Maeve Barry
Stella
I get the job only pretty girls get. The one that pays really good, not like the one all my friends have. They work at the ice cream stand where they’re encouraged to wear leggings. So when they bend to scoop the rum raisin, black fabric spreads and the old men watch their thong strings lift like pink fog out of some dark valley. My friends get accused of stealing from the register by the owner’s Christian daughter. They get screamed at when they tell the health-food-ladies that they aren’t even allowed legally to sell milk that’s unpasteurized. The stand smells like cow shit. You never really see any cows. Just tires. Hundreds of them piled up, oozing onyx onto tarps like snowy mountains.
The job that I get is to take care of Stella. When I met Stella’s mom she asked how long my hair was. We met on the phone. I told Stella’s mom that I’d babysat since I was eleven, which is true, and that I want to go to nursing college, which isn’t. Stella’s mom doesn’t care about this. She asked if I went to the prom and if I have any pictures. She asked if I own sparkle-eye-makeup.
I’m gonna smell normal after work, I say now to my friends. After work they smell like cow shit. We’ve been sitting in the pool all day. It’s above ground, and the water doesn’t even cool you off. We sit there stewing, and Claire keeps pissing and thinking that we don’t notice. Claire is dehydrated. Her piss is the same color as the Sun-In she sprays all over her body and head. We don’t talk about how Tess isn’t here. We don’t really talk about anything.
My mom comes home in her purple scrubs. She doesn’t say hi. She says, You girls really need to be careful if you’re gonna be fucking like rabbits. My mom works at Planned Parenthood. When she comes home from work she smells like antiseptic. She’s mad ’cause the other night she came home, and my friend Sophie was having sex with some grad student in our basement. My mom fans condoms out on the deck. Sun bounces off the foil and blinds us. Once Sophie and the grad student left, my mom had gotten nicer.
Will you talk with me, she kept asking, ’cause I wasn’t looking. My eyes flopped in my head like gooey fish.
I’m just worried, sweetie.
My mom talked to the white fish bellies like they were focused.
I don’t feel like any of you girls are processing. It feels like you’re trying to show your bodies are invincible, but really you’re just hurting yourselves and letting shitty people take advantage.
I didn’t answer. I smoked in my room and didn’t open the window.
Today’s the kind of hot where our hair dries while we’re still in the water. We’re sixteen and it’s summer and we don’t do anything. We float here and watch our arm hair turn white. Talk about the shape of our tits then get kind of cranky. Dunk our heads back under water.
Then droplets start to shake off our faces in little sparkles. Off our rattling bodies. The ground wiggles, but it isn’t an earthquake. Rabbits dart in all directions. Our wet bodies vibrate.
Maybe this is why my mom wanted to live all the way out here, I say and we snicker, rubbing up against the pool plastic. The train blasts its liquid whistle.
I put eye-glitter on with my finger.
You’re growing up, my mom says, her face next to mine in the bathroom mirror. She says this even though last month I crashed her car into our neighbor’s porch. I just shrug. She reaches over to pet my head, and I duck it. I tell her I’m leaving.
I walk along train tracks then the edge of a road with no sidewalk. Pressed up against tick-grass and the burning guard rail. My feet sweat. I slip forward in my flip flops and hit the bar between my toes. The walk feels like ten hours, and I’m mad I can’t be mad at someone else for it.
When I crashed the car into our neighbor’s porch, there was blood on my wrists. The cop said that if I’d hit a brick house and not a soft porch I’d be dead. The whole thing was totaled, which is mostly why I need the job that pays good instead of the one with my friends. This job I got pays more hourly than what my mom makes.
The family I usually babysit for stopped calling. They’ve got two unmedicated boys and a dad who’s a professor. He only ever wanted to talk about puppets. Homemade ones, they were life-sized and supposed to look realistic. He’d line them up on the bed when he got home late and his wife was away. They stared up at me with dead, wood-painted faces.
The last time I went over there the boys wanted to play Dog. They put me on a leash then tied it to their mailbox. I crouched on all fours. The boys lifted their legs and they pissed on my hair. I had just washed it. They were confused about who was human and who was Dog. My hair smelled like piss and strawberry conditioner. I sat there on my hands and knees. This clean girl named Lily drove by with her friends, and they stared at me all scared through their windows.
The boys were unmedicated, but they had medication. I took the pills from their mom’s dresser. After, me and Tess shared them like Tic Tacs. I told her about the pissing boys and she laughed from her stomach. Her crying got on my hair when she sniffed it.
