It always looked like there was a world of trouble in that Wiley girl’s face, well when I first looked at her-like she had gone and swallowed a thunder cloud and she was just waiting to rain, to bend trees, to flood banks, pick up cars with her small storm hands.
You know that Wiley girl I gathered had not always been like that-somewhere I did sums in my head and figured that something must have hit her that way-like some boulder found her playing in the road, playing in her scuffed jeans with the marbles in the pockets and the boulder rolled over her-and the sky turned for that Wiley girl, knocked her off her feet, flattened her, made her eyes open, made her eyes still and staring and she was trying to breathe she knows, just trying to breathe.
That Wiley girl liked praying before she knew how to stare, to stay still. She was a good Catholic girl-kneeling at the foot of her bed, praying for her sister, her mother and father, her grandparents-the people that had had no supper that night, the animals in the cold. She prayed with her small hands pressed together. The good Catholic girl who couldn’t wait to get her knickers off and commune with heavenly bodies, to sing different hallelujahs, scream different hallelujahs, she prayed not knowing that, never imaging that…while the prayer above her head spoke of shepherds and sheep and being watched over.
She liked to make people laugh before the boulder-liked to dress up and play at being other people-she would do shows in the living room, and the living room was a theatre and her family would laugh till tears streamed down their faces. Yes, that Wiley girl was a clown, even with her small feet and she was always funny. She liked herself she knew, knew she was brave, knew that she could do anything if she wanted to, she could be that fireman, that lawyer, or doctor, or the policeman with a gun at her hip.
She liked to swing on swings standing up, as high as she could go, as the sun was setting and then she would leap off, she had no idea where she would land, or if she would break something, but she liked flying-liked the way the pulsing orange sun felt so close as it slipped under the horizon, as if she had something to do with its leaving and its returning. As if she had made it go and she would make it come back.
Someone she loved in her family, loved like a child would their father-some fathers-the fathers that are kind and swing you around in their arms till the scenery blurs and it is a nice kind of dizzy-the fathers that put you high up on their shoulders and that Wiley girl would always ask this one she loved -please swing me around again. She was still small then, little then. The one she loved took her to a hill-told her how to do it, showed her how to do it, to make things rise in him-told her about light and light years, showed her how to take her knickers off and what was between her legs-and she had never looked, never felt-much of anything at all, like that, that way. She never breathed, lay like some frozen wooden thing-and she makes it up this way. Maybe she was very much older and he was some guy, someone-she had liked, and he took her driving in his car, got her in the backseat and she didn’t mind-she makes it like this to take the first breath that makes her shiver that makes her shake like she will never be warm- in that purple morning light-and he is in bed asleep for hours now and she was just staring-and not moving it was just a bed, a dark room, the smell and taste of beer in her mouth, other smells she never knew about and her lips chapped, kissed to bleeding at the corners of her mouth, no hills no car no liking-but something about dead stars.
That Wiley girl she takes up smoking because it is something to breathe. She smokes when she can, on the sly, out of her bedroom window-at the parks where she doesn’t swing anymore and she ain’t eleven yet. She smokes to forget, to feel grown up, the adulterated thing she now is, she smokes to bear.
She took that prayer off of her wall, put the rosary beads away, somewhere at the back of her cupboard-with the most dust…she never wants to go back there, but she wants to with all of her heart, back then, just for it to be how it was before, the same like before.
She gives all of her toys away. She says goodbye to them first, turning them in her hands, giving them a proper send off, someone else will make better use of them she thinks. She wears a denim jacket, with skulls and ugly bare things sewn on it-she talks tough like nothing would hurt her.
She fucks every village idiot that looks at her that way-in storm water drains so that the neighbours don’t see-she wants to take something back, and she doesn’t know what it is, but she is thinking if she is hurt it will make sense-the dark room, that she will come back gasping and screaming and be back in her body again. Then she would make the sun rise and set again and she would leap off swings. She doesn’t know if the village is talking, but she feels it is talking, pointing fingers, whispering and the lines are alive with hate for her and God likes to engulf her in damning flames, where all of the wrath she read about in the Bible is visited upon her. She never goes to church anymore but she has to confess at school, the school with the nuns and the priest once a month waiting for confessions, and she is hearing choirs and the hallelujahs and hymns again as she confesses to anything but that. And where is your rosary my child— but Father you know I forgot it.
