A buzzy afternoon, warm for April. Trickle of the stream newly liberated from ice. The sound of insects clicketing in the grass. The sound of the sun.
They enter the cornfield and walk single file between freshly turned furrows, careful of last year’s cornstalks sticking up like bones from the ground. Behind her, Grace starts turning round and round as she walks. She says, “Get dizzy, then look up at the sky.”
Claire tries it. She and Grace laugh with their heads thrown back.
Up ahead, Marjorie turns. “Hurry up, you two, I’m not partial to dilly-dallying.” She sees an ear of corn on the ground, still bound in yellowed leaves. She picks it up, light and lean with age, and peels back the papery husk. The kernels are withered, some darkening like bad teeth. She is about to toss it away when Grace grabs it.
“Guess who I am?” says Grace, the cob between her legs, wagging it up and down.
Claire smiles politely but turns away, embarrassed. Marjorie rolls her eyes in disgust and walks on.
Grace swaggers behind Claire—“Squeeze my muscle, little girl”—laughing. She pretends to pee out of it, “Psssss….”
“Don’t be so rude, Grace,” says Marjorie.
Grace runs ahead of Marjorie, spins around and walks backwards, spraying her with imaginary pee.
“I’m warning you, Grace.”
Grace turns forward again, loses interest in the ear of corn and drops it. Marjorie picks it up.
The cornfield gives way to the meadow.
Cows do not even graze here, it’s empty but for the long last summer’s grass collapsed over new growth, and the few cattails left standing — some broken like spars, others split at their furry tips, spilling seed. The tiny white bell-heads of the lily of the valley release their scent, crushed underfoot, and here and there, brushstrokes of blue like spilled sky, the spreading bluebells. This meadow is lying fallow; in a year or two it may be the cornfield and the cornfield may be the meadow. The ground becomes marshy. They are nearing the woods.
“Are we there yet?” asks Claire.
Grace glances at Marjorie but Marjorie is unconcerned, twirling the cob of corn like a baton.
“Not much farther,” says Grace.
Up ahead — standing alone, announcing the woods — is a stately elm.
Claire stops. “I’m not allowed to go in the woods.”
“Well I’m afraid you have no choice, that’s where the nest is,” says Marjorie.
“No,” says Claire.
“How come?” asks Grace.
“My mommy said.”
“The cornfield is worse than the woods, Claire,” says Marjorie.
“Yeah,” says Grace.
But Claire shakes her head.
“It’s your loss, little girl.” Marjorie shrugs. “Oh well, you might as well show us your underpants.”
Claire looks at Grace. But Grace is looking at Marjorie.
Claire smiles and raises her dress obligingly, as though to make up for spurning their invitation to enter the woods.
“Oh, they’re pretty.”
“Yeah, they’re really pretty, Claire.”
Tiny yellow butterflies. White cotton.
“Take them off.”
Claire takes them off. Modestly dropping the skirt of her dress first. A voice in the back of her head says, Don’t take off your underpants when people ask, it’s not good for people to ask that. But there is a lovely breeze and she is out in a field, not among houses or in the schoolyard, where it certainly would be rude to be taking off underpants.
There is another reason why she is taking off her underpants. It’s difficult to explain, but she is doing this mainly because she knows how. As if there were already a Claire, an invisible one, perpetually in the act of removing her underpants on demand. So this Claire — the one in the meadow — may as well do so too. And it’s not even as though she herself is taking off her underpants, it’s as though this is something that is simply going on.
She slips her underpants to her ankles and steps out of them. Grace giggles. Claire laughs. Marjorie picks up the underpants. They are warm.
“Now bend over, little girl,” says Marjorie.
Grace giggles, Claire laughs and runs through the grass with no underpants on. Oh it is a lovely feeling. So fresh, like when you first go out without your woollen hat in springtime, the free feeling of your ankles flashing along in running shoes for the first time after a long winter in galoshes.
“Get her,” says Marjorie.
Grace runs after Claire, who is delighted to have someone join the aimless race. Let’s run and run until we come to an enchanted clearing. There we will meet a fairy princess who will serve us tea in walnut shells, and her attendants will be wearing acorn hats. Grace runs heavily — the more she chases, the more she is weak with laughter, but excited too, and it’s the excitement that keeps her going, gradually gaining on Claire, who is politely slowing down. They are about fifteen feet from the elm tree.
Marjorie follows, unhurried, tapping the corncob into her palm the way a teacher does with a pointer.
Claire nears the elm and stops for Grace, and Grace grabs her arm. “Ow,” says Claire.
Grace looks back at Marjorie.
Claire scans the ground for her blue egg, which she dropped when Grace grabbed her just now. She spots it in the grass, the shell looks fine, but Grace’s grip prevents her from stooping to pick it up. “Excuse me Grace, could you please let go?”
Grace looks at Claire as though noticing her for the first time. There is a look in Grace’s eye. Excited and scared, as though at the sight of something just beyond Claire’s shoulder. Claire turns to see what’s behind her, but behind her are the woods.
Grace hollers, “Hurry up, Marjorie!”—too loud, because Marjorie has almost caught up. Huwwy up!
Marjorie is not laughing. She has a grown-up expression on her face. Like when grown-ups are past the end of their tether, they are not even angry any more, but you know that means that you are in even more trouble than if they were. They are just sick to death of you, that’s all.
“I’m sick to death of you, little girl,” says Marjorie, a worn-out disgusted look on her face.
Claire giggles, because what game are we playing now?
“Bend over and touch your toes,” says Marjorie.
“Um,” says Claire, “I don’t — I want to play — let’s pretend—”
“Are you deaf, little girl?”
Grace gives a delighted shriek and holds tighter to Claire’s arm, with both hands.
Claire whimpers, “Can I go home now? Want to come to my house and play?”
Grace pushes Claire down.
“I warned you,” says Marjorie.
She tosses Claire’s underpants onto Claire’s face. Grace jumps onto Claire before she can get up. She holds the underpants stretched over Claire’s face and hollers, “Smell your bum!” Shrieking with laughter.
Marjorie stands over them, watching. She sees the outline of Claire’s nose and open mouth through the taut fabric. It’s not enough. “Get off her.”
Grace gets up, grinning, her tongue working the chafed corners of her mouth. Claire lies motionless.
Marjorie removes the underpants from her face with the tip of the corncob.
“Get up.”
Claire gets up. “I have to go now.”
“It’s okay, Claire,” says Grace.
“Put your hands around Grace’s throat,” says Marjorie.
Claire obeys.
“Squeeze. Harder.”
Grace says, “Mar—!”
“Shut up.”
Claire lets go of Grace and waits for the next instruction.
Marjorie tells her, “Pee.”
Claire’s forehead wrinkles. “I can’t,” she says, and begins at last to cry.
Marjorie says, “Hold her still.”