Kate Zambreno - Green Girl

Can we leave now? She begs. No, not yet. Teddy is annoyed, impatient. So she follows Teddy around dumbly.

They are in a circle of people. They are talking about an exhibition at some place called the White Cube. They ignore her as if she isn’t there. So she doesn’t try to contribute anything. She grows meek and then melancholic.

Ruth sits down on a couch and decides to feel very sorry for herself. She decides she is going to drink as much as possible to drown her miseries.

What is wrong with you? Teddy is standing over her. I want to go home. She has now reverted to being an eight year-old. She is close to throwing a tantrum.

Fine, fine, I’ll take you home. He sighs heavily, a disappointed father. On the train home he berates her: Why are you like this? Why do you act like this?

But Ruth has already turned off from him. The green girl shrinks when someone tries to pry underneath. She begins to pout if pried too far. There is nothing inside, nothing underneath.

She decides not to see Teddy anymore. And that is that. The green girl draws decisive lines in the sand. The green girl breaks easily with her past.

She knows now she has to get a job. Just another job where she will be just another salesgirl. Another disposable job, another disposable boy, her disposable existence.

Would you consider yourself a leader? Ruth is being interviewed for a position at a high street women’s clothing store at Oxford Circus. Her interrogator is a tiny blonde girl named Alice, utterly proper, immaculately groomed. Alice was outfitted in standard flower child regalia, wearing a flimsy peasant top that revealed a dainty patch of freckled white and a thick leather belt fitted over narrow hips, the kind Ruth had seen everywhere in London, even given away free in some women’s magazines.

Ruth didn’t know what being a leader had to do with folding shirts, but she had rent to pay so still she answered what she was supposed to. Still she answers Yes.

Okay. Soft, careful voice. Alice marks something on her clipboard using a gold glitter pen. They are going down a list of questions. Ruth has had enough jobs to know how to stay inside the right box.

Okay, Ruth, what makes you want to be in sales? With that the blonde girl looks up, with her patient tiny heart-shaped face. There was something about this girl — and there were legions of them in London — English roses so unflawed in their femininity, so petite and prim, so perfectly contained, that made Ruth feel like something was threatening to spill out of her when she was around them, an avalanche of American vulgarity. She felt her armpits a damper black.

Well…

Ruth’s eyes wander around the cramped office surroundings, settling on the headlines of yesterday’s Metro. MAN BEHEADED ON STREET, it read.

I like to shop so…

Charles and Camilla at some social function. Camilla wearing a hat like a well-behaved blue chicken roosting on her head. Smiling, arms around each other. They looked happy. She always noticed when people looked happy. They were her parents’ age, maybe older. Happy. She had seen pictures like that, pictures where her parents were at some wedding or another, poised standing behind a table. Happy.

Alice’s eyes loom large and blue at her. Waiting. I don’t want to be in sales, actually Ruth thinks. I hate selling anything. I’m not made for the rejection. That telemarketing job for the Chicago Symphony. Hi, Mr. So-and-So…Click. Good evening, Mrs. So-and-so…Click.

I like to shop so I feel that I’ve really, like, cracked that thing that makes women or girls or whatever, buy. She has no idea what she’s saying. Her palms start to sweat.

The managerial Alice nods. She is so serious, so English. Pursing her pink pout gently glossed. Check. She puts the clipboard down. Crosses her legs the other way. Gold ballet slippers. Skinny ankles.

Well let me tell you a bit about our philosophy…. She launches into a well-worn monologue about the mythical customer, their needs, their wants, studying her hands clasped in front of her. Ruth studies them as well. Her hands soft skin ivory white, tiny little bones, like two fragile doves. They look cold. Ruth fights the urge to fold her warm sweaty hands over them, to feel their pulse.

At night she lies in her soft tomb, listening to the constant soundtrack outside, of angry cars pulling up and speeding away, slamming doors, loud sometimes charged conversations in mysterious tongues, the cackle of callers shouting gossip to each other across the street, the clomp of heels and cowboy boots, the sloppy antics of drunken American and English groups.

She felt like she was always moving, fleeing from some scene of a crime. The impermanence of her life was starting to weigh on her. The constant move from place to place. Where will she stop? Nobody knows. She was in permanent exile. She was serving her sentence. One dingy darkened room to another. Furry monsters hiding under the bed, ghosts of dust evading the lazy non-broom. Noises. The world was pregnant with noises. The humping of the Spaniards downstairs. Dogs moaning. The late-night orgy on the streets. 50 % off! 40 %! 50 %!

The noises oh the noise. The noise makes one forget oneself. The noise so thick it can tear away at one’s identity. The foam earplugs stuffed into her skull could not drive out the orchestra of the night. She curled shut, trying to drown out the blanket of horns and screams stretched over her head like a leather canvas, ballooned and pulled until there was a cloud of cacophony in her head. Car noises, the honks, the squealing brakes, the sliding by on the wet street. The Bollywood soundtracks issuing forth from the windows.

Agnes was never home again at night. All she would say is she was on a date with a gentleman. The same gentleman? Ruth would ask. No, a different one. They take me places, is what she would say. Men. That’s the ticket. Those boys, I never went anywhere. Ruth didn’t know exactly where Agnes was trying to go. She had entirely different clothes now, one of the rich men Agnes was seeing, a stockbroker, had let her run up his credit card at Selfridges. A flurry of expensive labels. She had quit her job at the coffee shop as well. Looks like I might be looking for a place by myself now, she had said coyly to Ruth. Something more central, you know. Something more comfortable.

Last time she saw her Agnes had bleached her hair blonde. Ruth looked up from her soft tomb. What do you think? Agnes asked. I was going for Dietrich in Scarlet Empress . I was thinking more Harlow, Dinner at Eight , said Ruth. Aah, I like that. There was something unhinged about Agnes lately, needier. She would run in frantically, unzip herself out of her evening dress, cursing all the while, hopping into a sequined number. She had taken to lining her eyes thick and black. Lately everything seemed to be going outside the lines. Maybe it was the spring. Maybe everything seemed crazed.

Inside the grand white two-story light box Ruth can only see what is directly in front of her, watching blurry packs of cooing girls lifted up and down the elevator. All around her so much color. Spring was here, signs announced, coral and sky blue and mint-green. Ruth looks at the outfit arranged on a mannequin, a haphazard bag-lady chic, layered with strands and strands of beads. Ruth saw countless girls in her neighborhood wearing the same type of ensemble. Should I dress like that? she thinks. Maybe I should dress like that.