Weird Girl

Weird Girl

Mae McCall

Weird Girl
is
an original work of fiction. I made it all up. Any resemblance to real people
(living or deceased), locales (with the exception of any existing cities or
countries that are used as backdrops), or actual events is purely
unintentional.

©2014 by Mae McCall

1

On the day she was born, her mother and father argued. It
was one of the only normal conversations they ever had, and it was about a name
for the new baby girl. Her mother, a botanist, wanted to name her after a genus
of desert plants. Her father, the anthropologist, demanded a more “realistic”
name.

“Helen, I’m the father, and I should have some say in the
matter. We’ll call her Australopithia.”

“Darwin,” said Helen through tightly clenched teeth, her
chestnut hair matted with sweat, “I have been in labor for thirty-three hours
and twelve minutes. This is NOT A FUCKING DEMOCRACY!”

And so it continued, until, as is the way of the universe,
the lady won the argument, the baby finished being born, and Cleomella St.
James was carried down the hall by a rosy-cheeked nurse. It came as quite a
surprise when, twelve minutes later, another baby made an unexpected entrance
in the birthing ward. Darwin was quite put out.

“Twins, Helen? I can’t believe you didn’t tell me there were
two! I’m going to have to edit all of my notes now!”

This was, perhaps, not the right moment to say this. The
same rosy-cheeked nurse cheerfully escorted Darwin to another cubicle to await
stitches. Who could have expected that an IV stand could do so much damage when
wielded by an exhausted woman after a day and a half of labor?

“I wonder how much velocity she achieved?” Darwin muttered
as the first suture was being tightened. He looked at the doctor. “Do you
happen to know the exact dimensions and weight of that IV stand? And would it
be possible to obtain a compass and protractor for a few quick calculations?”
said Darwin. The doctor ordered the nurse to prepare a room for Dr. St. James,
PhD immediately, as there was clearly some loss of mental clarity as a result
of the injury.

Meanwhile, Helen St. James held her second child and enjoyed
the relative silence. This one would be called Achillea. Darwin would not find
out until the next day, and although he would be very upset once again, he
would wisely hold his tongue.

The sisters would, in the way of twins everywhere, be
inseparable from that day forward.

***

The St. James household was quite unconventional. It
contained (in addition to two renowned scientists and two clever little girls)
one dog (Juniper), one iguana (Gally), and one extremely patient housekeeper
named Vera. The estate was old, inherited by Helen from her grandfather, who
had made his fortune on California silver mines. She liked to tell her academic
peers that he had been a very successful geologist. They were always quite
impressed.

As Helen was a very successful botanist, having published
four hundred and twenty papers in peer reviewed journals, and having been
presented several international awards at science conferences, there were
well-maintained gardens all over the estate, as well as half a dozen
greenhouses. It had taken her four years to interview and select the team of
gardeners to maintain and cultivate these plants, and she was prone to sneak up
on them at random to inspect their labors.

Dr. Darwin St. James was famous in his own scientific
circles, particularly for the publication of important books like
Courtship
and Mating Rituals of Javanese Pygmies: The Long and Short of It
and
One
Hundred and One Recipes for the Preparation and Ritualistic Consumption of the
Heads of Your Enemies, The Easy Way!
, and he was a favorite speaker at the
annual anthropology conferences. This was partially due to his tendency to make
jokes about pygmies. Everybody loves a pygmy joke, especially anthropologists.

The interior of the mansion was a random assortment of
furniture and eclectic items collected over the years by the grandfather, as
well as the artifacts and specimens accumulated by Helen and Darwin in their
scientific travels. Thick Persian carpets overlapped underneath mismatched
furniture of exotic woods. Fertility statues perched beside fine porcelain
figures. A Gainsborough portrait of some long lost cousin was dotted with
ragged holes, the result of a serious lapse in judgment on Darwin’s part as he
was working out the finer details of the spear-throwing techniques of the
indigenous peoples of Papua New Guinea for a book about cultural hunting
practices. (Helen did not speak to him for five weeks.) There were skulls
everywhere—a survey of the human species and his primate cousins—and the
occasional fully articulated skeleton (although never in a closet). Helen and
Darwin each had a study, on opposite ends of the house from one another, and
four of the guest bedrooms had been converted to libraries.

