Sisterhood of Dirt

Excavation

I find the first one on my way home from school, as I’m crossing the forest. My feet refuse to move. My knees buckle, and I fall to the ground. Trees watch as I dig, watch as my hair ribbon billows.
           I feel it before I see it—a hand, peeking out from the dirt. Small like mine, fingernails painted pink but chipped and cruddy. I tug and tug, and out pops a girl. She looks like me but not. We latch onto each other and walk. We walk until our feet stop and our knees buckle. We drop down to dig. Excavation is easier with extra hands. We scrape away dirt, and out pops another girl. Then another, and another. Our army accrues. Finally there are seven of us, and we decide that is enough.

Domesticity

We line the bathtub like days of the week. We decide we like sisterhood, we like it very much. Seven is a good number, a perfect number, we don’t need any more.
            What we need is to get clean. We scrub each other with loofahs Mother left behind when she went and died. Scrub behind the ears. Between the toes. Scrub the scalp till the dandruff is gone, sprinkled in the tub like confetti.
            Clean! one of us shouts.
            Clean, we agree.
            We don’t need a mother or a father because we are more than enough.

Taken

The authorities do not agree. The authorities say we are children, and children need caretaking.
            The authority stands at our front door, belly bulging into the foyer, peering into the household, observing our deadish father on our dirty filthy couch. The authority tries to snatch us with his giant hairy claws, but we pounce on him.
            We dangle from his body, scraping, fighting, biting. The authority says we need order and discipline. Sedation! Our teeth draw blood. The authority does not shoot us because we’ve chewed up his gun.

Tower

We are taken to a nearby convent and placed in its tower. A round room with five cots—the nuns didn’t count right. Sometimes we blend into each other. We have started to look so very much alike. Scrappy straw hair and storm-cloud eyes. We need distinction. We crave it. We’re almost thirteen after all.
            Thus we name ourselves: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune. We skip Uranus because none of us wants Uranus. Neptune wants Pluto, but we tell her SHUT UP, NEPTUNE, PLUTO IS NOTHING, PLUTO IS A ROACH BENEATH OUR SHOES.
            Neptune cries all morning. The tower is small but her tears are loud. We’d kill Neptune if she wasn’t our sister. We’d strangle her until her vocal cords snapped like grass blades. We daydream about Neptune’s neck, until the headmistress arrives.

Headmistress

The headmistress is a beautiful statue, and when she brings us dinner we can only stare, unblinking, at her golden marble eyes.
            We want to kiss her, we want to unclasp her habit and rub her velvet hair against our faces, we want to smell it, we want to eat it, we want to feel the strands sliding down our throats.
            But all she does is put the tray of food on the ground and scoot it toward us, as if we’re prisoners, as if we’re animals. She backs toward the door, and we want to attack her, we want to climb her, but we’re frozen; she has turned us to stone.
            She leaves and we are lovesick. We can’t eat—not the bread, not the fish, certainly not the stew. All we can do is think about her habit and how it would feel pressed over our mouths, smothering us to death.
           Jupiter moans and croaks and thrashes her body. We tell her STOP IT, JUPITER, STOP IT RIGHT NOW, EXHIBITING YOUR DESIRE SO CARELESSLY. IT’S DISGUSTING; YOU DISGUST US.

Eat

You have to eat, the headmistress tells us. She has brought trays for a week, but we have not touched them. This is the first time she has spoken. Her voice speckles us like rain.
            Eat, the headmistress says, pushing the tray toward us with her clog.
            Can’t, says one of the planets.
          Feel my forehead, says Venus. I’m ill.
            No, feel my forehead, Earth says. Earth is a shameless whore and we all know it.
            The headmistress backs away, exiting the tower, locking us in. We are alone. Alone with each other, and each other isn’t enough anymore.
            I want to eat her, says Neptune, but Neptune is shy and we hardly hear her, and she’s curled up in a ball, so we start to kick her around like soccer.

Soccer

Sisters are good because you can kick them and scream in their ears and scratch at their eyes and bite into their flesh. Your pain is my pain, we tell each other, watching Earth keel over. Earth is our punching bag.
            Mars sits in the corner. This is an anomaly because the tower is round. We can tell Mars has gotten fatter. We suspect she’s been eating off trays in the night.
            Mars is Virgin Mary, Jupiter whispers in my ear.
            Hardly anyone talks to me these days because Saturn is the best planet, and it’s mine, and sisters are jealous, horrid creatures. Only Jupiter is stupid enough to address me.
            Don’t be absurd, I tell her. Mars is just fat. I kick Earth in the shin, and Earth collapses.
           STAND UP, we tell her, exhausted by the tower, by each other, by our yearning.

