University Christian Living Covenant Contract Broken Friday, August 28, 10 p.m.
Sally O’Reilly rooms with her best friend. They eat five meals together a week, take one class together on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. Sally’s best-friend-roommate has a boyfriend. Sally does not. On Friday nights, Sally, her best-friend-roommate and her boyfriend go to a house on Little Cricket Drive for a party. Always the same house: Faded red vinyl along the outside, a cracked cement porch, a single potted plant sitting in pale, crumbly dirt. Twenty or thirty people come to the house. They meander and laugh through the cramped living room, the steep, narrow staircase, the linoleum kitchen. Sally always sits on the rickety front porch swing with David. This is David’s house. Together, Sally and David smoke a pack of Swisher Sweets, and watch the pearl gray plumes of smoke rise in the night air, disappearing somewhere beneath the purple-ish clouds overhead.
“Can you blow smoke rings?” Sally asks David.
He glances at her, and then at the cigar between his fingers. David fits the cigar between his lips, drags, and throws his head back, cheeks like cherubim, rounded, with smoke. He constricts his lips tightly, into an O, and puffs out carefully, contracting his lips like a goldfish. Sally sees a hazy circle ascend above him, a halo, and it disappears before David has a chance to see it. Sally drags on her cigarillo and exhales through her nostrils.
“You did it,” she says.
The swing sways slightly, far past curfew.
Living in the Girl Dorm
Sally O’Reilly lives in a girl dorm. Many girls live in the girl dorm along with Sally and her roommate. Tall girls and short girls, fat girls and skinny girls, girls in between. Sally knows all different kinds of girls in the girl dorm. When Sally wakes up in the morning, she rolls out of bed, grabs a towel and toiletry caddy, and goes to the bathroom. There are girls brushing their teeth above the sinks. They smile at Sally, the white foam bubbling around their lips and teeth like a pack of rabid coons, their eyes screwing up into crescents. Sally smiles faintly back.
“This,” she thinks, “is very odd…”
She sees the coagulated stripes on Mary Johnson’s wrists. But it was Mary Johnson who smiled the broadest at Sally O’Reilly this morning. It is Mary Johnson who makes ham and cheese sandwiches every Monday, Wednesday, Friday at lunch, who wears long sleeves in early September, who sits in her closet and cries in the afternoons when her classes are over. It is Mary Johnson whom all the guys ask out. Sally O’Reilly knows this because she can hear Mary Johnson crying through the plaster walls, those thin, choked sobs that come to a shuddering stop when the phone rings. Mary Johnson gulps in air for a few seconds. Then Sally O’Reilly hears her answer the phone in a voice that sounds something like excitement, like joy.
“Friday night sounds good,” Mary Johnson says.
It is all very odd.
Sending Mixed Signals
Sally’s friend, David, sends her a wild flower through the school mail. Sally knows that David likes her, because he buys them Swisher Sweets every Friday night. But Sally doesn’t think she likes David. He smokes Swisher Sweets, and Sally doesn’t want to date a guy who smokes, or who drinks Captain Morgan’s. She likes the idea of dating a youth ministry major, or a chaplain. But she likes to smoke. This Friday night, Sally will go to David’s house, and she will not say anything about the flower. She will sit on the front porch swing, and dream of a guy who asks her to pray with him, who writes theology articles for the school newspaper, who talks with Bible professors about God. Sally will think about this for a long time, and she will smoke five of David’s Swisher Sweets. One after another, until she can’t hold the tobacco stump between her fingers without getting burned. David will ask her, “What are you thinking about, Sally?” And Sally O’Reilly will look into the sky, eyebrows pressed together and reply, “…About why pears taste grainy.” David will smile, laugh, and ask her what she means. Sally O’Reilly will smile, and laugh, and tell him something off the top of her head. And David will think she is very charming.
Koine Greek
It is very quiet in the classroom. And the professor, Professor Jarrad, has not arrived yet. Sally O’Reilly is afraid. She is the only girl, sitting in a classroom with twenty-two guys, and she is afraid that they will think that she is a Pastoral Ministry major, too. That she is a revolutionary. A woman who will graduate and move to some distant state to pastor a small church. She will cut her long, blonde hair short and let the highlights grow out several inches, parted down the middle, to exemplify the virtues of a celibate monkish hermitage for the congregation. Sally O’Reilly will stand up at the pulpit wearing thick glasses without prescription lenses, throw her arms to either side, and exclaim, “Beauty is fleeting, ladies, might as well beat ‘em to the punch!” The congregation will cheer. A white- steepled congregation of high school and college girls. They will love Sally O’Reilly’s example and will go to distant universities and never marry, and the population of the neighborhoods around Sally O’Reilly’s church will plummet into a dusty, tumbleweed ghost town. She will spend her Saturday nights pondering the dates she never went on in college. She will ponder this, and she will not revise Sunday’s sermon. She will forget how to wear makeup. She will go to the Jubilee Supermarket, whore-red lipstick caked across her lips, and try to flirt with a cashier named Harold. He will be fourteen years older than her.
