Chapter 17 Payback Time
(Author's Note: I would like to thank LostSchizophrenic for making me rewrite the Grace/God scene. The original was pretty bad.
I also don't have any right to rewrite Stephen Sondheim lyrics. And judging by how long it took me to come up with 4 rhymes in 1 verse, I'm no threat to him anyway)
On the Wednesday before the homecoming game, Grace and Maggie were walking down the school corridor when they heard female voices singing at the other end. At first Grace thought that they were rehearsing West Side Story, which would be the school musical this winter, but they were giving the famous "America" song quite different words.
Prettiest teen is Elizabeth
Coolest colleen is Elizabeth
Best girl we've seen is Elizabeth
Homecoming Queen is E-li-za-beth!
Grace laughed. "Sounds like Elizabeth Goetzmann has found her theme song. Or stolen it."
"But do you have a theme song?"
"Nope. And a name like 'Grace Polk' is not very musical anyway."
"You do not seem to have done much to compete."
"No. There's not much point. Elizabeth has--"
A boy suddenly grabbed Grace's biology textbook out of her arms, and ran.
"Hey! Come back here." Grace took off after him, quite forgetting Maggie.
She chased him down a couple of corridors and through some outer doors near the lunchroom. She found herself in a little alley between the main school and the gym, mainly occupied by some smelly dumpsters. Joan had been here once, looking for a poem in the dumpster, but few other students came here, for obvious reasons.
The thief threw the book at Grace's feet. "You want it? Pick it up."
Mystified, Grace bent down to pick up the book. The instant that she straightened up again, somebody seized her arms from behind. And suddenly the thief looked familiar.
"Recognize me? You kicked me in the balls, the first day of school. Now it's payback time, bitch. Since you're a girl, you don't have any balls. But since you're a girl, you probably care about that pretty face of yours. So--
He socked her in the face. Then again--…
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Grace's memory of the next hour was hazy, perhaps because one of the blows came near to knocking her out. When her mind cleared, she was lying down in the school infirmary, and the school nurse was applying ice to her bruises. Behind the nurse she could spot Joan and Luke, looking worried.
"I'm going to kill him," said Luke determinedly.
Grace found her voice, but her swollen lips wouldn't quite cooperate. "Don' try. He'll bwobably kill you inzdead."
"Maybe we can talk Dad into throwing the bully in jail," suggested Joan.
"I want to do something constructive," said Luke with frustration, "or destructive, in this case."
"Id'z the thoughd thad counts, dude," Grace reassured him. "Whad habbened?"
"Maggie followed you through the halls," explained Joan. "When she saw the boys beating you up, she rushed inside again and yelled for help. The boys got caught red-handed."
As if on cue, Grace could hear Price's voice say: "She's more coherent now? Good, I need her story." He walked in. "I need some time with Miss Polk."
Joan and Luke left dutifully, and Price went on. "Miss Polk, could you give us your account of the incident?"
Grace tried, as much as she could remember of it. The swollen lips made long speeches painful. Price was not interested in her feelings anyway, just cold facts. From hie point of view this was an Incident, something that could get the school sued if not handled properly.
"The boys responsible will be expelled."
Grace heard that with a curious apathy, the same that she had felt when her friends discussed how to punish her attackers. In her view she wasn't the victim of a bully who could be punished. She had had an encounter with Evil. It wasn't her first encounter by any means, though she had gone for several months without one. Evil was back in her life.
The nurse came back after Price's departure, and made another examination. "Swelling's down, nothing broken. But I'm afraid the bruises will show for a few days, including a pair of black eyes."
"Great."
"I'll keep you under observation for the rest of the school day, and I think you should get a friend to drive you home afterward. Don't strain yourself, and don't go home alone."
Joan eventually drove her home. Grace put off any attempt at conversation and Joan accepted the silence. Grace's mother, when they got home, was outraged at the sight of her face. Remembering that any strong shock had the potential of sending Mrs. Polonski back to drink, Grace asked her to leave her alone in her room.
Grace had a bathroom of her own, off of her bedroom. After checking herself in the mirror, and seeing just how badly her face had been bruised, Grace lay down, thinking black thoughts.
