise has made her on edge. She is going mad. She is breaking down. No hairline chips or cracks. She is Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight .

She walks tense among the terrible teem. She feels her guard rise up as she passes through the callers. She keeps on looking back, checking to see if anyone’s following her (a woman out in public is not paranoid, she’s observant). She makes eye contact with a few men who stop as she passes by.

She is a zombie come alive. She is out of it. She walks to the end of Brick Lane. She keeps pace behind two girls wearing silver stilettos, clinging to each other as they walk down the cobblestones. They look like they are supporting each other, like they can’t walk without the other. She doesn’t know where she’s going. She passes by people drinking at candlelit tables, smoking on doorsteps, pouring out of gallery openings. More bodies, bodies, bodies. She feels fragile right now, exposed. Salut, Ça va? , a Frenchman waves at her from across the street. She ignores him too.

She passes alleys with the stench of piss. Past a dark street frequented by prostitutes. Ladies of the night. She feels the burn in her belly. She continues walking. Past the strip club. Past the big stone church. Past the tree like an armless woman howling in pain.

The next morning the streets are papered with junk, vomit, wrappers, fliers from the market. The rubble and the ruin. A little boy jumps over a puddle littered with cigarette butts. She wishes she could clean herself of these dirty streets.

She prays for the rain. Rain to wash it all away. She needs to be baptized by rain, a flood pouring down absolution.

She clutches her keys with one hand and her phone with the other. Her safety blankets. Her protection from the outside world.

She hurries up the street. Past the jangle of rainbow-colored keys in a construction worker’s hand, the other holding a Styrofoam coffee. The construction workers turn to stare at her. She wants to shield herself from their naked leer. She wants to be in disguise. She has on her protective lenses but she wants to be invisible.

Look

(don’t look)

Look

(please don’t look)

It is too much outside. The studies and the stares. She stumbles down the street, dry and shaky. She feels depleted.

They never stop following her. They all want something from her. They want a piece of her. They want to suck her youth from her. They want her signature. They want her arm. They want a lock of her hair. They want her soul. It is a feeding frenzy. She is on all the cable stations. This just in: Ruth. It is Ruth-gate.

They push push against her. Bodies, bodies, bodies. It reaches a fever pitch. It is a media crush. It is a media circus. It is too much pressure. She wants to escape. Leave me alone! She begs. Just leave me alone! She is clearly traumatized. She crumples up. She hides behind sunglasses and hats and phony disguises. Breaking news — Ruth breaks down!

You can lose your mind right in front of us.

She is a train wreck. We gape at her. We are cruel, so cruel. Why don’t we save her?

Flashes of mirrored windows. She can’t escape herself. Her face frantic, pink, smudged.

For wherever you go, I will go…

Can you please spare 40p?

40p man is back. He has returned.

The outside world is chaotic and cruel.

Waiting at the crosswalk, she thinks, what’s that thing that keeps drivers slowly filling with rage throbbing with impatience from lifting the brake and plowing down a pedestrian? What keeps them from swallowing that brief impulse of glee, like stomping on a robin skittering past on the sidewalk?

(I want to stomp on their fragile stalks not yet formed, those spiky buds creeping up through moist dirt.)

The mall next to Liverpool is made of green glass like the bottom of a pool flooded with light. It hurts her eyes.

Today she doesn’t want to live in her skin.

She neededwantedneeded to peel it off, peel it off.

She begins to look for work on the high streets. The constant refrain: Do you have a CV? Just leave your CV. Your CV, your CV. Your proof of identity. She is having an identity crisis. Who am I? (Is that me?) Who do I want to become? She journeys invisible through fog.

She has no memory of herself. Surrounded by the gray, the gray, the gray. She passes out herself laid flat on a piece of paper, mumbling thanks to willing hands.

A realization — everyone in central London is a tourist. You can tell by the uncertainty in their eyes. But Ruth is used to being a tourist. Being a girl is like always being a tourist, always conscious of yourself, always seeing yourself as if from the outside.

She waits and waits for the call, any call, and goes home at dark, following the exodus of the properly employed. Tottenham Court Road. Holborn. Change here for the Piccadilly.

Doors closing. Mind the gap.

Chancery Lane. St. Paul’s. Bank. Liverpool.

She sits at Soho Square, watching the pigeons. The fragile yellow pom-poms from the trees fall on her coat, in her hair. Pigeon-beasts who look dyed in ink dart about skeptically. The red warty prong of pigeon toes. Amber glass dots for eyes. Metallic purple and green necklaces. There is a king pigeon with white tuft and turkey chin, cooing. They rapidly disperse at the faintest sign of crumb or wrapper, like a massive breeze through the trees. The weakest of the pack fly back disappointed. A little girl dives through the pigeons. A Godzilla baby.