The walk is long and hot. Boys from school barrel past in their trucks, rapping along to slurs they shouldn’t. Stella’s house isn’t in the fancy neighborhood. Her and her mom aren’t even rich. There’s just a union and a rate that’s covered by state insurance. They get someone for five hours. The ramp to the front door is plywood, spilling out of the house like a rotten tongue. Bikes are tipped on their sides by the low trampoline. Those are for the kids I’m not here for.
All the glitter makeup melted off my face. I knock on the door, and it pushes open. Stella’s there on the floor, sitting on her big sister. The big sister’s not big—I think she’s a freshman at my school. She’s probably scared seeing this drunk slutty girl come to watch her sick baby sister. She looks at me and says, My mom’s on the phone. She finger-combs through her sister’s hair, so patient and gentle, not embarrassed that I’m standing there watching.
No problem, I tell her and kick off my flip-flops. I smile around the dark dirty room and try to look pretty.
Stella is eight and she won’t live much longer. I googled her disease. Genetic disability—that’s what Lily, the clean girl who used to come over here, called it. Lily isn’t just pretty. She’s smart and nice also. She mentioned the disease casually, like I would know it. Lily took care of Stella for two years before she moved to the city for college. She got me the job, and I have sex with her boyfriend.
Stella’s mom comes downstairs with the phone stuck between her ear and her bony shoulder. She holds up a one-second-finger. Her hair’s like she’s in a hurry.
Stella, this is the nice girl I told you about, Stella’s mom says once she’s off. Stella can’t talk or walk, and her hair’s dark brown and pretty. She’s wearing a pink shirt with a zipper like a wetsuit over some life-vest thing.
Stella, maybe she’ll be nice enough to tell you about prom, the mom says and she winks at me. And you’ll make sure she gets something to eat and that she does her stretches.
I don’t know anything about special stretches or how to make food. I nod. The mom scrunches up Stella’s bangs with her mouth when she kisses her. The big sister leaves Stella on the floor. She follows the mom out, and leaves me alone with Stella.
I sit there with my phone in Stella’s face. I scroll through prom photos. She hangs her head over her supportive vest and looks sleepy. I lift her water cup to her face and tilt it too far. Water splashes off her. It slides down her neck. She doesn’t get mad. She smiles like it feels good. I dump the rest of the water on my head, and we both sort of laugh. None of it feels very funny.
Stella’s body is stiff and locked like cement. When I take her out of her eating chair to bring her to her sitting chair, I hold her under the arms the way toddlers carry babies and cats—I’m close to her height and wobble with her weight. Stella doesn’t look heavy, but she is, and I’m not strong. I wore this white shirt that pushes out my tits ’cause I was supposed to look pretty. Tess gave it to me ’cause my tits are bigger. Were.
Stella doesn’t care how my tits look. The back of her vest tugs down my shirt so I spill out and can’t balance her at the right angle. I squat and hold Stella over the potty-training toilet and wait to see if she’ll shit or pee. I haven’t shit in three days. My thighs burn while I squat, so I quit early.
On the floor, Stella leans into my lap. We sing that one song from Frozen over and over. Stella sings like her mouth’s full of cotton, way off-key. I film us on my phone. I stop, adjust my tits so they’re up and start over. I post the video to my story so the boy who I fuck can see that I’m good. Like Lily, his clean college girlfriend.
At first I can’t understand what Stella’s saying. I just nod and say, Ooohhh, like I know what she means. I tell her that I’m going to this party later and will probably wear my crop top with the little blue flowers. That’s not what she asked me. Then all of a sudden I know what she means. She nuzzles her head and wipes drool on my shoulder.
She says, Bunny. I carry her to the lawn and lay her on the low trampoline. I don’t see any rabbits. I see a wooden box with a door cut in its front like a house. I leave Stella lying there, and she turns her head to watch me. I reach in the box and there’s a black bunny with the softest fur I’ve ever felt. Its eyes are afraid. I bring it to Stella. When I put it on Stella’s stomach, the bunny scrunches its eyes shut. It keeps its little paws tucked close beneath it. Stella can barely control how her arms move, but she makes sure they’re gentle when she rubs them, stiff, up and down the black bunny. She lets out this big sigh like it’s got the world in it. Like she’s tired and living makes her tired, but she’s got this bunny rabbit and she has to pet it and love it.
When Stella’s mom gets home her hair’s neat. She taps her pack before smoking. She talks about Stella like she’s not there. Stella sits there and listens, her eyes getting droopy.
You know, all she ever wants is to be one of the pretty big girls and to wear fancy dresses and gossip and things like that. Stella’s mom waves her cigarette. So I always try to get one of you girls from the high school to act like her friend when you’re with her and all that. So she gets the chance.
