Rat Girl Excerpt (Kristin Hersh)
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EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
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Rent Girl. A Memoir by Kristin Hersh. Spring, 1985 The handmade Jesus on Napoleon's living room wall has no face, just a gasping caved in head with blood dripping down its chest. He appears to have been crucified on some Popsicle sticks. His modeled green and gold surface reminds us of fish scales, and his panel shaped toes fan out like a tail. It is a singularly gruesome crucifix. We call it Fish Jesus. The first time I saw it, I thought it was funny. It's less funny at night when you're alone and even less funny tonight, because next to me is a bag of horrible doughnuts. One of the painters left for me as a joke. They look just like fish. Jesus Oh, belong greenish gold and bloody with jelly. Coconut maggots swarm over them. I really don't want to look at them anymore, but throwing them away would mean touching them, and I don't want to do that either. So me and fish Jesus and the donuts all lean against the wall watching Christmas lights blink. It isn't Christmas, but these were the only working lights left in this empty apartment. When it's old man died, he was named Napoleon. All we really know about him is that he lived here in Providence and now he's dead. His body and most of his belongings carted away, and somehow he still pays his electric bill. Someone does anyway. And it isn't me or any of the other people I've seen use his electricity. I also know where he hit his key under the mat. Napoleon was a brilliant tactician, and tonight I need a place to stay. So I park myself under a sad crucifix and watch tiny blue, green, red and orange bulbs blink on and off. Insomniacs like to waste time. The lights are comfortingly tacky, the garish blue ones, my favorites. They remind me of being a little kid, hypnotized and mystified. By Christmas, I opened 1st 1 I and then the other to see if I can watch only the blue lights and ignore the other colors. But it's hard and I'm boring myself. So I closed both eyes to try and get some sleep. They pop right open again. Fish. I have a fish nailed to a cross on my apartment wall. This room is not a good thing to look at, but I look anyway. The wall to wall carpeting is a pew key beige bleached in the centre by a stain shaped like a hermit crab. The paneling on the walls is marked by big splotches of something that one sprayed across it. It has been suggested by Sleepless Crashers that thes splotches are a clue as to how Napoleon died. The whole apartment smells like mold and disinfectant, and now doughnuts. It's spring, but you'd never know it. Looking out Napoleon's window, he lived and died in a gray world. I'm glad it's spring, though. Christmas decorations around here are the saddest things you ever saw. They hung decomposing in the grey wind through March. Just a few weeks ago, someone took down the dismal pink reef, blackened with car exhaust that hung around the fluorescent green sign across the street. The sign has always read will always read pumpkin muffins. 24 hours. All the women who work in the donut shop below the sign look the same. They wear pink smocks and lean on the counter smoking all night long. I'm often the sleepless crasher in this apartment myself, and I have spent many hours watching them to see if they ever move. They don't I've never, ever seen one light. A new cigarette. It probably smells like mold, disinfectant and donuts in there, too. The loosely associated group of crashers who frequent Napoleon's guesthouse touring musicians, bored kids with nowhere else to go, where nothing else to Dio. And anyone who's job isn't really a job like painter have agreed that the key should remain under the mat. The first place any desperate individual would look toe honor Napoleon's memory. Not that we remember him, but he's become kind of a saint to us. He shelters the lonely in the lost, wrapping them in a soft blanket of Christmas lights and old man smell. So the key stays were Napoleon left it because if somebody wants to break in here, well, then we should make it easy for him. Clearly, they need Napoleon's soft blanket. I got to get rid of these ******* doughnuts. They're making me sick and they aren't going to get any prettier. Maybe I'll leave them here on the floor for the animal. We don't know what the animal is on Lee, that it gets in sometimes and eats cornflakes out of the Cabinet, which is fine because I didn't like the look of those dead guy cornflakes anyway. Once a painter named Jeff actually took the animal to the face, it leapt out of the