Be A Woman - Allison Field Bell

BE A WOMAN

Maddie

They are camping and isn’t it wonderful.

There’s this woman who teaches them running, this wonderful grownup woman who takes them camping to the ocean, to Bodega Bay, to Doran Beach. This grownup who allows beer and vodka because they deserve a break. They deserve tents and hotdogs. They deserve the slushy nighttime stars and the fishsalt waves that come in all at once or not at all. They deserve the wonderful grownup woman who is their coach, who can drink more beer than the shot-put guys with chests folded over like elephant hills stretched along the San Andreas.

Maddie is the girl who cannot drink nearly as much as the shot-put guys because she is fourteen and still a girl and her bones are small. Body like a ten-year-old body that she works with machine footfalls. The right and then the left until a finish line. And, when she doesn’t have to, like now, tonight, she feels somehow more invincible, every edge of conversation or firelight could be a starting line. Not running, she is a body of endless degrees of potential.

A virgin body, but old enough to not be. Still virgin: to every potential. Embarrassed virgin: to kissing, to touching, to holding, to that other unmentionable between the skank girls and the skank boys. Until tonight she was also virgin to beer. But how easy to drink it! Bubbly and dizzy and easy. Boring then, that people should do it so often, pretending each time that it’s something exceptional: a way to divide day from night, breakfast from football, running from camping.

Her old camping memories are forest memories. Mom under the pine tree with the ghost story about the pine tree people who swipe the kids from the tents for littering, for not turning off water when brushing teeth. Dad with the shitstupid sing-alongs and the peanut butter gram cracker glue. The neighbors: Daniel and his little brother Neil. Their parents. Everybody knowing so much about everybody else. Or at least something. Everybody knowing at least something. Like, that the marshmallow’s the best but also the most annoying because it’s so easy to burn and there’s only one bag. And even if not burned, then sticky: you have to lick it off all your fingers. And then it’s in your hair and Mom and Dad and everybody else laughs at your hair that snares pine needles like sap, or like some sort of magnet. Your forest-camping magnet-hair.

The bummer about this beach camping is the strangers. Deep metal fire pits, orange light flashing and spilling from the edges, men and women all around them. Mostly men. Or maybe it’s just seeming like mostly men because men are always taking up more space with their beer burps and their giant gesturing bodies.

Except for Daniel, who knows forest camping, who likes the peanut butter glue, who does not take issue with marshmallow. Daniel is boy-bodied, small-bodied like her, and so very annoying tonight. He watches her like a worried dog. Follows her like a dog too. A little yappy dog to keep her away from the bigger dogs. Ha. Turn the shot putters, high jumpers, long jumpers, relay runners into dogs. Ha! Coach would find it funny. All her dog athletes lapping around the track, lapping up beer and that blue bottle of vodka smelling of something toxic. Disinfectant. Odor of wound. Healing. The mother lesson about no picking because blood poisoning and tsk tsk. Here’s a band aid. Ha. Coach would never tsk.

Coach, who smiles and talks to the strange men, sits next to them by the fire, leaves all the team in the dark to do whatever they want because they deserve it. Not like the mother-father lesson: no doing what you want, no deserving what you deserve. Moms and dads would not approve. Not of beach camping, not of Coach. Coach who doesn’t buy them alcohol but allows the drinking of it, but only after nationals and only because it’s such a big secret that she knows for absolute sure they will all keep. Maddie knows secrets because Mom: don’t tell Dad about such and such. Birthday boxes and certain candies like chocolate hidden in certain locations: for Maddie and Mom only.

Coach’s secret is easy. Because the ocean. Because all the running or jumping or throwing and all of them needing a break, just a tiny break for a single night. Whatever could be wrong with this?

Nothing. Nothing could be wrong.

Except Daniel. Daniel who sips one beer but does not sway or laugh with the others or even join Maddie and Coach by the strange men at the fire. He could at least do that. She sees him at the edges in the dark like a stray dog. She could throw things at him. Ha! Wouldn’t that be something. Like a stray animal: throw things, and it goes away. And then you don’t have to think about it, out there in the dark alone, because you can just imagine it happy somewhere else, running along the sand free, not begging for anything. Not needing anything but open space to run. Wouldn’t it be great if Daniel would just run? Run away across the sand. She would cheer for him. Just like she always has. Isn’t that enough?

