If I Told You Once. Judy Budnitz

were painted on. I gaped. She did not seem human; I wondered if she was something Baba had created: carved out of soap, baked in the oven, cultivated in the dark like a mushroom.

      Close the door, cow-eyes, there’s a draft, she said. Her voice was that annoying singsong that had faintly haunted the house since I arrived.

      I closed the door and stepped closer. I knelt beside her and studied her. I could not resist poking her arm; her flesh was as cushiony as it looked. It was flesh that had never worked or sweated under the sun. I poked her again. I fingered a thick handful of hair. She was a fascinating plaything. She lay there limply, regarding me indifferently.

      Baba said there was a girl here, but she did not want you to see me, she said.

      Why? I said, watching the hair slide and shimmer like water.

      She said in her grating voice: I hate it here, I’m going mad in this room.

      How long have you been here?

      More than two years, I think. I’m not sure.

      Why don’t you leave then? I said.

      At that she raised herself up and began tossing aside the blankets that covered her lower body. Her legs entranced me: smooth, white, hairless. And then I saw that she had no feet.

      How …

      She leaned back and sighed. She told me how a man had gotten her into trouble, a married man her father’s age who pushed her down in the forest without a word and held her there. She had been in trouble and had heard Baba could help her out of it.

      She said: I used to live in a village far away, I had to walk all night to get here, it was terribly cold and by the time I arrived my feet were frostbitten. Baba got rid of the baby, and I hardly felt it, for the pain in my feet. I got terribly sick and she took care of me for weeks, and when I came out of the fever I found myself here, in this room, and Baba told me my feet had turned black and fallen off, she hadn’t been able to save them from the frostbite. I couldn’t go home, after the trouble with the man, so she has kept me here, all this time.

      Your hair, I said. Has it always been like this?

      No, she said, it’s Baba’s doing, she rubs a horrible green paste into my scalp every night, and then it grows like weeds.

      I said: Those men, why do they come here at night?

      She laughed shrilly and said: They like to look. All they do is stand around and stare, with their mouths hanging open and their hands in their pockets. They stink, and they say the stupidest things.

      Do they touch you?

      Baba won’t let them, she has told them I am some kind of ridiculous fairy creature, and if they touch me I’ll shrivel up and turn to dust.

      And they believe that?

      Men are foolish, she said, they believe what they want to believe.

      They only look?

      Yes, Baba tells them that what they feel is an illness that requires a cure. Whether they believe that or not, they keep coming back. And bringing friends.

      Do you like it? I whispered.

      She said scornfully: Men are like cattle, easily led.

      I fingered her hair. She let me. I wondered if Baba did the same thing.

      When you leave Baba, will you take me with you? she said suddenly. I’ll go mad if I stay here much longer.

      Her eyes traveled over my face. I felt myself flushing. I was conscious as never before of the sallowness of my skin, the narrowness of my face, the pink birthmark at the corner of my lips like a dribble of wine.

      She said her name was Anya.

      During the following days I visited her room often.

      How I hated her whining voice.

      But her body was a white smooth thing that I wanted to swallow whole. Even the blunt stubs of her legs were beautiful to me, there was something so naked and helpless about them. I split wood into smaller and smaller pieces and let the sweat run down my face to burn my eyes.

      Baba watched us both and smiled.

      The men continued their secret visits. As the winter dragged on they came more and more often, red eyed, distracted; they could not really see me, or Baba. They saw only the milky smooth skin, the red-gold hair that grew over the floor and climbed the walls like ivy. They looked and wiped their mouths.

      Anya said scornful things to them, yet she seemed to luxuriate beneath their gazes like a cat being stroked. She kept her legs discreetly covered.

      The men began coming every night. There were more than two dozen of them now. They shuffled into Anya’s room in shifts for their precious minutes. They began to come earlier in the night, some even came at dusk and lurked among the trees waiting for Baba to admit them. These men were burly with bushy beards like my father. But there was a desperation about them that made them slack mouthed and helpless. They seemed not to understand it themselves; I saw them shaking their heads over nothing, clucking their tongues.

      Now when I went down to the village I heard muttering among the women. They had noticed the change in their husbands. They knew their men were visiting Baba’s house late at night, but none of them knew about the footless girl hidden there. Some women suspected Baba was offering herself to the men. That old hag? Impossible. How could they? the women asked each other. No man would touch her, they reassured themselves. But there were a few who said: She has bewitched them all.

      Night after night they came.

      On a night when the men were more frantic than ever, one of them refused to leave Anya’s room when his allotted time was up. Baba spoke sharply; he ignored her. She tugged his arm, but he brushed her away and swiftly knelt by the bedside, reaching out to touch Anya’s face as she recoiled in disgust.

      Baba cried out angrily; the other men reluctantly dragged their friend from the room. Baba herded the men onto the doorstep, told them never to return, and turned the lock after them.

      She watched from the window as they wandered back to the village, hanging their heads, sullen in the moonlight. Go to sleep, she told me. She went into Anya’s room and locked the door behind her. I lay awake thinking of her brown spotted hands touching Anya’s white ones.

      The days that followed were queer silent ones.

      One evening I heard the wail of a rising wind. The trees moaned and scraped against each other. A storm was brewing. I heard footsteps, glimpsed a dark figure darting among the trunks. I whirled about.

      A branch snapped and I saw one of the village men approaching, his eyes cold and thoughtless. I ran to the house and he lurched behind me. Men were emerging from the wood on all sides, swaying and staggering up to the doorstep.

      I slipped into the house from behind and barred the back door. I saw Baba standing in the front doorway, facing the men gathered there. Their bodies were dark and indistinct, their eyes glowing, like wandering spirits. They were demanding entrance, bellowing and snorting.

      I saw Baba refusing, saw her hands brushing them away. The men’s faces fell. Like spiteful schoolboys they kicked each other, spat, began hurling small stones that flew past Baba and tocked on the floor.

      Then a stone the size of a fist struck her on the temple and she fell back. I caught her under the arms and pulled her into the house. Her heavy head lay against my shoulder. The men looked shocked, suddenly ashamed, and they backed away, melting into the trees. I barred the door behind them.

      I dragged Baba to the bed. There was no blood, but her breathing was shallow and a greenish bruise was rapidly forming over her temple.

      In a matter of hours the bruise had deepened and spread over her entire face, as if her head were a rotten melon. In the dark hour before dawn her breathing stopped.

      I wiped her mouth, pressed her lids shut. I held her head, touched the dense loaf of hair. I realized with