Fidelia hated her name. She hated kittens, rainbows, flowers, sunshine, and teddy bears. She hated smiling and people who laughed. She hated daytime, unless it was raining, or someone was screaming, or things were blowing up.
Not really.
But that was what she would tell you if you asked.
She carried around a scribble-filled journal glued inside a hollowed out copy of The Essential Kierkegaard.
Fidelia filled her journal with observations. She was a people-watcher. Pretending to read, she noticed all the nuances in speech and movement around her, and wrote them down. She recorded the puffy silhouettes of the clouds at sunset, the pitch of the fitful toddler, the toe-buzzing vibration of skateboards speeding by.
She only wore black, but she wrote about color, listing new words for colors as she learned them. Her favorites were cerulean and atomic tangerine.
She wore boots, because she liked to write down the sound different things made when she kicked them into the street or down the sewer grate. Cans clattered, bottles plinked, and half-eaten sandwiches never made much sound.
Once, before her devotion to 20-eye bubble-toe Doc's, she kicked a dead dog. Wearing only her Converse, her foot sank deep into the soft, rotting flesh below its sternum. Pulling her foot back with a sickening squelch, she tore open her ankle on a jagged shard of bone.
She retired the blood-stained shoe and sock, turning them into an object of macabre art for her Senior exhibit, and switched exclusively to boots. She recorded the squelch, the smell escaping from the hole her foot left, and the blue milk-glass dull of the dog’s eyes when she pulled back his slack lids.
Later she recorded the jagged shape of the scar on her ankle. Fidelia liked to stroke the smooth, raised ridge, poking hard at the desensitized flesh, recording the amount of pressure before it started to hurt.
She kept that scar a secret, lacing it away behind boot leather every morning whether she wore a skirt and fishnets, or jeans. She kept other secrets, too, like the secret that she loved to sing along with the Baptist gospel choir that rehearsed in the basement of her apartment building, and the secret that she didn't really “get” punk rock. She kept secrets about who she was, how she felt, and what she thought.
Fidelia never offered information about herself, other than that which could be gleaned from the logos on her band tees, and when asked, she was more likely to spin a dark lie than tell the truth, if she answered you at all. She avoided the moral dilemma of deceiving friends by having none.
She was brilliant at discouraging attention from strangers.
When the random people sitting beside her on various park benches around the city asked her name, she quickly horrified them by answering in one quick breath, “Pussy Face, well, it's not my real name, but it's what my Master calls me. His name is Satan Christ. I don't even remember my other name 'cuz he bought me when I was six. At Christmas he calls himself Satan Claus. He's so funny.”
They always seemed to stop talking to her instantly, and most of them even vacated the park bench, or the park, entirely.
Once, a young soccer mom with a bold streak of purple in her asymmetric bob got friendly enough to laugh and ask, “No way, really?”
Fidelia had never encountered even the smallest persistence before, but thinking quickly, she stood and growled. The soccer mom looked terrified, but just to be sure she wouldn't make the mistake of attempting communication again, Fidelia grabbed the smiling white teddy bear from the hands of the toddler slung and tied around her maternal middle and ground it into the greasy concrete with the toe of her boot.
“Breeder!” She screamed with as much hate as she could pretend, and scuffled away, affecting a limp.
She recorded in her journal, while sitting on another park bench, that she was worried the grease would never wash out of the bear's white fur, that she hoped the kid didn't cry much, that she hoped it hadn't been a gift from a now dead relative, that she wondered why she did it, that she felt bad. She wrote down that the soccer mom said her name was Ginger. It made her think of Gilligan's Island. She wrote down that Ginger had brown eyes. She thought that Gilligan's Ginger had blue eyes, but she couldn't be sure. She made a note to watch some TV, just to find out.
She recorded her decision to go back to the other bench, to look for Ginger and apologize. She tried to plan what she would say, what excuse she should use. She narrowed it down to a chemical imbalance or a recent abortion. She was sure she'd know which story to run with once she had Ginger face to face, only she planned to stare at her boots while she lied, for effect.
Fidelia decided to buy the kid a new bear. The kid hadn't done anything but hang there on the hip of a talkative soccer mom. She felt bad for the kid. She planned to lie and say she stole the bear when she gave it to Ginger. She would say she had to, because she was homeless.
When Fidelia got back to the part of the park where she had stalked away from Ginger, rainbow teddy bear in hand, Ginger had already gone.
She tossed the bear onto the park bench next to a wadded tissue she was sure Ginger has used to wipe the poor kid's eyes and snotty nose, and muttered, “Breeder.”
Before she trudged out of the park she kicked over the heavy metal trashcan next to the bench, looking away, but listening for the plink and ting of trash spilling on concrete. The sound was muffled. Turning back to see why, she found the dirty white bear, scarred by her scummy shoe print. She picked it up, held it at eye level and regarded its face seriously.
“Sorry I stomped you, bear.”
Fidelia carried the bear home and set it, grimy, on her windowsill, a dirty little souvenir.
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