The Best American Short Stories 2015 (11 page)

For days, I feign illness and stay in bed. I hear the groups of women doing their outside activities. It is a cyclical drone of laughing, arguing, calisthenic counting, and loaded silence.

When I do go outside to the pen, the women from my old floor give generous hugs and we try to talk, like the old days, but it's different. There are new women. A couple of friends have been chosen and are gone. A new woman replaced me; she lives in my room and has a view across the road to the men's shelter and my window friend. Her name is even close to mine. She told me that the women sometimes slip and call her by my name. She told me this to comfort me, with a sympathetic pat on my arm. But it doesn't help. Is there any difference between us beyond a few letters in our names?

The women on my new floor are mostly concerned with escape. They are bullish. Their desire scares me. But there are two nice women. They don't try to escape, or not that I've heard about. Our way out of here is to get chosen. So we swap tips from the different pamphlets we've read.

We don't bake. Sometimes my old girls send down cookies, but they come a couple of days after their baking parties and so they are crumbly, stale; nothing like the warm, fresh treats I was so fond of. I've started throwing them away, but I won't say anything, because I like it that they still think of me.

The alarm sounds.

It sounds when someone runs.

Floodlights sweep over the field, then through my window. I hear the far-off yowling of dogs as they smell their way through the night, tracking some woman. Curiously, I find myself rooting for her. Perhaps I'm half-asleep but, peering out my window, I think I can see her. When the lights pan the wasteland between the pen and the forest, something like a shadow moves swiftly, with what seems like hair whipping behind, barely able to keep up with the body it belongs to.

There's nowhere to hide before the forest line. The runner needs a good head start. I doubt she got it. They never do. And yet they always try. What are they looking for? Out there, it's dark and cold. No guarantee of food or money or comfort or love. And even if you have someone waiting for you, still it seems such a slippery thing to depend on. Say my window friend and I ran. Would he love me outside of here? Could I ever be sure? I barely know him.

I picture myself running. My nightgown billowing behind me, my hair loosening from a braid as I speed along. Finally it comes undone and free. I hear the dogs behind me. I see the forest darkness in front of me. From across the field a figure races toward me. But I'm not scared. It's him. My friend. We planned it. We're running so that when we reach the woods we can be together. I feel hopeful to be running across this field, and then I suddenly know why they do it. They are running toward what they believe is best for them, not what the manual claims is best. It should be the same thing but it isn't.

I find at the end of this fantasy I am weeping and so I write it down in a letter to my friend. I write it as a proposition, though I'm not sure it is one. I just want to know if he would agree to it. It's another way of asking, if we weren't both poor wretches, would he choose me? I don't know why, but it's important to me. Maybe I've changed. The manual says that in order to move forward we must change. But this change feels more like a collapse. And that is not how the manual says it will feel.

I open my window and the wind pinks my cheeks. I like it. The wind brings the smell from the field and even from the trees. It smells good out there, past where I can see. The dogs are silent now. The runner might have made it. I shake my head at the night. I know it's not true.

My window friend is gone.

At bingo I search for him. I want to explain my absence, tell him I was moved, while discreetly slipping the letter into his pocket. I can't find him. Another man follows me around trying to grab my hand; he whispers that he has secret riches no one knows about. Finally a guard from the men's shelter intervenes, takes the man by the arm. I ask about my friend and it turns out he was chosen. The guard says he left a few days ago. I ask how many exactly. “Just two,” he says a little sheepishly. I'm destroyed. I say, “Two is not a few,” and return to my room. It is painted a buzzing shade of yellow and I hate it. The desk is even bigger and emptier now that I've stopped pretending to read. The floodlights from the pen shine in my window at all hours.

The next day I slog to lunch, but I can't eat. I stare at my crowded tray until the cafeteria empties. My Case Manager calls me in. Her eyebrows are raised, imploring. She opens a file and in it is the letter I wrote to my window friend. I can't even muster surprise. Of course they would find it.

