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June and Margo

April Claire Evans

    Something about that already stifling Saturday in early July left June vaguely dissatisfied. The sky was overcast and threatened a “donder-boomer,” still she would have rather biked to the lake to dive down into the murky gray-green water; but, Margo had pleaded the sniffles.
    Margo had been June’s friend since kindergarten, mainly because there were very few kids June’s age in the woodland community in which they lived. Also, Margo was one of the few kids who, like June, spent way too much time in front of the TV and had way too much time on her hands.
    Anyhow, Margo was too much of a “tenter-foot” in June’s view, always staying home from school at the least sign of a cold. Sometimes June could barely stand it; it seemed as though whenever June invited Margo someplace she invariably had a cold, especially if the invitation was for a sleep-over at June’s house. According to June’s mother, Margo always had a cold because both Margo’s parents smoked and because Margo ate such a poor diet.
    According to June’s mother, June bossed Margo around and Margo didn’t want to eat there because she didn’t like the food. June didn’t like the food much either, but she was used to it.
    June’s mother was an Adele Davis groupie, which meant everything had to be uber-healthy. Margo was really grossed out by the undercooked cheese eggs, which she salted as if the mound on her plate were a giant slug and the salt would make it shrivel up and die. And she slathered the dry whole wheat toast with enough margarine and jelly to give her both an instant heart attack and diabetes.
    Anyhow, if you asked June, it was Margo who was the bossy one. She always decided what imagination games they’d play and who would play what role - like that day. June had stayed the night at Margo’s house. Margo’s parents had gone out early to a flea market, their normal Saturday activity. And so, after a breakfast of Sugar Smaks (over which Margo poured at least two tablespoons of sugar) in front of the aging Zenith with intermittent reception, the two girls discussed what they would play.
    June wanted to play “super-heroes” with herself cast as Wonder Woman and Margo as Wonder Girl. Margo wanted to play The Bionic Woman with June as Jamie Sommers and herself as both Steve Austin and Jamie’s kidnapper. June as usual gave in because Margo whined that she didn’t want to be Wonder Girl, and that June always got to be Wonder Woman. So, at Margo’s insistence, June trudged up the narrow staircase to the second floor to Margo’s parents’ bedroom. It was stuffy, and even hotter up there than it was downstairs. Margo’s mother had shut the windows tight and closed the blinds as she had in the rest of the house. June reflected that the house was always stale and dark – no fresh air or sunshine allowed. Margo had explained at one point that her mother was paranoid about the neighbors spying on them.
    Margo first wanted to push the twin beds together (twin beds? hello Ward and June Cleaver), and after much grunting on Margo’s part they were where she wanted them to be. She plopped herself down, “Now you be Jamie. The KGB has kidnapped you and taken your battery packs. You’re helpless, and they have you tied up on a metal bed frame in an old warehouse.”
    June fingered one of the blinds – no dust was left on her forefinger. “But if they took her battery packs she’d be dead or dying, or at least unconscious.”
    Margo plumped one of the over-sized pillows and moved it to the far side of the other bed. “No she wouldn’t. They’d just remove her local packs, you know, in her arm and legs while she was unconscious; she’d still have her bionic hearing.”
    June turned around and ran her fingers through her as yet unwashed dirty-blonde mop. “She’d still be unconscious or something,” she mumbled, as she rubbed her now greasy digits on her blue and white nubbly cotton pajama shorts.
    Margo bounced her flabby backside on the bed – a bed so tightly made, June thought, that it would’ve passed a military inspection – making the flaps of fat that passed for developing boobs jiggle. “Oh c’mon June, it’s my turn to pick what we play anyhow; besides, it’s my house.” June wanted to retort that it seemed like it was always her turn to pick, and that she always picked at June’s house too, but she didn’t. She stepped over to the bed.
    Margo grasped June’s wrist in her clammy, boney fingers, “Now, lie down. The KGB has you tied up.” June complied. Margo knelt over her and pinned both her wrists to the bed spread-eagle fashion. Margo leaned into her so that Margo’s scummy, yellowed buck teeth were within an inch of her face. She closed her eyes to shut out the sight, and because Margo’s breath, which smelled like a vomit-inducing combination of Flintstone’s chewable vitamins, Sunny Delight, and milk was making her nauseous. “Open your eyes, dummy, Jamie’s supposed to be awake.”
    Once again, June complied. Margo held June’s wrists more tightly and shifted her weight so that the bed creaked; she spoke with a very bad Boris and Natasha accent, “So, Miss Sommers, you will tell us where to find the secret code to the base, no?”
    The, “No!” that escaped June’s lips wasn’t just good acting – she wanted to tell Margo, “No! Get the hell off of me!” Of course, she didn’t.
    Margo grasped June’s wrists even more tightly and angled her body even closer to June’s so that her sweat-soaked white sleep shirt came in contact with the skin at the base of June’s throat. “You will tell me, Miss Sommers, or I can make things very, very uncomfortable for you.”
