Green Girl (19 page)

Ruth. Ruth the golden girl the cover girl the girl next door the girl on the moon. Time has been good to Ruth life goes where she does. She has been profiled, covered, revealed, reported on, what she eats, and what she wears, who she knows and where she was and when and where she’s going.

Ruth. You know all about Ruth.

Exclusive video: RUTH. RUTH steps out of a cab. Legs first, then the rest of her. Flashes! Pop! Pop! The sunglasses shield her from the paparazzi. The camera bulbs are hot.

The sunglasses come off. There’s a camera. She smiles. She waves.

RUTH! RUTH! Over here! Over here!

The sale people come out for the sale. Sale people are the worst kind of people. They maul through the carefully set up boxes of discount merchandise. They are gross specimens. They are not beautiful people. Some of them are fat. American fat. Talk-show fat. They mill about greedy monsters, hopeful monsters, lusty for that elusive find.

The ride home, the train stops suddenly in a dark tunnel. Ruth examines her fellow passengers in the empty car, measuring them up. A large woman in a cornflower blue housedress stares suspiciously at Ruth. Her shopping bags lean into her pantyhose-wrinkled ankles like expressionless pets.

A curly-haired man looks directly at her. He has been ambling around the platform before the train came, muttering to himself, spitting into the dark void of the tracks. Ruth had avoided him for fear that he might push her in front of the train tracks. Nutters here, or mental. Now she kept her face frozen, immobile.

These, the last human beings she will ever see.

The car remains stopped in silence.

The train begins to move, as if it was just clearing its throat, as if it had never halted in its journey.

Someone probably killed themselves on the tracks, Agnes declared, all nonchalance, after Ruth complained of the stalled train. People do that? Ruth wondered. A shiver went through her.

The next morning she aligned her toes against the painted yellow line. She stared into the guts of the tracks, as if mesmerized. She saw her reflection passing, passing her by in the glass of the incoming train.

Doors opening.

Mind the gap.

First of all, I must make it clear that this girl does not know herself apart from the fact that she goes on living aimlessly. Were she foolish enough to ask herself “Who am I?” she would fall flat on her face. For the question “Who am I?” creates a need. And how does one satisfy that need? To probe oneself is to recognize that one is incomplete.

— Clarice Lispector,
The Hour of the Star

Why did you cut your hair? She is taking her break with Rhys, the boy with the enflamed face.

All about the massive food hall, this thick and green Emerald City, shoppers are milling about greedily. Hungry bodies thronged all about them, standing in the queue at the bakery for bread, lumpy asses pressed against each other at the sushi bar, cramming monster sandwiches made of piles of red-tinged meat down their throats at the gourmet deli, children with bodies like insects begging for gummies arranged in every color, for bars of chocolate bigger than their heads, children threatening to burst with the full force of their tantrums if this desire is denied to them. Mummy! Mommy! Please! Please! A little girl of unknown nationality is on her knees, screaming bloody murder as her mother tries to pull her little arm away from the old-fashioned soda fountain where happier, more or less well-behaved children are receiving balls of ice cream piled on top of each other in a melting orgy. She screams and screams. Her face turns every color of the rainbow just like the ice cream denied to her. Her mother folds her arms and watches.

Bodies in groups. Bodies on cell phones. Bodies shouting orders to the person behind the gourmet cheese counter, the gourmet olive counter, the gourmet tropical fruit counter. The Epcot Center of food—let’s visit France, then Italy, then Asia.

But in the still center of the chaos of bodies desirous to be fed sits Ruth and Rhys with coffees in front of them. He seems so nice, so sensitive, such a nice boy.

All that exists is the two of them, in that moment. Something very important is happening. They are hungry for something else, something deeper. Ruth knows that this is an important interview. She gazes at his hopeful face. She sees him looking at her with an intensity that frightens and flatters her. He is her mirror. She likes what he sees when he looks at her.

Why did I cut my hair? She senses that she cannot lie to him, but still she smiles and shrugs.

I don’t know. Change, I thought. Why? She pats her head nervously, as if startled to find it had disappeared in the middle of the night. You don’t like it?

