My Dress Billowed Out Like A Window Curtain
Named Gene

I. Legend

They called it the legend of the Finger. During recess the girls gathered around the three Tims – Timmy, who slicked his hair back and bleached his sneakers; Timothy, who had apple cheeks, mushroom hair, and could run faster than the sixth graders; and Keith, who was our favorite Tim, even though he wasn’t really a Tim, with butterfly hands, black curls, eyelashes that should have been ours. Beth and I sat cross-legged in the front, close to Keith, pulling the hems of our skirts back over our shins. You know the corner of the tanbark, they told us. That’s where it is, over the fence. They know because of Timmy’s sister, who’s already in high school and knows these things.

We knew what over the fence meant without knowing what it contained. Over the fence meant a sharp, echoing whistle from across the concrete, a firm hand pulling us by the wrist, lifting us off our feet, a time-out on the bench. Over the fence meant there were daisy chains and tetherball and water fountains, and there was everything else, cautionary tales and hidden lairs, trapdoors and gypsy curses. Over the fence meant Mr. Stanley the yard keeper, who we called upon to retrieve lost balls, the only one who understood the outside and could tame it.

Every once in a while we dared these realms to meet. Team down three points, bases loaded, we would hold the plastic bat tight, squeeze our eyes until we could only see victory, swing, and with a crack! send the ball into the unknown. We would run, hollering and whooping, our senses attuned to the trail of adventure, bats and mitts abandoned and score forgotten, as the ball soared over the wire mesh, tumbled down a crackling golden-brown hill, and sink deep into the forest below. Whatever found its way over the fence always took the straightest path to disappearance, dodging tangled roots and thick blackened trunks. The negative space tickled the backs of our necks, pulled cold sweat out of our palms – the between that swallowed daylight with a mighty gulp and spit back whispers of Marcos Mendoza got lost, Jenny Fong went missing, and Anthony George was taken.

Long ago, it got Mr. Stanley, too, the Tim’s told us. Reached up and squeezed until all his guts shimmied up into his head.

“Shloop,” said Timothy, “like toothpaste.”

“Like this,” said Keith, squeezing a finger until the tip went purple.

He escaped, they said. But he’s been silent ever since.

Mr. Stanley was a wispy man of fifty, with more blood and weight in his head than in his manner. Before we recognized his black windbreaker, white t-shirt, and sweatpants, we saw his head floating toward us, parting the crowd. With a breathy grunt, he hoisted himself up and over the fence. We pressed our faces against the fence, unblinking, mouths ajar, and watched his lollipop figure disappear into the blackness.

“You can’t really see it at first,” said Timmy.

“It’s like a sausage,” said Timothy.

“But you make a wrong move. You take a wrong step. And it’ll pop outta nowhere and get you. Come shooting outta the ground and wrap around you and break you, like,” he snaps his fingers and we shiver, “that.”

It was left there, they explained, by the old lady who used to live on that corner, remember her? Her son was a soldier in that war when he got blown up, and the army sent back a finger and an ear, all that they could find. And the old lady was crazy, she had all those birds and she spent all her time painting her house and for what, remember? She couldn’t stand going to those dinner parties and seeing all those kids running around drinking fruit punch so she cursed the finger and planted it in the forest. The ear she pickled in a jar and kept on the book shelf above her bed.

“He didn’t get her any souvenirs,” said Keith.

When Mr. Stanley finally reappeared, baseball in hand, trudging slowly back up the hill, we peeled away one by one, pink grids tattooed across our faces. We picked up our fallen bats, we returned to our bases. The score was three to four.