“It’s a sign,” Marlene said, cornering me by my locker. “The Lord wants us to be friends.”
“Bug off, Marlene.”
She covered her ears. “I don’t hear nasty language.”
“How about this,” I said, grabbing her collar and pulling her toward me until our noses nearly touched, “can you hear me now? Does your God think that after we whack a little frog on the back of the head, stab a needle in his brain and slit his gut, we’ll be pals for life?”
“Stop it. You’re choking me.” I let her go. Marlene shook her finger as she backed away from me. “I’m still praying for you. I’m praying for you, Lizzie Macon.”
I opened my mouth and stuck my fingers inside to show her that the idea of her praying for me made me gag.
“The Lord tells me that you must be suffering in some way.”
I kicked my locker shut. “Yeah, I’m suffering, all right. I’m suffering being forced to talk to a stupid cow like you.”
“I forgive you for what you just said. And the Lord forgives you too.”
Now that she’d swallowed religion, Marlene Grosswilder was impossible to rile. I said, “The Lord has nothing to do with anything that happens between us.” Marlene was the only girl in the eighth grade who was as tall as I was. We stood nose to nose and I peered through her thick glasses thinking how strange her eyes looked, magnified twice their natural size.
She sucked in her breath, gathering up the peace that passes understanding. “God sees everything,” she said, “whether you believe it or not.”
“If He’s watching us, why’d He let me choke a good girl like you?”
“He doesn’t always interfere. He allows us to be tempted by the evil one. How else can we prove our faith?”
“The evil one must’ve tempted you a few times.”
“When he does, I pray. And I pray for you, Elizabeth.”
The idea of Marlene Grosswilder talking about me to God made the muscles in my chest so tight I thought my heart would stop. The only way I could think to relieve the pressure was to knock her flat on her ass. But we were both spared. She waddled off down the hall. I watched her, following her steps from her thick ankles to her pudgy knees up to the wrinkles of her skirt where it bunched and creased to stretch over her broad beam.
My hatred for Marlene was as pure as it was the year she made special valentines with a piece of homemade fudge wrapped in colored foil glued on top for everyone in the class except for three kids — and I was one of them. That was bad enough, but she wouldn’t let it lie: she had to make a particular effort to let those kids know what a delicious treat they’d missed; she had to lick her chubby fingers right in front of me. That was in third grade. I never forgot. I guess that made her some kind of superior person to me because she already forgave me for what I said today, and I’d been holding a grudge for six years. She’d left me in some mighty fine company: the only others who didn’t get valentines were the Furey brothers. One was supposed to be in fifth grade and one was supposed to be in fourth. Maybe they were Mary Louise’s cousins or maybe they were her brothers. When it came to the Furey clan, these distinctions didn’t make much difference. They all had too much of the same blood; they all had short necks and small ears. Some of them were born with six toes on each foot, but Harley Furey was scared of that. He said it was the mark of the devil and amputated the evil little growths, leaving several of his sons with nasty scars and a fumbling gait. Sometimes I worried that Nina’s relationship with Billy Elk meant that I was connected to all the Fureys, but I didn’t think on it too deeply.
Marlene Grosswilder got me another time, in fifth grade. By then the Furey brothers had dropped out of school; I didn’t even have the misery of their company. Marlene had a Halloween party with a haunted house and real caramel apples, and everyone talked about it for weeks before it happened. I waited. Right up to the very day of the party, I hoped she’d just forgotten my invitation. Even Gwen got a card with a ghost that popped out of the fold.
I told myself I didn’t want to go through her dumb haunted house anyway. I didn’t want to be blindfolded and have my hand forced into a bowl of cold spaghetti while someone whispered I was touching a human brain. I had no desire to get my nose full of water bobbing for apples. I said it over and over as I shuffled through dried leaves, taking the long way home.
Mr. Lippman heard me talking mean to Marlene by the lockers and kept me after school. That gave me extra time to think about how much fun I was going to have cutting up a frog with that girl. When Mr. Lippman set me free, the sky was woolly in the bleak half-dark. Only one car still squatted in the lot — not Mr. Lippman’s; he walked everywhere and was proud of it. This was Gil Harding’s brown Duster. It glistened under the yellow lights, all its windows clouded by the hot breath inside.
I’d noticed the Duster in the lot other nights, but I could never see who Gil had pinned to the seat because the windows were steamed. This night I did see. Gil stepped out of the car to take a piss, making no effort to hide himself. He was the only boy I knew who would pee in the middle of an empty parking lot without so much as taking a glance around to be sure he wouldn’t scare any old ladies.
The girl in the car sat up, and in the sudden flash of light from the dome I saw the unmistakable flick of the head, the way Gwen Holler tossed her ponytail over her shoulder. She finally had the real thing: Gil Harding’s yellow fingers, stained from cigarettes, stroking her face and breasts.
Gil caught me watching him and turned to face me; then he laughed, shaking the last drops of piss from his penis. Gwen leaned out her window to see who was there. Her look was bored, distracted; she wanted Gil to get back in the car. She peered in my direction without a whiff of embarrassment or remorse, turned her head as if I were nothing more than a stray dog. Her indifference drowned me. I wished we were boys so I could wait for her after school some night and pummel her with my fists.
On Monday, we pithed and mutilated our frogs. Marlene got sick and had to run to the bathroom when she saw how complete the creature was, a little man with bowed legs. I had to finish the job alone. This is all I learned: the tiny muscle of the heart felt tough and hard between my fingertips.
I sprinted home that night, my coat open, my scarf flying. The air stung my lungs like slivers of ice. Even in the cold, I could smell my own hands.
13
IN JANUARY and February it seemed winter in Montana would never end. The fog rolled into the valley and sat, unable to rise. In the morning, when the pink light was still trapped behind the mountains, I heard the bare trees groaning in the wind, their black trunks swaying.
The sky was white for days at a time. If the mist broke enough to reveal the foothills, they too were white, and the distant pines were dark and colorless. Along our block, the dry bark of birch trees peeled like paper. Only the willows held a promise of change, their thin orange limbs quavering with the slightest breeze.
By March we had hope. Winter came and went half a dozen times in a single month. The first heavy rain was too cold to wash away the piles of crusty snow. Pools appeared in the yards, and ice lakes spread across the treacherous streets. Every night the ponds froze.