It was a dark, dusty, and quiet house. With two scientists
on the premises, the atmosphere was always heavy with thoughts zipping through
the air and onto the pages of expensive data notebooks. The two little girls
were, for the most part, left to devise their own entertainments.

By mutual consent, they shortened their names to Leah and
Cleo, and, as unsupervised children will always do, they made mischief daily.
It was usually Vera who discovered the telltale signs: a trail of strawberry
jam from the kitchen all the way to the lizard’s terrarium (and, of course, a
bloated and pink-faced iguana inside of it); a wavering tower of antique
reference books, and four bare ankles with scuffed black shoes hanging out of a
ventilation duct in an upper wall of the first library; a baboon skull in the
icebox, with red-painted canines. And it was always left to Vera to dole out
justice for these crimes against the household. Doctor and Doctor St. James
could not be bothered with the details of parenting. Science ruled their days,
and publishers were never sympathetic to excuses (like having children) when
deadlines were near.

Unfortunately, Vera was a softie. One look into two matching
pairs of tear-filled brown eyes was enough to crush her resolve every single
time. So, she would slip them each a cookie, smooth their chestnut hair with
her hands, and send them on their way to the next great escapade.

The family ate dinner together every evening at precisely
seven o’clock. Helen and Darwin would bring their notebooks and proofread for
each other during the meal. The only sounds were of fork on plate, and pen on
paper. The girls were never told to eat their vegetables, to clean their
plates, or to excuse themselves from the table. Once, they hid in the hallway
when the bell was rung, just to see how long it would take for their parents to
come looking for them. Their absence was not noticed.

***

When the girls turned six, it was Vera who suggested that it
would be a good idea to send them to school. Helen and Darwin exchanged a
meaningful look, and then informed the housekeeper that she would be the girls’
teacher. The dutiful parents sacrificed an entire week of their research in
order to prepare packets of assignments for the girls. They were not
necessarily in alignment with the standard curriculum set forth by the state,
but the intelligence of the parents was magnified in the daughters, and they
had very little trouble with the work. Whenever one of the girls did not
understand something, they were sent to the libraries to seek additional
resources. They became very skilled at research. They also became very skilled
at playing hooky, considering the fact that “school” was in the kitchen, and
Vera was easily played. Helen and Darwin took turns grading the assignments
every other week, so as long as that deadline was met, the girls continued to
make mischief during the other hours of the day. Occasionally, a scientist
friend of their parents would visit for a few days—a physicist, an astronomer,
an archaeologist, and of course botanists and anthropologists—and the girls
learned plenty from eavesdropping on adult conversations throughout the day.

However, intelligence does not always go hand in hand with
common sense, and the logic of a six year old will rarely unite the two. This
is how the tragedy happened.

Vera had excused herself from school lessons to answer the
telephone, and the girls took the opportunity to excuse themselves as well.
After a brief conversation with the electric company regarding a new efficiency
package, Vera noticed a heavy silence in the household. It was even quieter
than usual.

She went back into the kitchen, and was unsurprised to find
it empty. Being softhearted did not make her stupid, and she had been
suspicious all morning that the girls had a particular plan for their mischief
of the day. For a moment, she considered not looking for them, but she could
not escape the feeling that something was very wrong.

Vera went to the libraries first, as that was usually where
the girls ended up. But all four rooms were empty and silent. She listened at
doorways, and walked every corridor, and finally went outside. Cleomella was at
the foot of a large rhododendron, holding her knees and counting out loud, with
tears streaming down her cheeks. When Vera’s hand came down on her shoulder,
Cleo pointed to her right and started to sob.

Vera almost repeated Achillea’s mistake. She saw the
prostrate form, and ran to it, skidding to a stop when Cleo shrieked “No!” It
was then that Vera noticed the puddle, and the smell of burnt hair.