There are others in her family that are this way-all these ugly older men, just waiting for something to fall down rotten. And the fingers are inside of her and she is trying to feel pretty-pretty in secrets, pretty in you can never tell. Jesus looking down on her from the wall in her grandmother’s house and he says while he puts her hand around him where no one will see, that we will burn in hell together-you who tempts me-you who does this to me-you who makes me do this-she can’t help coming————sometimes, a body is just a body that Wiley girl is thinking-nothing to feel inside of her anymore anyway and she hangs her head, hangs her body from ropes strong enough-in her mind– plagued by shame and guilt. She hangs it till it kicks no more.
She runs away often-to some place she thinks is sanctuary, was sanctuary once, to escape the village that turns this way around her now, like some bicycle wheel just spinning in the road, some bicycle she just left there while speeding down a hill and jumped off halfway to something else.
On the road and on the way she is forced to commune violently with a body so heavy it rips a hole in her-this time she ain’t freezing-this time she is howling-screaming begging-and the heavenly body clamps her mouth shut-tells her to shut it, to shut up and his fat hands are wet with her tears, wet with the screaming she isn’t screaming. She is alone after that, running the rest of the way to the sanctuary and it has shipped out, moved on—half empty and packed and she leans in the doorways smoking, trying not to think about being held, consoled.
The hole in her now makes her want to vomit, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t eat, and the doctors look at X-rays and tell her mother that she is too young for surgery-it is tricky at the best of times to fix that kind of tear, they say, so they say. No one knows but her, who put the hole in her-she loses weight, loses weight.
There are some kind people in her family, one who asks why she never smiles anymore-and where did that laughing clown go and what is all this skin and bone you have become? That Wiley girl who is now thirteen years old, trusts a little-still; maybe this one would make it stop, would make all of this go away. She tells of one thing, just one thing. The kind one is threatening murder, saying oh I will kill him-I will kill him! The Wiley girl becomes afraid, what has she done? The kind one says maybe it is not her place, to interfere, but she will do something-call upon the one who would care the most.
So the Wiley girl is hearing words like whore and slut and it was all lies, all of it. The Wiley girl she hangs on ropes strong enough again-but she was dead already and how would she hang a body that was already dead? She sits in her room, holding on to her knees-her legs with her arms, trying to rock herself, but there ain’t no comfort, none at all.
The other older ugly man is getting religious on her again, saying she will burn, he will burn. She wonders which side of the bed the aunt sleeps on-and that Wiley girl is climbing the steps to heaven, growing wings as he tries to get in her, get in her get in her-and she would snap pencils in half she knows with her teeth, she would bite down on her lips, with tears streaming down her face-she would lie forsaken in hell and in limbo forever.
She goes to church once more. She brings her other loud billowing aunt with her-told her she wanted to go to confession-not the confessional at school, but the real one in the church. Her other aunt asks if she has her rosary with her and that Wiley girl says yes. Her aunt says honey to her sometimes-and she says Honey it is your turn now.
The confessional smells like old wood like old wringing sweating hands confessing, saying sorry for being alive, always saying sorry. The priest slides the screen open. That Wiley girl can see the priest’s old face through tiny black holes.
She say Bless me Father for I have sinned, it has been————since my last confession. She tells the priest about committing profane sexual acts with a man-with men. The priest says in the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit…He gives her her penance.The priest doesn’t hear that her voice is the voice of a child. She has to say the whole rosary, says it in a back pew while her other aunt sits in front looking upward at the cross, praying silently. And that Wiley girl’s fingers are slipping and sliding over the rosary beads. The icons look upon her with grace, she must think, but she never knows grace, never knows mercy.
She leaves the Convent school, goes to some normal place without any nuns. The children there mock her because she is always so serious, sometimes, God she does laugh, sometimes, but mostly she is trying not to move, trying not to feel. They throw books at her, to try and get a reaction out of her. When the book hits her head hard enough she does cry, is that the reaction they wanted-from that Wiley girl, you know is that enough, got what you want now?
