Aimee Parkison and Carol Guess
Girl in Ransom Note
We have her and have not sold her yet but will sell her at the drop of a hat. If you want her back, do as we say. She’s not harmed, not damaged goods, but your inability to follow instructions could damage her beyond anyone’s wildest imagination. We have done much research about you, about her and you, and we know you would never harm her or make the mistake of talking to the police about what has happened. You already know enough about what has gone on in your own house.
We have arranged this carefully. If you fail to follow instructions, she dies. The police will automatically assume you are the murderer, as the case we’ve created against you will be airtight, proven by DNA, blood spatter, and fingerprints, already collected and ready to be planted before decay sets in.
Please do not make us cut her fingers off to prove to you; her toes, or even her hair, are out of the question.
Do not ask to speak to her. How dumb do you think we are?
Do not expect any photographs or for us to in any way prove she is alive. How stupid do you think we are? Besides, photographs can be faked.
Remember, if you want to ever see her again, we are in charge. We are the only ones allowed to ask questions, make requests or demands.
Now is the time to trust us. Totally. Completely.
We are your new God, if you want us to save her.
Have faith in us and believe. She will be fine, only if you follow our instructions to the letter. Without question.
Here are our requests, which you should fulfill immediately, without asking why we want these things done. Don’t think. Just do. And do fast. If you follow these instructions and do what we ask, we will know. If you deviate from our instructions, we will know.
Our instructions, henceforth known as “The Ten Commandments,” are as follows:
1.) Go to that place in your garage, the stash of old gym equipment draped in spider webs. Crawl under the trampoline to locate the big spider web where one dragonfly has been captured. Without damaging the dragonfly, remove it from the web and put it in a clear clean jar, secured by a lid with ice pick air holes. If the dragonfly is still alive, capture the spider and put it in the jar with the dragonfly, but whatever you do, don’t damage the web.
2.) Collect the used tissues stashed in her bedroom, under the bed and in her underwear drawer. All of them. Leave none behind. (Note: Under her bed and in her underwear drawer are the obvious places. There are other places for you to find. Try to think as she thought—as she thinks. Think of her. Think of her alive, still thinking.)
3.) From inside your next-door neighbor’s tackle box, in the top drawer, get the razor blade—not the new one, the old rusted one—and use it to carve her initials into the least obvious tree in the park she liked best. If she didn’t like one park more than the others, or if you never took her to the park, or if the park has since been paved, carve her initials into the wall of your next-door neighbor’s garden shed, above the lawn mower.
4.) Amid old perfume bottles in your neighbor’s master bathroom, on the mirrored tray, is a hairbrush full of hair. Remove this hair and commingle it with yours in the hairbrush at home.
5.) Call your neighbor every night at 6 o’clock. Hang up if they answer. Do not leave a message.
6.) Buy a birthday cake, her favorite kind: red velvet. Prop up the cake so there’s space underneath. Carve a hollow core into the cake from below so the surface, with her name in frosting, stays intact. Then fill the core with wrapping paper, as if you’re confused, prone to mistakes, likely to damage what matters most.
7.) Ask to babysit your friend’s children. Return them late.
8.) Practice speaking in the present tense, even when you have your doubts, even when things happened in the past, and they did, things happened years ago. Practice speaking of these things as if they are happening now.
9.) Leave us the money we requested. This is ransom, after all. Leave us money this way: one dollar bill, new, not wrinkled or torn or stained or damaged. Leave one dollar bill in a standard white envelope in your mailbox every two hours between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. every day except Sunday. When you leave the envelope in your mailbox, raise the red flag. Keep your curtains closed at all times so that you never accidentally see the courier tasked with collecting the money. Do this until we tell you to stop.
10.) If you figure out who we are (even by accident, even if it’s not your fault, even from the most unlikely scenario, a series of coincidences and bad luck all around), turn yourself in immediately and accept your punishment. If you think you’ve figured out who we are but you aren’t sure, casually approach the person or people you think we are and say in a calm voice, “Hey fuckwad, are you the one ruining my life?” If it’s us, we will respond calmly as well, and escort you to the police station, where your ransom begins.
Girl in White1washed World
Women with children in state prisons2 explore the language of poetry through neglect by association, finding poetry everywhere, even in each other’s eyes, asking what is this poem asking of me?3 They feed poetry, but it never feeds their daughters.4 Even as you’re waiting for her release,5 watching at visiting hours from a distance, you’re listening for the girl in this collection of women’s voices married6 to mishap and loss. Though you know better, you’re optimistic7 about your daughter returning home to a whitewashed world where hand-me-down songs are coming straight from the heart.
Girl in Woman8
Once the first girl falls pregnant,9 if she sees the state of her body as the tyranny of beauty, the Cashmere Bouquet and the Dreamflower Box are the reasons for the eyebrow floating in the toilet with Belladonna and mouse skin.
If she is lost to the new girl growing inside her, she will become her own mother, host to another life, and the reason why virgins with painted-on veins apply layers of liquid mascara with spiral brushes, carefully, artfully, an act of worship to secretly enhance their chances of transforming.
The outline of the virgin’s eyes is an outcry for insemination, along with bee10-stung lips, the half-moons of manicure, those artificial fingernails not claw-like weapons for protection but like a peacock’s feathers, an invitation for mating, obscuring her humanity like wedding attire where the bride loves the sense of mystery created by the veil, hiding her eyes to emphasize the way her lips have become a second pair of labia,11 welcoming the male,12 painted pink or red or slathered with glittery liquid gloss, swollen and dripping.
NOTES
1 Notice how the word breaks one story in two. “Girl in White” and “Girl Washed,” maybe “Girlwash” like “Carwash” or “Girl, Washed Out,” or “Watched,” but missing S and subbing in TC, the sound they make when they want to say “less than.”
2 Deliberately ambiguous. Might mean: Women in state prisons who have children back home. Might mean: Women whose children are imprisoned by the state. Might mean: Women who are in prison and have children who are also in prison. Might mean lots of women locked up.
3 To put the poem first is freedom.
4 Their daughters go to the store and come home with empty paper They live on air, which costs less than the bag.
5 The word “release” feels bound to pleasure rather than It feels like excess, like sunshine and orgasm and wine, like something given as a gift. But “release” here just means beginning again the lease you left behind, beginning again to live within the thing you borrowed, something you’ll pay for in the end.
6 Shadow overhead: expensive divorce.
7 Optimism is the opposite of knowledge. It’s the thing that cancels out knowing, leaving room for fantasy. It’s the net under the bridge that keeps you from jumping.
8 Alternative spellings of “woman” typically accompany periods of social The spelling of “girl” remains standard.
9 From a great height, as when a girl is pushed off a roof after losing her virginity.
10 Reference to “bees” dates this piece to the era of Environmental Collapse.
11 Oh, sweetheart, calm down.
12 Mail is also welcome, especially child support checks and coupons for milk.