Helen Phillips - Some Possible Solutions

The thin man taught Roo how to make the daily porridge, which was served at noontime with honey and at nighttime with cheese. Also we ate things grown on the farm. Strawberries, of course, and vegetables from the garden. Soon Roo’s porridge surpassed the porridge of the thin man.

* * *

One day Ilooked over at my sister and looked down at myself and realized our appearances had begun to diverge. Roo was plumper now, her breasts larger than mine, her skin a deeper shade of tan. Her hair was light brown and now that my hair was long enough to pull over my shoulder I could see it was several shades darker.

“What color are my eyes?” I said to Roo. Hers were brown flecked with yellow. It was wonderful to have them gazing so thoughtfully into mine.

“Gray,” she replied after a moment.

Dismayed, I insisted that we ask the thin man. We stood before him in the barnyard, our eyes wide open.

“Both of you have hazel eyes,” he said, and I was filled with giddy relief, “but yours are more gray,” he said to me, “while hers are brown like honey.”

There were other things, too. Her fingernails grew faster than mine. Freckles appeared on her forehead but not on mine. We noticed a difference in our heights — I perhaps an inch taller — that had been lost on us before. We’d always been so interchangeable that Mrs. Penelope had often just referred to us as R.

Yet still our voices were identical, with the exact same cadence. Still our collarbones were a perfect match.

* * *

I couldn’t growaccustomed to the wind and I couldn’t grow accustomed to the thin man. But I grew accustomed to the snakes among the strawberry plants; I scarcely noticed them anymore and when I did it was with a feeling of fondness.

It was easy to forget certain things about our former life. What was the name of the last street we used to cross before entering the park? What was the weekly breakfast served by Mrs. Penelope on Wednesdays? Exactly how long did we have to stay in the freezer before going out to the customers?

Time passed. We ate porridge with herbs. I watched a brown bird reclaim a strand of synthetic hair from the freezing mud. Roo and I dug for carrots and placed hay over the dying strawberry plants, working side by side. A series of eerie notes plucked on a banjo, my sister whispering and singing. In the firelight, the Jack of Hearts winking at me. Voices heard as though from afar, the voice of the thin man and the voice of my sister, the same as my voice, but the words drifted over and around me, the fire warming the unpleasant feelings out of me.

* * *

One morning theywere gone. I woke to the wind, and the rooster scratching. The rooster wandered lonesome over the frozen dung of the barnyard. My sister and the thin man were not in any bed. That was my first thought; I anticipated finding them entangled, I began to understand the vague hatreds I’d felt. It was something of a relief not to discover them, his bed empty and tidy — but they were nowhere else either, not in the fields, not down by the river, not in the groves.

That night it seemed near tucked under my pillow, how could I have missed it, a note from she whom I had taught to write. Her handwriting still looked like that of a young child, all capitals; her spelling, abysmal.

R — WE LUV U. HAVE FUN WHAL WE R GONE. KEEP A EYE ON THINGZ. HARVIST SQUSH/FED CHICKS. THANK U THANK U THANK U. WE LUV U — R

I had never in my life been so enraged; I had never in my life been away from Roo. The loneliest minutes in my life must have been the six before she was born; but those were now trumped by these, as I stormed around the barnyard, crushing the intricate architectures of frosted sludge. Looking out over the strawberry fields, I saw the small plants all turned brown for winter, the snakes vanished, every last bit of redness harvested. Unlike the rooster, I could do something about my resentment. That poor rooster, he was left there in the barnyard digging through the cold mud for auburn curls that might or might not emerge.

* * *

Back in thecity, no wind blew in the park.

I stood in the middle, right where Roo and I had stood, and looked at the blades of grass and groves of trees. I awaited movement. But the park was still. The sky was gray and quiet, everything bathed in flat city light. The wool skirt weighed on my hips. The starched shirt gripped my throat like a pair of hands.

Mrs. Penelope had greeted me mistrustfully. She was not used to hitchhikers showing up on her doorstep at five in the morning. She wrapped her silken peacock robe tighter around her thin, ladylike frame. “Where’s the other one?” she said. Warily, she led me to our old room. Another pair of girls was sleeping in our bed. Mrs. Penelope ordered the elderly maintenance man to bring up a cot. There was no one with whom to share the minor adventures I’d experienced on my journey back to the city, so I let those hours spent traveling slide into gray oblivion.

* * *

Our trick fornot crying when we had to go into the freezer no longer worked. I couldn’t envision God pinching my tear ducts, and I came out crying. But not the desired kind of tearing up that makes one’s eyes incandescent; this was true crying, the kind that makes makeup and men run. I kept getting sent back to Mrs. Penelope’s with the early shift of girls, those who were less slender or more awkward or partnerless. Pairs of girls were always better off. And pairs of identical twins — well, obviously. The two girls with whom I now shared our old room were new to it, young and scared, which made them irresistible, and they’d creep in quiet, exhausted, hours after I’d settled into my flimsy cot. They were neither friendly nor unfriendly to me, as impeccably gray as the city itself, and mournfully I observed between them the desperate, joyous intimacy I’d once known.

* * *

Mrs. Penelope theLady leaned against the doorframe of the kitchen, luxuriously smoking a cigarette, while I ate undercooked scrambled eggs.

“Do I need to say it?” she said, blowing out.

I looked up at her, terrified.

“You ain’t no good no more.” It was always a bad sign when Mrs. Penelope slipped into trashy grammar. “Watcha thinkin, hidin in corners all night away from the guys, lettin your makeup run and wearin dirty underwear?”

“When Roo comes back I’ll be good again.”

“‘When Roo comes back I’ll be good again,’” she parroted. “She ain’t comin back.”

“What do you mean?” Hope flooded me. “You know where she is?”

Mrs. Penelope smoked.

“She did all the work fer the both of you.”

My fork clattered to the floor. I stood up noisily, pushing my chair back across the linoleum.

“We worked together as identical twins,” I hissed, “which is how we brought in all that dirty slutty cash for you, Missy.” I couldn’t believe I’d called her Missy; that’s what she used to call us.

Mrs. Penelope smoked and laughed and for half a second looked a little bit sad.

“Sweetheart, you two ain’t identical twins. You ain’t even twins. You ain’t even sisters . Didn’tcha ever notice how you don’t look at all alike except fer your size and your hair extensions? In dim rooms men believe anything.”

* * *

In the parkthere was a stone bridge built before the climate was controlled. Orange lichen grew on it and beneath it there were places where one could sleep. I thought I was alone but when I woke there were people squeezed in beside me. They had bad breath, it smelled like Coca-Cola and dead squirrels, but they were friendly and didn’t mind being held too tightly at night. Soon enough I could out-collect them when it came to five-cent bottles. I found a lighter in a sidewalk grate; we used it to roast the softening eggplants someone discovered behind the grocery. I avoided the other associations I had with eggplant, the darkness of its skin against the tan skin of its harvester. I shat in the pleasant autumnal groves of the park. There was never any wind. My hair became matted, my woolen skirt lighter as its fibers wore away. I tried to pump my heart full of joy. I thought sex under these circumstances was supposed to be wonderful. I tried to develop a particular affinity for one of them, the kind of thing where we might say, The two of us, we’re a team, this is our life and we’re making it together. We did special things, shared tips about where to find glass bottles and split a candy bar found on the sidewalk and went on nighttime walks not to scavenge but just for fun. We whooped and joked and taunted and smoked discarded cigarettes. But that person disappointed me again and again. In all honesty, this new team didn’t hold a candle to the one I’d been on my whole life. I did push-ups and my muscles grew. You’re depressed, the vagrants told me. Seriously depressed.