    June squirmed; it took all her internal strength not to knee Margo in her gut, or to at least tell her that she didn’t want to play anymore. “I... I can’t.... I don’t know the code.”
    Margo’s smile became sinister, and she ran her teeth over with her ton...gue, which was stained orange from the Flintstone’s vitamins and the Sunny D. “O come now, Miss Sommers, of course you do; we know that your bionics were created and implanted on that base.... So, the code now if you please Miss Sommers, or I’ll have to resort to more drastic measures to drag it from you.”
    June struggled within Margo’s grasp; her chubby wrists reddened. Of course she wasn’t supposed to put up a real fight, so she said as if she was about to spit in her face, “You’ll never get it from me!”
    Margo shifted the bulk of her weight forward and treated June to her version of a menacing whisper, “Then I will make you beg to tell me by the time I’m through,” sending a fetid cloud of breath into June’s face.
    It was all June could do not to cough or turn her head away. She gritted her teeth and closed her eyes. “Do your worst then, because I don’t know the code. Besides, don’t think that they haven’t discovered that I’m missing by now.”
    Margo bared her ferret teeth, as in triumph, and said, “Then I will have the pleasure of prying the truth out of you.”
    June gave a mock cry of, “No! No! Aaah!” Her struggle was not quite so mock this time as Margo pulled her wrists together in front of her chest in one hand, reached down and forced her legs open with the other, and then made grinding motions with her hips. June shut her eyes against Margo’s nearness and the sweat dripping down onto her face, and tried to hold her breath against the unsavory odors coming from her friend.
    “Shh!” Margo hissed. She announced that Jamie’s captor had put chloroform on a rag, and held her hand over June’s mouth – her hand tasted as gross as the rest of her smelled. She continued the hip-grinding motions for five more seconds, as June played unconscious. It was five seconds too long for June’s liking. Then Margo announced that Steve Austin was in the building using all his bionic superpowers to find his Jamie.
    She at last released June. She got up and made the appropriate motions and sound effects of the Steve breaking in and beating up the baddie. June was supposed to be unconscious, so she kept her eyes closed and lay motionless as she took several deep, restorative breaths.
    Then Margo, doing her best deep heroic voice impression, leaned over June and shook her. She cried in an imitation of desperation, “Jamie, Jamie wake up! Wake up Jamie! O my God...what did they do to you? C’mon Jamie wake up!” There was a beat of silence. Margo treated June to playacted ragged breathing and choked sobs. Then she leaned in, her forehead practically touching June’s. All June could think about was fresh air and the cool relief of lake water rinsing her, enveloping her. Margo stroked June’s hair, pushing the sweated forelock back from her brow like an over-rambunctious child – who hasn’t yet learned how to be gentle with an animal – would pet a kitten, murmuring, “Jamie, Jamie...O my God, what did they do to you?” She slid her hand down the side of June’s face and the gripped her chin. As she leaned closer, her hot breath assaulted June’s face in un-rhythmic blasts. Her face closed in over June’s. The slimy spit-coated lips touched June’s – her eyes flew open; she pushed Margo away just as she heard the wooden screen-door bang shut, and flew down stairs with Margo behind her.
    She grabbed her aged brown canvas back-pack that had once belonged to her older sister Amy from the threadbare if clean couch and wheeled around, nearly running smack into Margo’s father who was holding a greasy white bag of some sickeningly sweet-spicy tomatoey smelling food item. He put his oily, hammy hand on her shoulder and grunted, “Whoa there June: Careful now.”
    June took a step back out of his grasp and stammered, “Sorry, Mr. Hogentoddler, I, I was just on my way out.”
    He took his freed hand and pushed his unlit pipe to the other side of his mouth and said, “I brought a couple pizza subs from Special Pizza City now, if you’re hungry.”
    June could just picture Margo pulling her sub apart and salting it, and then scraping the cheese off with her buck teeth, strings of it clinging to her orifice as she made little smacking sounds with her lips – ugh! “Uh, no thanks. I think my Mom’s waiting for me at the lake.”
    He rubbed his hand over the furry growth on his neck. “Okay, then. Tell your mom I said ‘Hi’.”
    June said, “Okay,” and then exited to the porch where she pulled on her battered Keds. Margo’s mother was sitting there on a brown and dun chaise lounge rocking back and forth smoking a Capri.
    She didn’t look up until June pushed the door open, then she put the cigarette in the center of her mouth between her lips and brushed imaginary ashes off the chaise as she spoke through the cigarette. “Margo catches cold easily you know. When she was a baby I had to take her in for an operation – I saved her life. She had to have a tube in her stomach; she still has the scar.” Mrs. Hogentoddler lifted her blue and white checked blouse to touch her own puffy, cellulite-ridden abdomen and continued, “It was right here; she almost died.”
