Dona Cleanwell Leaves Home by Ana Castillo

Author:Ana Castillo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-05-16T00:00:00+00:00

Unsurprisingly, it was Halloween time when the headless girl in the green dress became a topic for discussion. Mrs. Kantor dropped a stack of black and orange construction paper and a box of supplies in front of Sharon and Vicenta. They had a huge bulletin board that was decorated every month according to what national holidays or figures were being celebrated. The two women found a reading table to spread out the stencils, glue, scissors, and other materials. It was a duty Vicenta enjoyed and she started on it immediately. Sharon commenced cutting paper to make black and orange links to string along the bulletin board. It was the extent of her creative talents, she said. One of the patrons who’d been reading at the table offered to help. “I love Halloween,” the woman said. “I rent slasher movies and watch them alone just to scare myself.”

Sharon held back a snicker. “But have you ever noticed how it’s always the ‘bad girl,’ you know, the sexually promiscuous one, who gets slashed first?” she asked. The volunteer shrugged. Vicenta glanced over at Mrs. Kantor, who was busy with a few people checking out books. Leaning in, Vicenta said, “Speaking of scary, has anyone ever heard of a girl with no head around here . . . in a green dress?”

The volunteer and Sharon both reacted with mildly amused expressions, as if she were joking. Two women at a nearby table, working on a grant for the city to use a vacant lot for a community garden, were eavesdropping. They shook their heads.

“Well, this is a new building,” Sharon said. “And I don’t think anyone ever died here. Isn’t that why they say ghosts appear? They died abruptly, and then their spirits are trapped in that place.”

“Maybe it wasn’t in this building but whatever was here before,” said the lady helping out. “You know, like they always talk about Indian burial grounds being desecrated by people building over them?”

Vicenta didn’t think the girl in the green dress had anything to do with indigenous burials. A man sitting on a comfortable chair a few feet away put down his book. He came by once or twice a week. Retired and with long days on his hands, he was slowly reading his way through the Western fiction section. “When I was a kid, this whole block was lined with Edwardian houses. Impeccable gardens. Bankers lived here. Lawyers. The crème de la crème. The houses were all eventually knocked down, one after the next, due to deterioration and the mayor’s plan to make a modern Chicago.”

For some reason, everyone nodded. One of the women working on the grant, forms strewn in front of her, put down her pencil. “What kind of green dress?” she asked. It seemed like a peculiar question, especially from someone whose appearance might have been described kindly as casual, if not scruffy, but it set Vicenta’s imagination aflight. She envisioned angora, like the winter white beret she was wearing, and the color of the scarf smartly tied around her neck, forest green.

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