When I was little and I found out the teen girl who sometimes watched me was getting paid and didn’t just like me, I cried through the night. I look over at Stella.
And you know, I just like you girls to act like Stella’s one of you guys and to sort of act how you would with each other, her mom says.
One Halloween, Tess walked out from the thick woods wearing pink bun- ny ears. Her thigh-stockings were shredded. Mascara streaks cut her face into stripes. We all just laughed and said nothing. She posed for a picture.
Can we bring the rabbit inside sometimes so Stella can play with it? is all I say.
That fucking rabbit. None of us even wanted it. Stella kept asking over and over, so we finally got one. She’s the only one who wants it. I don’t want it coming in and dropping shit pellets all over. It’s hard enough cleaning up after Stella. I keep nodding then smiling over at Stella. When I found out my babysitter wasn’t my friend, my mom was really nice. She said that she was my friend. I said, You’re my mother. I slept in her armpit and wiped snot on her shirt. Now my mom wants me to be her friend, and I barely look at her. She gets all excited about the new pool she saved for and I say, It’s above ground, then look at my cell phone. She tries rubbing lavender lotion on my cheeks, and I flinch like she hit me. Stella’s mom keeps talking. I can tell Stella’s listening and understanding.
I look between the mom and Stella. I wish I was a good enough person to just look at Stella.
On the walk home I drink Malibu out of my water bottle. I sweat coconut. I think about Stella’s stiff arms and legs. Locked-up like sticks. I don’t think I could bend them even if I was really pushing. I think, Rigor mortis. I learned about rigor mortis from Tess’s mom. Tess’s mom found her on the floor in her puke. That was four months ago. Tess’s mom tried to hug her, but her arms were so stiff and Tess was no longer a daughter but a board. Her mom just stood there with her board-daughter and Tess’s dumb, leftover dog. Licking her body, licking her mom, and her mom hadn’t wanted that dog to begin with.
Maybe it’s not fair to think of Stella as part-dead ’cause that’s what her body’s always been like. The air’s water-thick. I walk, and I see Stella’s mom try- ing to hug her little body, once it’s stiff-dead, and I drink from my melting bottle. I wonder how Tess’s dog is. I get home, and my mom tries touching my hair. I tell her, Get off. I’m too fucking sweaty. I stomp through the kitchen then slam into my room. My mom stays there in the kitchen, words rolling around in her mouth, wanting to ask how my day was.
I’m in my underwear floating in the inground pool in some kid’s yard. We walked here from the party. Bugs strobe and scream. I feel them flash on my face.
He swims up beneath me. I’m really drunk. He is the boy who I fuck who is in love with Lily, his nice college girlfriend. He swims underneath me and holds onto my arm. He dunks his head. Little gray ghosts skitter through the black yard. The sky lightens. They’re just rabbits. The boy kisses my pubes through my soaked underwear.
One time my mom got home late. I was really high, and my bra was caught on our kitchen table. He was inside of me on the floor. I had my legs locked and my arms wrapped around him like I was his baby. My heel dug into his tattoo—a Chinese word on his back that he spelled wrong. His skin stretched with my heel when he moved, so his back was raining ink. My mom ripped him off by his shoulders. She started screaming, asking what the fuck was my problem, then she saw my piercing. She saw how it made my nipple look mosquito-bit. She yelled that I was disgusting. I stood there, naked, screaming back. I screamed that she was a bitch who I hated. That I wished she was dead. The boy left with his slinky hips and no shoes. Blue petals pushed their way through the insides of my thigh skin.
I can get you wetter than this whole pool, the boy says to me now. That means Lily’s back at school. He’s always saying that, how wet I am and how wet he’s gonna make me. When we have sex I’m always pretty dry. He swims around, kissing up my arms and my ankles. I just float. My tits shove through the water like headlights and usually I would be thinking about him and hoping he’d notice. Tonight I just stare at the sky, and I think about Stella.
I’ve seen Stella every day for a month, and every day I’m hungover. I walk to her house and lay on my back in the yard. Stella lays on my stomach. She pets her silky rabbit. I put the rabbit back in its house then spray me and Stella down with the hose. Sometimes that’s the only thing I can think to do to feel better. Sometimes I put the hose in the kiddie pool and I fill it. Me and Stella lay in there, and her body relaxes. She laughs when I turn the hose so it blasts in our faces. It comes out in a high squeal.
When me and Tess got bored we used to click through Omegle. We’d touch ourselves for the limp-dicked men panting on the other side of the camera. I’d touch Tess’s peach, floaty hair. She’d touch mine and my tits and I’d know my hair felt dry and stringy. One time I was so high that my teeth clacked, like my head was a computer. Tess zipped me into this giant fleece onesie. When I looked down my feet were gone and instead there were pink ovals. Tess clicked through men and stopped on one in a big Mickey Mouse head.
