Regan Wolfrom - Catholic Guilt and the Joy of Hating Men

“Destroy them? What are you talking about?”

Adelia started walking back toward the glade of blue and white flowers, clutching her orange-hatted gnome.

She sat down on the grass, tossing the gnome down beside her. She started plucking flowers and laying them in a pile.

“What are you doing?” Marguerite asked.

Adelia didn’t answer.

“Adelia…”

“I’m going to light them on fire,” Adelia said.

She pulled out a lighter.

“You smoke?” Marguerite asked.

“I smoke… something…”

“You can’t start a fire in the middle of the garden,” Marguerite said.

“Don’t try to stop me.” She knelt down and struck the lighter.

The flame wouldn’t catch.

“We will take them to my house,” Adelia said. “And burn them.”

“No,” Marguerite said. “I won’t let you.”

“We had sex with them. That is wrong.”

“Why is it wrong?”

Adelia gave up on lighting her pile of dying flowers. “If it’s not wrong, you would want me to tell your brother?”

Marguerite’s mind filled with images of Bradley pointing and laughing, mocking her, probably creating a Facebook Fan Page for “Marguerite and the Brown Gnome: Love and Marriage in the Grotto” and inviting every last friend and relative to the non-existent nuptials. Bradley would do that. She knew he would.

And Diogo would find out. And Netuno would find out. And Rafael… well, he’d know, too, and he’d probably tell every last gamer on Xbox LIVE about it.

“Okay,” Marguerite said, “we’ll burn them. We’ll burn them and we won’t tell anyone what happened.”

She felt ashamed, but she wasn’t sure if it was the memory of her threesome, or their foursome, or of her sudden betrayal of the little plastic friends she’d only just made.

Marguerite knew that everything that came after would be mind-numbingly normal.

Adelia mellowed once they reached her back garden. She even offered Marguerite a can of Sumol Zero, which Marguerite gladly accepted despite the fact that she felt the pineapple soda tasted a little bit like deer piss.

The two plastic gnomes sat on a stone ledge, looking quite natural beside the small garden of peas and potatoes.

“I’m sorry if I am seeming rude,” Adelia said as they sat down at a small lattice table. “I am… envergonhado .”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It’s… shame.”

“Oh. That I get. But I don’t think it’s fair to them.”

“To the gnomos ?”

“Yeah. They’re just doing what gnomes do, I guess.”

Adelia laughed. “You sound like a girl in love with plástico .”

Marguerite laughed, too. “Maybe I am,” she said.

Adelia leaned in toward Marguerite and placed her hand on Marguerite’s knee. “Did you like it?” she asked in a whisper.

Marguerite nodded.

“I liked it, also,” Adelia said.

“Maybe we shouldn’t burn them.”

Adelia nodded. “Maybe we should keep them here.”

“They look like they belong,” Marguerite said.

Marguerite stood up from her chair and walked over to the gnomes. She bent over and gave both gnome foreheads a kiss.

“In love with plastic,” she said with a grin.

The next few weeks were strange and wonderful for Marguerite, and she was sure they’d felt the same for Adelia. They’d meet every few days, when they both were free from work and study, and they’d take the two little gnomes up to Adelia’s bedroom. Sometimes they found mushrooms to eat, and sometimes they didn’t; they found in time that the mushrooms weren’t needed.

Bradley complained about their new friendship, telling Marguerite that she ought to have picked an uglier girl to be her bestie.

But Marguerite didn’t listen and she just didn’t care, and she found that nothing Bradley said to embarrass her, like joking to Diogo and Netuno about her shyness, or asking the boys from the nearby high school if they’d ever wondered just what a pale-skinned ginger girl looked like down below… none of it seemed to bother her anymore.

She wasn’t embarrassed. She had no reason to be.

And after those few weeks Marguerite had started to notice that the young men of Sintra were treating her differently.

Diogo and Netuno and even Rafael… they were talking to Marguerite like she was worth talking to, and not just worth looking at. And she was talking to them, and the old urges to throw up, or curl up in a fetal position… those urges were gone.

“Would you like to go to Quinta with me?” Diogo asked her one day as they walked along the Avenue. “I would love to show it to you.”

Marguerite laughed. “Have you forgotten who my brother is? He’s an old pro at taking girls to Quinta.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Then I won’t ruin this for you.” She grabbed his hand and squeezed. “I’d love to go to Quinta with you.”

They kept walking, but with their hands locked together.

“Oh…” Marguerite said, “do you mean right now?”

Diogo smiled and nodded. “If you have time.”

Marguerite leaned over and gave the young man a kiss on the cheek.

He took her through the gardens for a little while to start, telling her stories about Quinta that she’d heard two months before from her brother, although when Diogo told the stories they sounded far better, even with a few mispronounced words.

They reached the glade of flowers and mushrooms.

Diogo knelt down and picked up a mushroom. “Have you tried it?” he asked.

“I have,” she said, “but I don’t feel like having any today.”

“Just eat it.” He took an oversized bite and held out the rest.

“No,” she said.

“I want to show you the pozo iniciatico ,” Diogo said.

“The Initiation Well,” Marguerite said.

Diogo nodded and led her down the path.

“At the bottom of the well is the nine circle of hell,” Diogo said. “The knights would give an… oath, and they would say that they would be happier in hell than they would be to make dishonor to the Templários .”

Marguerite nodded. She was in heaven.

They walked together down the winding steps of the well, deep into the earth. Diogo was getting grabbier, moving from her hands to her thighs, to her hips, to her rear… she didn’t mind at all. It was about time someone made a big deal over her.

When they reached the marble floor and the red arrows, Diogo went in for the kiss. It was a little sloppier than she’d expected from a guy who’d seemed so smooth, but she still liked it.

“You are beautiful,” Diogo said, brushing a tuft of hair from her forehead.

“So are you,” Marguerite said.

Diogo laughed. And then he kissed her again.

“What are you doing?” a voice called out, deep and loud and frightening.

Diogo pulled back.

Marguerite stood and watched as Diogo glanced around the bottom of the well, more nervous than she’d have expected.

“It’s not funny,” Diogo said. “Who are you?”

“Marguerite…” the voice said. “Where has your beloved gone, Marguerite?”

“What beloved?” Marguerite asked.

“Do you not love another? One of my humble men?”

“This is stupid,” Diogo said. “Who are you?”

Marguerite walked over toward the dark at the edge of the well, to where the stone met the rock.