The Blondes (6 page)

Our train pulled out, and when it did, it left behind the train on the opposite tracks. At first I saw nothing—I guess I was looking for blood—then I saw the thin white string of wire, just a piece of it, twelve inches or so, the cord of the iPod headset lying nearly under the silver body of the train. I couldn’t help it. My gaze fastened to the small round earbud, no bigger than a penny, and the other severed end. That was when I threw up.

Maybe the acrid smell of human vomit had more effect than violence, because the platform cleared quickly. By then, two cops had swung down the stairs. Beside me, the older man in the grey suit was still saying, “I had her …”

He was going into what had already become a story. Some onlookers gathered in one area of the platform to talk over one
another and continue to be part of the scene. Vultures. The high school girls were gone, I realized, in spite of wearing similar uniforms to that of the girl who had disappeared on the tracks. But the submarine sandwich guy was still there—although, wouldn’t you know, the sandwich had vanished.

A lady cop was bellowing, “If ya witnessed the incident and have something to report, please wait. Otherwise, we ask that ya go about your business!”

New passengers were arriving, coming down the stairs, people who had no idea and were impatient to get where they were going, asking what had happened—
was it a flasher?
—or slinking with skeptical glances away from the commotion toward the non-puke part of the platform.

And then I had a terrible thought:
Eventually that train, that train right there, is gonna move
. And probably not even eventually, but soon. I didn’t want to be there when it did. Every part of my body said,
Go
. I found that my purse was still strung over one shoulder, between my breasts, and before the officers even glanced in my direction, I stumbled up the stairs and out into the daylight, saying, “I need air. Excuse me, pardon me. Sorry. Excuse me.”

Someone said, “Ma’am!” behind me, and it might even have been the lady cop, but I just kept going as if the voice didn’t apply to me.

I remember walking so fast I was practically running, past dollar stores that sell postcards of the Chrysler Building and coffee cups with pictures of the Statue of Liberty. I stalked through rush-hour intersections like a seasoned pro, and cabs
and limos burst forth from one-ways and honked. I flew up my street like a kid chased home after school, up the stairs to the fourth floor before I remembered I was now down on three, and finally managed to get my key into the door, and landed face down on my bed. Through the parted velvet peach curtains, evening bled a gentle stain of light. I must have lain immobile for an hour or more. Then I curled onto my side, and stared at the sky above the courtyard until it greyed and sleep crashed into me.

THERE ARE WORSE CIRCUMSTANCES
in which to be born, my little womb-raider. This is what I tell myself. You will not be a child of war, for instance, just a child of plague. You’ll be
Babe of the Plague
, like a character in an old horror movie such as
Children of the Corn
or
Child’s Play 3: Look Who’s Stalking
. You see? I still have a sense of humour. If I think too much about the pandemic, I become frightened, and I worry that you can feel my fear, that fear is in the blood. That’s why I’m going to keep my sense of humour, keep talking, keep moving around this little room. Until Grace comes back,
if
Grace comes back—and I wouldn’t blame her if she doesn’t—I have all the time in the world, and nothing left to do but this.

For a while after I found out about you I was making lists of names—not that I can imagine you ever having a proper
birth certificate. And not that I can imagine you being alive long enough to learn your own name. But the lists were a welcome distraction. At one point I toyed with Carlotta, after Karl, but then I decided you should have an identity all your own. When I say your name, I want you to feel there is only love behind it, no conflict. There should be no trace of the dead or the damaged hanging over you.

Every time I come up with an option these days, it sounds like a dog’s or cat’s name. Or the name of a Southern belle. Or else it’s Scottish, and am I really going to saddle you with my ancestry when I don’t even know my own father? Hippie names are out, because do you want to be named Ocean, Sapphire, or Harmony after age twenty, if by some miracle we all live that long? At that point, you might as well sign up to be a stripper. Gender-neutral names are off the list too, because I can’t think of a single one that rolls off the tongue.

If you survive, the world you grow up in will be one that has experienced intense panic and distrust, violence and hysteria—though that’s a loaded word. I don’t think I would have used it before this past year. But now? All of us living with a disease that affects only girls and women?
Hysteria
is so bang on.

As outrageous as the news reports were, and the solutions and proposals of their talking heads, I miss them. We lost our cable signal the fourth week after I arrived here at the cottage. Grace had just finished putting on her makeup and had sunk into Karl’s chair. I remember I was heading into the bathroom when she shouted out, “Fuck me, fucking, come on, you lame little ass-wipe, come on—”

I came back out immediately to see what had happened. Grace jabbed her fingers over the remote, got up and toggled buttons, but to no avail. The television remained—and continues to remain—blank.

Grace is so paranoid. Before we lost the signal, she’d already cancelled the mail and her magazine subscriptions, because even though the mailbox is out by the road and therefore safely away from the house, she saw a woman driving the delivery truck one morning. She freaked, saying, “What if that woman becomes contagious? What if she comes up to the door to ask for a signature for something?” And so Grace used the wall phone to call the post office in town.

Just like that, news of the outside world disappeared and Grace replaced television with drinking. She had a case of wine and a few bottles of whisky stashed around the cottage, as if she’d known that day might come. There are still a couple bottles left, and sometimes I’m
tempted
to take the edge off, let me tell you. But I won’t. I won’t, for your sake. I offered to go into town and get the newspaper or ask someone what’s happening in the world—maybe buy us some milk other than Carnation canned, fresh bread instead of frozen, restock the eggs—but Grace just shook her head. “And take my car?” she’d asked haughtily, begging for argument.