Blood

The moon wanes and we all start our periods. There is so much blood. We laugh because Neptune bleeds most; she trails blood like a slug. We stop beating each other because we’re women now. We hope the headmistress notices.
            The headmistress brings us sanitary pads, and we giggle and throw them at her.
            We’re all women here! we tell her.
            The headmistress commands us to stop, commands us with her ashy, sooty voice, and we throw harder. Finally she gets the ruler.
            The ruler! We laugh, giddy.

We are not giddy after the ruler. We put the pads in our underwear and vow to never love again. Neptune cries and Jupiter howls and Mars wilts. Venus and Mercury chatter their teeth. Earth lies flat on the floor. I want to step on her, but I don’t.
            I stare out the window, at the night sky. Starless. I want to escape, I don’t want to be a sister, I want to be a star. I bang on the glass. I bang and I bang and the other planets join me. They give me their hands, the hands I dug up, and we bang together. The glass shatters, and we slide out, using each other as rope to descend the tower walls.
            We don’t think of the headmistress or blood or death, or the dirt from which we came. We think of the future, of womanhood, of seven separate orbits.
            We all agree: it is time to disperse, to individuate.

Dispersal

Bye Venus! we shout, as she walks west, toward the river.
            Mercury, we say, you’re hardly there, WE WON’T MISS YOU AT ALL.
            Kiss a frog, we tell Jupiter.
            Take off your clothes and get sucked by LEECHES.
           Neptune is crying again!
            Neptune is going to dehydrate and shrivel, like the raisin she is.
            We love you Earth! We push her south.
            Earth looks haggard as ever, we whisper.
            Mars, we can smell you from all the way over here.
            Good riddance, Saturn!
            I wave as I walk northeast, toward the forest, toward aloneness.

Aloneness

I run my fingers along trees, scrape my nails against bark. A mosquito dances around my face, and I blow it away. I am alone. Once there were seven of us, now there is one. What good are sisters? Good as dead.
            Dead! I tell the forest, looking around its darkness for the thing that will fill my holes. I wonder what else there is to dig up—brothers, aunts, uncles, grandparents. The sanitary pad between my legs begins to squelch. Blood trickles down my thigh, red and clotted. I use my dress to mop it up.
            Then a firefly flickers, just ahead. I follow its light. It senses my blood and my hopelessness, and it speeds up, taunting me. Its lighted behind undulates, up and down, like a spotlight.
            I’m big and you’re small! I want to tell it, but that’s a lie. Every second I shrink. I am so, so small. I am the mole on the headmistress’s chin. I am Jupiter’s chipped tooth.
            I get on my hands and knees and skitter in circles. I start digging, digging into the depths of my aloneness. There’s nothing—not a finger, not a toe. Instead I bury myself, sink into the ground, let dirt invade my every orifice.

Buried Forever

I am buried forever.
            It is a comfort to know.
            I have chosen this path. This path is my choice.
            In a hundred years, a prince may dig me up and kiss my lips.
            For now I am a seed.
            Things will sprout from me, but I will stay underneath.
            I won’t wonder about sisters, about where they will go, what they will do, who they will become—
            I shut myself off, like the firefly squished beneath my boot.

Excavation

What are you doing down there? says a voice.
            I open my eyes—they are unburied. My eyes, my forehead, my scalp stick out sharply from the dirt. Like a tombstone.
            I try to speak but my mouth is still buried. I move my eyes, left and right and left and right, then up, to the voice. She wears a habit, but she is not the headmistress. She’s sparser, plainer, like yogurt. She means nothing to me. Still—my mouth salivates.
            Shall I dig you up? asks the voice. I think you are alive, I see your eyelids blinking and your pupils contracting. Look at those tiny specks!
            She leans close to my face, and I can feel her heat. My heart beats double time, shaking the ground like an earthquake. I’m alone, I say, when she has excavated my mouth.
            I see that, says the voice. The voice brushes dirt from my skin, softly, like an archaeologist. I am her discovery.

After I’m excavated fully, I press my lips against hers in gratitude. She presses her lips against mine harder, as if to say, No problem, my pleasure. I part her lips with my tongue to tell her, It’s nice not to be alone. Our tongues touch, our tongues agree. I open my mouth wider, dig my tongue deeper, as if to say, You’re not like my sisters, not like my sisters at all.
            We press our bodies together like sandwich bread. Her torso wiggles, her torso says we must go back to the convent. Her hips gyrate, her hips don’t care. Her habit falls from her head. I sink my teeth into the cotton, its fibers swimming down my throat. My stomach fills like it hasn’t in weeks.
            Don’t go back to the forest, the nun girl tells me as we walk.
            Why not?
            It’s dirty. The nun girl adjusts her habit, hiding the teeth marks.
            Will I get one of those?
            That’s not for me to say.
            I want one, I declare.
            She unlatches the convent’s gate. The tower looms ahead of us.
            I escaped from there, I confess, as we walk through the iron gateway.
           You’re from the tower? The nun girl smiles. So am I.
            Am I going back there?
            The nun girl shakes her habit. Come to my room, she says, we’ll find a bed for you. There are lots of new girls, but we’ll find a bed.

