Bree-Anna Burick

Ashland MFA Candidate

FREAK

The room is spinning and my glass is empty. The bartender is a man named Phil with a lumberjack beard and a tattoo of a spider on his neck. I miss Penny. Her large breasts are better to look at than Phil’s beer belly. He tells me she is off tonight, which is odd because she always works Tuesday afternoons. Phil shrugs when I ask him where Penny is, and pours me another tequila. 

The bar is small and dirty. I get a splinter from the unkempt wooden bar top. Cheap liquor lines the shelf, and reflects off the grimy mirror attached to the wall behind it. It smells like someone tried to cover up the permanent mildew smell with an air freshener called Christmas pine or something. I hear the clacking of pool balls as two men in business suits play behind me, arguing over who deserves the promotion more: Terry because he had the best numbers all quarter, or Becky because she has a tight ass. I think about yelling “pick Becky!” because it’s harder to keep a nice ass than it is to sell air conditioners or whatever bullshit they do.       

It’s been 10 years today since my mother died. I left a yellow hyacinth on her grave early this morning before anyone would be at the cemetery. Beloved mother and wife was carved into the tombstone. My father picked that, and then moved to Boston with his new wife and two beautiful children. I take the glass of tequila like a shot and slide it to Phil to refill. 

My mother sat cross-legged on the floor of the porch, patching the bottom of her dress which had gotten stuck in the door of the grocery store when we were leaving. I’ll tell you how it happened. I had been trying not to draw attention to my mother’s matted hair and her red stained hands from juicing beets all morning. She was struggling to hold a large basket of Gardenias. I bowed my head when she asked the cashier in which aisle to find the rat food. As the automatic doors were closing our bodies escaped, but a corner of my mother’s unnecessarily long dress got stuck and ripped. She continued on walking as if she hadn’t noticed. 

Rain pattered on the roof and trickled down off the gutters, splattering onto the edge of the porch and splashing droplets onto my mother. She only stopped sewing momentarily to wipe her face with her sleeve. I thought my mother was beautiful. She wore no makeup over her fair, freckled skin and left her red eyelashes naked of mascara to match her hair. I think my mother used to wear makeup; I saw it in a picture that was taken on her wedding day. Her eyes looked bigger and her cheeks were full of color, but I liked her better bare. She looked happier. I looked more like my father. He and I both had dark hair and dark eyes and dark secrets.  

I sat in the rocking chair behind my mother, twisting long strands of her hair between my fingers. She scolded me when I pulled too hard. 

“Will you teach me how to braid, mama?” 

“You’re too impatient, Alice, it would never work—ow!” She pricked her index finger with the sewing needle and stuck the tip of it in her mouth. “Go inside, you’re distracting me.” 

My mother sat on the porch all night even after her dress was finished. She sat twirling her fingers through her hair and braiding small parts at a time. I watched her hands move meticulously with every twist and pull, creating long, beautiful patterns that flowed down her back. I attempted to copy her movements, but my hair only ended up twisted in knots.

Every time my mother braided her hair I mimicked her. She would brush her hair, root to tip, one hundred times every night then braid it down her back. I practiced for weeks until finally I managed to create a messy, but doable, braid while my mother was in the kitchen plucking feathers off a dead bird.

“Mama, look!” I said, holding the braid proudly above my head. 

My mother looked up from the bird only for a moment. “It’s much too loose, Alice. It would fall out as soon as the wind hit it.” 

I settled with tying my hair up in a ponytail. My mother told me it pulled my face back too much, and I would get wrinkles before I turned 40. I cut it all off with a pair of blunt scissors until it barely reached passed my cheekbones. My mother dragged me to a hair salon after a two hour lecture between right and wrong, smart and stupid. The stylist was forced to give me a bowl cut to even out the cuts. She told me I would have made a beautiful boy.  

My father left when I was eight. He was supposed to walk me to school that day, but I ended up walking by myself. My path involved running into 6th grader Randy Hewman, his brother Gordon, and his best friend, Dave Walters. 

“Burn the witch!” Randy yelled, throwing rocks at me to make his friends laugh. I shielded my face with my school books, and ran as I swatted the rocks away. They chased me all the way to the school parking lot. Dave caught up to me before I reached the doors. 

“Go to hell, freak!” Dave said, pushing me down into the blacktop, and kicking my books away from me. 