apartment and jumped on his head when he opened the door. This is the closest encounter any of us have had with it. Unfortunately, it was the middle of the night, and the stairwell was too dark for him to get a good look at it. The animal just knocked him backwards down the stairs and took off. Jeff was thrilled. The next time I saw him, he was still giddy, glowing with pride. Kristen, he said dreamily. The most wonderful thing happened. This guy looked just like Jimmy Stewart. I tried to imagine him falling backwards in the dark, limbs flailing for wrapped around his head. For some reason, I saw this happening in black and white, maybe because of the Jimmy Stewart thing, which made it even creepier. But Jeff was so happy telling the story, he looked Dewey. Painters are so sick, I wouldn't want an animal jumping on my face in the dark. I gotta admit I was enchanted, though. Did it Make noise? I asked him. Was it furry? Did it smell weird? He couldn't remember much. He was falling down stairs, happily falling, having taken a wild animal to the phase but too distracted by gravity to pay attention to much else. In retrospect, he figured it had been furry and was about the size of a watermelon. This was relevant information as we had had a kind of meeting on the subject. Once the gaggle of lost souls who used this apartment when they have nowhere else to go, the animal hadn't yet gone for the corn flakes. It had only shuffled around the apartment in the dark, which was, I admit, a little spooky. Subsequently, there had been murmurings of ghosts walking around at night, and most of the musicians are such *******. They were scared to sleep here anymore. Some of them wanted to have a Narragansett medicine woman smudged the place with sage to relieve it of its restless spirits. Look a drummer named Man, he said gravely over the cold leftovers of too greasy pizzas. Candles flickered near the open window, the dancing shadows making it look more like a sounds thin. The overgrown Cub Scout meeting it really Waas. She's really nice. I've met her. She doesn't dress weird or anything. She charges a nominal fee, and all we have to do is fast or **** off for like a day and 1/2. What? Yelled a painter. Laughing Painters think musicians are ridiculous. There seems to be a general consensus among them. That painting is high art. Music low. Can't say that I blame them. Musicians are sort of ridiculous. I'm a guitar player, so technically I'm one myself. But I don't stick up for us all that often. Manny, clearly more afraid of ghosts than painters, held his ground. This place is definitely haunted, he said. I hear noises, but when I check him out, there's nobody there. He pushed a lock of purple hair behind his ear. For some reason, none of us musicians have normal hair. Another thing that makes us seem ridiculous to the painters. Mine is blue. There is a lime green and a fuzzy yellow chick yellow. Together, we look like an Easter basket. Chalk, white and glossy jet black are close to normal, but those two are golf kids at least once a day, a painter will turn to them and yell Happy Halloween fast. The painter stared at Manny, wide eyed. Don't eat, explained Manny. I know what it means. I just think you're a moron. The other painters laughed, the musicians and neutral observers said quietly in the candlelight. Manny shook his head last night. Something was walking near my face. It was weird. It's just the family downstairs banging around, said the painter. They got, like, 12 kids or something. No, seriously, I could feel it moving. It was right next to my face. Were you high? Asked the painter sarcastically. Yeah, answered Manny. But it was right next to my face. You can tell painters and musicians apart by their uniforms and expressions all the musicians except the golf kids where tourney blue jeans, flannel shirts and pajama tops and look perpetually stunned. Painters dress like it's 1955 in white T shirts, khakis and black loafers, all splattered liberally with paint. They either spatter their clothing on purpose, so everyone comptel their painters or else they have a lot of trouble getting paint from brush to canvas, cause they're really covered in the stuff. Painters usually look like they're about to laugh, not smug. They just think everything is funny. Let's get him in exorcises, Um, said one. He really wants one man. He looked grim. I'm not saying there's an evil presence. Napoleon was a good man, but he died here, a violent death, he said ominously, pointing at the splotches on the wall that's Mikel. Aub smirked. The painter Napoleon probably had a Barca lounger and spasms. If you're worried about hauntings, worry about