All the Horrible Girliness

Catfight

After this night, everyone will say she didn't do anything to deserve it. Some will say they always knew you were a bitch.

At work you have always been quiet. Most will shake their heads and say they thought you were just shy. The rest will fold their arms and talk about your slender body, your long light hair, your violet eyes. They'll say you thought you were better than everyone else. You will hear snippets of this around the corners of break rooms, smoking areas outside. You will say nothing.

2:00 a.m.

You will call your father from the police station. He will be calm, rational. He will ask questions about bail and you will tell him that they're not keeping you, that you really just need a ride back to your car. He will arrive wearing gray sweatpants, his receding hair sticking straight up and flattening in other places, and he will ask what happened. You will not be able to tell him. You'll say something about having been drunk and he will nod, silently. This is the easy answer. You really only had half a beer.

It will start to rain. The windshield wipers will squeak intolerably. You will imagine punching through the glass and ripping the wipers apart with your hands, now capable of violence, still in fists. You couldn't pry your fingers apart from your palms long enough to even sign your name on the papers at the police station. Your signature is warbled. The fat woman who took your fingerprints said your index finger might be broken, but you said nothing, and you say nothing now.

You feel so alive.

1:00 a.m.

The two of you will sit together at the police station, she screaming nonstop, delicately touching her nose, screaming screaming that it is broken, that you certainly broke her nose, even when the tired looking cop who has had his nose broken, who has broken other people's noses, looks at it, touches it and declares it unbroken. She will spit that he isn't a doctor, what would he know? You and the cop will exchange a look. He will know why you did it, even if nobody at the office will ever understand. You belong to his club now, somehow, even though you wear hose and heels and transcribe letters and answer phones for a living. Both of you have made that connection, knuckles to nose, thumb tucked tight and low to avoid breaking. You will sit across a table from one another, a big lunky beige computer between you, your arms behind your back, handcuffed, the metal digging into you. They were put on too tight, but when they asked if it hurt you said nothing; you say nothing now.

He will take down your information: 5'10" and 130 and blonde; you will answer his questions short and low, your words almost like silence, nothing at all. You will describe the small tattoo that you hide from the people at the office: the word "strength" in Chinese on one shoulder. When they unlock your wrists you will hand over your drivers license and he will tell you it's a nice picture. It really is nice. The man at the DMV made you smile. At work the next Monday, she will tell everyone that you flirted with the cop, your long light hair and violet eyes, and that's why you got to go home. You will not argue.

12:00 a.m.

At the party, surrounded, suffocating with people, humans like ocean, like all those dreams you have about swimming, opening your eyes to see the wiggling sun over the water, and in those dreams you can't surface and you think you will drown, you will die, somehow you have to breathe. In the dreams you start breathing underwater, and you start breathing now. With all those people around, pounding music, beer spilling out of red plastic cups, fists around bottles, someone in the distance dialing the police on the kitchen phone, yelling into the mouthpiece, you will breathe. It's the first time you've really breathed all night. All these people, they pull you back by your left hand still held in a fist, fingers pressed into your palms, nails making little crescent moons in your skin that will bruise. Your right hand holds a Pete's Wicked half gone. You will sip it and someone will yank it from you, will growl, You've had enough.

From the water/bodies around you will hear them screaming Catfight Catfight, and making rooowr sounds from their throats, and it will sound like whale song.

She will flail there on the ground, her hands over her nose, blood falling over her mouth and chin, staining her teeth, down onto her white dress. She will look so funny that you will want to laugh, but won't be able to, and you will think, Later I will laugh about this. Alone in my bed tonight, or in jail, wherever I end up, I will laugh when I'm alone. Now, I will breathe. You won't say anything out loud, but then you've never said much.

11:50 p.m.

