Sapphic Voices General Fiction

Poor Little Girls

(She just stands there, in a white dress, like hospital issue, holding an old suitcase.)

1/Roxanne

It’s amazing what people will throw away. As I sort through the donations, I know just how ungrateful we really are.

Designer blouse, by J.Crew--brand new. I swear I saw it in the latest catalogue. It’s missing one button — one.

Orange dress, by Liz Claiborne. Perfect condition. Maybe a year old.

And there’s so much more.

The sun shines through the gaps in the plastic tarp overhead and beats on my back, but the air is crisp: a typical California December. Soft chills run through my nerves every now and then, but I work jacketless anyway. My hands are dry, so dry that sometimes they crack and bleed. But no one really minds the faint red stains so long as they get a handout. Their priorities are more in order than ours, I think.

I work here four days a week, sometimes more. The establishment is a rickety old house in the slums, permanently filled with dust and stray, pregnant cats. An old couple runs this place; they finally retired, only to open their home to anyone who walks in off the street. The homeless and the needy are always here, curled up in corners or having a smoke on the brick patio. Working here is disconcerting at first (why exactly, I’m not quite sure) but after a while you go numb, you get used to it.

I rip open a white plastic trash bag hastily marked “for charity” and let out a sigh. This job has been the death of my fragile faith in people. Some folks think that they can just get rid of all their crap for a tax deduction. Old, stained underwear and ripped pants-—this is what the well-to-do of South County consider “charity.” All of it, new and old alike, will go to the same place and get handed out to those in need tomorrow morning at church (it's a Catholic organization). Some will get torn, worn-out t-shirts while the lucky ones get brand new, designer clothing. With every bag I open I'm amazed all over again. It’s like the lottery – luck of the draw. I pick out a brown shopping bag and start over again.

Five Old Navy tops, price tags still on. Ten dollars, fifteen, twenty-five, twenty-five, and twenty. Not significant enough to just return, I suppose.

I move on to the next bag and the next and the next – tedious work but someone has to do it. I open a bag full of neatly folded skirts and sweaters – used but nice. And just when I think I’m as jaded as possible, I’m stunned anew.

A red, strikingly red, satin negligee. La Perla. The leftovers of someone’s affair come out of the same bag as those conservative office-type clothes. The negligee comes off like the rest of the clothes-—nice, but used. It reminds me of that song from Moulin Rouge, the one that goes Roxanne / You don’t have to put on that red light / Roxanne / You don’t have to wear that dress tonight / Roxanne / You don’t have to sell your body to the night.

It goes into the box of underwear, the used underwear and brassieres that people so generously donate to the poor. It’s so out of place in there; all afternoon it beckons to me from that box, winking in the filtered sunlight.

Roxanne.

The song stays in my head, repeating endlessly, haunting me like a melancholy specter. I can’t stop trying to picture a woman wearing that negligee, voluptuous and curvy in shining siren red, both alluring and heartbreaking at the same time. Maybe her lover gets it for her when they go on a secret weekend-long escapade at some secluded B & B or else at some trashy hotel. (Oh, Roxanne...) The affair ends shortly afterwards, and badly. He’s married, or she’s still looking for something greater, something more fulfilling, something that doesn’t need red-light satin to perpetuate this myth of happiness. Maybe a few weeks, a few months later, she’s going through her clothes for charity, wearing an old black sweater and not lingerie, and sees it, remembering the mistakes of that affair. It’s time to let go, she thinks, and hastily puts it in the bag.

The picture is oddly intriguing, yet somehow bittersweet.

Roxanne / You don’t have to put on that red light.

2/Dominoes

As time passes, the clear afternoon gives way to the veil of night. The place gets busier and busier, like it always does at dinnertime. Families filter in, one by one, looking for a warm meal and a place to relax. Children color with the volunteers as their parents pile up plates of free food.