the guy who died in those pajamas you're wearing. Manny winced. It was a little low, I thought, going after his clothes. Everybody knows you don't buy pajamas from the Salvation Army if you're not into the dead. Manny's girlfriend, the fuzzy yellow chick here chick, tried valiantly to come to his rescue. Paranormal events occur in places where souls were unwilling to separate from their bodies at the time of death, she explained carefully. What if Napoleon's soul wanted to stay home even though his body was dead? This place is a **** hole. If you could fly, would you stay here? The other painters laugh. Everyone else was silent. Painters and musicians never agree on anything. It could be entertaining, but it can also be exhausting. They even ordered different pizzas. I consider myself to be a neutral crasher. I don't wear either uniform, and I don't side with anyone. The painters are almost always right, but I feel sorry for the hapless musicians who were so mercilessly ridiculed. So I abstained from arguments and pizza. The painters have made it clear that they feel I'm one of them, even going so far as to try to make me paint. They claim that making noise is the heathens way. A poor excuse for calling, I guess there, right? But I am a Heaton. I mean, I've met me, but I toured their studios anyway. Watch them paint, let them lecture me and attempted to absorb the process of smearing colors onto cloth in order to impress upon observers a sense of visual feeling. I even took classes at the Rhode Island School of Design here in Providence. This is frowned upon by the street painters in Napoleon's gang, who believed that art is something which can't be taught. I thought some paintings were very beautiful places to go, but ultimately I don't get it was all I could think to say What don't you get? Asked Jeff in a studio on a freezing afternoon. We studied one of his paintings together. It's too quiet, I said. Even the orange? He asked. Surprised? I stared at the orange, trying to see it as loud. It just seems hard to make something matter if you don't yell it. Kristen Whispering matters. I looked at him. Yeah, well, you don't do that either. Jeff frowned thoughtfully. Oh, yeah, it was painters who suggested that I keep this diary in the interim between making noise and artful sublimation. I don't even know what a diary is really a book about. Now. That means you can't write the ending first and work backwards, right? Don't worry, they said. Painting will come. Just give it time. So far, so bad. Manny's girlfriends side, slowly pushing pizza crossed, surround in the cardboard pizza box like a little train, the multicolored Christmas lights creating a shifting pattern for her to drive the train through. We all watch the crusts drive around. I'm just saying you should keep an open mind. Maybe Napoleon's still living here. It's his house, not ours. The painters held. You guys are idiots. Manny pouted glaring at them. The girls shifted uncomfortably, blowing yellow hair out of her eyes, her pizza train slowing to a halt. I said Maybe we decided to sit up and listen For the ghosts, staying up all night wasn't hard for the musicians who were high, paranoid and scared shitless. Everyone else was board until the noises began. Scratching, shuffling. Nothing too scary, really. But when we crept into the kitchen, his group there was nothing there told you, Manny hissed. The mystery was partially solved when the ghost turned out to be a furry, watermelon sized face jumper that likes cornflakes and is good at hiding. We now have tremendous affection for the animal, which is easy because it never shows itself it politely div hours, whatever it confined and then takes off. We all act like it's a magic bear, but the best thing it could be really is a raccoon. And it's probably just a cat, though it might be taffy, the neighbor's dog, who never comes when called, are scary. Neighbors stand in their yard wearing bathrooms and yell taffy over and over again. The taffy never shows up. Maybe Taffy lives with us now when I give touring bands and lonely kids directions to this place. I always mention the animal in case it jumps on their faces. Displaced individuals could be sort of jumpy. I wish it were here right now because nobody else is the more promiscuous and insecure of us. Have a rule? No sleeping alone at Napoleon's. A rule I'm breaking tonight taffy I call weekly and wait. Napoleon took his bed with him when he left. So when you stay here, you sleep on the floor and the floor feels extra hard tonight. Extra heart is extra lonely for some reason, like you're being punished for something you probably did but don't remember doing.