New Girls

We enter the bedroom, a long rectangle lined with beds, beds lined with girls.
            Can I tell you a secret? the nun girl whispers into my ear, as I stare at the beds in disbelief.
            The nun girl clears her throat: I found these girls in the forest, too. Just like you. I knew to look for you, she whispers, because I’d been finding girls, all around the property. An epidemic really.
            I stare at the epidemic.
            Seriously? I shout at the beds, crossing my arms, narrowing my eyes.
            You know them? The nun girl fingers her habit.
            We tried, they say. We really tried. The only place we could think to go—they look at me, eyes watering—was back to the dirt.
            Idiots, I say under my breath, cursing them, cursing myself. Neptune jumps from her bed and tackles me. Jupiter tackles Neptune. Mars wraps her arms around the three of us. Mercury and Venus latch onto our legs. Earth nuzzles against my shoulder.
            Get off. I push their bodies back into space. I’m happy to have them back, but the happiness is thin. I watch the nun girl, watching us. She chews her lip fluff like cotton candy.
            No more of this, I say to my sisters. We’re supposed to individuate. Remember?
            My sisters look at me, apple heads bobbing up and down. Their eyes have darkened and faded to the exact same hue.
            Not mine. I am not like my sisters. I was not born from dirt. I had a mother and a father. I went to school.
            I turn to the nun girl. I want a habit, I tell her, like yours. I want to be like you.
            You’ll have to speak with the headmistress, she says.

Headmistress

The headmistress is ugly as a statue. I see that now. She trapped us in the tower and twirled us around her fingers, and now we are free, and she is ugly. The mole on her chin is growing, her habit fading.
            The nun girl and I enter the office. We sit on the chairs facing the headmistress.
            Welcome back, she says, with her grimy raspy voice. To what do I owe this visit?
            The nun girl crosses herself and bows her head. Mother, she says. Saturn is repentant.
            She looks at me and I nod.
            Saturn wants more than a juvenile tower existence, she goes on. Like I did, Mother. Saturn wants real sisterhood.           
            A banging bangs on the window behind us. I turn to look. All six of my sisters’ faces are smushed against the glass, hungry for attention.
            INDIVIDUATE, I mouth at them.
            Quite a lot of mischief you made, the headmistress says, clicking her tongue. You’ll have to prove yourself.

Proving Myself

Proving myself turns out to be mostly chores. I sweep chimneys. I sweep all 273 steps of the property. I scrub fountains. I collect milk from the milkman. I purify and redistribute Bibles. I wash habits and hang them to dry.
            I never see what they wear under their habits, the nuns, what they wear while I wash. Perhaps a frock, like mine. When I ask the nun girl what’s under hers, she laughs and says: sins, of course.
            She won’t show me. Our bodies haven’t touched since the forest. She watches me at the wash basin, drowning fabric. In the corner, by a stockpile of Bibles, are my sisters. Pressed into the wall, melded into each other, following me with their eyes.
            My sins won’t let me be. I glare at them.
            The nun girl nods. I see that.
            Remember the forest? I ask. I reach out to her, my soapy fingers grazing her habit.           
            Dirty forest! She slaps my fingers away.

Nighttime

Nighttime is particularly wretched. My sisters have enough beds now, but when lights go out, they climb into mine. I nearly suffocate from how hard they hold me. Sometimes I think they want us to suffocate, together, one final act of sisterhood.
            They take turns at my ear, whispering nightmares into it.
            Neptune tells me about hurricanes and tsunamis. She tells me about water filling a lung, about being drowned from the inside. Earth tells me she was a punching bag, and now she’s angry. Earth tells me she will torture each of us, ignite flames, watch our bodies singe. Mars reminds me that we are still hungry, that our hunger will never be satiated. Jupiter moans in my ear; Mercury bites the lobe until it bleeds; Venus sucks up the blood.
            I don’t sleep, I only wait for the night to be over, for them to leave me be. I try to dream. About prayer, order, faith, the nun girl’s cotton candy lips. But there are no dreams to be had. There are only sisters, night after night after night.

