Aimee Bender - The Girl in the Flammable Skirt

When I got home my father was nearly asleep. He heard the front door and called out from the darkness.

“Ellen,” he said.

“Celia.”

“Don’t worry, sweetie,” he said. “She just does these things sometimes. Tomorrow.”

“I should call the police,” I said.

“No,” he said firmly, “really. If by tomorrow this time we’ve no news, then okay. But she’ll call.”

I smiled. I knew he was wrong. But as a comfort, I stayed in the living room with the TV on all night, as she often did. I didn’t really watch much, but stared at the reflected silhouette of my body in the TV screen, twirling my ankle sometimes just to remind myself that I was there.

The next night after dinner we still hadn’t heard a word. I brought him milk and sat by his bed.

“She’ll call,” I said feebly.

“I know,” he said. “She just does this sometimes.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Really.” He looked at me for a moment, touched my hair with his forefinger. “You’re a pretty girl, my Celia,” he said. “You ought to go out sometimes. You must be so sick of taking care of me.”

“No,” I said, trying to think of something to say. “No.”

“Boys, any boys you like now?” he asked.

“No,” I said again. “No boys.” He looked at me and patted my head again. I could feel myself smile.

• • •

She called at ten. She was at a bar in Connecticut, on her way to D.C., to the museum, walking. She had a day or so more to go, and she wanted me to send my father on a train, bundled in blankets to keep him warm. She wanted him to meet her; they could go on the cattle cars together. She said her feet were already very blistered, and I imagined her relaxing into the cattle car, arm around my blanketed father as they prepared to experience simulated genocide.

“Put your father on the phone,” my mother told me.

“He’s asleep,” I said. “We were both really worried. You didn’t call. I was sure — we didn’t know where you were.”

“Is that Ellen?” I heard my father’s voice, oddly strong, from his room.

“Put him on,” my mom said.

“He’s tired,” I said.

“Celia,” she ordered. “Now.”

I brought him to the phone. He was delighted to hear her voice. I waited for him to be angry, to tell her how mad we were, but he didn’t sound angry at all. Instead, he curled up in his bed like a teenage girl, and cooed into the receiver. I walked, disgusted, into the living room, and watched my ankle in the TV again until I heard the click.

“She wants me to take a train and meet her in D.C.,” he said.

“Oh well,” I said.

“But if I’m bundled up and in a wheelchair I should be okay,” he said. “You know, we’ll explain it to the conductor. It’d be fun to go on a trip.”

“Are you kidding?” I asked.

“No,” he said, “no, it could work. It’s a little crazy, I know, but it could work. Your mother is walking to Washington — now that is crazy.”

I stared at him. “It’ll give you a break,” he said. “You can have a little vacation from us.”

I wasn’t sure if he’d suddenly lost his mind. He’d been in bed for several months. He hadn’t been outside for an entire season.

“Daddy?” I asked.

“I’ll take a lot of vitamin C,” he said. “It’ll be fine. I’ll go tomorrow. You’ll take me to the train station?”

I walked to the door frame of his room and looked at him, so thin under the many blankets that I couldn’t see his body anymore.

“Really, Celia,” he said, “I wouldn’t try if I didn’t think I could do it.”

“Let’s see in the morning,” I said quietly. He smiled at me and clicked off his light. I stayed in the door frame for a few minutes, trying only to remember the words of radio songs, trying hard to fill my whole brain with hundreds and hundreds of lyrics. I cleaned the refrigerator but it was clean. Finally I left the house.

The night was warm and clear, all the lights off in the neighborhood, front lawns wide and empty. I walked through the streets counting the sidewalk squares over and over under my feet until I reached one thousand, which brought me right to the middle of the center square. And there was the Greek statue looming under its sheet. I stood quietly at its base, and looked around. The park was empty, only trees and circles of splintering wooden benches surrounding me. Even under the sheet, the statue commanded the space. I began to run in front of it, back and forth in tight rows.

“I’m going to do something,” I warned, back and forth in front of the pedestal. Windows in the distance were dark, people sleeping, holding their wishes in tightly. I could hear my breath mounting as I ran faster. “I’m going to show him,” I yelled, louder this time. The silence was great and empty. I ran for a moment more, faster, faster, then stopped abruptly in front of the base of the statue, and stilled my body. Breathing quickly, I grabbed a corner of the white sheet. I rubbed the corner over and over between my fingers, chafing my skin, until it climbed into my fist and I had a good hold. And then, with one fierce yank, I pulled the sheet off. It blew up high, like a gasp, then floated to the ground, collapsing and bowing behind the statue.

Uncovered, the god looked huger than ever — young, unbreakable. I put my foot on the top of the pedestal and pulled myself up. I climbed on his foot, then his knee, until I was high enough to face him. Holding on to his shoulders to steady myself, I moved in close, arms wrapping around his shoulders, pressing into his chest.

“Father,” I whispered. I listened as my breathing slowed, and waited for something to change.

I fell in love with a robber and he took me on his rounds.

Don’t talk too much, he said, or you’ll mess me up.

As I talk a lot, this was difficult for me. He told me in a hushed voice to look around the kitchen while he went to scour under the living room couch. I stuck my hand in the flour canister and found a diamond ring! It was so hard not to shout out! Clamping a hand over my mouth, I whispered to my palm the word diamond over and over. I put it on my wedding finger and the white dust sprinkled over my glove as if someone was about to cook me.

The robber returned with a bag full of loot — three gold chains, a watch, two diamond bracelets and a shiny spoon — but when he saw that ring standing tall on my leather finger he proposed to me right then and there — took it off my finger, put it on again, kneeled down, looked me in the eye. And right there in a stranger’s kitchen I said yes to that robber and both of our eyes filled with tears at the Tightness of it all. Shutting the front door quietly behind us, we walked hand in hand to the car; when he said we were far enough away, I let out a shout of joy.

The next day we declared ourselves married and for our wedding night he went to the supermarket and bought ten bags of flour. Pouring it on my bedroom floor, my robber made a foot-deep flour sandbox. It was going to be a pain to vacuum but I loved the clean way it rolled off our skin and how I squeaked on the grains and when we kissed it tasted like morning.

Late that night I called my parents and told them I was married and my mother shrieked with delight and when my father asked: What does he do? I said, He’s a baker. I could hear they were skeptical about the life of a baker’s wife but I said, It’s a good life and I love him and my mother said, That’s all that’s important, Penny — congratulations and my father grunted but I knew he was happy; I know his spectrum of grunts and this one was pleased.

We moved into a little apartment together on the rich side of town which was a good career choice for him. We used my furniture because he said he didn’t have any. I got wedding gifts from my side of the family: a rainbow array of pot holders, a fluffy towel set, a million cashews. He didn’t get anything from his family and he said that’s because he didn’t have one. Really, I said, why didn’t I know that, and he said: Probably because I didn’t tell you. I stood still for a second, absorbing this. He said, I don’t own anything, Penny, family or furniture, and I piped in, You own me now! and he smiled and kissed the top of my head.