Read Online Green Girl by Kate Zambreno - Free Book Online

look downwards. You look upwards. You are a good girl.
     
    Make me over into someone new, someone who doesn’t think such things, someone with memories wiped clean.
     
    Mold me.
     
    You are their raw material. Their Galatea. A fistful of clay, gray, gray, gray, like Ruth’s eyes, like the army of everywhere pigeons, like the crisp malice of the autumnal air. If the whole city of London was sliced open all that would come out would be a mess of intestinal gray. (In the world of cosmetics gray is not gray is not gray. There really are countless shades.)
     
    Such lovely lips, eyes, lashes. Such young skin, those brows, that neck. There is always some neglected attribute to draw out, to compliment. You drink it in. It is nourishment you have not received for a while and even if you receive it often you are always thirsty, thirsty for it. To be admired by the vast unknown.
     
    How did you get lured in? You were looking, searching, for something. Something to conceal, to hide, to disguise those flaws, no not the bit of redness there, the shine here, the crow’s feet there, the flaws deep inside, the filthy thoughts, the prurient mind. One magical product that would perform all this. You offer yourself up to the counter. No, you need concealers and highlighters and foundations and powders. A product to cancel out the other products.
     
    And finally the reveal. You use the hand mirror they provide. But his adoring eyes have already served as your mirror. Look at you. So lovely, lovely, lovely. The black-clad crowd crowds in for effect, the formerly bored frosted lilies now fawning over the mannequin (that’s you!), the slicked-back boys with shiny skin oohing and aahing, clapping their hands with glee.
     
    The girl behind the counter takes over from the male makeup artist. He is an artist. He doesn’t handle financial transactions. Earlier, to try to push the expensive makeup brushes on top of the purchase, he said: I am an artist. I must use my tools. You are my canvas. The salesgirl who has played the admiring spectator before now steps in front, clipboard in hand. All cool and business-like. The illusion is gone. They are not your friends. Or, to keep that illusion just a little longer, you know you must buy something. It’s part of the exchange, the ritual. She tallies it up. She barters with you still flush with attention. At home is a full makeup bag. But is there a price for seeing oneself anew in the mirror?
     
    This is for the eyes. This is for the lips. This is for the skin. They haggle over the skin.
     
    The skin is necessary of course. You need the skin. Without one of the tricks in the bag it all falls apart. It is a house of cards, your new identity. The makeup artist miraculously reappears to finish the sale. Look at how lovely you look. Your skin looks so young so dewy so glowing. You are reborn. You are luminous. You are lit from within. You flutter under the flattery, docile, obedient.
     
    I’ll take it. You say. I’ll take it. I’ll take the eyes, I’ll take the lips, I’ll take the skin. I’ll take it all.
     
    Wrap up my new face and throw it in a bag.
     
    They give you a face to take home, an actual paper face with colored in instructions. These masks like memento mori .
     
    Faces, other faces. I can take mine off and breathe.
     
     

The very turmoil of the streets has something repulsive about it—something against which human nature rebels. The hundreds of thousands of all classes and ranks crowding past each other—aren’t they all human beings with the same qualities and powers, and with the same interest in being happy? And aren’t they obliged, in the end, to seek happiness in the same way, by the same means? And still they crowd by one another as though they had nothing in common, nothing to do with one another, and their only agreement is the tacit one—that each keep to his own side of the pavement, so as not to delay the opposing stream of the crowd—while no man thinks