This idea raises goosebumps on Sally O’Reilly’s arms. She wants to throw her chair back and yell, “I believe in mutual submission of the spouses!” But she does not do this. Professor Jarrad walks in and thumps his Greek Grammar text onto the lecture stand. The room quiets immediately. And while he passes out syllabi, row by row, Sally’s palms sweat and she peers down at her left ring finger – a little column of flesh and bone and nerves, naked.
Best Friend Number Two
Sally O’Reilly’s best friend that she made at orientation is Martina Hesbitt. Martina Hesbitt fell in love with Steve McQueen at age nine; she owns each of his movies and a glossy, signed photograph that she framed and nailed into her dorm room wall, though she knows she will be fined for the damages at the end of the semester. Martina Hesbitt lives in Sally’s hall.
She eats black olives out of the jar with a plastic fork while exegeting 1 John for Hermeneutics class. Sally O’Reilly comes into her room while she is eating black olives. Martina Hesbitt happily slams her textbook shut and turns in her chair to talk with Sally O’Reilly. She has something to tell her.
Martina Hesbitt has a crush on Nick Clairy.
“I think we’d be real good together,” she says, her teeth scrape the fork leaving her mouth, jaw crushing a black olive into mush.
Sally O’Reilly does not have a boyfriend. She listens to the sound of Martina’s voice and wonders if it is prettier than hers. It is. Sally looks at Martina’s complexion. It is very clear. Sally looks at Martina’s mascara-ed eyelashes, the way they clump together, and she feels much better.
Facebook Status
Sally Michelle O’Reilly: is going to wear heels, dang it.
Toenails
Sally O’Reilly plans to paint her toenails. Either flamingo pink or cobalt blue. Sally is worried, however, that she will get nail polish on her jeans, so she changes into a pair of white cotton shorts. But, when Sally O’Reilly looks into the mirror she says, “Mother of pearl!” and for the next five minutes, she presses the flesh on her thighs together in her hands, watching the smooth flesh dimple. Sally O’Reilly looks in the mirror and recites every synonym for fat that she can think of: blubber, cellulite, lard, flab, lipid, adipose tissue. But, then, Sally O’Reilly remembers what her mother told her. Her mother, who gave birth to five children. “The last one just kinda slipped out,” her mother had said. So Sally grins at her thighs in the mirror, and exclaims, “These are child-bearing hips!” and she punches the air with her fist. “Let’s show those free weight boys what a real woman looks like!” And so Sally O’Reilly throws open her sock drawer and snaps a pair of white ankle socks on over her unpainted toenails, laces up her sneakers, and goes to the gym, head held high, a smirk on her face.
Sally O’Reilly Injures Herself at the Gym
Sally walks into the free weights room. Seventeen, bulging-armed, sweat-glistening guys stand or sit inside, huffing as they strain large black barbells up and down. Sally picks up two 10 lb. dumbbells, and does eight reps. Then another. Her heart is pounding. Then, she hoists the weights above her head, and her right shoulder comes out of its socket. The humerus separates from the scapula at the glenohumeral joint. The pain feels like her arm came off: There is no right arm anymore: You will have to make do, Sally O’Reilly. She falls to her knees, mouth gaping, breath caught in her throat. The eyes of the guys around her widen, barbells clang onto stands. Sally wrenches her arm upwards, instinctively, and hears the muffled sound of a snap – feels her throbbing limb maneuver into its socket. The humerus joins with the scapula at the glenohumeral joint. You have an arm, Sally O’Reilly. She sits on the ground, a crowd of guys around her. Sally bites her lip so that she will not cry.
After a Phone Call, Sally O’Reilly Drove Six Hours Home on Thursday, October 29
Sally O’Reilly is walking down the sanctuary’s center aisle at her grandmother’s funeral dressed in a coffee-black pencil skirt, shirt, pumps, black slip underneath her pencil skirt. The slip rides up Sally’s thighs as she walks next to her mother. It rides up as she sits down. A long inverted crater across her thighs. Sally squirms and shifts in her chair to coax the black slip down, but she can’t.
The doors at the back of the sanctuary open. Sally knows her grandmother is in that ash-wood casket coming down the aisle. It looks like a fat bar of toffee, and the six straight-lipped pallbearers like ice cream popsicles with chocolate shells, cracked down the middle, vanilla ice cream dripping on their chests.
Sally wants to reach up her skirt and yank her slip down. She wonders if anyone will notice. She peers around the audience, her hand, poised, on the edge of her skirt. Sally sees Aunt Christine across the aisle, her hair tied up on top of her head in a loose bun, the swirls of brown hair like chocolate frosting. She holds a tissue against her face to catch the drops of Sprite soda leaking from her eyes.
“Poor Aunt Christine,” Sally O’Reilly whispers.
The pallbearers lay grandma’s casket on the stage, and solemnly edge away.
A Streetcar Named Desire
Sally walks into the lounge where Martina Hesbitt lies on the couch, her ankles entwined, left arm lying over her stomach, in her long-sleeved pajamas. The ghostly light of the television reflects on her face. Her eyes are glassy, glinting rectangles of bright, gray light. She does not notice Sally walk in until Sally asks, “What’re you watching?”
