WILHEMINA

A short story from Unrequited 3,

Wilhelmina is a story about a girl I don’t know anymore. It discusses violence against women so keep that in mind before you read.

Wilhelmina is the most beautiful thing west of the Mississippi.

I hear Wilhelmina's voice every night in the wind.

 I started closing my window.

It was almost five in the morning when she banged on the glass pane next to my bed. I thought she'd break it. I'm startled but I don't mind.

I never do.

Somehow when she appears, whatever I dreamt about doesn't seem so important. 

I forget everything except how to press my weight up to open the window. The light from the streetlamp outside my house is blinding so all I can see is her figure in the darkness and reflection in the window. 

Her fingerprints get stuck on the glass.

This is quite possibly my favorite part of my room. It is so hidden and such a precious momento. I am a sucker for artifacts. I reread old letters and stick them in a memory box that is perpetually open. I am a glutton for punishment, I love remembering what once was. And on the very bottom of my window, the dust on the outside of my window is filled with fingerprints. Each a story holding memories of moments or lovers.

If she ever leaves away these will stay. 

I prop the window open and let her come crawling in, along with the ice cold wind I awake fully. Here she sits, half on my windowsill lifting her sleeves to unlace the wrestling shoes she wears constantly. I just stay in perpetual awe and I'm not quite sure why. It's just the feeling that is there when she's around. 

She climbs into my bed, wrapping herself in a cocoon of blankets as I close the window leaving the outside there.

I turn my light on and look at her theres marks on her neck I couldn’t see before, and she looks so fucking sad. Before I can ask what's wrong she turns back to me,

“You know what guys keep telling me,” 

I'm not as clairvoyant as I claim to be so I let her continue

“I like you so much more than I thought I would,” She scoffs,

“What does that even mean? I mean they say it as a compliment but it just makes me want to crawl into a hole.”

“I was at Jonahs when he said that. It was right after we hooked up and then he fell asleep.”

I wonder if the sex was any good.

I wonder if he held her long.

If she was still naked when he said that.

Was she sitting at the edge of his bed, looking for her underwear, wearing his shirt? 

“So I laid there for about five minutes then felt myself start to cry, so then I climbed out of his window and came here. I just couldn’t do it.”

“Do what?” He lived about a 7 minute walk from me. 

“Lay there and pretend to be complimented. Feel the way I felt and know there will be no proper explanation. And what's worse is he isn’t even the first to say that, I mean I would never say that to him. Do I seem to love only a little girl? I don't know what I did to make them think that in the first place, or to prove them wrong, do you know how infuriating that is?”

I know this is rhetorical

“I would like to be cherished. Or at the very least respected and I really don't think I am. I spent the whole time walking from his house to yours stepping on each crack and wondering what I mean to the men I love. I don't think I mean much.” 

I can see her doing that, bouncing from one foot to another. Holding her jacket around her as tight as possible, crying. I have never heard Wilhelmina use the word think so much when she spoke. She was usually so sure of herself. 

“Did he want to be proven wrong? These boys always get into these situations looking for a level of casualty I won't provide and then are shocked when they like me. What's even more funny is I don't even think he knows a thing about me. At least not like you do.”

I know just what she means

“They thought they could keep me at arms length and they were wrong, and now they think they know me and they continue to be wrong and loud.”

She paused and I didn’t say a word.

“I don't want to be a concoction anymore, I think I'd like to be a person. But what if he only likes the concoction? That's the best part of it all, he says this to me like he knows me. And if he did know me do you think he'd like me more or less?”

I have nothing to say. Her eyes are tearing and I pretend not to notice. 

 I had only seen Wilhelmina cry truly once before it was a night just like this one.

Her at my window, the air even smelled the same, the only difference is she put no effort into concealing her pain, just sat there wailing like a hurt dog. 

Snot running everywhere and I just sat there. 

I never have anything to say when it actually matters.

 She had a boy over, it was probably the third new boy that week. But it was a friday.

They were together, her on top of him or vice versa. Shirt on or off it didn't matter, when her mom burst through the door.

See she wasn't supposed to have this boy over, or any boy over for that matter. 

She should've been in male purgatory but then again she never could be, but I get it. It's hard when they  are the only things making you feel like you're worth anything.

I imagine the fight with her mom before she snuck him in. Yelling in the kitchen, her pressing her hands to her ears and yelling lalalalala. 

Like a petulant toddler being denied a toy. 

