Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All

by Laura Ruby

The order of nuns that ran the orphanage was called the Sisters of Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow, but some sisters served Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow, and others simply caused perpetual sorrow for everyone else.

I wandered Chicago, antsy and ghostful.

Now, as always, I could have walked straight into the house, through the door or the wall, but I didn’t. I might have been a revenant, but I wasn’t a creep.

How nice to be a man, to be free to read a monster book in public without anyone worried that you would turn into a monster yourself.

Bible verses tingled on my tongue: His eyes are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters, washed with milk, and fitly set. His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers: his lips like lilies. Except his eyes weren’t like doves at all, not pale like that, not soft. They were as black as his hair, black as the wings of crows wet with rain. And didn’t smile the way that other boys, other men had smiled at me, the way they would have smiled at a girl so damp and disheveled, wrecked and wretched. He didn’t smile at all. He was almost . . . frowning. As if I had disturbed him somehow. As if I were threatening. When I reached him, when I said hello, all he did was nod to acknowledge it. I asked him if the package was for Mr. Brownlow, he nodded again, holding the parcel out to me with one hand, but the way you’d hold out a scrap of meat to an animal, perhaps wanting to feed it but still afraid it will bite. I thought, Please don’t be scared of me, why are you scared of me, you’ve never met me before, you don’t even know me, and, at the same time, That’s right, be scared of me, be terrified. So, said Mad Maureen Kelly. Who was the wolf?

Another door, I said. What? Doors can be dangerous. You never know what’s on the other side, what you’re letting in. True, she said. In stories, girls are always opening doors, always the wrong ones. Always crossing thresholds thinking they’re getting away free. Nothing is free. Marguerite ran a finger down the side of her face, as if remembering someone else’s touch. It doesn’t matter which door you open, she said. Three or ten or thirteen doorways, there are wolves behind them all.

In 1932, we thought Hitler was a ridiculous little man, Marguerite said. No one took him seriously. We were too busy with our own worries.

Why does the world demand girls be beautiful, but when they are, punish them for it? Why does it punish girls either way? Why does the world want girls to be sorry, some even more than others? Sorry, sorrier, sorriest.

You tell yourself the story of what happened. And then it happens. Try it.

What if he doesn’t repent? What if he tells me that even with everything that happened, he would do it all again? Love you? Hurt me. I took the bourbon from her hands, drained it, turned the glass over, and slapped it down on the bar. Then, I said, we kill him.

She dragged her eyes back to me, her attention. She said, No one is ever ready for something like this. You don’t do it because you’re ready. You do it because you’re weary. And I am weary. I have been weary for too long.

Girls were punished so hard for their love, so hard, hard enough to break them.

But pain could be on the other side, too. Failure. Ruin. She couldn’t be sure what was waiting behind it, wing or tooth or claw.

My friend Claire Rudolf Murphy has said that a single book has several story arcs, including the arc of the book itself, the arc of the author’s life during the writing of the book, and the arc of the world during the writing of that book.