Girls Howling

by Christine H. Chen

Jon Tyson

When Mirabelle with her pale yellow lunch pail trudges into the schoolyard we’re licking our lips like hungry wolves, we’re elbowing each other, we bury our cackles behind our palms, here comes Mirabelle who has nothing belle in her, Mirabelle of long flimsy coffee hair sticking on her face like feathers on wet backs of ducks, Mirabelle of quince skin with squinting eyes the way we screw ours when we bite into lemons, Mirabelle of stick legs and arms like our matchsticks that light forbidden cigarettes, here comes our feast, we’re licking our lips like hungry wolves when Mirabelle with her pale yellow lunch pail hops toward us, Mirabelle whose name conjures orange plums from Lorraine, mouth-watering, candied innocence, Mirabelle who’s neither juicy nor fed like us with homemade jam and white bread, imported ham and crème fraiche, Mirabelle who once shoved our cheat sheet into her mouth, chewed and swallowed it to hide our guilt, Mirabelle oh Mirabelle, another time we said, if you’d just let us sneak a peek into your test, and she did, didn’t she, let us cheat on her math tests, Mirabelle showed us her answers, Mirabelle made a mistake on the tests, so did we all, poor Mirabelle called into the headmaster’s office while we waited outside twirling our fingers, we were hungry wolves waiting to hunt her down if she dared say anything, but she wouldn’t would she, Mirabelle whose mother we pay to wash our dirty clothes, Mirabelle whose father drives for our mothers’ shopping sprees, here comes she with her pale yellow lunch pail, if you’d just show us what you have in your lunch pail, we say to her, share with us what you have, we’re nuzzling our warm canteen boxes, we dangle our silver spoons over her like bells over cows, Mirabelle oh Mirabelle show us your goods, we’ll show you ours, we say to her, smacking our hunger between our lips hiding our growing canines behind smiles, we lick the fear off her face, and she’s smiling too, Mirabelle of no more fear, she’s twisting open her straw raffia lunch pail, there’s an orange clementine, two moukats of mashed bananas and cassava, we’re exchanging glances, we’re squeaking monkey sounds, our faces roiling with mean chortles when Mirabelle looks up from her lunch pail, and her eyes grow so large we think it’s terror, we’ve got our prey, we’ll pounce on her, crush her will just because we can, just because we are hungry wolves, until we realize her eyes are mirrors mirroring us drowning in our darkness, we are wolves thrashing in our own wickedness, her eyes say, the day will come when her tongue slashes out from her parting lips, when her paws grow into claws to tear our wolfskin like shreds of tissue in the wind, when her words pulverize our glee to ashes, her eyes say, the day will come when we’ll howl for forgiveness.

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Christine H. Chen was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Madagascar before settling in Boston where she worked as a research chemist. Her fiction work has been published in The Pinch, CRAFT Literary, Hobart, SmokeLong Quarterly, and other journals. She is a grateful recipient of the 2022 Mass Cultural Council Artist Fellowship and the co-translator from French of My Lemon Tree forthcoming in 2023 by Spuyten Duyvil. Her publications can be found at www.christinehchen.com