“I wasn't really going to run,” I say. “It was just a fantasy.”

“I know.”

She pushes the letter to me.

I read it. My handwriting is looped and sleepy. The pages are worn. I wrote a lot, and reread it obsessively to make it right. Reading it now makes me blush. In the letter, I am begging. My tone near hysterics. I promise that we'll find a house, unoccupied in the woods, abandoned years ago. That we'll forage for our food, but that eventually we'll find work, even though all the jobs are spoken for. I insist we'll be the lucky ones. We'll have a family, a house with a yard. He'll have a nice car, and I'll have nice things. We'll have friends over to dinner. We'll have a vacation each year even if it is a simple one and we'll never put anything off if we really want to do it. And we'll never wait for something we want now, like children. We'll never fight over silly things. I won't hold a grudge and he'll say what he's feeling instead of shrugging it away. I won't be irresponsible anymore. I won't buy bedding we can't afford. And I'll be more fun. I'll be game. I won't insist he tell me where we're going when all he really wants to do is surprise me. I'll never cook him things he doesn't like because I think he should like them. I won't forget to do small things like pick up the dry cleaning or rake the leaves in our yard.

Of course, I'm writing to my husband.

It reads as if we're fighting and he's stormed out, is staying on a friend's couch. Here is my love letter, my apology: please come home.

I look up.

“Be sensible,” my Case Manager says, not without some kindness. “I can't put your name on any list until you've shown you're moving on.”

“But when do I grieve?”

“Now,” she says, as though I have asked what day it is.

I think of the man from across the road, my window friend. But I can't even remember what he looks like. I try to picture him in his room, but all I see is my husband, waiting, in his plaid pajamas and wooly slippers. He shakes a ghostly little wave. I can tell from his shoulders he is sad enough for the both of us.

For a couple of weeks I allow myself a little moment. I scrape other women's leftovers onto my plate. I eat the treats my old floor still sends, even though I don't like them. I barter for snacks with some rougher women who somehow had it in them to set up a secret supply business. Now my pants don't fit. My Case Manager finally intervenes and tells me to cut it out. She says even though we live in a progressive time it's probably not a good idea to let myself go. She gives me some handouts and a new exercise to do that is, literally, exercise. “Get that heart rate up,” she says, pinching the flesh above my hip.

I know she's right. We all deal with things differently. At night, some women cry. Other women are bullies. Others bake. Some live one life while dreaming of another. And some women run.

Each night a new alarm sounds, the dogs, the lights. In the morning I'll see who looks ragged, as if she spent a futile few hours flying across the barren tract to the forest, only to be recaptured. I'll also look to see if anyone is missing. I still secretly hope she, whoever she was, made it, and I feel twinges of curiosity at the thought of that life. But they're just twinges. Not motivation. What I want, I can't have. My husband is gone. So my future will be something much quieter. It won't be some dramatic feeling in the wild unknown. There are other ways to be happy. I read that in the manual. I'm trying them out. My Case Manager says this is healthy.

Eight months into my stay, I am chosen. My Case Manager is proud of me.

“That's a respectable amount of time,” she insists.

I blush at the compliment.

“The knitting helped,” she notes, taking quiet credit for suggesting it.

I nod. However it happened, I'm just glad to have a home.

My new husband's name is Charlie and he lives in Tucson and the first thing he bought with the dowry was a new flat-screen TV. But the second thing he bought was a watch for me, with a thin silver cuff and a small diamond in place of the twelve.

My Placement Team takes me to a diner on the outskirts of town, where Charlie waits in front of a plate of pancakes. He has girlish hands but otherwise he is fine. The Team introduces us and, after some papers are signed, leaves. Charlie greets me with a light hug. He is wearing my husband's cologne. I'm sure it is a coincidence.

I am his second wife. His first wife is in a shelter on a road that leads to the interstate outside Tucson. He tells me not to worry. He didn't cause their broken marriage. She did. I nod, and wish I had a piece of paper so I can take notes.