I don’t want you sisters! I tell them in the courtyard. I grab onto a nun passing by. I want these sisters, THESE ONES.
            Us too, they say. Us too! They grab onto nuns, until we each have one. I release mine. Idiots! I say, spitting on the ground. My sisters spit on the ground. I cross my arms and stomp my feet. They cross their arms and stomp.
            I want to be ALONE, I scream at them, at their identical specter faces. The faces that face me day and night, the eyes that watch me from every vantage point.
            We want to be alone too!

Limits

Have I proven myself? I ask the headmistress, exhausted. I look at her habit; it’s loose around her skull; I could almost pull it off.
            We take pride in rehabilitating the disturbed, the abandoned, the ruined, she says. But we have our limits.
            Limits, I echo in agreement.
            Take care of them.

Blood

The moon is full. I am bleeding again, we all are. They throw sanitary pads at me, giggling. I tell them to remember the ruler. They have no memory. They have no thoughts. They have only me. They giggle, they cackle, they scream.
            You have to stop! I tell them. It’s nighttime, lights are nearly out. The other girls in the room vacated, frightened. Even the nun girl is nowhere to be found, no matter how hard I search, no matter how desperately I crave.
            You have to stop! they say.
            Neptune throws a pad at my face, and it sticks to my forehead.
            The headmistress wants you gone, I tell them, throwing the pad to the ground.
            The headmistress? Their ears perk up. They salivate.
            No! I say, hiding under my covers.
            Lights go out, and they invade.

Chimney

The next day I find the nun girl hiding in a chimney.
            What are you doing down here? I ask her. You’re dirty, I tell her, wiping soot off her habit, running my fingers along the teeth marks. There are more of them now.
            I’m not dirty! She covers her ears.
            I’ll wash your habit.
            Make them leave me alone. She scrunches into herself, pulling her knees to her chest. They say sisters are alike. They say they need me. Make them go away! Get them away!

Away

Where are we going? Neptune asks. Neptune’s behind me, as we walk, all seven of us, in single file, out the convent gates.
            Away, I say.
            Away! they scream in single file.
            I skip to increase our speed. I want to be rid of them, I want to be rid of them now. They skip after me.
            The forest! they observe, as we slither into the trees.

Buried Forever

This is good, I tell them, packing the dirt. I pack the dirt tight, so they’ll never get out. They’re ordered like the planets. Mercury first, she went in easily, excited. Then Venus, happy to be beside Mercury. Then Earth, who said nothing as I lowered her underground. Then Mars and Jupiter, who thrashed a bit, but acquiesced. Neptune smiled at me as I funneled dirt around her mouth. I left out their foreheads and eyes, for kindness.
            I’ll come back for you, I lie. They nod with their eyelids.
            I buried them because of love, I think, as I leave their bodies behind. Because of hate. Because I’ve outgrown them.

Real Sisterhood

Real sisterhood begins that afternoon. The headmistress straps a habit onto my head. It’s tight, godly, perfect.
            I dance around the courtyard, letting the fabric billow behind me. Can you believe this? I ask nuns passing by. They don’t look at me. They are focused, as they walk, on some pinprick in the distance, following it closely with their eyes.
            The sisters here are awfully quiet, I say to the nun girl as she passes by.
            Real sisterhood is silent, she says, walking faster, walking past me.
           I spend the day in the courtyard, trying to focus my eyes, to find that tiny distant pinprick. My habit covers my ears; I can hardly hear a thing outside of my head.
            At dinner, I do not eat, cannot eat. Cannot remember the last time I ate. The food on my plate makes me want to retch.
            Night is quiet now, so very quiet. I toss and turn on my cot. I grab the habit from my wardrobe and bring it to bed with me. I rub it against my face, around my shoulders, in between my legs. Then I stuff pieces of it into my mouth, chew, and swallow. My stomach expands, my stomach grumbles with gratitude.
            I think about my sisters, the ones in the ground, whether they’re happy or miserable, if they have any thoughts at all, if someone else will excavate them, someone they will love more than me, someone who—
            Shhhh, says the nun girl. I realize I am talking aloud.
            I look at her, two beds over, in her nightclothes, eyelashes fluttering. I tiptoe to her bed and climb in with her.
            Get away, she shoves me.
            I don’t move.
            Away! She shoves me to the ground. This isn’t the forest, she says, sealing her eyes shut.
            I return to my bed and think about sisterhood. I think about it until the word goes flying, hopping around my skull like a rabbit.

Forest

When I wake, I’m in the forest, digging. Digging with my teeth. Dirt caked around my mouth, on my nightgown, in my hair. Can’t remember how I got here, but have a feeling here is where I will always end up. Can’t remember where I put my sisters. I study the dirt, but there are no foreheads to be found.
            I keep digging.