I play checkers with a young girl, a nine year old being raised by a volunteer. I’m deliberately losing when another girl, about four years old, pads out of the darkness and decides to sit in my lap. She squirms and swipes the little plastic checkers off the board for a while; she grows impatient with the game and tugs at my hand. Beaming innocently, she leads me to another bench where dominoes are scattered about.

The girl has the continuous stream-of-consciousness speech typical of kids her age. For some reason, I’m absolutely charmed by this girl. Her name’s Zoë, she tells me, and she wants me to set up the dominoes. She lives with her grandmother for five days a week, she says, and her mother takes her for two, even though they don’t really live anywhere. They wander around, going from “house to house.” A shelter case, I think to myself, pitying this sweet little girl. With an air of carelessness, she says that her grandmother always tells her that her mother’s sick, a sick, sick woman, and can she knock down the dominoes now?

She sticks her hands between my knees for warmth, still talking, as if the dominoes were only a means of initiating conversation. Her mother brought her here tonight. Her grandmother doesn’t know, she says. She’s not supposed to tell. It’s a secret.

I try to explain to her that her grandmother will be worried, that it’s not right to hide the truth from someone. (For a brief, bitter moment an image appears behind my eyes: wavy, tousled brown hair, red lingerie, and dark, dark eyes…).

--Lying hurts people, I tell her. She looks sheepish and lets go of my hand.

--Even if she doesn’t know? Zoë asks me. And I realize she’s much more perceptive than her chitchat lets on. (She doesn’t think you’re awake, doesn’t think you could possible see that pale fluorescent light has been turned on or that the telephone cord is stretching into the bathroom. Yet you’re painfully aware of her softly resonating voice: “We’ll have a good time. What she doesn’t know, won’t hurt her.”)

--Even if she doesn’t know, I tell her. Because when she does find out, it will hurt so much more.

Zoë's face crumples; her eyes become misty. She’s so much more sensitive than I would have ever imagined. My heart goes out to this poor girl, stuck in the middle of two warring women, each probably trying to poison her against the other. At this rate, Zoë's going to grow out of her childhood long before her body reaches puberty. I think disillusionment is the most devastating disease of all, especially in regard to people and relationships. It makes you bitter and lonely, unable to enjoy anyone.

--‘Scuse me, Zoë says politely. She jumps off the bench and pads off into the night, back into whatever netherworld she came from. I haven’t done the right thing at all.

--I won’t say anything, I tell the emptiness of nighttime.

The dominoes give way without warning.


(Roxanne, voluptuous in whispering red by candlelight. Roxanne, putting on her rouge and lipstick, putting on a face and becoming someone else, someone unrecognizable. But which face is the real one?

Roxanne, in screaming red, in absolute darkness.)

3/The Longed-For and the Loved

My thoughts are still with Zoë even though I’ve moved on to another typical chore – washing the cookware. It’s easier to drift off during this task, even necessary – anything not to think about the grime you’re touching. Periodically I look out the window into the yard, but it’s so dark that I can hardly see anything besides my own reflection.

Where is she? Is she still here? Is she with her mother? Is her mother really sick?

Somehow the odd combination of adventitious forces has left me depressed. I feel like I let poor Zoë down. Maybe I should have lied instead of being so candid. I think I forgot I was talking to such a young girl, one who still needs to have her hand held. Hell, I’d still like someone to hold my hand, shield my eyes. Being independent and alone isn’t at all like you imagine it will be when you’re young. It’s like standing n the tips of your toes at the very edge of the vast universe. There’s nothing between you and the emptiness, and you feel like you might fall in at any moment…

And then, there’s that negligee…

Someone claps me on the back, jolting me from my fretful thoughts.

Scott, another volunteer, grins as he sidles up next to me, picking up some wet dishes and a towel.

--I can do those myself, I tell him.

--But then I’d miss the pleasure of your company, he replies.

We spend an awkward few moments in silence before he starts telling me about how he spent his weekend skiing somewhere on the East Coast. Does he realize that he’s just talking at me?

--Did you see the donation tent? he asks abruptly.

--I worked there this morning, I say curtly, but then I glance up and catch his leer in the window’s reflection; now I know what he means. He saw it.

