Angeline Schellenberg
Bottled
Instead of flowers, after the first date, men bought her Kleenex, cards taped to the boxes: “Do you cry for me?”—her roomie’s brother. “My love won’t ‘blow’ over”—that writer at the bar. “Your tears are precious.” She’d told them about her gift, her livelihood. Were they even listening? It was enough to make her cry. She pulled two empty flasks, held one under each eye, let it flow. Not enough to treat rash or rug burn this time, but it should heal a cut or two. Almost time to make another shipment to the dispensary. She corked the bottles, slapped on the labels: “Potency: Morning-After Misunderstanding,” and returned them to the shelf.
Closeted
The sleeve caught Serena’s eye, making the hairs on her arm tingle. She reached into the vintage rack, seeking pearls draped across an open back; yes, this was it: the graduation gown she’d sacrificed to a rummage sale, thinking the navy satin could go a long way toward the church’s mortgage payment—until the pastor gave it away for a dollar. The church had paid its bills, but folded the following year, after the authorities seized the pastor’s computers, leaving Serena and the other dazed young women outside a locked soup kitchen. For ten years, she’d distanced herself from the memories of the pastor’s dark study, from men, from being seen at all. The armpits of her dress were faded from antiperspirant and the bodice held a wine-deep Rorschach—a sign the dress had been spared her fate. She thought of the skirt she could make of it as she snagged it from the hanger, pearls raining onto the tile.
On the Surface
Becky is lucky. Unlike other women, she can walk anywhere after dark without looking over her shoulder.
From band camp to board room, men have assured her they’d rather cut off their own balls than go near her body,though, on the surface, she has all the same desirable parts as other women. Apparently, Becky’s parts do not make her whole.
As early as preschool, boys would slide to the end of the seat to keep her from sitting, each leaning his upper body away from the aisle to avoid contamination. As the bus ploughed the potholes, pacing that aisle she found her balance, her still-warm curls petting her shoulders.
In high school, Becky had longer legs, higher cheekbones, and smoother elbows than the popular girls, and she’d read all the same articles, including “The 3 coyest ways to cross your ankles.” When she tried out #3 on her choir tour stop at McDonalds, the tenor section snorted and took their fries outside.
In college, her lab partner explained about pheromones: the girls who got offered backrubs in the cafeteria lineup had them. When Becky asked her English prof, he told her classically desirable women had “carriage” and handed her a copy of Jane Eyre.
She used to join the girls from the office for drinks, but since spring,every night Becky rushes home and up the steps to the door of her attic apartment, where her rescue is waiting. She carries the pitbull through the alley, sets trembling paws on a patch of lawn, and coaxes her to pee.
That day she found the old dog curled at the back of the kennel, something inside Becky cracked open. The shelter normally euthanizes the breed on intake, but their vet was busy examining a new litter of spaniels. Owing to the city’s pit bull ban, Becky gave animal control a fake address in the country and walked home with the emaciated body hidden inside her parka.
Becky contemplates the chasm separating nature from nurture, beauty from attraction, as she lifts the broken animal to her cheek. What the poor thing must have been through on the streets before she was discovered. There are no scars to tell.
Angeline Schellenberg is the author of the Manitoba Book Award-winning Tell Them It Was Mozart (Brick, 2016), the KOBZAR-nominated Fields of Light and Stone (UAP, 2020), and Mondegreen Riffs (At Bay Press, forthcoming 2024). Her micro-fiction has appeared recently in New Flash Fiction Review and The Dribble Drabble Review. She works as a contemplative spiritual director and hosts Speaking Crow: Winnipeg’s longest-running poetry open-mic. angelineschellenberg.wordpress.com