The ugly men don’t go away and she ain’t fucking no village idiots anymore-cause that never did bring her back-just the old ugly men, in her family, the men with nothing in them that put nothing in her.
One teacher won’t leave her alone, thinks she is stupid or slow or something-or you could do so much better, what is wrong with you, wrong WITH YOU-that Wiley girl she is all hard and cold when people want to dig in her-she says why don’t you tell me, ain’t nothing wrong..tells her without telling her that she could press a gun to her head and pull the trigger, be done with herself, blow herself away and she is sorry so fucking sorry that she won’t feel the next bullet and the next one, like it would take some automatic rifle- but she doesn’t tell the teacher that, what does that stupid girl do-she trusts, dig in her enough, dig kind and she will maybe say something real. The teacher arranges stuff-psychologists because she is really thinking there is something crooked in her, for her to tell lies like that-tells her like it is a fact, looks deep into that Wiley girl’s eyes at fourteen years old and tells her you will grow up into a sick and twisted adult.
That Wiley girl she still tries to walk with her back straight. She is still gentle-still kind to others, like it was some elusive holy grail to stay beautiful,to have compassion and empathy somewhere deep inside. She is never kind to herself.
To feel clean, to feel anything at all for herself, to punish herself she has to cut her arms to shreds, as if she were in a trance-deeper deeper, and she ain’t never seen so much blood, like she was slaughtering herself,and for a little while she feels alive, euphoric and she cleans herself up afterwards, sometimes her mother does with some kind of frantic look in her eyes-that look back at the Wiley girl’s dead eyes. She is never held, but her bones seem to ache, for that. Only the ugly old men hold her————— down. Tell her things like I got some animal instinct to fuck you, and another saying you are my girl, would just die without you…though I will burn.
At seventeen there was a car on a hill, one with fake leather seats and cruise control and the one who couldn’t live without her-finally getting what he wanted-cause he was always saying you just aren’t big enough and I don’t really want to hurt you, don’t really want to make you cry———-my girl. She gave no more to him, could give mo more to him, one last attempt to save her life and she said to him if you touch me again I will kill you. He ain’t looking so brave no more, he is looking worried, looking scared, like some small withered thing-that the secret would be out, that she would go on a path that would ruin him, that really would throw him in hell. He feels his ulcers flare up, like he made the Wiley girl’s ulcers flare up all those years.
But she be older now, of consensual age-and he really had nothing to worry about-how would it be proved and the village would cry whore you know, my girl.
But he never tries to touch her again, to get in her again. She doesn’t ruin him, ruin them, she thinks about the others it would hurt-and it wasn’t their fault.
That Wiley girl she grows up old, grows up sad, and on her knees, she makes mistakes, so many mistakes, she loses and loses, she gains, she loves and she loves and she loves, she tries to forget, she still tries not to feel, but still she cries. She wonders what it would be like to really not be here-you know that peace, the bliss that is spoken of, the thing that carries you away and heals you.
She looks at the scars on her arms the old faded scars and doesn’t mind them much. Lives with them, contemplates them. But she doesn’t want to just live with them, she wants to celebrate them, sometimes, she tries to celebrate them, maybe she has always tried.
What love would it take, and how many years would she wait for that love-till she was very old, till she was middle aged when when when, when would all of this be beautiful?
And the Wiley girl, and I we look at each other one day-you know all the distance we went and the way we were split into two into three four maybe six ways from Sunday and all that singing Hallelujah and singing hymns and she tries not to scream-puts her hands to her mouth, stuffs her fists into her mouth and feels tears run through her fingers-and you think I am still talking simple, maybe I am talking like rain and that thunder behind the windows, in front of the windows,blows this place apart till me and Wiley we can’t see no more, see no more and her bones and my bones dislocate come undone and where is Wiley going to put this crying for her for me where is she going to fit it, where is it going to go and will she die, and she is forgiving, forgiving forgiving and is she dying, she stuffs her storm fists deeper into her mouth, bends over, curls up, her eyes are not big enough big enough big enough and you think I am talking simple SIMPLE SIMPLE like I was stupid or something like I was talking funny but I is TALKING LIKE RAIN, LIKE rain like rain like rain, rain rain rain.