Maria Teplova, Movie Night
The Home for Problem Girls
They sent me to a home for problem girls because I kept taking my clothes off in music class, and now here I am.
My fall from grace began in the summer, when I was fourteen. Afternoons, my sister Sandra and I took off our shoes and socks in the stuffy old hall where our parents had sent us for music camp, because the air conditioning was broken and it was too hot inside for sensible footwear. We kept our ankles crossed under our chairs. The teachers either never noticed or never cared about our bare feet.
You’ll never know how much I appreciated this tiny camaraderie between Sandra and I, becoming sockless together.
But I couldn’t stop at just sockless. Once my toes were liberated, everything else had to come out too. Soon I became naked behind my cello. They called my parents and my parents locked me away in a home with other delinquent females.
At the home, I was reunited with my old ballet teacher Janie, the one with the spiked hair and the fruit bat tattoos, the only adult who ever loved me. I remembered Janie from the past as someone much older. But now, in the home, she seemed to have regressed in age. Despite her professional wardrobe, she looked nineteen or twenty at most.
I wasn’t sure if Janie was there as a counselor or because she too was a problem girl. Individual roles in the home were always a puzzle. For instance, many of the wardens also served lunch, and many of the lunch ladies wore business-casual shoes. Janie’s role, in particular, was very iffy. Afternoons, she would stride through the halls in a pantsuit, holding a clipboard, pen behind ear, and every once in a while, she would tap girls on their shoulders and say they were making great progress. But she slept in the same room with all us problem girls, which none of the other counselors did, and she didn’t always keep her socks on during meals.
Sometimes, at night, Janie would climb into bed with me and we’d cuddle. “You’re making progress,” she’d tell me in the morning, winking like it was some kind of inside joke.
“Am I?”
She never answered.
There were about thirty of us problem girls in the home, but they and I had nothing in common. They were all druggies or hornies. Me, I was scared to paint my nails lest I accidentally get high on nail polish remover once I got tired of the chipped colors, and I didn’t have a lot of sex, or any sex, I just really liked becoming naked. It was all about skin for me, not about organs or orgasms. Still, despite our obvious differences, I tried to make friends with the other problem girls. But I remained lonely-ish.
During visiting hours, Sandra came to see me frequently. She had a license now. “You’d get out of here sooner if you behaved yourself,” she told me, because I was once again naked, hanging upside down from a random clothesline in the visiting room. “You’re always making a scene.”
“Yes,” I replied. “I do make quite a lot of scenes.”
“Will you please come down and put your clothes on?”
Obediently I got down from the clothesline and wrapped myself in a sweater, which wasn’t mine. At least my nipples were covered.
“I want you to come home,” Sandra said. “I want to tell everyone you’re all better now. Please, Kittie, get better.”
“I’ll try,” I said, and she offered to pray for my soul.
For a few weeks I kept my promise. I tried to behave. Really I tried, for Sandra’s sake. I kept my clothes on all throughout dinner. I kept my clothes on during midnight ping-pong tournaments which were forbidden by staff but mandatory for sanity. I kept them on in the shower. I even kept them on outside, which was hard, because I missed feeling the cold lick of autumn on my bare skin once the weather turned chilly. On occasion I scraped the frosting
from a few cupcakes and smeared it on my genitals, but this was only a tiny rebellion, pea-sized really, and I made sure not to get caught. My behavior was mostly good, and slowly everyone seemed to notice my improvement. The counsellors started treating me better, taking me more seriously and hitting me less, and soon they were talking about discharging me from the home, possibly before Christmas. Those counsellors, they always spoke about us girls as if we were delayed construction projects. “Should be done by December, if all goes according to plan.”
One night Janie was licking stray frosting from the insides of my legs, which was not intended to be a sexy activity so much as it was an act of hygiene, for frosting can infect if left untreated. Think of a mother cat licking its babies. As she cleaned me, I broke the news that I would probably be home by the holiday season. “Home for good,” I specified. “As in, permanently discharged.”
“Progress,” she whispered.
“Progress,” I repeated, and she smiled. I thought of my parents who’d sent me here, of my parents who were always shipping me off to some boring summer camp or after-school shenanigans activity, of Sandra who loved me but was always preaching at me. “I’ll miss you,” I said to Janie.
“No, you won’t.”
“Yes. I will.”
“You’re beautiful,” she said. “Such a sweet girl.”
I told her I didn’t believe her, and that beauty meant nothing to me anyway.
“Don’t sacrifice your future for me,” Janie advised, and I promised I wouldn’t. But by morning I was running up and down the halls stark naked once again.