I had one friend at school named Rosie who was different too. She didn’t like loud noises and had a hard time learning. Rosie wore her hair in pigtails everyday with different colored scrunchies and needed help going to the bathroom. People laughed at her too. I don’t think Rosie knew my name, but she called me pretty and I liked that. One time Rosie’s mom let her come over to my house after school so I could help her finish her math homework. I was a level ahead of Rosie in math. I snapped my fingers in front of her face and told her to focus whenever she would lose concentration. Rosie didn’t understand math. She didn’t understand that two plus two was four and why. She slumped down in her chair and pouted when I told her she had gotten a problem wrong. Her bottom lip jutted out and she crossed her arms. 

“I have to potty.” 

“You just went, Rosie.”

“I have to now!” 

I helped Rosie go to the bathroom. Are your pants unzipped? Is your underwear down? Are you sitting on the toilet? She finished and we went to the kitchen.  

My mother was seated at the table with a bowl of foul smelling liquid. When Rosie told her that it smelled, my mother tried to feed her the concoction claiming that it would make Rosie normal. Rosie screamed so loud that the neighbors called the police. She wasn’t allowed to come over anymore. But we ate lunch together at school, and I reminded her to use her spoon to eat applesauce. 

“Hey! Look!” Rosie said, balancing a spoon on the edge of her nose, and made an elephant noise that sounded more like a screeching cat. 

“Stop it, Rosie.” I said and flicked the spoon off her face. I gave her my spoon so she could eat the rest of her applesauce.

A drunk old man who is missing his front teeth spins a spoon around in his hands as he hums something that sounds like the Canadian National Anthem to himself. My phone buzzes as soon as he finishes his song. 

Come over. 

Greer is deaf. I met her on the bus and she said she was from San Francisco. When I asked her what brings her to New York she shrugged, and I couldn’t decide if that was sign language or it still meant indifference for deaf people. She was different like me. She didn’t care as much, though. She said she couldn’t hear the bullies anyway so why would she be upset?  

I’m drunk. 

Just how I like em. 

When I get to Greer’s, the door is unlatched and I hear loud, muffled classical music coming from her apartment. She is in the living room, leaning against the stereo with one hand placed against the speaker, and the other is holding a half-empty glass of wine. She doesn’t acknowledge me when I walk in, but I know she sees me because she turns the volume down. 

“Hi,” I say. 

“Hi,” I repeat after she looks at me. 

Greer smiles and holds her free hand out to me. Her dark blonde hair is thrown up into a bun, and she’s wearing baggy black sweatpants with a crop top. She leads to me to the couch, pours me a glass of wine. I’m too drunk to say no.

Rosie was sent to a different high school than I was, to be around students more like her. I met Mary Ann, who went by Ana and made it a point to correct everyone when they forgot. She sat in the back and drew things like daggers and eyeballs. Half of her head was buzzed and the other half was dyed blue. She was constantly sent home for violating the dress code. We weren’t allowed to wear chains on our jeans or shirts that said Fuck Off or Suck it on them. Ana missed a lot of school. The first day we met, she dared me to cut class and smoke with her instead. 

My mother didn’t care. She didn’t ask why I was home early or why my clothes smelled of smoke. She didn’t care when the school called to tattle on me. Instead, she unplugged the phone so it would stop ringing all together. Later that night my mother told me she was dying and went to bed.  

Ana reminded me that we were all dying. I started to skip school too because if I was going to die I didn’t want to be at school all the time. 

“School is just a social construct created by the government to brainwash us and to take our money,” Ana said. She drew an alien leaking fluid from its arms on my hand as we talked. She talked, I listened. She told me Valentine’s Day was made up by candy companies and God was a nonexistent entity that people believed in to make themselves feel better. Ana had a lot of opinions. I had none. 

We first kissed under a highway bridge, ankle deep in polluted water, when we were supposed to be in English. That was my favorite class, but I didn’t tell Ana that. She would just tell me the literary canon was bullshit and only white males had a chance to make it in. Her lips were rough and chapped and she bit mine without asking. I groaned which she mistook as a moan and bit harder. My bottom lip was swollen for three days after that. 

Ana needed braces, but her parents couldn’t afford them. She had a snaggle-tooth next to her front teeth and her bottom teeth were crooked so when she smiled she was ugly. I liked it better when she frowned because her lips were plump and pink. We didn’t like the same music or colors and argued about whether the Bermuda Triangle was real or fake. She told me I watched too much television.

“Do you believe in the Bermuda Triangle?” I ask Greer. 

