What She Learned to Wear
by Daniel PlateOpal wore a man's shoes. "What does it matter, a woman's shoe size?" she muttered to her corpses. "These feet will have to last me, and a man's shoes are for lasting." She was not dead herself. She had the limp she had always had, though now it was a dead limp; and she was told for certain that she was still at least a sort of living woman. But what distinguishes a living woman, she was told, is not breathing or eating or feeling. What a living woman has is a nose for screwing.
And Opal did. She could put her nostrils to the lip of a park bench and tell how many years it had been since some man had leaned onto its slats with a woman under him, or some woman had hunched up her knees for the same or a similar exercise. This was her only encouragement when she saw the bend of the road come far too quickly and her car's hood crumple against the tree beyond the curve. Her breathing, when it stopped, was only the air a person needs for talking. She would have what she would need for staying on.
On her first night after the burial, she could only make it up out of the dirt and down the cemetery's hill to a bush on the street's edge before knowing she had to drag herself, roots and clumped muck and all, back to her daylight hole. This, Opal was convinced, was because of her feet, which had ached from the first push up against the coffin. On her second night out, she hunted for a pair of cast-off boots to take as quarry back with her. Then, on her lucky third night in the ground, the scent of a teenage girl arched over the head stone three plots down gave her a five-night surge of strength, and she found her way from one bedroom window to another until at one paneless window the force of a year's-worth of lechery widened the arches of her nose as though it were she herself spreading for some midnight ritual.
The house had been abandoned, but was serving somebody's uses. Opal burrowed under the floorboards and waited. On the following night, she heard voices at the door. She made out three voices, two men and a woman, she thought. The click of heels and two sets of heavier shoes confirmed this when the door creaked open and a young woman, maybe a girl, giggled, "Where's the mattress?"
"It's in the rafters. We'll get it down."
There was a scuffling and grunting as they lowered the mattress to the floor. The girl must have jumped. Two staccato clicks and another giggle.
"So what do I do?" she asked.
"Don't worry. We'll show you."
Opal heard the sounds then of the men's shoes coming off, tossed into a corner, and their belts and the softer thump of jeans and shirts. A man's voice said, "All right. Frank will start. I'll join in if you need me."
"What do I do?"
"Just listen to Frank."
Frank's voice was more like a rasping hinge than a voice. There were no more giggles. One grunt like a kick to a dog's flank, the grunt of the one doing the kicking, and, right after this, a squeak that didn't stop but gradually lost its high pitch and leveled into a moan and, all without a breath, down to a near growl.
"Ok. All right. Back out of her."
"No." It was the growl. It was her.
"Frank. You're done."
"I'm trying."
"Shit. Here. You two have to quit."
A loud scuffle then, the two men cussing as though trying to plug a burst water main. Then silence. After several minutes, she said, "You weren't kidding about this, were you?"
"No."
"Are we doing it again?"
Frank was quiet still, but the other man laughed. Then he said, "Frank. Your turn to referee."
The next day the smell was enough to make Opal glow. If they had not told her otherwise, she would have thought herself a daylight body again and free to walk the sidewalks looking for a tongue or a prick or even a fist of the right proportions. But they had told her No. There will not be any more of that. You are alive as well as any of them and more alive than most. But you will not go back to that.
This at first made her angry, and anyone walking along the perimeter of the house, in the trash and years' accumulation of leaves and decay, would have claimed to feel the heat of something smoldering in the ground below. But they taught her to compensate, and soon she was learning to forget the folds and nubs of her first self.
There were nights when Opal overheard whole groups of partyers, and nights when nobody came, or just a single couple for a paltry squeeze. Then, well over a year after her collision with the tree, something happened. It had been a week since anyone had come to the house. Each night a little weaker, she had slid along the underside of the floor from corner to corner, picking up whatever scents she could. On that last night, she was ready to leave, but they had told her to stay until there was nothing left.
She did not hear the door. She heard the voice first. "Hello? Are you here?"
It was a woman's voice. There was only the slightest footfall. The woman went to one of the edges of the room, maybe at the window. "I couldn't come until tonight. I've known you were here for over a year. I came with a couple of men before. They thought they stopped in time, but I felt you and wanted to dig down to you. I don't know if you can hear me, or if you'll be able to feel me if I do find you."
As the voice continued, the boards of the floor she was sitting on filled with a scent that Opal remembered. "I've wanted to sit here by myself and give you something. No one else can do what you did. Men have no idea."
They had told Opal she was finished with a warm body -- new in its first life. They had told her to stay where she was. But now, she pulled herself up through the hole in the closet and looked out into the room. The woman was sitting on the floor under the window. She was wearing a dress and had it stretched over her knees, which she was hunching up to her chest. Her toes, from underneath, were holding the hem down to the floor, and she had both of her hands under it. There was no moon, and the house was too forlorn for street lights. Opal took off her heavy shoes and crawled out of the closet. She edged along the wall until she was in the corner.
"I know you're here. I can feel you."
Opal hissed for a whisper, and the woman turned to her. "I'm Kera. I'm not scared. If you kill me, I'll be all right. There's nothing here for me. But if you kill me, make it feel like it did before."
Opal hissed again. She was trying to speak, but what she said was what a faucet says after months of nothing. Kera looked into the corner, squinting. Then she swiveled onto her hands and knees and started crawling. Her black hair hung to the floor. When she reached the corner, she sat cross-legged with her dress up around her waist. "Hi."
It was then that a man's voice barked from the door. "Kera! Are you in here? Hey, Kera!"
"Shit!" Kera whispered, standing abruptly and smoothing her dress down against her knees. She pressed herself into the corner. Opal stood and turned into the corner also so that her face was up against Kera's face. Then Opal spread her legs and arms to seal the corner off.
The man called out again and then again. "Damn it, Kera. Where are you?"
Opal did not hear him anymore. She encircled this new body with her arms. Then, with one hand, she pushed her fingers down until she came up into her from the front. She did not hear the man run across the room or feel him trying to pull Kera free. Everything was the smell of the skin she was covering herself with. When she finished, she turned back into the room and saw the man at her feet where he had fallen upon touching them.
She noticed that he had nice leather shoes, which she slipped over her own new feet. Then, without another look behind her, she walked out of the door and into a breeze that played with her black hair and brought her the smells of the whole town bedded down for the night.
©Daniel Plate
Daniel Plate teaches literature and writing in the St. Louis area. He lives, with his wife and three children, within near walking distance of the Mississippi. This is his first published story.