She told me to take some of her vitamins in the medicine cabinet “for the baby.” I guess it was big of her to share them, all things considered. I have to take two a day for you to get everything you need, though I didn’t tell Grace that. The contents don’t have the amount of folic acid required, according to the
pamphlets I got from Nurse Ben, forever ago now. To be on the safe side, I pop one vitamin every morning with dry cereal and one at night with supper, which tonight will be canned green beans and maybe a hot dog from the freezer. I am in the heartburn stage of the pregnancy, but you need the protein.

You want to go outside, my little goiter? Have a look at that satellite dish? If we could get the TV signal back, I’d feel so much better—maybe the panic would stop. Maybe someone on that illuminated screen would say something smart for once, about what is causing the Blonde Fury and what is being done to contain it, and everything would click into place.

Too high. But I think there’s a ladder in the shed.

Rickety thing. This would be great, just great, if I fall off this stepladder in the snow and hit my head. That’d be a crazy way to go out after everything we’ve been through.

I shouldn’t have done that. The satellite dish was icy and I tried to chip away at some of it with an old broom handle, but I didn’t think about what it means to stand on a ladder and work above your head while carrying a giant kettle on your front that weighs an extra twenty-five pounds. Yes, I’m talking to you. You’re like a little pasta pot. Fuck, I don’t believe this. Still no signal.

Well, I guess there’s nothing to do but continue telling you my story. Our story. Lucky you.

All the New York dailies carried articles about the subway attack. The news was up on their sites only hours after the
incident had happened. In some cases it was the lead. This shouldn’t have surprised me, and I guess it didn’t really, but still. It made me feel numb.

The papers said that by the time the police arrived at the station, the worst had already occurred. They said that a seemingly unprovoked attack had left Eugenia Gilongos, seventeen, dead. Eugenia. That was her name. It is a beautiful name. But for the reasons I’ve already noted, it won’t be yours.

Eugenia’s photograph seemed to spring from my computer, taking up half the screen. It was eerie, a two-dimensional school picture—eerie to have seen the real girl, grasped her hand. She was younger in the photo, and her hair was different. She was wearing a band behind her bangs and her hair was curled. She had on an Oxford shirt, maybe the same kind as she was wearing that day, her school uniform. She wore a small pendant, a heart or a cross or something. She was smiling, a shy smile. I could already imagine the tribute page in the high school yearbook. I scrolled down my computer screen to avoid looking any longer.

The woman who attacked Eugenia had not yet been identified, but the articles included her photo. It’s funny how a photo stays with you. Sontag said, “Images transfix. Images anesthetize.” Aesthetology would agree. And there, as evidence, was the grainy surveillance image of the attacker: a smear of pixels, a tight mouth and chin, waves of hair. Police were urging the public to come forward to identify her.

The first report I read confirmed that Eugenia and her attacker had perished beneath the oncoming train. Police said
the girl died instantly. Those of us who had tried to help were referenced as “strangers”—“Strangers attempted to pull the teenager to safety.”

The man I’d taken for a businessman was quoted. He was a lawyer in his fifties named … Hoagland, that’s what it was. And he said much the same thing he’d said on the platform, as if he’d become stuck permanently on those words: “I had her. She caught my hand, but then she slipped away. I grabbed her again and then she was gone—just like that. I can still feel her.”

The article was written in short, clipped sentences. A statement of facts.

Eugenia’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Gilongos, were Filipino. She was their only daughter. She’d gone to the Fashion District with her friends after school. The reports speculated that she had parted ways from the other teenagers before the attack occurred. She was an honour roll student. She was Catholic, and very involved in her church. She also played volleyball for her school team and loved dancing. She had a younger brother who was quoted saying something about her belief in God, that she was with Him now.

Witnesses gave conflicting reports about whether the teenager and her attacker knew each other, but police said it was unlikely given the age discrepancy and cultural differences. What else can I tell you? Apparently some witnesses said the woman had first hugged the teenager, then pushed her onto the subway tracks. The detective called the incident “strange.” I remember he said that the person who had done this might
have been emotionally or mentally unstable; there was no way of knowing at such an early point in the investigation. The tone of the reports was both cold and indignant, the way articles of that sort always are; there were statements about how young people should be safe at four in the afternoon. The MTA advised passengers to always stand well back from the tracks, to remain alert and aware, to disable audio devices while in transit. Most of the articles speculated that the attack might stir discussion over MTA safety barriers.

You have to remember this was before anyone knew that the attack would not be an isolated incident.

Another article claimed that the women were together, that the older woman had “helped Gilongos onto the tracks” and “joined” her there, and that police had not yet ruled out an association between them. Still another claimed that double suicide was a possibility. Gilongos had been “embraced, then thrown,” “dropped,” “lowered,” “punched,” “forced,” and in one report, quite accurately as it turned out, “bitten and tossed away.”

Late into the night I was swimming in information, none of it illuminating. Eugenia was elusive. She liked cats and her favourite subject was math. I wondered,
Is this how we summarize a human life—with cheap speculation and lists of hobbies?

It was then that Moira reappeared. I heard the outer door to the alcove scrape open, followed by footsteps. A weight paused in the hall, and then came a soft
rat-a-tat
tap.

“I saw your light,” Moira said when I answered the door. She had an instrument case with her. She looked tired and
smelled faintly of juniper, likely the after-effect of several gin and tonics.

“Come in,” I urged.

She did, but lingered just inside the door and didn’t set down her case. She was wearing a long dress and strappy sandals. The lights in my room were blazing, and I realized for the first time that she was black, or more likely half-black. I’d been too self-involved before to notice.