Jaimy Gordon - Bogeywoman

Lemme tell you, such a negative report of herself from Miss Dying Popularity, the nurses’ pet, the Bug Motel most prized for her guts, was a shock and my jaw dropped and I didn’t know what to say. “You look fatter,” I finally observed, “that ain’t bad.” “Miss Peabody is doing better in highest degree,” Doctor Zuk announced. “She will soon be well.” Emily sniffed mightily. “What is wrong, my dear?” Zuk asked, peering into Emily’s face; now even she seemed puzzled. “They played so purty,” Emily said. “Yes indeed, and so shall you,” Zuk said heartily, “what I have promised? why are we here?” But Emily didn’t answer and in a moment madame-too-beautiful-on-her-horse leaned over with a handkerchief and wiped her nose, from which a curtain of green snot had descended. “What I have promised, eh?” she soothed, polishing Emily’s little freckled cocktail onion of a nose, flashing her eyes angrily at me over Emily’s head. What did I do, I almost asked, but what kinda question was that, when Emily sat there like Europe in ruins? “You shall sing, you shall play,” Zuk boomed like a prophetess.

All the same I didn’t like that, Zuk telling Emily and all the world that any girl could be a rock star if she only tried. “You could hum along,” I told Emily, and Zuk gave me a look that said Monster, despair, you shall never have me or be me .

But come to think of it Emily could sing, I suddenly recalled, sing, yes, like a little girl, but not just any little girl, the little girl, the fabulous girlgoyle of myth and legend, that is, a high voice straight as a pencil that doesn’t quite land on the blue rule it’s aiming for but pierces to the numbest cochlea… We could use that in the Bug Motels and in fact Emily was a Bug Motel, she had always been a Bug Motel, what was I thinking of?

“Um, er, uh, maybe you can sing after all,” I said. “Soon’s you pick up the tune.” “I couldn’t never make up no wacky words like that,” Emily was sniffling. “Whaddaya mean,” I argued, trying not to look as frog-proud of my word salad as I naturally was, “you just hold your mouth open and the bugs swim out. You’re in the bughouse, right? There’s always some in there.” “Unh-unh, I couldn’t, I couldn’t,” Emily whined. It was like her fabulous girlgoyle nerve had burned up with her fingers.

“Hey, you don’t need a song. I got a song for you, Emily. I got songs for everybody,” I bragged. “Quiet, is enough from you, Miss Bogeywoman,” madame-too-beautiful-on-her-horse had the cheek to cut me off in my own clubhouse, NO ROYALS ALLOWED, and then she turned to Egbert: “Mr. Stein, you have instrument for Miss Peabody?” “It’s around here somewhere,” Bertie mumbled. I could hardly believe my ears-the two of em had schemed behind my back! Bertie bent down and thrashed around in the big black doctor’s bag he used for his music stuff. “Egbert plays even gooder than Ursie,” Emily commented helpfully. She was mad at me, not for setting her on fire of course but for forgetting to save her place in the Bug Motels.

Meanwhile Bertie pulled out this wire thing made of godzilla knows what orthopedic appliances and set it on Emily’s head. It looked like the halo from a Sunday school play, only with one rakish antenna spronging out of it and curling around into Emily’s face-some kinda clear plastic laboratory-pipe kazoo or whistle or sumpm was bobbing there at the end of it. Bla-a-a-at! Wouldn’t you know she got a pure A out of it the first time she tried.

Well I had never felt so rudely put in my place in my life but as it was madame-too-beautiful-on-her-horse who had put me there, I wouldn’t give up so easily. “Hey, Em, wanna hear my song?” I fired off, “even though yours is better?” Emily stopped blowing, the wastewater whistle dangled there patiently in its off-the-eyebrows orbit, and she said with a sick little smile, “Yeah, sure, Ursie.” “We have heard your song,” Zuk intervened coldly, “it is very fine song, like we told you once already, but now is time for somebody else.” Exactly when she put on these democratic airs, Doctor Zuk was the royalest royal of them all. “Ahem, NO ROYALS ALLOWED,” I quoted, pointing to the hand-lettered sign thumbtacked over NEUROPATHOLOGY. “Will you please shut up and let Emily play, Ursie,” Bertie said to me. I stared at him in disbelief. He was a whole new person, he was getting better, he was getting even better than me . I didn’t like that. Now that he was in love with me I could see he meant to jack me up to the highest standards. I stuck out my chin and announced: “That last tune was just an improv. I got my own song, everybody gets a song.” “Give Em a turn now. We all know you’re the best,” Egbert said. Dead silence after that, since everybody knew who was really the best. They all stared at me, waiting for me to be a better person. “I ain’t the best, you are and you know it,” I caved in, and was ready to lay my pukelele down or even play humble backup when Emily said, “I got nuttin to sing yet, honest, all-a-youse. Whyncha let Ursie go first.” They looked at each other, shrugging. What could they do? Hah!

Instead of my own ditty, I tuned up my puke and sang

EMILY’S SONG

Because I couldn’t stop for lunch ,

It kindly stopped for me .

The van read PIZZAS BY HASSAN

FAST FREE DELIVERY

It’s two weeks later now and I’m

No fatter than the day

I started eating pizza

To postpone mortality .

It’s two years later now and I’m

Still tryna put away

That eighteen-inch cold pizza

Known as immortality .

“I think I heard that song before,” said O, wrinkling up her nose. She was always poking that nose into some ragged anthology in the dayroom, maybe she really smelled a rat. “Heh-heh, I don’t think so,” I muttered, but then my eye fell on Zuk. Her ugly hands were on her hips and her dark eyes flashed. “You have steal Miss Peabody’s song,” she said, “I am shocked.” “No I didn’t,” I said uncomfortably, “I just borrowed it.” True, I had sung Emily’s words to O Susanna in my sloppy haste. Probably that gave away my larceny even to a dreambox mechanic from Outer Hotzeplotz. Yes, all at once I was sure that even in Outer Hotzeplotz, third graders sang “O Susanna!” the same way we sang “La Cucaracha” and “Song of the Volga Boatmen” at P.S. 149. I turned red. “Greedy, greedy girl,” Doctor Zuk rolled her guttural r ’s at me, “what I will do with you? Look what you have done,” and she pointed down at gauze-upholstered little Miss Peabody, refusal was her middle name. Emily had managed to twist her face into her wheelchair so all I could see was the tangled back of her head.

I saw I’d better do sumpm for Emily or Zuk would be disgusted with me for weeks. “Hey Em.” She turned back around and she was a puzzle piece of sad lumps around her face, like all Bug Motels when they wonder how they fit in. But the thing about puzzle pieces is, you can turn them. “Say Em,” I said, “I made up that song just for you and if you don’t like it, I don’t know what I’m gonna do.” And my neck, it’s a pretty long neck, wilted like a strip of bacon. I got so low and depressed that I even banged my chin on my pukelele, which played a weird, going-nowhere, broken-down fence gate of a chord. Then she had to do sumpm for me , see. Then she fit in again. “That ain’t it, Ursie, I love that song,” she said nobly. “It was my best,” I sniffled.

I slid a glance over at Doctor Zuk to see if she bought it. I don’t think so. Her eyes glowed down at me like nuggets of greenblack kryptonite or sumpm. “You are good little horse thief,” she said to me without smiling. “So-what shall be punishment of Bogeywoman, Miss Peabody? She must be punished. You may choose.”