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My worst enemy and arch-nemesis, Greta Gill, is, of course, at the bank.
We were once again sent like clockwork to pick up our husband’s checks for the week. She is wearing a lovely green and red dress that cinches at the waist, the green, I know, was on behalf of me, because, as my husband will tell you, our house abhors green and glamour.
Already the bank tellers are looking at each under their little hats, for they fucking love our tirades, I’m sure, although not more than I hate them.
“Oh, is that your knitting?” Greta peers her eyes at my hands. “Is it some kind of…. I’m guessing a sock?” Everyone knows she and I used to be close before we were married and our husbands, smartly so, I’ll give 'em that, have introduced us to the idea of true vengeance.
“It is a scarf, actually.” I say, pointedly. I want to tell her that when the time comes and the world gets cold it will go over my mouth and I will finally breathe warm air and it will fill my chest and I will be able to run around with my love even in the darkest and coldest of nights.
“It is not,” I mutter, "over surprising at all that you would be caught unaware of a scarf. As I’m sure enjoying winter festivities are too beneath the handsome qualities your husband prefers."
Pompous ass.
The tellers pass each other eyes because they know it’s started and they are giddier than someone opening a gift at Christmas.
My arch nemesis Greta thrusts out her hand. A white bottle. “Rat poison,” she says. “I expect that the entire town knows about your little problem." A stage whisper. “Such a shame, my dear.” Then after she rustles the skirt of her red and green dress - which I know she wore on behalf of me - she shimmies herself out of the bank like royalty, throwing a wink over her shoulder for good measure.
Oh, she floats everywhere she goes, beautiful auburn hair behind her. The bottle in my palm is cold and foreign. I will figure out how to get her back starting first thing tomorrow.
Pompous. Ass.
The week, as always, is a long one, there is much to make and do and knit. My husband, Charlie, comes home and I love him for who he is, he never comes home without checking the state of the house top to bottom. He is the kind who loves his home so much and sets each room like a stage for the Rolling Stones to come do a show. I am too ashamed to tell him why so many of the rats are going missing, only make him stew the next morning to celebrate. His favorite, not mine, I fear. Plenty of leftovers.
My sworn enemy today is - of course - in a green dress the color of rotting things. A bruise is uncarefully covered across her cheekbone, so striking against all of her soft pale dainty. Her husband would say it was for her ungraceful nature, her long lanky limbs a little too long, too much, and I know Charlie would agree.
I strike first, already so very pleased by my grand master plan, shoving over our red picnic basket tied with an intricate bow. “I made you and yours a stew,” I say wistfully, “for beneath all that you carry” and all of that horrible wealth of your husband “it seems you’re getting rather skinny.” I can’t resist one more thing, “I am worried you’re about to waste away to nothing.”
She plucks it out of my hand, “Oooh, well yes, if it weren’t for you and your husbands dwindling wealth,” her sarcasm is biting as ever, “I’m sure I will be nothing in, oh, five weeks time.” She chances a glance at me and lets a small smile take over her face. She arches a brow. “So long from now.”
“I am counting the days,” I whisper. Her lips purse.
The tellers behind me make a choked titter, perhaps, by their estimation, I have won this round fully and completely.
I go home to Charlie smiling. He asks where I have been and I tell him I’ve been at the bank, but he checks anyway because I like to get up to tricks and schemes with the girls at the farm and at the lake and he doesn’t like to fall for it. It is a good game we like to play. At night, when he is asleep, I am so in love that I must convince myself to pull the covers over my nose, like a scarf, and practice breathing.
How silly to wake him up for a young girl’s feelings.
The first week of five: Greta gives me a solid, ugly ring that requires three knuckles to hold. “I just feel so badly for your current status, and I must remember to practice charity,” she says, sighing, “it’s such a small thing, but do be careful amongst all that pine furnishing of your house, which dents so easily.” Charlie appears at the bank’s front door, just checking, so lovely to be picked up by him.
At night, in a rage, I try it. Beneath the table bends easily. I scuff out the scratch with walnut before Charlie can see. I pull the covers over my face in bed and practice breathing.
The second week of five: I wear her ugly ring and give her more stew, this time heartier, with meat. Her beautiful sundress is a meadow and it makes her look soft and beautiful. My heart, each time it sees her, collapses on itself. She gifts me clothes for my husband, since his wealth continues to go missing, and the charity of her is just so loving. I am so ashamed I bury them by the old tree, where all my shames go hiding.