They are friends. Connected by their backyards, and they share the backfield with the oaktree and the wintercreek. Their oaktree! Isn’t that enough? They walked around in the wintercreek with rubber boots and nets. Daniel even brought Neil along. His little, younger brother. Neil, who loves everything outside and always insists on coming along. They all three had nets and boots. Tadpoles. Isn’t that enough? Daniel always reminding her about the tadpoles and the field and the rubber boots and how that one time Maddie’s boots were too small, too small in height because her feet were so small in shape. Boots filled with water coming in over the tops and stuck in the mucked bottom of wintercreek so Daniel pulled her out with both hands. Both! That’s how plain stuck she was. Maddie burped out of her boots. They both splashed into the wintercreek which was cold but fine because they drank hot chocolate after, sitting on the porch watching the sky go gray. Not talking because that was the kind of way between them. Was. Was: Daniel. This is what she should say: was.

This is real life now and she could shake him for his stupid dog behavior. She could just shake him. Throw things at him. She could at least do that.

She says to Coach, Daniel’s being creepy.

Daniel has an excellent stride.

I think he’s creeping on me. Daniel. Creeping me out.

Coach says, Maddie, have you met Jack? Maddie, this is Jack. Jack was four-by-four back in the day. We ran together, didn’t we, Jack? Jack, Maddie. Maddie’s long distance. Excellent stride. And isn’t she just adorable?

This man who is suddenly not a stranger. Plaid and jeans. Coach is also wearing jeans. Maddie is wearing a skirt. Skirt for the special night of having a tiny break that she deserves.

Jack holds a larger fatter glass bottle of beer. He is very hairy in the face. Like Dad. But when he smiles he has very large white teeth, almost pretty teeth. Like he could be a dentist. Coach might like a dentist.

Jack says, Maddie…

Madeline…

Is that short for Madeline?

Yes!

Yes, it is short for Madeline.

His teeth almost take over his face. In a nice way. Pretty. Pretty enough for Coach. Maddie smooths her skirt down.

Jack says, Hm, good name…

Well named…

Classic. Like Jack.

Coach smiles. Isn’t she just adorable? So much potential. She’ll be first in state next year, the sixteen hundred. She’s got a great kick. Last lap and she kicks it into overdrive, sprints practically, passes the other girls like it’s nothing. Blur of a thing. Fantastic kick. And so young still! First in state. Mark my words.

Maddie feels her face hot but really that could be anything: fire, beer, skirt. No, she is pleased. Coach talks nice of her and of course she is pleased. Coach is not easy with praise. She is very hard on them. Intervals even after weekend races. Strict diets, too. Lists of what they should eat before long runs. Pragmatic, Dad says. Dad who thinks of food in numbers: energy in, energy out. But according to Mom, it’s a bit frownable, a bit controlling, and really, she’d rather Maddie didn’t bother thinking about what she eats or doesn’t eat. Hence the hidden candies. Eating disorders are a very serious problem these days, Mom says. Disordered ways of eating: as in, not eating. Like Maddie could be an anorexic. Like she would want to be smaller. Ha.

Something on Coach’s don’t-ever-eat list: milkshakes. Maddie drank it anyway. But only half, three weeks ago. And it was Oreo, so part of it she had to chew, which is weird, chewing something from a straw. Daniel drank the other half because they shared it. Neil got his own—chocolate malt—because he doesn’t have a don’t-ever-eat list. And the whole time Maddie flipped the leftover milkshake coins in her pocket. Skirt pocket. The last time she wore a skirt it was short and with pockets and a guy from her Spanish class in the ice cream store—senior, stupid—told her she had nice legs. Said her legs looked nice in skirts. Good to have nice legs because she’s a runner. Neil laughed at her. Little kid Neil. Embarrassing. And the way Daniel drank the milkshake after that made her so so embarrassed. Slow, and with a very specific way of chewing the bits of Oreo, like she could see every part of his jaw working out the problem of the Oreo. Or the skirt: the problem of the legs, the problem of the senior looking at the legs. Suddenly Daniel’s problem. Because he was there?

The plaid man, Jack, speaking again, his voice deep, like a dad voice. Jack isn’t a dad though. It’s so obvious. Some men are just so obvious about not being dads. They don’t look at you right. They look at you like normal, not like a kid. That’s the difference. Dads know how to look at kids. Hey, you’re a kid, the look says.

Jack says, Is that so?

Is what so? Is Maddie really so good at kicking? That is what Coach was saying. Jack seems kind of bored. Like now he’s kind of avoiding looking at her. Is Maddie really so boring to look at? To talk to? Dads know how to not seem kind of bored when they talk to kids. That’s just fact. Obvious.

Coach says, It is so! Isn’t it Maddie? Tell him your times.