It had begun as a game of advanced hide and seek. The girls
were well beyond lurking behind curtains or under tables. Cleo was counting to
six hundred and three (not an arbitrary number, but the girls would never
explain its significance). Achillea had been searching for a good climbing
tree.  She walked past the fountain just as one of the gardeners plugged in a
leaf blower. The cord had been chewed by some small animal, and the fountain
had sprung a leak over the winter. A sizzle and a gasp, and it was over.
Cleomella kept counting, and the gardener fainted. Vera screamed.

The funeral was three days later. It didn’t rain. It wasn’t
even cloudy. Instead, the sun cheerfully looked down from a bright blue sky.
Birds chirped continuously. Cleo hated birds from that day on.

Darwin and Helen, to their credit, mourned the loss of their
child. Tears were shed by both, and there were several hushed conversations
between them, but they always stopped talking when Cleo walked into the room. Darwin
sang an ancient Masai funeral song, which nobody could understand, given that
it wasn’t in English. Helen ordered the gardeners to plant Achillea’s namesake
flower on the grave. The grieving parents hugged each other, and drove away in
a rented black Rolls Royce. Vera hugged Cleo, and held her in her lap as they
rode home in the back of the head gardener’s Taurus.

***

The family avoided one another for three days. Cleo stayed
in the room that she and her sister had shared since birth, and refused to eat whenever
Vera brought her food. Vera always left a tray anyway, and would silently
collect it once Cleo was asleep. Sometimes, she would hear the girl talking, as
if she was having a normal conversation with her sister. It broke Vera’s heart,
but she assumed that it was part of the normal grieving process.

Late on the third day, something strange happened. Cleo’s
father came to her room and quietly told her that she was expected at dinner at
the usual time. He looked like he wanted to say more, but he turned and quickly
left the room. Cleo was shocked. Her father never came to her room. He barely
even spoke to her. She was afraid of what was to come, but at five minutes to
seven, she put on her shoes, smoothed the coverlet on Achillea’s bed, and said,
“Well, I guess we’d better go downstairs.”

To be fair, Cleo knew that Achillea was dead. She knew that
ghosts did not exist, and that right at that moment, various microbes were at
work in her sister’s coffin to reduce the body to its carbon base. After all, Cleo
was the child of scientists. But, she didn’t have anyone else to talk to, so
she talked to Achillea out of habit. Her parents never noticed, but Vera did.

When she got to the dining room, her parents were already
seated. She suspected that they had been arguing, because her mother looked
furious and wouldn’t make eye contact with anyone. Cleo was certain that she
was in trouble.

They waited until the meal was served, and as soon as Vera
left the room, Darwin cleared his throat. Cleo looked up.

“Cleo, what happened to your sister was shocking—ummm…what I
meant to say is that it was unexpected and tragic, and completely her fault. I
mean…when one is properly observant of one’s surroundings, one usually does not
get fried by lawn equipment,” he said.

Helen crossed her arms and glared at him.

Darwin cleared his throat again, and continued. “What I’m
trying to say is that your sister’s accident, while possibly attributable to a
genetically pre-determined deformity in the logic centers of the frontal lobe,
which is similar to the developmental deficiency present in certain of our
lesser primate cousins, is definitely the result of a lapse in dedicated
observation of the environmental conditions…Shoot. Your sister didn’t pay
attention, and now she’s dead. Therefore, your mother and I have decided to implement
a new house rule.”

This alone was a cause for Cleo to draw in a quick breath.
There were no house rules. Ever. She really was in trouble.

Her father looked at her for a few moments before
continuing. “Cleomella, we feel that it is necessary for you to improve your
powers of observation, so that you don’t fry yourself like your sister did.”
Helen kicked him under the table, and he winced. “Therefore, while you will
continue your regular school assignments as planned, your additional task will
be to observe something new each day, record these observations in a notebook,
and report these details to your mother and myself during dinner every evening.
We feel that this training will allow you to overcome any potential deficiency
similar to your sister’s, and, well…we don’t want to bury another child.” He
looked away for a second, touched a finger to the corner of his eye, and then
looked back at Cleo. “Do you understand this assignment?”