Kate Zambreno - Green Girl

Just then, the door opens. It is Olly from men’s neckties. He nods at Ruth and Natalie. Hello ladies. Hiya, Olly! Natalie calls out gaily. Ruth smiles, blushing a little, lowering her eyes modestly. She can feel Natalie watching her.

Olly pours hot water into a paper cup.

Going out for a pint Sunday?

Ruth realizes he is addressing her. Yeah…I don’t know…. But she does know. Although she doesn’t know if she is being coy or still being polite. Every Sunday night the fragrance department goes to the local pub for a drink. Ruth has never been invited, since Elspeth hates her. Maybe. I don’t know, she falters.

Oh. Well. It’d be nicer if you came along. He finishes his tea, crumples up his cup and throws it into the bin all in one gallant gesture. All right. Bye now, ladies.

Bye, Natalie says frostily, miffed not to be included in the exchange.

Bye. Ruth’s comes out unintentionally breathy, again, as if she were flirting.

Once Olly has left Natalie slaps Ruth’s pantyhosed thigh. Ruth winces. Ouch.

You fancy Olly, she says accusingly. She is still whispering, even though they are once again alone. Me? No. Ruth tries to blow this off, like the thought is ridiculous.

There are strangers who wear your face. Is this some plot, or is this my vile hallucinations? I cannot seem to shake you away.

Well, he seems to like you. Natalie appraises her.

Yeah?

Why not? You’re a cute girl. She says this almost reluctantly. She scrutinizes Ruth. We’re all cute girls in fragrance.

Natalie checks the time on her mobile. I want to grab a quick ciggie before we have to go back on the floor. Want to come? An offer that is not actually an offer. There is a certain area out back on the dock in goods receiving where the terrible girls smoke on their breaks and spray acid on everyone else in the store. Ruth knows that she would not be welcome. She shakes her head no, thanks. She is suddenly on mute. Natalie shrugs again.

As she opens the door, Natalie looks like she is struggling over whether or not to say something. The gossip in her wins out, drowning whatever else was in her underneath the surface. You know, Elspeth fancies Olly. The inferred sign posted on recently wiped glass. Ruth knows this. Everyone in all of Horrids knows this. Last month she bought him a cake for his birthday (dark chocolate), which store employees were selectively invited to eat out in the break room. Ruth had not been invited.

Oh well, she can have him, Ruth blurts out. But then as soon as she says that, she wishes she hadn’t, because it was not nice. But she had not wanted to be nice, but she feels ill not being nice. Natalie regards Ruth coolly again. Anyway, I just thought you might like to know. And then she is gone.

Thanks, smirks Ruth, once alone in the room, knowing that in the next ten minutes Elspeth will be given even more fuel to hate her. That American temp, that American temptress, making off with one of their own.

Gossipy Natalie. Like a child who likes to light fires, just to watch them burn.

Ruth is hit again with the desire to swallow her tongue, to swallow, swallow her tongue.

Later in her shift, Ruth’s stomach begins to churn, from the nauseating combination of sweet smells and body heat as well as the casual cruelty of it all. She has a fire-breathing belly. A seething sputtering ball of stress. A volcano spilling over messy anxieties, sensitivities, fears. What if it is an ulcer? Ruth worries, worries, worries, while her stomach twists, twists, twists.

Ruth hurries up to Noncy. I have an upset stomach. Fine, fine, Ruth , Noncy waves her away impatiently. The way she pronounces Ruth’s name comes out as an accusation. She knows that she is daily supplying material for the terrible girls to torment her with. She knows that every move she makes is documented, is reported back to Elspeth. She is overdocumented but intimate with no one.

She hurries to the employee toilet. She locks herself in a stall and begins to explode, emptying out all of her insides. Amidst the horrible sounds and the stink, the outside door opens. Ruth had forgotten to lock it. It is Elspeth and her constant companion, Sam, a watery-eyed Scottish girl from the Nars counter. Together with Elspeth’s ghost complexion and Sam’s pink and blonde squatness they resemble Roald Dahl’s two greedy aunts. Ruth frantically tries not to make any more bodily sounds.

She is in fact the subject of their conversation. Something, something, that American girl. Haughty Elspeth. Something, bad? Sam. She smiles too much. Elspeth. Do I? wonders Ruth, her stomach doing contortionist tricks. Americans, something. Sam. Something, nauseating. Elspeth. Would you like to sample Desire? Elspeth again. Giggling. They’re mimicking me, Ruth realizes with horror. The brushing of hair, the blowing of noses, the clasping closed of compacts. The door swings shut.

Ruth is going to be late coming back from her break. But she is frozen on the toilet bowl, skirt around her ankles. Tired from holding it all in, in that stall she thaws. The tears pour out, along with seemingly everything else.

My ice girl. I carve her into a swan.

Before getting on the train to go home that evening Ruth stops at Boots. In the pharmacy she picks up a pamphlet for ulcers, stationed next to the pharmacist, as well as pamphlets for: appendicitis, migraines, tension headaches, upset stomach, irritable bowel syndrome, panic attacks, stress, and urinary tract infections. Suffering from ulcers? a drawing of a woman, hand on stomach, doubled over, mouth curving down, the pain drawn in lines on her forehead. Peptic. Duodenal. Gastrointestinal. A burning feeling in the stomach area. A gnawing. A hole.

The train rumbles past, stopping a distance away. Her reflection multiplies endlessly. She sees herself passing by, staring, staring into space.

Sometimes after work she takes a bath and watches herself in it. Sometimes she forces herself under water. She pretends she’s dead. She pretends she has drowned. She is Millais’ Ophelia floating down a stream, clutching flowers. The painting hangs in the Tate Britain. Although Ruth has not gone to the Tate Britain. She wouldn’t know the first thing about how to get there.

After her bath she gazes at herself in the mirror. Is this what I look like? She marvels at the stranger in the mirror. The stranger looks so solemn, so serious. She smiles. The stranger smiles back.

I too study her, a curious object. Like a prickly piece of fruit. I experience horror at my former self. Is that me? Can’t be me. Can’t be me. Can’t be. I was never that young. Never, never that young. No longer joy meets my eyes when I gaze into the mirror. That me is no longer. She is dead. Dead and gone. Dead and gone. Gone. Gone. She is gone. I have mourned her. I have murdered her.

Later, when we look back at ourselves, we marvel at our emptiness, our youth. The shiny surface. We forget the confused upheaval stirring deep within back then, a revolution that we stifled daily.

There is some gap in between. Some dark hole in the center of Ruth that is not reflected in this mirror. She mutes this violence and turns it on herself. She resists the urge to peel off her skin. Sometimes she would like to put her fist through a window, but she is too well-behaved.

Everyone always tells her how pretty she is. You’re so pretty, they say. It is a fact. She could be described in the language of growing things. She is a tender sapling. She is green, she is fresh (yet the freshest ingénues can carry with them the most depraved resumes).