Now Maddie really is nervous. She knows it’s good to be humble about these things, to not go on telling everyone her times. Especially to manrunners because all their concept of time is male, which is just completely un-comparable and will make Maddie seem like a total slowpoke. She looks out past Coach to Daniel still standing in the dark. He’s not looking at her though, which is suddenly even more annoying than when he was looking. Suddenly even more Maddie’s problem. He’s looking up at the sky in that dreamy way he sometimes does.

Like when he looks at the clouds in the middle of the courtyard: everyone all around moving back and forth from classes, linking arms and laughing, someone throwing a football. Sometimes seagulls swooping around making some girls carry books over their long straight blonde hair. Then Daniel in the middle, backpack flat against his little bony back, neck cranked at a weird angle so you can see the Adam’s apple in his throat. Which is a new thing. And the voice too, growing into the deep voice, dropping into the dad voice. Not Daniel’s voice. The problem of the voice: not Daniel’s. The problem in the courtyard: Daniel being Daniel. Clouds above him flip-flopping over the sun in big fat clumps.

But now, at the campout: really Daniel, you are so annoying. It’s most likely the stars he’s watching. No moon tonight, just a stain of stars. Except right now where Maddie is, there’s a smoke sheet in the way. Campfire snapping up dry outsides of logs, hiccupping glittery orange pieces sometimes out of the metal cauldron. It’s totally a cauldron! Like: as in a witch’s. If Daniel wasn’t so busy looking at stars, he’d enjoy this: thinking about bonfires as cauldrons. Daniel loves fantasy worlds with elves and such. She tried to tell him how it’s cool but uncool. Like as in: don’t talk to her about it in public. But it doesn’t hurt to think. To think: if cauldron, then witch. Jack the witch. Very funny. Daniel would love that one.

Just like Maddie loves the ones about the stars: Daniel’s stories of them. In the backyard, near the oaktree but not under it. Under stars, under story. Look Maddie! That one is the Eagle monster dancing in a lightriver. And the castle of a certain kingdom: elves with lightbows on electric light field walls. Connect them with lightlines Maddie!

Now: Maddie crossing her legs like Coach but careful of skirt, sitting by the lightbowl of fire, expected to speak. Both Coach and Jack not looking at her so much as at the fire. But there’s a kind of waiting in the air. She’s trying to remember the question. Stupid memory like some stupid test.

Maddie says, I love running. I used to play soccer like when I was little. But I didn’t like getting hurt all the time. In the box. Always that dumb coach was putting me by the goalie. Striker’s for small people or something like that, is what he’d say. And of course the ball would come, the goalie’d jump and I’d jump, and goal or no goal, I’d be half pulverized.

Pulverized is a good word to use when telling a story. Didn’t she read that somewhere. Pulverized, that’s drama, that’s visual. Visceral. Pulverized. Daniel says words like that. Daniel played soccer too. Soccer with her as a kid, running track with her now. Standing in the dark without her.

God, so annoying.

Coach says, See what I mean, Jack? See!

Sure. Another brewsky, Madeline?

Maddie looks at her hand, which has been shaking her empty can and squeezing it into a weird metal sculpture thing.

Yeah. I mean, yes please.

And then she does it. Jack and Coach looking elsewhere. Not really thinking but it must have been in her head like in the background. The can. Daniel. She isn’t particularly the best at throwing cans. Or anything really. But she’s good right now or lucky. Or unlucky. The can floats away from her like a magnet. It’s in the air, up catching all this light from the fire. It sparkles. Kind of pretty actually. Like a star shooting, falling. Her arm kind of hurts actually, which means she must have put a lot into the throw, like the end of a race: the big dig deep at the end. Legs so sore but good tingle sore, like her body knows what it has done.

The can in the air and then the can on Daniel. He’s looking up, but in the other way so he doesn’t see the can until it’s on him. And then he sees it, feels it probably. Not a full can at least. Empty, couldn’t have hurt. Like nothing really. Daniel has been hurt before. He’s no baby about hurt. Once as a kid: Maddie and Daniel out there in the garden serving mud pies, a grand feast, to you know, tulip fairies, oak gnomes. Daniel running after Neil who was little little then and Daniel falling on accident, and hitting the garden rocks weird, like in a bad place, his skull. And kid skulls are not as tough or something so it broke a little. Not too much but enough to be really hurt. Staples and a little shaved part on the side of his head. So Daniel knows real hurt. Empty can is not that.

Still, he looks hurt, even in the dark. His face looks really really hurt. Like he might cry.

