Sewer Girls

Real pipelines aren’t as big as they are in the movies, so sewer girls are used to making themselves small. They keep their elbows tucked close to their sides, knees slightly bent so their hair won’t brush up against metal ceilings which quiver when semis drive past up above. Their thighs are strong from permanent squats. Their abs are strong from keeping their stomachs sucked in. They hold their breaths so their lungs won’t expand, but this is fine: the air down here is foul, anyway.

…

Sewer girls collect pregnancy tests like Pokémon cards. A single one will run you twenty bucks at CVS, but the nurses give them out for free at the corner clinic. “Grab some condoms while you’re at it,” the lady at the front desk always says when a sewer girl drops by, brandishing the bowl of Trojans that sits out on the counter. “We’ve even got cherry flavored.” There’s no privacy in the sewers, but this has never been a deterrent; it’s easy to spot shadowy figures hunkered down in dark corners, jeans bunched around their ankles, a stream of pee mixing into the filth already puddled on the cement floors. Used sticks build up in piles along the convex walls, positives and negatives all jumbled together.

Once, the piles got so high they reached the pipe tops, pushed against the manholes until the covers came loose and they poured out onto the streets above, onto the sidewalks so pedestrians would crunch crunch crunch when they walked. Red-faced politicians stood behind podiums and squawked about the sewer girls until their bellies were sore. Something had to be done, they agreed. But sewer girls are a resilient sort: they slip like reptiles underground where it’s dark and wet and squalid, where police officers are afraid to follow. It’s impossible to get rid of sewer girls, so instead, municipal workers went around and bundled the pregnancy tests into garbage bags, lugging them into one large mountain on the city outskirts. They poured gasoline over the bags and threw matches on top, dancing around the flames as the smell of burning plastic mushroomed out across a dusk orange sky.

…

Sewer girls weren’t always sewer girls, you know. Once, they were children who played with Barbies and Easy-Bakes, tomboys who scraped their knees climbing trees. They used to sit in sudsy bathtubs with their sisters, coating each other’s backs with bar soap and tracing pictures into the foam with their fingertips. They spent their winters pouring maple syrup over the snow because that’s what Laura Ingalls did in Little House on the Prairie, licking the frozen sugar crystals from their palms. In the summer, they’d crouch in their mothers’ gardens and watch monarch butterflies suckle at the milkweed. For Halloween, they’d paint their noses black and bend fuzzy pipe cleaners into cat ear crowns. At school, teachers would warn to be careful of strangers, and the children who were not yet sewer girls would listen with wide, curious eyes, wondering whom to trust. A stranger’s not a stranger to everyone, after all.

…

Question: If a sewer girl jumps off a building but no one’s there to witness her body splatter open on the concrete, did she really make a sound?

…

Braver boys will sometimes sneak down into the pipes and litter the walls with graffiti. They go after sunset, after all the sewer girls have crawled up for the night. There’s an Ace Hardware within walking distance that sells spray paint on perpetual discount, so the boys stock up, filling their backpacks, their moms’ grocery totes, the canvas messenger bags they use for their Sunday paper routes. As they make their way to the nearest manhole, the shaker marbles rattle inside the aluminum cans like a choir of snuffed handbells. The maintenance ladders are slick with humidity, so the boys are careful going down. They take their time practicing their art—their names; declarations of undying love for high school crushes; cocks and balls because, as their dads frequently defend, boys will be boys. This is the Sistine Chapel, and they are Michelangelo.

When the sewer girls return, they pause to admire the new additions, phone flashlights illuminating the fresh paint. They never mind it. Sewer girls understand what it’s like to want to leave your mark. They understand what it’s like to want to be remembered.

…

Sewer girls slice their knuckles on sharp teeth. They lap the blood up with their tongues and swallow back the taste of copper, wave away offered Band-Aids because they’ve been through far worse. Sewer girls have spent their whole lives fighting. They light tea candles and set them on the floor, do pushups over the open flames until their triceps melt with the wax. They wrap their hands in boxing tape and punch at wooden poles until the fabric soaks scarlet. They keep their nails long just in case they need to claw out faces, store DNA in the crevices of their bodies so they can make the bastards pay. They carry pepper spray in their purses. They aim for the groin. Sewer girls know to protect themselves, because they know no one else is going to do it for them.

…

In the movies, sewer girls wear ’80s leggings and Dolly Parton hair. Their dresses are leopard print and body tight, just barely stretching over the curve of their asses, and their makeup is so heavy you’d think even a crane couldn’t lift it.

In reality though, you might look at a sewer girl and easily mistake her for your sister, your daughter, the pretty IHOP waitress who gave you a free side of hash after you told her you were having a bad day. Sewer girls are sneaky like that. They like to blend in. They camouflage themselves with sports bras and oversized sweaters, and rub coconut oil into the corners of their eyes because Pinterest said it would help prevent wrinkles. There’s no one style they ask for at the salon: they have bob cuts and pink-tipped pixies, balayage waves down to their waists. They spritz themselves with Bath & Body Works because it makes them feel pretty. If you didn’t know any better, you’d almost think they were normal.

…

You didn’t meet a sewer girl until you were a freshman in college. You got wasted at a friend of a friend of a friend’s house party, too nervous and awkward in your own not-quite-adult body to notice how many cups of spiked punch you’d guzzled down. All the bathrooms were taken, even the en suite attached to your friend of a friend of a friend’s parents’ bedroom, so you ended up puking into the rose bush out front. You startled at the calloused hand that came out of nowhere to caress the sweat-soaked hair plastered to the nape of your neck. The breath in your ear smelled like beer, too warm and too close, and you tried to pull away but your limbs had turned into marble, and it was only then you realized there was probably more than just alcohol mixed in with your drink.

Before you could try to fight back though, the sewer girl was there, screaming and shoving him away and you were suddenly sprawled out on your back across the lawn and he was leaving and she was kneeling beside you even though the grass was damp and already soaking through your clothes. At the time, you didn’t know she was a sewer girl; you were young, and stupid, and had fallen for the media tricks. You didn’t know, so you didn’t care. You just stared up at her like she was a sky full of stars, beautiful and untouchable.

…

Your sewer girl sips her wine straight from the bottle between mouthfuls of Chinese takeout, then turns to you and offers a swig. You shake your head, because it seems unsanitary, so she turns instead to the sewer girl beside her, who gladly accepts. There’s no internet down in the pipes, and so no Netflix, either. Instead, a pre-recorded MAS*H episode plays on the CRT TV, and if you listen closely enough, you can hear the faint buzzing of a scrolling VHS tape. Every once in a while, one of the sewer girls will rise from her spot on the damp ground and wipe the buildup of humidity on the screen.

You don’t know why you came here. You don’t know why you’ve stayed.
But when Major Hot Lips Houlihan makes a clever quip, and suddenly all the sewer girls are laughing, and your sewer girl is grinning at you as she chews on chow mein, you decide it doesn’t matter. This is close enough to home.

First published in The Pinch, Vol. 43, Issue 1