My face grows hot. I feel my anger rising – something in me wants that lingerie to belong only to me, to be my secret.

--Clothing duty’s more exciting than I thought, he says in a husky voice. I didn’t realize that we had a penitent whore right here in South County.

That makes me angry. My reflection and I flush. (So many reflections – shadows really – Roxanne, Roxie, Zoë, her mother – the real and the imagined, the longed-for and the loved – how can so much be wrapped up in one body, in one mind?) I wish I could think of some fiery comeback, but my wit is slow and my tongue dull.

--So did you try it on? he asks, taking advantage of my chagrin.

--Of course not, I say, knowing that my face is the color of the object in question. I drop the dirty pan I’ve been scouring and leave. There’s nothing else I can do. Scott’s chuckles haunt me as I stalk out the sliding door and into the yard. I know his eyes are still on me.

I bury my hands deep into the pockets of my jeans. Gooseflesh has spread all over me like a rash; I can see my breath in front of me, as it washes into the air. I consider ducking back inside and batting my eyelashes at Scott, hoping that he’ll lend me his jacket, but pride restrains me.

A soft little voice permeates my ears. I can’t make out the words, but I know that sound; it’s as if I’ve known it forever. It’s Zoë. I glance around in the darkness; amidst all the people-shaped shadows I make out her tiny silhouette against the back wall. The shape of her curly hair gives her away. I can’t see her face but I can read her figure easily enough: arched back, head down, hands and feet together, trembling ever so slightly. She’s somewhat turned towards a larger, adult shadow, a woman. There I can only make out thick, tangled hair and a frail, almost skeletal body. Her mother? Something catches in my throat – all the emotions that randomly built up during the day are making me uneasy. I duck into the clothing tent.

There’s a pale light bulb hastily rigged up and suspended from the ceiling; it casts a sallow light, giving everything a sickly hue. In this ghastly atmosphere, my eyes immediately flow to the red shimmer in the dirty white bin. I can’t help myself – it’s as if Scott’s words have awakened some dark desire within me. I want to know the secret of this fabric, of the life it seems to carry with it. I carefully pick it up and cradle it in my arms like a child, and then I hastily stuff it under my t-shirt. It’s cool and slippery against my skin. I consider just walking out of here with it – no one would notice.

I wrap my arms around me, hugging the lingerie and my own body tightly, urgently. What is this thing, this thing that transforms women? I wonder. I think maybe I’m giving it too much credit, but something in me wants to put it all on this piece of fabric. My face feels heavy; tears form in my eyes.

(Roxanne – Roxie. Two different women, but not so far removed. One only imagined, the other idealized – they might as well both be fiction. Sudden, inexplicable attractions that strike with sharpened scythes and hack, and bury themselves into your flesh – your flesh – your heart – your brain. Roxie, the smiling girl, not at all the lingerie girl. The sweet-smiling girl with the endearing laugh. The girl who was somehow transformed in the night, in red, betraying and becoming a Roxanne. Or maybe there never was a Roxie as you knew her – loved her – imagined her. Maybe it was Roxanne all along, Roxanne playing games and putting on costumes, having endless adventures. The girl you love and the girl that is are never the same person. And in the end, all that’s left is the lingerie, the lingerie that conspired against you and betrayed you. Roxie – Roxanne…).

The negligee grows warm against my skin as I stand there, tears silently running their course down my cheeks, bitter and melancholy. It would be even worse if I were to let myself realize that this piece of clothing has nothing to do with anything, that it’s just a scapegoat for unfaithful lovers, but I don’t dwell on that thought. It’s easier to pretend, it’s easier to lie. It’s the truth that stabs, the truth that hurts.

