Mr. Fox

by Helen Oyeyemi

“What would you do for me?” she asked. I studied her, and she seemed perfectly serious. She was making an offer. “Slay a dragon. Ten dragons. Anything,” I said.

Then I told Katherine about the literature assignment I was setting her: read The Woman in White and The Count of Monte Cristo, then answer the question “What is a villain?”

I haven’t been to the Long Island house, but I’ve seen photographs, and I hope the Coles never think to ask me along. Besides the tennis court they have a swimming pool and a topiary maze. Also a cook. What would I do in such a place? Die, I expect.

Good for you, Count of Monte Cristo. Your escape is one in the eye for jailers everywhere.

She knows her place, she sure does know her place. There’s something ghostlike about this girl…she will appear at certain times and in certain places, and at other times she will recede into a disinterested dark.

His eyes were quite beady, there was too much white to them and they sat too close together, but his smile was pleasant, soothing, despite them.

I often think it would be such luxury to go mad, and not have to worry about anything. Others would have to worry for me, about me.

I had been quite tired the past few days: sleeping longer than usual, feeling the shock of waking throughout my body, as if I had been flung against a wall.

He knew what was supposed to happen. He knew that this awkward, whispering creature before him should now transform into a princess—dazzlingly beautiful, free, and made wise by her hardship. That is not what happened.

Our Decisive Thinking examinations are conversations conducted before the entire class, and your grade depends not on the answer you give but on the tenacity with which you cling to your choice. You earn a grade A by demonstrating, without a hint of nervousness or irritation, that you are impervious to any external logic. You earn an A+ if you manage this whilst affecting a mild and pleasant demeanour.

Because things grow. Wherever there is air and light and open space, things grow. So much cutting and uprooting must be done to keep a place like this bare.

Close to the waterfall each tree quivers as if trying to shake itself awake from a bad dream without waking the others up.

I look through the dusty window (I can never get it clean; the desert is our neighbour) and I see soldiers every day. They think someone dangerous is running secret messages through here; that’s what I’ve heard. What worries me more is the young people of the village. They stand and watch the soldiers. And the soldiers don’t like it, and the soldiers point their guns, especially at the young men. They won’t bother with the women and girls, unless the woman or the girl has an especially wild look in her eyes. I think there are two reasons the soldiers don’t like the young men watching them. The first reason is that the soldiers know they are ugly in their boots and fatigues; they are perfectly aware that their presence spoils everything around them. The second reason is the nature of the watching—the boys and the men around here watch with a very great hatred, so great that it feels as if action must follow. I feel that sometimes, just walking past them—when I block their view of the soldiers these boys quiver with impatience.

All I could think of were a couple of lines someone else had recited to me a long time ago, in France: To goodness and wisdom we only make promises; pain we obey.

and she didn’t hesitate or falter because she’d gone nuts. She was scared right out of her mind. She had to be—to rescue herself. So she quit working to make sense of things—we don’t always realise it, but it’s hard work we do almost every waking moment, building our thoughts and memories and actions around time, things that happened yesterday, and things that are happening right now, and what’s coming tomorrow, layering all of that simultaneously and holding it in balance. She cut it out and just kept moving. She was nobody, she was nowhere, doing nothing, but doing it as hard and fast as she could.

Our exchanges always seem to turn into whatever he wants them to.

A dark man, my St. John, tall and broad-shouldered and full of force he doesn’t exert. I’m only just starting to see him clearly.

I came to him without substance, and six years later I’m still the same.