The Terrible Girls by Rebecca Brown

Author:Rebecca Brown [Brown, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: N/A
Publisher: City Lights Publishers
Published: 1992-08-02T16:00:00+00:00

I’m stumbling up the broad flat marble steps of the giant, wedding-cake-white mansion. I’ve found the joint by tagging along behind the fancy horse-drawn coaches and dark-windowed pimp-mobiles. I’ve slogged behind them and the mud has splattered my faded overalls, my holey sweatshirt, my worn-out work shoes. I’m clutching, in my battered hand, a copy of our manifesto. Flyers of the DISAPPEARED bulge out of my pockets. My fingernails are broken and black with dust. I know I’m not in regulation party dress, but if those arrogant snotrags try to deny me entrance to the house, I’ll shove my cream-colored invitation right up their assholes.

I’m met at the door by a coffee-cart girl wearing white apron, black dress, dark tights, sensible shoes and a small white cap which actually looks more like a doily. She opens the huge, many-panelled fake baroque door. It takes her ages to open the thing, so I give her a hand. She offers me a shawl to cover my dirty work clothes, then tries a jacket, but I don’t take either. I wear my position proudly. She escorts me through the tux and gown festooned crowds. They stare at me, partly out of fear that I might be contagious, but mostly out of respect for the quiet dignity that shines forth through my humble attire. They part for me like the waves of the sea for Moses. Head held high, I march beneath the dozens of huge glistening chandeliers and by the exquisite trompe l’œil frescos on the gallery walls. But I don’t stop to glance at this junk; I know where I’m headed.

The floor of the ballroom is marble, the ceiling is a giant dome and all around the edge of the room are small tables, each with a candelabra and a bottle or two of champagne, each with some baroness or countess or general’s wife or courtesan who’s managed, in a very short time indeed, to push her pudgy way up through the ranks. Each of these nouveau tarts holds her puny court with a circle of clean-shaven, uniformed, bobbing-headed boys. In the center of the room, as if they were being guided by the strings of a giant puppet master, hundreds of almost identical boy – girl couples dance. In the very center of the party, in the prettiest gown of all, attached to the handsomest young buck, is you. As I push my way through the dancers, each couple I touch stops dancing. They drop their hands, their eyes glaze over, they hang their heads in shame. Everyone’s stopped dancing when I reach you. The band stops playing. But you, you princess with your dream come true, have closed your eyes and raised your sticky blue eyelids towards your beau. Your escort is a movie star pin-up look-alike. I hesitate as I try to remember who he’s trying to imitate. When he sees me, he stops dancing abruptly. He gulps. He isn’t holding you anymore, but you keep swaying to music no one else can hear.

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