4/The Invisible Other

The wind has started up again, swirling paper plates and crayon-colored pages in tiny tornadoes. Shivering again, I hurry to put away kiddie crafts before they’re all carried away. My heart isn’t really in the work, but then it hasn’t been in anything for a while now. The yard is mostly empty – most of the homeless have either gone to sleep inside or left. The other volunteers are busying themselves inside. I would be in there with them if I weren’t ashamed to face Scott. I know he watched me go into the donation tent. I hear a noise behind me – the crunch of a dead, dry leaf under a shoe. I glance behind me, ready to be assaulted by an ex-con or deranged lunatic. (Maybe even half-hoping).

But no, it’s a woman. She has a demure smile on her lips and a suitcase in her hand. Her hair is wind-worked, messy. She’s wearing a white dress, like hospital issue, and holding an old suitcase. Her gaunt wrists stick out of her overcoat; they’re wrapped in white gauze. Something in her figure is familiar – is this Zoë’s mother? It must be. She’s not exactly what I’d pictured from Zoë’s description of a “sick, sick woman.” Almost disappointing, really. Her eyes reflect some vague agreement; it’s as if they ask forgiveness for not being more interesting, more disturbing. They’re the same disillusioned eyes I saw in her daughter earlier this evening.

--I have some clothing to donate, she says. Her voice is wispy and smooth; that song floats back into my head: Roxanne / You don’t have to put on that red light / Roxanne.

Roxanne.

(Funny how the ones you love never disappear, but reincarnate themselves in the little things. Funny how they haunt you, even though you know that you’ve been long forgotten. Funny in a sick, sad sort of way.)


I lead her into the donation tent. She opens her suitcase; the clothing is well-worn, but not ragged. There is the occasional designer — Juicy, Banana Republic — but mostly not. It’s like déjà vu seeing these clothes, like they’ve been here before, been sorted through this tent and handed out by volunteers in an infinite cycle of sarcastic charity.

I hang them up and sort them, humming El Tango de Roxanne. She watches for a while, and then leaves, hands in her pockets. After I finish sorting her donations, I look for the Roxanne negligee on my way out, but I don’t see it.


(Roxanne in her femme-fatale cliché, but pulling it off so well, she thinks. Roxanne, with total disregard for anything outside this one moment, total disregard for the Invisible Other who adores her, red satin or no. Roxanne – Roxie – who doesn’t hear the sobs, doesn’t see the tears. Roxie, who won’t reach out. Roxie, who leaves you for some man, who never even explains or bids farewell after you find them together – her in that red negligee like the blood that runs from your lips as you bite them, trying not to scream. Roxie – Roxanne – the betrayal of love and faith and hope.)

5/Crucifiction

When I get back into the house, a little body attaches itself to me and won’t let go. Zoë’s afraid of the crucifix, the gold-plated Jesus on the wall of the living room. The thing’s always made me uncomfortable, too. I hug her to me, strangely attached to this small girl, maybe even recognizing something of myself in her. I want to take her, hold her, care for her. I want to tell her everything is fine and the world beautiful, full of beauty just for her. I want her to feel loved, I want to save her soul from its weariness before it disintegrates into nothingness. She clings to me, saying her hands are cold, sticking them in mine for warmth. She tells me she can’t find her mommy, her mommy left her, she’s so afraid to be alone. Her grandmother says her mommy is dirty. Her mommy is a sinner. She asks, what’s a sinner? as the screaming rings out.


(You always – no, let’s be honest – I always blamed the red fox color of the negligee, the way it hugged her in the candlelight, the way it screamed surrender in the darkness. Because maybe then it wasn’t a betrayal, but a weakness, a passive seduction. Then maybe it wouldn’t have meant that I never had to find out that she didn’t really love me. Then maybe it wouldn’t have meant that the sweet girl I honestly loved was just an illusion, like the play of light on her lingerie. It wouldn’t have meant abandonment; it wouldn’t have meant having to face the world alone. It wouldn’t have meant degenerating from the comfort of the intimate we into the incredible solitude of that lonely pronoun, I.)