Coach and Jack seem to not notice or care. They’re talking about something new: fishing, the freshness of salmon, whether it’s better smoked or grilled or baked into little cakes. Something stupid. And maybe it’s the fish talk that gets her feeling sick. The picture of a fish flopping on some deck, then a whole line of them hung from hooks, slit down their middles. Or how many pounds of what and imagining big fish chunks on scales with numbers like some weird flesh towers. The smell must be so much, and touching the smell all day, no way you could shower it off. Not with a million bars of soap. Not like sweat, which comes off easy and is just salt really.

Fish. Ick. She feels ill, like throw-up ill. Ick. Not something Coach would enjoy. Not something Jack would find adorable. And Daniel’s face just filling up her brain with its fake hurt. God, why was he such a big baby? Be a man! Isn’t that what his dad is always saying. Be a man, Daniel. Be a man, Neil.

Be a man, Be a man, Be a man.

Stop with the annoying boy faking. Except she hates when his dad says that. As in the dad shouldn’t say it because he doesn’t know Daniel at the wintercreek. As in the dad doesn’t know about the boots or the oaktree, about Daniel who doesn’t take issue with marshmallow.

She’s somehow away from the fire now. Like a magnet sucked away. The ocean’s over here somewhere. In this vast fat darkness that is not the fire, not the team laughing and smashing cans underfoot. Not the team singing. They aren’t singing camping songs, singing more like not normal sing-alongs. Not “Clementine” or “Down by the Bay.” Not in the deep dad voice. More like something hip and with a guitar sound like smiling. That’s right because there’s the relay team captain with his guitar.

She’s not in the Daniel part of the darkness either, which is now so annoyingly empty. He is annoying for leaving, just because Maddie was being a woman. Sorry Daniel. Maddie, be a woman. Be a woman! Nobody says that to girls: be a woman.

No, she is floating magnet-like to the darkness which is sand, over to the waves. White rows like teeth rolling over themselves, taking up all the light, sucking it off the sand so that sand is only a feeling. A grit-between-toes feeling because she’s barefoot. Of course. Barefoot of course because hello: this is sand! She at least knows that.

And then Maddie runs. She’s a runner. She runs and the feeling is like breathing again, like when you can’t catch a breath and then you can and everything is crisp and open. Eyes are open, muscles opening, uncurling from something like a box. Like a muscle box all bound up by beer or fire or being woman. The stars! Uncountable. In one forest, once, camping near a lake, late, on the little fish deck, at the edge, no wind, nothing but lake and sky and you couldn’t tell the difference. If only we could fly, Daniel had said. As in, if we could fly, now would be the perfect time. If you could believe in flying, you would jump out into the lakestars, and instead of water there would be sky.

Now it is like sky: running. Run to the Daniel-darkness. Run from the fishsick feeling in the belly. And the sense of someone following. The following sense which is a good one to have, know the pace of the person behind you. Give their steps numbers. And then keep your numbers steady. Until the end. Then kick-dig until your body is dying to be done. Like any number of steps might send you off the sand into the air.

Except: her body is too heavy with beer and there’s the skirt problem and that fish picture again. Fish bellyache. Side ache. Running cramp. The worst. Close to the waves, and she’s better. Water so cold like the start-of-a-race cold. Everything clear and obvious. Heart so ugly loud, every smell so exactly a smell: deodorant and nervous. There is a smell to nervous. Now though: salt. A smell to salt and fish. Ick. The fish. She stops, ankles in waves, hands on thighs. And then sitting there in the waves, skirt soaked, water cold. Legs stretched out in the dark.

Everyone here is a runner so everyone has nice legs that have been seen in motion and out of motion, on the bus, in the grass. No one who is a runner cares about looking at legs.

And then Jack? Jack: no longer a runner. But plaid Jack did run: he is behind her. And now he is holding her from the armpits, dragging her. Why? The white foam of water so so pretty, sucking the light from the stars. Ambient light, that’s what it is, isn’t it? Like extra soft light that has nowhere else to go.

Rough hands. Lumpy, like too much muscle there. Skin you could probably stick a pushpin through without hurt.

Maddie is sitting and then she’s not. Then she’s half-standing, half-dragged backward, half-pushed down again. Her back is in the sand, stuck in the sand, like she could actually turn into sand, like quicksand. She used to be afraid of quicksand. Nightmares. Walking in an exotic jungle and then suddenly sinking: a feeling beyond gravity like falling, only opposite. Falling is weightless, sinking is weightful.

Is she sinking? Drowning? Does Jack think she is drowning?