Martina Hesbitt looks up at her and shouts, “I am NOT a Pollock!”
Sally O’Reilly Text Messages Her Cousin, Elisha
Message Sent:
wearing jeans u bought me 4 my brthdy
Message Reply:
then prpare 2 get hit on
Sally O’Reilly Cannot Write a Poem
Sally crouches down on the balls of her feet, her shoulders leaning back against the brick building – the back wall of her dorm. It is eleven minutes before curfew. Sally clamps the leafy end of a cigarillo between her lips. The flame in her dollar-store lighter flickers in the slight breeze. The tobacco tip alights, and Sally slips the lighter into her jacket pocket calmly, relieved. She drags, savors the slight Irish Crème flavor in the hollow of her mouth and nasal cavities before sighing the gray fumes into the late night air. Sally recites The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. “And looked down one as far as I could, to where it bent in the undergrowth,” she murmurs, watching the smoke tumble out of her mouth with every syllable. Sally tips her head up, and exhales. The thick stream jettisons into the air like a steam engine on the Thames, like the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Sally tips her head against the brick, and recites, “And both that morning equally lay, in leaves no step had trodden black…” The end. Sally O’Reilly flicks the tobacco stump into the bushes. She has forgotten the rest.
About a Prof
Sally does not turn the music up. Her fingers draw back from the keyboard and she tilts her head towards the thin plaster wall.
“Isn’t it weird?” asks a girl in a low voice.
“Are you sure he really meant it?” asks Martina Hesbitt.
“Read it again,” she says.
Sally O’Reilly hears papers shuffling. They must be sitting on Martina Hesbitt’s sofa because it is pushed up against the wall. A few moments pass. Sally’s conscience says she should keep typing her paper for English Comp, but she does not because Martina starts talking again.
“What a douche!” she exclaims. “What a creeper-douche!”
Sally knows that Martina is combing her fingers through her hair because they are best friends, and because Martina combs her hair with her fingers when she is upset.
“Show it to Student Services,” Martina says, “then he’ll get axed, the horny goat.”
Sally hears a metal spring creak in the sofa. She places her hands on the keyboard and looks at an unfinished sentence, the cursor blinking impatiently.
Tires
Sally O’Reilly watches Martina Hesbitt through the kitchen window on the second floor of their hall. Martina walks outside to her ’89 Buick and unlocks the trunk. The horizontal door pops open and she looks either way over her shoulder at the maple trees and the few cars sitting in the parking lot. She rummages through vinyl bags and cardboard boxes until she finds the hunting knife her father gave her and stuffs it, handle up, into her jean’s pocket. Martina Hesbitt walks to the professor’s parking lot. She finds his car, a 2005 black Hyundai Tiburon. She knows that this is his car because of the license plate: MarcM(space)5. She looks over her shoulder, to the right and to the left, again. Then Martina Hesbitt pulls the knife out of her pocket and clips off the scabbard. She starts with the front left tire. She inhales, exhales, quickly and robustly, and swings her arm at the tire, feels the knife meet rubber, hears the sharp pop, and watches the tire sag to the ground as she drags out her knife. She does the same to the front right tire, and then the back two.
She stands back, chest heaving, perspiration glistening on her upper lip, and looks at the car. Tires lay like melted licorice around the chrome hub caps. She pulls her eyebrows together. Something is missing. Martina fits the blade of the knife in her hand, sharp edge away from her palm, and approaches the car. She scrawls the letters B-I-T-C-H onto the driver-side door. She looks at the car again. Martina Hesbitt grins, shrugs, and walks away.
Salad Bar
Sally O’Reilly stands in one of the lines at the salad bar. She is waiting for the shredded carrots. The shredded carrots will be here in a little while. Sally draws a sigh and looks up from the empty bowl. The guy standing across the salad bar from her is spooning cherry tomatoes onto a bed of lettuce, raisins, and banana bell peppers. Sally sees a girl stand in behind him, where he cannot see her. This girl is standing very close to the guy ahead of her. This girl’s eyes shutter close. She leans in to just above his shoulder, and sniffs. Her mouth perks with the shadow of a smile, and so does Sally O’Reilly’s.
Facebook Status
Sally Michelle O’Reilly: wants to know why whenever guys look in her direction they say, ‘Gimme dat’.
Ovarian Cyst Ruptures at 8:21 a.m., Tuesday, December 1
Sally O’Reilly lurches in bed because of a sharp pain in her lower back. One stab. Sally waits a moment, and the pain is already gone. So Sally sits up, scratches her head, and walks to the bathroom for a shower. Two minutes pass. Now Sally O’Reilly is lying on the blue bathroom tiles. Her stomach balloons to twice its size. Single teardrops fall from her unblinking brown eyes. She is sweating through her cotton pajama shirt. Sally’s lips draw back and forth across the linty carpet mat, “Oh, God,” she whispers. Sally wonders if a Mafia had been hiding in the shower stall, and has shot her in the stomach five times. Or if a lumberjack sprang out of the cabinet behind her and impaled her abdomen with an ax. Or possibly both.
Sally feels a gnawing sensation clench in her chest. She is going to throw up.
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