mingled outrage and confusion, but the woman in the stall continues, oblivious or uncaring. “I can make that happen. Help you, help me.”
Bronca has never, ever responded well to threats. Not even when everything about this situation, everything about this invisible woman, has her so unnerved that she’s broken out in gooseflesh. But this ain’t her first rodeo. She knows better than to show weakness.
“I think I’d like you to come out here and say that to my face,” she snaps.
There is a startled pause. Then the woman in the stall laughs. It’s not a giggle this time. This is a full-on, rich, rolling belly laugh, though with a scratchy edge that makes it less than pleasant to listen to. It goes on insultingly long, too, and finishes with “Oh, my! Oh, honey. No. It’s been a long day, and this shape is such a pain. I’ve had to step into my parlor, so to speak, to rest. So trust me… you don’t want me to open that door right now.”
“Yeah, I really fucking do,” Bronca snaps. “You gonna sit in a goddamn toilet and threaten me and mine?” It’s bluster. She’s sick with fear, even though fear usually pisses her off, makes her even more ready to fight. Now, though, every instinct is a-jangle with warning that somehow she isn’t ready for this. She can’t let this chick get away with threatening her… but she also doesn’t want to see what’s inside that bathroom stall.
“It isn’t a threat,” says Stall Woman. And suddenly, her voice is different. Less pleasant. Less husky, more… hollow. Like she’s outside the stall somehow, speaking from much farther away. Like the stall is not a tiny cubicle but a vast, vaulted space; her voice echoes off surfaces that should not be in there with the toilet and the tampon box. And she’s not smiling anymore, this unseen woman within a South Bronx bathroom stall; oh no. Bronca can practically hear the words being gritted through teeth.
“Consider it advice. Yes, advice, useful advice to counter your useless innocence. You willlll see things in these next few days, understand.” Almost electronic, that extended word. Like the stutter of an audio file that’s corrupted or otherwise incompatible with whatever system it’s trying to run on. “Fresh things, unique thiiiings! When you d-d-do, remember this conversation, would you? Remember that I offerrred you a chance to live, and you ssssspurned it. I held out my hand and you b-b-burned it. And when your grandchild lies torn from its m-m-mother’s belly, split and spilt upon the ground like so much garbage truck falloff—”
Bronca clenches her fists. “Oh, that’s fucking it—”
And in that moment, something ripples through the room.
Bronca starts, looking around in momentary distraction from Stall Woman. That ripple felt like an earthquake, or the subway having a bad day, but nothing’s rattling and the closest subway line runs three blocks away. Bronca hasn’t moved, and yet she feels like she has. Inside.
Stall Woman is still jabbering, her voice growing louder and faster with every word. But somehow, Stall Woman becomes unimportant. There is a stretching… a snapping-into, like a puzzle piece finding its place. A becoming. And all at once Bronca is different. Bigger than herself.
Out of nowhere Bronca finds herself remembering a day from her childhood. She’d stolen—borrowed—her father’s steel-toed construction worker boots so that she could walk through a brickyard on her way to do errands. The brickyard was full of rubble from a building demolished so long ago that it had sprouted flowers and ivy, but she’d decided to cut through it to avoid some of the neighborhood boys, whose catcalling and attempts to follow her had lately shifted from speculation into an active hunt. There had been one man (they were all grown men, and she all of eleven years old; her low opinion of men is so well earned) who moonlighted as a security guard, and who’d been especially persistent. Rumor had it that he’d washed out of being a cop somehow; something involving improper behavior with an underage witness. Rumor also had it that he liked Hispanic girls, and nobody around the Bronx could keep it straight that Bronca was something else.
So when she’d seen this man step out of the crumbling entryway of an old building shell, with a smirk on his lips and his hand prominently resting on the handle of his gun, she’d felt like she does now, fiftyish years later in an art center bathroom. She’d felt bigger.