Kiss for me, ladies! Hehehehe, the man said in a squeaky cartoon voice. He jerked around so his ears flopped.
Tess unzipped my onesie. She kissed me, long, toothy and wet. Air swapped through the gaps in our teeth.
Oh boy oh boy oh boy! the mouse man said while he came.
Do you like that, Tess said and my underwear was all wet. I dropped down to my belly, away from the laptop’s camera, shiny, like a rodent’s eye.
Today on the grass, I take Stella off me. I leave her on the ground so I can puke in the bushes.
Wet spreads from the middle of Stella’s pink leggings. Darkening like blood, or some flower that’s growing. I pick her up and piss gets on my thighs. It smells better than mine does.
A week after Tess died, I got home with mud in my hair and no underwear. I was shaking. I had deep gravel dents in my palms and my wrists. I got into my mom’s bed and hugged her and she asked, Should we call the cops? and I didn’t answer. I passed out and pissed in my sleep. My mom didn’t move. She just lay there so the piss ran hot on her legs, too.
I clean Stella off. Her piss dries on my skin in a crunchy layer. I hold Stella up on her little toilet to see if there’s something left. She sticks out her arms and says the sound that I now know is my name. She says the sound that is I love you. Everytime she says it I get mad. Like I do at my mom when she says I love you or I miss you or that she’s proud of me. I know she knows there’s piss crusted on my legs. And while Stella’s saying this sound that’s my name and I love you, I’m staring past her. I’m staring at the orange tube in the cracked open cabinet.
I sit on the sofa with Stella on my lap. I want to tell her how wrong it all is. That she’s wrong, that I’m bad, that she should have a real nurse with a nursing degree. That going to lots of proms doesn’t mean anything. I should stretch her gripped arms and stiff legs so when it’s time her mom can still hug her. I put Tootsie Roll lip gloss on her mouth, and she licks it. I take out my phone, and we look at prom pictures.
Stella’s whole body shakes. She vibrates, arching her chest. She balls her feet and fingers into fists when I open the prom picture that I always skip over: me and Tess and the guy who I fuck and his girlfriend Lily who used to take care of Stella. Tess is kissing the hair on my temple. Stella happy-squeals. She looks at me standing there with the pretty college girlfriend. I zoom in on our dresses and corsages and faces.
Pretty, Stella says. I make up some story about how Tess is still alive and how actually we were just looking at this exact picture. How the boy in the picture is my boyfriend, and he picked me up in the truck that we’re standing in front of, and I got out and he twirled me and gave me a closed-mouth kiss there in front of all those people. We both know I’m lying. We both see how it’s all really ugly. Stella does this big sigh and I hear it as words. The words say that she knows it’s all bad and that she’s just pretending. Pretending she thinks it’s pretty. That it’s prom and makeup and dresses she wants and not the simple fact that she’d like to keep living.
Like when I’d watch Tess turn into a vacuum. She’d snort whatever she saw on toilet seats or coffee tables. She’d roll like a log on the floor and I’d tell myself that she seemed really happy. Or like when I sit in the pool with Claire and Sophie. We talk about how we’re getting so tan when we can see each other’s self-tanner peeling. I think I feel Stella’s breath catch; I make myself look down at my chest. Stella’s just asleep.
The roof thumps with rain. Stella’s mom comes home and clicks her umbrella closed in the doorway. Drops spray, they cut sparkles through the dust.
Rain zips down the side of the bunny house. It covers the little door with a watery sheet. It’s hot rain that can’t cool you. It slides down my hair, off my eyelids and nose. My shirt’s see-through, and my shorts turn a new blue seconds after I leave Stella’s house. I can’t tell when I start crying. Brake lights are red fish swimming their way up against the wall of rain. It bounces off itself. The whole world goes blurry.
Then it focuses, and I pass a brown dog on its porch, its hair turning to string. It noses the closed door. I squelch in my flip-flops. It’s been miles, and I pass my neighbor’s porch, crushed from when I hit it, rain pissing in an arch from the awning. They already started rebuilding. The new siding is young wood, but now it’s turning dark. I could lean on it and I’d sink through. Then I’m rain-drenched and dripping all over the kitchen floor. Peeling clothes off my hot goosebumped skin. My mom walks in from the other room with her ear leaned on the phone. She sees me and puts it down. I stand there without any clothes, slippery red-crying. Wet grass stuck to the sides of my feet. My mom walks across the room. She looks at me. I look at her want to hug me.