He asks me how I feel about kids, something he certainly has already read in my file. I answer that I've always wanted them. “We'd been planning,” I say. There is an awkward silence. I have broken a rule already. I apologize. He's embarrassed but says it's fine. He adds, “It's natural, right?” and smiles. He seems concerned that I not think badly of him, and I appreciate that. I clear my throat and say again, “I'd like kids.” He looks glad to hear it. He calls the waitress over and says, “Get my new wife anything she wants.” There's something in his eagerness I think I can find charming.

I am not ready for this. But I've heard that someday I'll barely remember that I ever knew my first husband. I'll picture him standing a long way down a crowded beach. Everyone will be pleased to be on the beach. I'll see something about him that will catch my eye but it won't be his wave, or his smile, or the particular curl of his hair. It will be platonic, something I wouldn't associate with him. It will be the pattern on his bathing shorts; bright, wild, red floral or, maybe, plaid. I'll think something like “What a nice color for bathing shorts. How bright they look against the beige sand.” And then the image will disappear and I'll never think of him again. I'm not looking forward to this day. But I won't turn my back on it. As the manual often states, it's my future. And it's the only one I get.

JULIA ELLIOTT

FROM
Conjunctions

W
ILDA WHIPS HERSELF
with a clump of blackberry brambles. She can feel cold from the stone floor pulsing up into her cowl, chastising her animal body. She smiles. Each morning she thinks of a new penance. Yesterday, she slipped off her woolen stockings and stood outside in the freezing air. The morning before that, she rolled naked in dried thistle. Subsisting on watery soup and stale bread, she has almost subdued her body. Each month when the moon swells, her woman's bleeding is a dribble of burgundy so scant she does not need a rag.

Women are by nature carnal
, the Abbot said last night after administering the sacred blood and flesh.
A woman's body has a door, an opening that the Devil may slip through, unless she fiercely barricade against such entry
.

Wilda's body is a bundle of polluted flesh. Her body is a stinking goat. She lashes her shoulders and back. She scourges her arms, her legs, her shrunken breasts, and jutting rib cage. She thrashes the small mound of her belly. She gives her feet a good working over, flagellating her toes and soles. She reaches back to torture the two poor sinews of her buttocks. And then she repeats the process, doubling the force. She chastises the filthy maggot of her carnality until she feels fire crackling up her backbone. Her head explodes with light. Her soul rejoices like a bird flitting from a dark hut, out into summer air.

Sister Elgaruth is always in the scriptorium before Wilda, just after Prime Service, making her rounds among the lecterns, checking the manuscripts for errors, her hawk nose hovering an inch above each parchment. Wilda sits down at her desk just as the sun rises over the dark wood. She sharpens her quill. She opens her ink pot and takes a deep sniff—pomegranate juice and wine tempered with sulfur—a rich red ink that reminds her of Christ's blood, the same stuff that stains her fingertips. This is always the happiest time of day—ink perfume in her nostrils, windows blazing with light, her body weightless from the morning's scourge. But then the other nuns come bumbling in, filling the hall with grunts and coughs, fermented breath, smells of winter bodies bundled in dirty wool. Wilda sighs and turns back to
Beastes of God's Worlde
, the manuscript she has been copying for a year, over and over, encountering the creatures of God's Menagerie in different moods and seasons, finding them boring on some days and thrilling on others.

Today she is halfway through the entry on bees, the smallest of God's birds, created on the fifth day. She imagines the creatures spewing from the void, the air hazy and buzzing. In these fallen times, bees hatch from the bodies of oxen and the rotted flesh of dead cows. They begin as worms, squirming in putrid meat, and “transform into bees.” Wilda wonders why the manuscript provides no satisfactory information on the nature of this transformation, while going on for paragraphs about the lessons we may learn from creatures that hatch from corpses to become ethereal flying nectar eaters and industrious builders of hives.

How do they get their wings? Do they sleep in their hives all winter or freeze to death? Do fresh swarms hatch from ox flesh each spring?