Then Willie holding a finger over his mouth smiling climbing up her stairs slowly motioning her hands like they are spies. He was probably blissfully unaware what would happen.

She wasted no time, she never does.

I wonder how close they were to having sex, if they were being loud, if she put a pillow between the wall and the bed frame. I wonder if she was actually trying to hide him at all. He didn't care, they never did.

But her mom barges in and scoffs. Usually when Wilhelmina does this her mom doesn't do anything but passive aggression the next day asking if she  had fun or if it was worth it. But this time was different.

They separate as fast as they can while trying to keep themselves decent. They can't. I wondered if music was playing. I wonder if either of them could still hear that song.

Her mom just looks at her, ripping the blanket off from around her shoulders  and looks her up and down. 

She rolls her eyes and smiles, 

“You know you don't have to fuck every guy you like for god sake.”

And with that her mom walks out and leaves the door open mumbling cruelties to herself.

That's it. An interaction that couldn't be longer than forty five seconds.

I wonder if the guy stuck around longer than grabbing all his clothes. 

I wonder if he kissed her forehead before he ran out the door.

 I think about this cruelty often.

“The worst part of this whole Jonah situation is I think I love him.”

I checked back in and it's like she knew I was reliving a memory I wasn't there for, it's like she said it just to shock me, she knew I wasn’t listening and I knew she wasn’t telling the truth.

Neither of us are perfect.

I must not think bad thoughts repeating over and over within the confines of my head. I wonder how often she goes back to that night. I know I do.  

I wonder if she ever left, I know I wouldn’t.

She looks at me like I will be surprised, I am not.  She's loved all of them in some way or another. 

“I think I am in love. Previously that sentence would have made me scoff. You are or you aren't, it is as simple as that. But I believe I am, yet I also believe that this love is inconvenient and painful at its conception. But I told him I loved him.”

Oh yeah?

“Not louder than the faintest whisper. Enough for him to turn around and enough for me to say nothing. Come to think of it, I don't think the words ever left my mouth. 

 I try to tell him in morse code when his hands are tangled in mine but I only know how to say SOS so I do that over and over until he gets the idea because they feel the same.

 I have written it on his back and done my best to say it with my eyes and one day after I tell him I'll ask him the moment he knew and he wont have known until I said it straight flat out. Recently I've been debating this love. Can  love really be debated? Well I’m fucking doing it. “

“If it can be debated I don't know if it's true. It should just be.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

There's a pause because I always do what she says.

“I thought the same thing.”

When she's speaking all I  can hear is rain. How comforting and melancholic it is. It's getting louder. 

“I mean who cares if I love him”

That's a preposterous thing to say. I don't speak this thought but she can see in my eyes it's what I am thinking. 

“No I mean it” She looks at me quite seriously, sitting up in my bed

“It's just that I am not sure he even knows me, so how could he possibly love me back?”

“And if I told him and he said it back it just may not feel right and then what do I do then” 

I can't keep eye contact,

“I mean who would it be that he loved?”

“Love love love love love,” each time she says it its getting louder, and I suddenly remember we are at my moms house who is sleeping right now. 

“You once said love is gruesome and it fucking is,I mean Im just so scared.”

The sun is up and I am only just realizing it now, funny how stuck in my head I can be. 

With that she kisses my cheeks and leaves

We never spoke of it again. Any of it

The window shuts slowly and she smiles and waves from the outside of the glass and I know when I wake up I’ll believe for some short moments it was all a dream. 

She ended up telling him three weeks after this night on the dot.

It was a Monday night.

He asked her to keep her lamp on so he wouldn’t fall asleep. 

He did anyway. He always does. He mumbles some lines about some sort of innate comfort she offers blah blah blah. She personally thinks it has to do with the full time job and big life he lives. He is so driven. 

Pretty thing.

That's what she calls him.

Wilhelmina gets up and switches the light off.

He lays blissfully unaware.  

That's how she likes ‘em.

She watches him impatiently as she waits for her eyes to adjust to the darkness in her room. 

Thin streams of light come from the telephone pole outside, barely illuminating his face. 

That's around when she told him she loved him.

Though she whispered the words did actually leave her mouth which one could call an improvement. 

She thought she was feeling so much care. 

She cared for him and him for her and isn't that alone so beautiful?

However thought is the operative term because this is not the part of this night she remembers particularly well. 

Wilhelmina remembers instead waking up in pain and not knowing how or why it came to this.

“I remember fear and wondering why the love I experience is always gruesome.”