She had been stupid. For several weeks she had thought that, if she only redid herself to look more attractive, the world would follow suit. It had all been an illusion. The world was full of crap, and she had stepped in it. Evil had defeated her by inverting her own plan. Do you think you can make yourself beautiful, Graceful One? I can make you ugly.
Grace's mother knocked at the bedroom door, and came in. "The Figliola girl wants to see you, Grace. You know, the one that -- " she brushed her stomach.
"That's still supposed to be secret, Mom. But yeah, I'll see her." Grace really didn't care one way or another.
Glynis came in, with a large flat box under her arm. To conceal her bulging abdomen, she was wearing a loose un-Glynis-like smock that would probably arouse anyone's suspicions, if anybody ever paid attention to Glynis. Grace estimated that Glynis's story would come out at school within a week.
"I heard the terrible news," Glynis said. "But what are you going to do about the Homecoming Queen contest?" The disconnect between the two thoughts seemed typical of Glynis' habit of talking in spurts.
"I hadn't even thought of it. Pull out, I guess. The contest is a farce in the first place. And I'm supposed to go around with two black eyes and say 'Elizabeth is wrong, I'm really the prettiest girl in school'?"
"Well, I had an idea. I figured, you aren't the sort of girl that keeps makeup around," Glynis said. "So I brought this. It's from that stupid cosmetics course two years ago. It's been sitting in my attic ever since."
"Um, thanks, Glynis."
"If you feel like standing up and going into the bathroom, I can show you how to apply the makeup."
They went in and got into the kit. Even after two years of oblivion Glynis remembered how to use everything and explained it well; that was the way her mind worked. But eventually the pregnant girl had to interrupt the lesson, saying she needed to pee. Grace left the bathroom to allow her privacy, and thought over Glynis' idea. A nice gesture, but the whole symbolism was wrong: trying to cosmeticise an ugly reality. It wasn't Grace's way of doing things.
And so when Glynis came out, Grace thanked her but cut the lesson short, saying that she was tired and aching. Glynis insisted on leaving the makeup box behind as Grace saw her out. "There's an instructional video if you have any questions."
Grace decided to try the video, not so much because she was interested as because she wanted to drive away the black thoughts. She told her mother (it was years since she had asked permission for things) that she wanted the rec-room's DVD/VCR in privacy. But the instructor's opening was so phony and smarmy -- "Welcome, girls, to the World of Beauty!" -- that Grace reached to turn it off again.
"Don't do that, Grace," said the instructor in a different tone of voice, "I can restore beauty to your soul."
Video God? Grace hoped that her mother would not hear her addressing the VCR.
"I can think of a couple of people whose souls need to be run through a wringer."
"But yours is more delicate. At the moment you think mankind is basically evil. But you're wrong. Mankind has free will and can choose between good and evil. Yes, your bully chose a deeper evil than many, causing you not only pain but humiliation. But Glynis tried to help you, even with her own life in crisis. A year ago, Luke stuck by you even when you tried to send him away. They could choose good, and did."
"But what does it matter? The evil people can just beat everybody else up. I used to think that I could fight back, I could do something about it, but, obviously, I was wrong," she replied sharply.
"But it doesn't stop there. Will you let yourself be defeated? If you hide yourself, feeling yourself humiliated, then the bully has won. But the disgrace should attach itself to the evildoer, not the victim. Live your life as if the bullies never blighted it."
"Are you saying that I should stay in the Homecoming contest?"
"Yes."
"But it's such a trivial way of fighting evil. As Price said, goodness has nothing to do with it."
"Rituals are symbolic, and can have amazing power."
"Are you going to heal my bruises before I go before hundreds of people Saturday night?
"No. They're already healing, and I don't like interfering with a natural process. I'm here to heal your soul. As for the skin, avail yourself of Glynis' gift." Her expression abruptly changed and went insipid again. "And now, girls, let's talk about beauty spots."
Grace gave a disgusted sigh and flipped off the offending piece of technology. Later, she replayed the tape and found no sign of God's conversation with her.
Meanwhile, as often happened with Joan, she was stuck with a simple but incomprehensible task.