    June didn’t mean to be rude, but she’d heard the tale a thousand times before. “Yes, Mrs. Hogentoddler, I believe you’ve told me that.”
    Margo’s mother rubbed her belly. “Saved her life. She had to have an operation.”
    June pushed the door a little farther open and said, “Yeah, you did. Bye, Mrs. Hogentoddler.” She didn’t wait for a response, but let the Dutch blue-stained door slap shut behind her.
    She grabbed her ancient pink and rust Schwinn, another of her sister’s cast-offs, and pedaled out to the main road, sending crows into noisy, cawing flight overhead as she rode by. She whizzed down the hill to the main route, nearly spinning out into traffic. She crossed, and then panted up the hill by the general store that was a throw-back to another era. Up the hill, around the dog-leg turn and by the brown expanse of Soldier’s Field she pushed the heavy bike – pumping her legs as hard as she could – with one thing on her mind, getting in that water. As she reached the part of the road where it branched off to the left and there were pine trees on either side she began to feel the pressure in her bladder; she pedaled even harder until she reached the wooden steps up to the deck.
    She hauled her bike up the stairs and announced to the zit-faced teen boy at the white-washed board ticket window that she was Celia Rodemann’s daughter, and that her mother had a punch ticket at the booth for her. She pushed her thighs together as he was taking way too much time searching through the rusted index card box and hoped she wouldn’t wet herself right then and there. He finally found it and punched it as slowly as possible before giving her a nod.
    She wheeled her bike around to the bath house and propped it on the wall next to the door rather than employ the resistant kick-stand as she could feel the urine seeping onto her panties. She pushed the old creaky door open and went directly to a stall. She sat on the seat and stripped off her pajamas and panties, letting them fall to the floor as she let the flood flow from between her legs. A small exhalation of relief escaped her lips. She dried herself there in the semi-darkness and dug in her bag for her bathing suit. She pulled the day-glow orange piece of nylon up over her stubbly legs and onto her sticky body and tugged the padded bra cups into place. She rolled up her discarded clothes and put them into her back-pack along with her sneakers.
    She padded on bare feet out across the cool cement flooring and out the door and down the steps. She could see her mother arrayed on her fold out lounge chair like a queen, her broad-brimmed aquamarine sun hat clearly visible from a distance, enthroned under a sturdy oak tree with her courtiers around her (in other words, her friends and her current boyfriend).
    As June approached, her mother turned with slow grace to peer at her over the big frames of her sunglasses which she’d purchased along with the hat. Her matching eyes did a scathingly thorough assessment of her daughter. “Well, nice of you to join me – did you have a good time?”
    Being fixed there in her mother’s gaze made June want to dig herself into the damp earth; “Yeah. Fine.”
    Mrs. Rodemann extended one tan arm towards the battered metal cooler and stated, “I packed peanut butter sandwiches and orange wedges.” It was not so much an invitation to eat lunch as an order. June lowered the pack to the ground and moved towards the cooler and pulled out a sandwich bag that contained half a sandwich on whole wheat bread. She opened it up and obediently took a bite. The heavy bread stuck in her throat with the health food store peanut butter acting as mortar, making it almost impossible to swallow. The chubby iron-curled Mrs. Van DerVentor in her upscale version of the ubiquitous black suit shot a question at June about Mrs. Hogentoddler’s mental state, but June couldn’t pry open her mouth to give her an answer. It didn’t matter; Mrs. Van DerVentor went on to make a comment about Margo running the Hogentoddler household as her parents were weak and ineffective.
    As soon as June had sucked the juice from the orange wedges that her mother had pushed into her hand – just enough moisture to loosen her jaw – her mother proclaimed, “Well, it’s time for you to go for a swim, June.” She studied her short, chubby daughter for just a moment; a look of disapproval furrowed her brow and pursed her lips; she announced for all the beach to hear, “June, that suit fit you at the beginning of the summer – I think you’ve gained some weight.”
    June really didn’t have a reply for that, other than to mumble low in her still peanut butter coated throat that she was going in the water. Her mother arose from her beach lounge and produced an oversized white t-shirt from the bag that was a perfect match for her hat. She handed it to June with orders to put it on or she’d get sunburned. June obediently pulled it over her head; it nearly came down to her ankles.
    She could hear the chatter between the “beach buddies” resume like the buzz of the cicadas that would soon descend upon the woodlands and fields as she waddled away on legs now sore from pumping the heavy bike up the hill.
    She went to the end of the wooden dock and stood for a moment anticipating the shock of the cold water on her overheated body. She took a deep breath and let it go. She took the final step, her toes over the edge of the last board, and balanced there for a second – then she let go. Arms outstretched she fell into the dark, cold womb water. There, among the weeds that choked the lake she floated face down – the dead man’s float that she’d been taught while learning to swim at the local high school – the shirt encasing her like a shroud. Above her, turkey vultures circled the trees in search of carrion.

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