The volunteers are probably the last to get outside, having to push our way through the homeless crowd that has suddenly precipitated, seemingly out of nowhere. (Oh, Roxanne!) The red negligee is the first thing I see, the fire-engine satin fading rapidly under the dull stain of blood. Twisted and frightened on someone’s pale, deflated body. My eyes follow the long limbs of the body, faded and scratched like a broken record. It's that woman - Zoë’s mother. I’m not even surprised to see her in Roxanne’s lingerie—she must have taken it as I shelved her returned clothes. (Roxanne?) Her coat is gone and the hospital-gown is in a heap a few feet away. Those gauzy bands at her wrists have been slashed, and blood seems to be everywhere, on the ruined lingerie and the ruined body. One of our own kitchen knives peers out of the hospital gown, blotted in the white cotton. (What’s a sinner?) She’s laid herself in an awkward crucifixion on the rusty ground, like that gold-plated Jesus inside. Newly faded scars on her hands and feet seem like stigmata. Her fragile emaciation and her wide, paranoid eyes give her an other-worldliness, a look of fire and desolation and loss. A sick, sick woman. Somehow she has perverted sacrifice, turned it into some masochistic self-indulgence.

Most of the volunteers are afraid to get close to her, instead focusing on shooing away the homeless. Scott dashes forward, the daring boy-wonder he thinks he is, and snatches up the hospital gown. Apparently, it has been stamped on the back. He reads, and I already know the words: –South County Hospital. (A sick, sick woman). I take a few steps closer to her, hand over my mouth, trembling a little. Gently, I knee down beside her, reaching out to touching her but stopping short, unable to.


(Nothing at all left once the disillusionment, the heartbreak has set in. Nothing left but me and the abyss, and my screams as they fall into the hopeless nothingness. Nothing at all in the world unless – unless what?)


She’s alive, but barely; her breathing is labored and sporadic. Her color drains out through her wrists and onto the ground, onto the soiled negligee. Someone is on the phone with the paramedics; others are trying to keep all of the little kids inside. Zoë, I wonder, is this your sinner? Is this really how far pain can take you?

The violent act of suicide doesn’t seem to fit this fragile body. Something here is unjust, undeserved, provoked; yet at the same time, something here is selfish and sickening.

You poor little girl. The greatest tragedy of all is that you will survive this.


(Roxanne, in a twisted, shameful negligee. Roxanne, alone and humiliated. The lure of the red leads to nothing in the end. Roxanne – Roxie – is she penitent? Does it really matter? There are thousands more Roxies, Roxannes, more sick, sick ‘sinners.’ And how do we poor little girls get along? How do we ever move on, how do we ever purge ourselves of the scar tissue? How do we ever regain our innocence, our happiness? All of us, the good and the malicious, all of us, poor little girls. All of us, who somehow manage to keep breathing.)

6/Eventually

The flashing red lights of the ambulance fade away into the night. The negligee is cut and torn and bloody in my arms. Zoë clings to my legs, looking up at me with tearful eyes. She wants her grandmother now. I tell her to go inside; I’ll help in a minute. I watch her pad into the old house, still full of police and social workers. What will become of her? I wonder despondently.

I take the shreds of lingerie to the dumpster and push them below far below the surface of the garbage. That thing shouldn’t have to be anyone’s misery any longer. Or anyone’s scapegoat.

The act should make me feel secure, safe, but instead I just feel dismantled, incomplete. It’s just a thing, after all. It can’t take the pain away from anyone.


(Oh, Roxie…how do we stop from crucifying ourselves? Can the pain go away, the weariness ebb? It has to; it has to if these poor little girls are to survive…everything must fade, even the darkest pain, eventually…)


And I swear, as I go inside I hear music drifting on the air, from some distant boom box in the night.

Roxanne / You don’t have to put on that red light.

Roxanne / You don’t have to wear that dress tonight.

END

(Note: "Roxanne" lyrics taken from the film "Moulin Rouge;" those lyrics were adapted from the song by the Police. Parentheticals are not part of the lyrics.)

If you have enjoyed Alix's "Poor Little Girls", then please be certain to e-mail her at  Alix[at]sapphicvoices.com  and thank her for posting this Story.

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