Chapter 14: Breakfast with the Harpies

14. Breakfast with the Harpies

Love is not supposed to be like that. Love is something that is built over time, like the old couple tottering through the park side by side, and then they sit down on a bench and without even thinking about it their hands find each other, and they watch the sunset knowing that they have been together forever. Then the TV news people find them and take their picture because they have been married for forty years and have weathered so many storms. And now they have the quiet of each other as they fade.

But this feeling inside me, it is like a storm crashing into the walls of my chest. All I can see is her face. All I can smell is her smell. All I can think about is her. And yet, what if it is all a lie?

After the muddy night, the morning sun blazed white, washing out all the color when I first opened my eyes. It was going to be a very hot day outside, but of course I would not be going outside. Far above my head the ceiling revealed stains, brown splotches in the shapes of clouds and creatures. I wondered how they got there and what substance had created them, and then I remembered that there were girls who lived above me. Perhaps they had peed on the floor – sometime long before my arrival.

Outside the window the sky was white with haze. It would be one of those drippy, humid days, the kind where you can’t even move in the afternoon for the way it takes your breath. Allison remembered those afternoons, being out in the yard and then retreating into the house for her mother’s lemonade, the kind made from the frozen concentrate in a cardboard tube. I never got to experience that heat with Allison, nor the lemonade.  Except through her memories, and there was one of sipping the lemonade while feeling the sweat run down between her boobs, our boobs. She remembered that much, and then shut down again.

I was late. Outside I heard the tractor start, the one they used to mow the acres of brownish green which islanded Holshue House from the world. I stood at the window for a moment in blue-flowered pajamas, remembering the nightmare. But then I remembered that if I missed breakfast that I would just have to be hungry for the day – no one gave a shit if you ate or not. I rushed to the bathroom to pee and then back to my room to get dressed, not bothering to wash anything. As I dug through my clothes it seemed that everything I picked up stunk. I needed clean clothes. On the other side of the room sat a green plastic laundry basket, its handles and bottom edged in black from a previous resident or residents. Who knew how many owners it had had. Now it sat there overflowing with my dirty clothes. I was going to have to figure out how to wash at Holshue House soon.

Finally I found a clean shirt. It was pink with a white unicorn on the front, something left over from when I was about twelve. When I stripped off my pajamas and pulled it on it was a bit short – more of a crop-top, but it would have to do. The jeans I found smelled of me only a bit in the crotch – I wondered if, when I did do laundry if I should do it in my underwear so that they could get clean with everything else. My yellow dress was actually the cleanest thing I had, but wearing it two days in a row would just be too obvious.

As I carried my breakfast tray with watery scrambled eggs and soggy toast into the dining area, I immediately saw Phyla. She was sitting with Michele, but as I turned in her direction, her eyes moved back and forth in a “no.” I was instantly disappointed, but I could also understand. It was the color line. It was the secret of our kisses.

I carried my tray over to a seat near the window. Even though it was still morning I could feel the heat of the day building on the other side of the glass. Outside the tractor had mowed enough that a bench had appeared from where it had been hidden behind the high grass. It was brown fake-wood with a brass plaque undoubtedly saying that this bench was dedicated to the memory of someone. Had that someone died here in Holshue House? Had they died on that very spot, trying to escape towards the massive chain-link fence?

The tractor came puttering through again, cutting its swath through yard-high grass, casting up a cloud of dust in its wake which nearly sparkled in the early morning heat. I tried to see who was on the tractor, to see if it was Erika’s secret basement boyfriend, but his face was too obscured by the bandana he had tied over his nose and mouth, the goggles over his eyes and the blue baseball cap. The only other man I’d seen on the staff was the heavy-set Jeremy, who had been coming in through the door yesterday when I nearly tried to escape. The man on the tractor was too thin for Jeremy, so maybe …

“You don’t mind if we sit with you, do you?” came a voice suddenly right beside me. It was Erika with two of her friends, both of them nearly as blonde as her, both dressed as if they had just been shopping the day before. I pulled my arms in, wanting to hide my too small unicorn shirt, which I now realized had a brown stain right in front.

“No, of course not.” I answered as I looked up into her pale blue eyes. She was wearing mascara. I would swear that someone had said that mascara was illegal in this place.

They set down their trays and pulled out chairs, completely filling the rest of my table, their chatter totally disrupting the peaceful reverie that I had been trying to obtain.

“Killah, this is Rebecca and Lindsey,” Erika said, pushing my tray over to make room for her own. One of the two other girls had a scar above her eye, and a tattoo of a dragon on her arm. The other was pasty white and overweight with gray eyes that looked too small for her face. I had no idea from the introduction which one was which.

From somewhere deep within, I felt the labored breathing of the house itself. Slow, but irregular, in and out. And then it caught for a moment …

“Earth to Allison. Wake up.” Erica was still trying to talk to me. My eyes zeroed in on the coffee that was on my tray, black coffee. When did I start drinking coffee? Yes, it was after the accident, but then I couldn’t remember why. Perhaps it was just because I felt suddenly too grown-up to not be drinking coffee? Maybe it just seemed like the thing a killer would do.

“Hey, girl, y’all here at all?”

Perhaps it was just the isolation that had me believing that I could hear the old house breathing. The make-out session with Phyla the day before became suddenly so unreal, as if it hadn’t happened at all. The loneliness was making me crazy, and if I couldn’t be allowed to sit with Phyla and Michele I might as well talk to these girls. “Oh, hi,” I finally said, and reached for my coffee. The warmth felt good – real.

“We’re thinking of making a club, or maybe it would be more of a clique. You know, a group that hangs out together, and Rebecca was saying that it would be really cool to have Killah in our group.”

The two girls nodded, although I had doubts that either of them had really said that. It was called playing along with whatever Erika said.

“Not if you’re gonna call me that,” I answered and then deliberately looked away. If she was really courting my friendship I figured I could set some ground rules. There was a tightness in my chest about the whole thing.

“Okay, okay. I just thought it was kinda a cool nickname – you know, letting everyone know that you’re really badass, just in case there’s any trouble with …” she didn’t say it, but I saw her eyes flick over towards the table where Phyla was sitting with Michele. Phyla was dark enough to be considered a person of color by the likes of Erika, and that was the only delineation that she needed.

“Just don’t.” Her calling me badass had made it easier to be firm. “What got me in here is my fucking business, so just leave it alone.”

It was enough to set Erika back a bit. She took a forkful of pancakes, pushed it into her mouth and took the time to chew before saying anything more. Why hadn’t I seen the pancakes? The eggs were watery and tasteless. Maybe the pancakes were only for the privileged few. “Okay. Well, you think about our offer – ‘bout hanging out with us, and we’ll agree not to call you … that.”

The house started breathing again. “I’ll think about it,” and I smiled. I really did want to have friends eventually, and something seemed to say that friends might be essential in a place where I still didn’t know any of the ropes. Then I looked at my eggs and decided that I didn’t want any eggs anymore and that I would just wait for lunch before I ate.

“I’ll talk to you later,” I said as I pushed back from the table and took my tray to the conveyor that would feed it off into the kitchen. Looking back at the table I had left I thought about the Harpies from Greek mythology, harbingers of a storm. Erika and her friends were definitely trouble and it seemed that they were not going to just let me be. And now, it was time for therapy with Judy, and once again I steeled myself into the mindset of saying nothing to anybody while I was in there. Enough trouble would find me without me saying anything that might give someone else ammunition against me.