She tilts her head and squints her eyes. I repeat it slower so she can read my lips that were numb from the alcohol. I make a triangle with my hands. She shakes her head from side to side. In sign language that meant “no.” Greer was teaching me sign language. I remember the important words like thank you and fuck. 

“Why not?” 

Greer signs something I don’t understand, but swirls her finger next to her temple and that’s all I need to know. She moves my greasy hair out of my face, and tucks it behind my ear. She signs something that looks familiar, but I can’t remember what it means. She takes me into the bedroom and we make love for what feels like hours. 

I took ecstasy for the first time with Ana as she sat in her father’s recliner and chain smoked the rest of her cigarettes. I was sprawled out on the couch moving as if I were making a snow angel, entranced by the sounds coming from the porn Ana had put on TV. Two Catholic school girls who didn’t repent so they had to be spanked and fucked by the principal. I remember my experience at Catholic school going differently. Ana started to touch herself and told me to watch. Before she finished, she told me to touch her. I was a virgin. Unless you count masturbating alone to the blonde volleyball player in your class. Ana and I had kissed and touched breasts, but I never felt a vagina besides my own. I wasn’t sure what to do. I mostly just flicked my fingers around and went faster when she moaned. She climaxed, then fell asleep.

I washed my hands and walked home by myself in the middle of the night.

I felt the ecstasy wearing off as I tip toed into my mother’s room. An IV was jutted into her black and blue arm by the house nurse that was here on Mondays. Most of her hair had fallen out, and clung to her pillowcase. The room smelled like a nursing home. A bedpan sat on the nightstand next to her with a plate of uneaten food surrounded by tiny flies. My mother’s chest slowly rose and fell as she wheezed. She choked on her own breath and I grabbed her hand. A thin layer of skin was the only thing between me and her bone. 

“Let go, Alice.” She sighed, and her hand went limp.  

Greer and I lie face to face. Her bed is small, but my short legs barely reach the edge. The lights are on so she can see my lips. 

“Do you believe in heaven?” 

She nods.

“Do you believe in hell?” 

She nods.  

“What do you think happens to us?” 

She shrugs. 

“Do you think we’ll go to hell?” 

Greer shrugs.

She leaves the room. I hear the refrigerator door open and slam shut. Greer is teaching me how to cook too. She taught me to put butter on the bread to make a grilled cheese and that the word coffee and make out are similar in sign so to be careful. 

The stove is on and Greer is mixing eggs with a whisk. She adds milk and salt and I ask her why. She smiles and rubs her stomach. Greer puts the whisk in my hand and lets me mix. I spill some on the counter when I whisk too quickly. She cleans it up for me. Next, she instructs me to butter the steaming pan. The butter sizzles when it touches, and I swirl it around until it’s gone. She pours the bowl of eggs into the pan, and we wait while it cooks. 

Greer points to the toaster. The toast I make is only slightly burnt on one side so I lather it in butter to mask the taste. We sit at the table and eat in silence. She reminds me of the sign for dinner, and giggles when I do it wrong. I wash the dishes and she dries them. Her cupboards are labeled where the plates and forks should go, and her spice rack is full of spices I’ve never heard of. 

She makes me a cup of coffee and turns on some television sitcom about the Korean War. The volume is high and subtitles roll across the bottom of the screen. I mute the television, and the apartment is silent. I don’t bother following the subtitles, instead I watch Greer from the corner of my eye. She holds the cup in both hands, pressed close to her chest and breathes in the scent every time before taking a sip. 

I am drawn to the broken. I used to think Greer was, but she’s not. She is strong in a world of hate, and I find hope in her. I want to ask Greer if she is too, but she is mesmerized by the television. I don’t mind. I don’t mind that the coffee is too sweet or the television is too small. I don’t mind that Greer will never hear my voice or that I still don’t know how to make chicken parmesan even though I’ve watched her make it twice before. I don’t mind that my mother hated me. I don’t mind that I’m a freak or that I’m going to Hell because I know Greer will be there to meet me.   

______

BREE-ANNA BURICK HOLDS A BACHELORS OF ARTS IN ENGLISH FROM KENT STATE UNIVERSITY. SHE IS CURRENTLY PURSUING HER MFA IN CREATIVE WRITING AT ASHLAND UNIVERSITY IN OHIO, AND SERVES THERE AS THE MFA REP FOR THE GRADUATE STUDENT SENATE. SHE WRITES FLASH FICTION HORROR STORIES, AND IS CURRENTLY WORKING ON A 125 PAGE THESIS THAT SHE HOPES TO EXPAND TO BECOME HER FIRST NOVEL.