In the flash of decision making you will look at her face and not be sure where to hit. For two years you've kickboxed at the gym but you never hit a person before, only big heavy bags. You will put down your bottle; your hands will clench into proper fists and your body will meld into the correct position for a snapping one-two, but looking at her, all bumpy nose and hollowed eyes and detachable chin, all hard bone under a thin layer of skin and muscle, you will not be sure where you're supposed to hit. Your fist will not look like it fits in her face. This deliberation will happen in half a second. Choose her nose. She will notice your fists and you will wait for her to lower her beer bottle. She will laugh, mean and nervous, as if you are a four-year old who's promising to hurt her, as if you are any normal girl who would scratch and bite and call names, as if you are so beneath her that she can't be bothered to pay attention.

There will be no need for the right cross. After your jab she will bleed, she will scream and fall onto the floor, you will pick your bottle back up, and the water will close in around and threaten to drown you.

11:48 p.m.

You will want to hit her because she is one of those girls. The ones who won't look you in the eye, the ones seeking attention from every male in the room, the ones who roll their eyes when you speak and smile only when they're insulting you, little veiled threats if you get anywhere near their boyfriends. There will be the distinct feeling in your stomach of an evil in this girl even deeper than that of the other girls who judge her, a defensiveness about her body that will make you, always, her enemy.

You will remember what it is like to be her, you will remember how much you hated yourself then, and then you will hate her.

You will think of telling her, I know what you are because I've been you, and this bullshit gets you nowhere. Trust me. Trust me. It doesn't do any good to hate others just because you hate yourself. Grow up. Be good to your fellow women. We are all sisters. We are all fighting the same fight.

But you will not say this to her. You will never say this to her.

Halfway through your bottles of beer, she will say you're courageous to go out in a skirt so short; she wouldn't be caught dead in it. Then she will smile, so sweet that your jaw aches, and your fist will tighten uncontrollably.

11:30 p.m.

Standing together, both of you holding beer bottles all the way full, hers with the cap still on, you will pull your keys from your purse and hold a bottle opener keychain out to her. She will look at you like you're a bum, a pathetic homeless woman on the street having just peed herself and now begging her for money. She'll take the bottle opener from you, though, and pry the cap off her bottle of beer, and hand it back to you without a word. You'll stuff the keys back in your purse, immediately sheepish, worried that you did something wrong. She will cross her arms, holding her bottle upright, and look away from you, inch away and wave to no one in particular. You will make strained, one-sided conversation; you will ask about her work and her job, you will compliment her white dress.

11:00 p.m.

People in corners will talk about her, about how she should not wear white, she should wear something minimizing like black or brown, white isn't her color, she looks washed out and fat in that. You will hear this and it will shock you. When you were overweight, you assumed everyone talked like this about you but told yourself that everyone was too consumed with their own appearance to even notice you. Now you belong to some club, some group of people you don't want to belong to, people who talk this way in front of you because your body and their bodies are not heavy. These people didn't know you when you were heavy, they think you have always been this way, they think you go home and eat gallons of ice cream, and they hate you for it but at the same time they crave your proximity. They think being around you will make them prettier so they hover close and take the attention off themselves by pointing out the shortcomings of others.

Horrified, you will move toward this girl in white, through the pulsing people and the throbbing music. You will not join these evil people who laugh at the girl in white, who once would have laughed at you. You will befriend this girl. The two of you will go home early from this terrible party, to the drug store to buy silly things and then to your apartment, where you will hover over one another's heads in the bathroom, dyeing your hair black and eggplant, smearing silver lipstick over one another's faces, blowing on nails polished green.

10:00 p.m.

In your room, trying on different clothes in preparation for this party with your coworkers, the first you've been invited to, you think this will be the perfect opportunity to make friends. It will be dark and loud and maybe a beer or two will loosen you up, help you make conversation. You pull a skirt up over your hips and look in the mirror. Maybe now, maybe now they will accept you. Maybe now you will be invited in. You want to tell them how lonely you are, how often you've wished they would allow you inside, but you have never told anyone this. You will never tell anyone this.

posted by Samus @ 1:55 PM