Again, the covers. It, by now, helps me sleep. I have gotten so good at it that I can simply shimmy my shoulders to be perfectly toasty and buried beneath them.
The third week: she asks how my knitting is coming along. I wear a faint red dress which gave her a pause when she walked into the bank. She knows why I’m wearing it, it’s for her. I tell her it’s nearly complete. She asks how my husband is doing, whom she must know has been ill recently, and who is doing quite badly. I go home to him, shaking. Even sick, he’s a pretty good housekeeper, who always comes home examining for any dust and dinge so I do not fall behind on my chores. Who checks to be sure I spoke to only him and no one more, for fear a man might snatch me.
Tell me, who else has a good man so involved, in this day and age?
The fourth week: she is envy green and I am fiery red. I shove a whole heaping bowl of stew at her, for now her husband has gotten it. I tell her that it will return him to spirits, she laughs. A sudden, beautiful sound. In the quiet of a bank, everyone stops what they’re doing and stares. Maybe it’s the stress that is making her quite improper. I feel the same way, if I’m honest with myself, which I rarely am. So much is happening and it always seems like she knows. She says she heard he has left me nothing in the will, which everyone in this town already knows. She said she doubts either of us can dig upwards from the hole we’re both in.
I look at the bruise on her nose. I tell her to mind her own husband and be careful where she goes.
The fifth week: So very final. Her, garishly lime green, and I in sharp biting crimson, to pick up a check that hardly seems the effort. It will be enough to cover Charlie’s funeral. She smiles at me and hands me a silver bottle, “now that I am destitute, there is one thing for it all, and everyone would understand quite completely. It would be quiet, and quick, and complete.”
It is the night of the new moon now, so dark no one can see in it. I have received notice her husband has just died, and I am sorry to say, I find a terrible joy in it. The air has grown cold. I left a note asking to be buried in my scarf, the last thing I have made on this earth. I go through each perfect room, but there is nothing else to take with me, for the house has always been his and his alone. Now it aches to be gone of him. I wouldn’t serve as a good tender for it, having spent so many nights being watched carefully, my silly girlish freedom that I’d gained would surely set the house ablaze.
I follow her instructions, quick, quiet, complete.
The rustling is what does it, like a million green skirts, and then it’s dark. I am in my own coffin, eerie and warm with pine. My head hurts but I must be quick, and I must be quiet. They listened, and buried me with my scarf after all. I shimmy my shoulders just-so and get it over my face, bring my arms up, ugly ring heavy and begin to hit as hard as I possibly can. Over and over. The thin wood of my husband’s favorite furniture, the fucking cretin. It would be pine, of course - he left me no money to be buried in a nicer recourse.
The wood splits horribly, and then it’s hard to breathe, harder than under the covers, and I have to remind myself not for the first time to be patient and continue to dig. While my throat closes, and my heart beats so loudly I’m sure everyone six feet under can hear, and the whole thing is so heavy. The shifting of grave dirt is so loud, and loud, and I feel I will sooner become a worm, and I fear everyone forgot about me, or I got the timing wrong, or I will really die here in the dirt and the cold and my favorite scarf.
But then there’s her hand, and my hand, and we are both digging towards each other and she lifts me from the ground as if I was a plucked dandelion and holds me so close against her, we could become one whole, us both panting and caked in mud. We can only stay like this for so long, here in my grave. And then we are both running to the old tree where we met and unburying a second thing, my lovely leather box of shame. And men’s clothes, and all of my husband’s dwindling fortune I have slowly been squirrelling away.
My love, my life, Greta Gill, who has shocking red hair like a curtain and a mind so fast and witty I sometimes am in frank awe of it, who is even now, dirty and raw, even now the only sun in my life.
Like this, I am in an almost-dawn, and us cleaned up nicely by the river, and her smiling so widely, and only a faint bruise on her face. Our pasts behind us in ugly garish colors, and her delicate warm hand and beautiful scrunched up nose and when I finally get to kiss her, it feels like green feels. My favorite color, all warm and nature and sunny grace and mowed grass and lying awake so filled with love it makes you shake.
I hold her, and she holds me, and our future is a love like it’s a dream being unburied.