Mouth to mouth. Ick. Ha. No Jack, she was just sitting that’s all. Don’t be a baby. She was just sitting there enjoying the ocean, cold waves on her legs. She can breathe, Jack. She has her own breath. She’s feeding the oxygen herself, no need for his. No need. No.

And his beard hurts. Like when Dad kisses her goodnight and the beard scrapes her in the forehead. Sharp like saw grass, only by the water under the oaktree. Nowhere else.

Their oaktree.

But then hands on her legs. Nice-in-skirt legs. Hot, bulgy hands bigger than her nice running thighs. Wrapped all around them. On her skin! Stupid skirt. Stupid skin. Not even so short. It is a to-her-knees skirt, because she would never wear the other one again. She liked the skirt that day for the pockets: leftover milkshake coins, flip them together into this nice small sound. Like tiny bells. Daniel said that: coins in pockets like bells.

And Daniel, where is he now?

This beach skirt is not short but then Jack makes it short. Trying to, what Jack? Ick. The sand, sticking to her calves from the saltwater, stinging because her legs are shaved. She shaves her legs, yes, since year eleven. Duh. She is maybe still looking young but not really so young for that. Jack. Stop. Mom says, Hold off on the leg shaving Maddie! Mom means, Be like me, Maddie! Don’t be a certain kind of woman, Maddie!

Ick. Plaid beard scrape sand.

And Maddie, you don’t even have much hair, why not just leave it be? Jack. Leave. Leave her be.

Jack is pressing on her with his weight: all different ways, all of them gross. Trying to. Ick. She could throw up all over him but her neck is at such a weird angle. She could scream, she could at least do that. But he has his hand over her mouth.

Who is this Jack? Why would Coach talk to a Jack like this? Not pretty. Not dentist. How could Coach talk to him. Where is she now. This wonderful woman who is her coach, who is supposed to be there all the time because that is what she promised all the moms and dads. Don’t worry moms and dads, I’ll take care of them. And then this Jack, trying to.

This is wrong. And Jack will not. She will not let him. Someone will stop him. Coach will be running to find Maddie. Or Daniel. Where is Daniel?

She’s scratching at him and trying to get her knees up, legs free. Trying with all her muscles and thoughts. And this man’s trying with opposite thoughts, bigger muscles. Stupid man with stupid fat beer, you will not do this to Maddie. God if she could just run.

And in a way, she is running already. If you think hard enough you can just make things happen. The creek becomes a river becomes a moat becomes an ocean.

Maddie, he says. Madeline.

Then there’s yelling, and pain: her face. Her mouth. A sudden pain there from the sudden fear in Jack and his weight gone too fast. His arm knocking into her face. But the weight’s gone! It’s gone and there’s yelling. Her mouth is hot with hurt, with blood. But the rest of her body knows what it has not done.

Daniel is standing over her. Maddie, Maddie. Are you okay? Holy hell, Maddie. I’ll kill him, I’ll murder him. Maddie? Did he hurt you? What did he do? I didn’t trust them. And then the can, and I was mad. Maddie, I’m so sorry. I knew there was something and I left. I’m sorry.

Daniel is on his knees, holding her hand like praying. But ick. No touching. Doesn’t he know that? He should at least know that. Blood in her mouth but the weight isn’t there anymore. It’s hard to breathe. And the way to breathe is to run. But Daniel is holding her hand so much, like pulling her out from being stuck but keeping her stuck all the same.

This is not wintercreek, Daniel. This is quicksand.

And then Coach is there too. Coach with Jack behind her pointing. And the shot-putters, the long jumpers, the relay runners: all of them looking.

At Maddie. Then Daniel.

And Coach is pushing Daniel away, screaming in this not-mom way. This scared-as-hell way. This never-again-be-able-to-camp-and-coach-and-drink-beer way.

Jack is pointing. Maddie, Daniel. Strange man with hands and beard and so much weight. Accusing Daniel. Ick. Not Daniel. She could say: not Daniel. She could say: Jack.

But not Daniel, she should say.

She should at least say that.

Originally published by New Madrid 2018

Allison Field Bell is originally from northern California but has spent most of her adult life in the desert. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Prose at the University of Utah, and she has an MFA in Fiction from New Mexico State University. Her prose appears in SmokeLong Quarterly, The Gettysburg Review, Shenandoah, New Orleans Review, West Branch, Epiphany, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Pinch, and elsewhere. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, RHINO Poetry, The Greensboro Review, Palette Poetry, Nimrod International Journal, and elsewhere. Find her at allisonfieldbell.com.