He regards her seriously. He is always serious. Their interaction was always serious, from the beginning. Could this be the first stirrings of love?

You look like Joan of Arc.

Thanks, she says. Soft, breathy.

I see a deep pain inside of you the boy with the enflamed face is now saying.

You do? Ruth does not know anymore whether his face is hers or her face is his. His eyes were her eyes. She is intoxicated by his worshipful gaze. She sits greedy for attention, gobbling it up.

He nods. He takes her seriously. He listens to her. He understands.

He sees her, sees something pure and good in her. She wants to be that, wants to be pure and good again for him. She senses that he wants to save her somehow, save her from herself. Save her from the noise, the commotion, the chaos.

A green girl necessarily needs a Savior.

I guess, everything felt so out of control and this made me feel less chaotic. Does that make sense?

He nods. He understands. His gentle, pained face understands. There is something almost too good about him, that repels Ruth. With her simultaneous desire to be good for him is another desire to ruin him along with herself. But she does not understand. Ruth does not understand all of her actions. She just acts. She just reacts. She does not think beforehand.

You know Catherine of Siena cut her hair to be closer to God.

I don’t think that’s why I did it, Ruth laughs. She stops when she sees Rhys doesn’t find this funny. He begins lecturing her. She pays attention. She is a good student.

He begins telling her that Catherine of Siena’s family had problems with her ascetism, her refusal to consider a proper marriage. She would fast from a young age, she would deprive herself of sleep. Ruth suddenly noticed how skinny Rhys was, his slender arms, his long bony hands like an Egon Schiele figure. How his hands shook a little while he talked, like the fruit vendor. His eyes were red-rimmed, exhausted. She had a sudden desire to hold him in her arms, to nurse him back to health, to mother him.

I think I remembered that from Catholic school. Ruth did not know why he was telling her about this, what that had to do with her. But this interested her.

When I was little I loved learning about the saints. My favorite was St. Lucy.

Why? His eyes regard her. His eyes were the clearest, unmilkiest blue. A blue like a newborn’s. A blue that shot right through her. The lovely Lucy with the lovely golden hair (why are all the saints blonde?), who took out her eyeballs for a suitor, who said here, you can have them if you think they are so lovely.

Oh, I don’t know. She was so young and beautiful. And she was a martyr, right? The green girl habit of asking permission with every comment. And she was stoned to death, right?

Rhys nods.

I wanted to marry God when I got my First Communion.

Rhys finds this amusing. You did?

Oh, yeah. I just was filled with such love for God, and I wanted to marry him and be a nun and just worship him. I remember kneeling on those hard wooden pews and thinking how much I wanted to be his bride. I was like nine or something.

Then what happened?

I don’t know. I discovered real boys to have crushes on, I guess.

Rhys is lecturing her again. He tells her that Catherine of Siena had a mystical marriage with God. She received an invisible wedding ring from the Infant Jesus. She described her unions with him, her raptures, in extremely erotic language.

That’s interesting. Says Ruth. This is what she says when she’s not terribly interested. It is also what she says when she is interested, but has nothing more important to add.

Rhys is telling her that many medieval mystics received visions. They described these states of utter abandon, and then the Lord would enter them and they were filled with the spirit and it would produce a joy so sublime that it was impossible to describe.

Oh. You’re really interested in this. Ruth’s coffee was cold. She drank it anyway. But only a bit at a time, because her eyes were still locked in with Rhys’.

I went to divinity school for a while.

Then what happened?

Rhys shrugs, he smiles. Always a beaming smile. Almost beatific. There was something so mysterious about him. But Ruth did not enquire further.

I took some time off, he finally says. I’m living with my parents.

Oh. This surprises Ruth but she does not say anything else.

Rhys continues. Catherine of Siena found joy in torturing her body. His eyes light up. She thought her suffering was a service to God. She would bathe lepers’ feet and then drink the water. She would drink pus. She scalded herself. Or St. Veronica would eat cobwebs. Catherine of Genoa would eat scabs and lice. She would bite or burn herself in trances. Rhys grew increasingly agitated and excited.