Courage, Confidence and Character

The three girls were fully aware of the alliteration between their names. In fact, although none of them remembered, it was what drew them to be friends in the first place. However, they did remember that the similarity between their names and the organization’s motto is what lead them to sign up as Girl Scouts. Courtney, Connie and Karen looked like a set of Russian dolls as they ran down the street in their green uniforms. Connie in the back was extremely tall for a 5^th grader, whereas Karen upfront was extremely tiny for a 5^th grader and Courtney in the middle was about the height you might expect of a 5^th grader.

“Let’s move it,” shouted Karen. They had just learned that their sworn enemy, Teresa, had been selling cookies door-to-door, which really wasn’t allowed anymore, and Karen wasn’t going to let her have the upper hand. “Slow down,” cried Connie from far behind. “Yeah, don’t be such a Karen, Karen,” Courtney complained. Karen stopped suddenly and turned, with a glare. A short but intense discourse transpired with Karen Yang reminding the others she was named before that insult existed and she couldn’t be one because it was “for white ladies,” and not only was she Chinese American and not white but she was “assertive, not pushy” and that the whole thing was not only sexist but “name-ist,” which could be “the worst ‘ist’ of all.” After it was agreed to continue calling Karen ‘Karen,’ but never ‘a Karen’ again, the three realized what they were standing in front of.

The little house creeped out all of the kids, and most of the adults, in the neighborhood. It was overrun with weeds and vines. Rusty and broken old nick-nacks, of the garden-gnome variety, littered the yard and most people had never seen anyone coming or going, but there was definitely someone in there feeding cats because the property was a magnet for every cat in a mile radius. Karen walked into the yard. “What are you doing? No one goes there,” Connie said. “Exactly, so that means it’s one house Teresa won’t get. We need any advantage. C’mon, ‘courage, confidence and character’,” Karen responded. Before they could argue with her, she was knocking on the door. She had pressed the bell, but was fairly confident that it had produced nothing and had been long out of order. After what seemed like ages, but was probably only a minute or two, the door was opened by a surprisingly well dressed and tidy looking elderly woman. What could be seen of the inside of the home was also surprisingly tidy.

Courtney and Connie couldn’t make out much being said, since they were still firmly planted on the sidewalk, but they could tell the woman had a British accent and was very excited to have a visitor. They heard the words “husband” and “hibiscus tea,” and to their horror, Karen walked into the house and the door shut behind her.

The woman invited Karen to sit in a burgundy velvet chair that dipped low to the floor, causing Karen’s knees to come up to her chest. The room seemed to have been constructed by layering drapes upon drapes and was finished with a layer of dust. The woman sat across from her and called into the other room, “Bart, darling, tea for our guest! You do drink tea, dear?”

Before Karen could answer, the woman rose and disappeared through a beaded curtain.

The moment the room stilled, a slight metallic din began, and Karen became frightened. Why hadn’t her friends joined her? Why had she felt so at ease accepting a stranger’s invitation? Was she not Karen, daughter of Daniel Yang, the man who mastered reflective vests and required helmets on even the lowest swing?

Enter Bart, who, though clad in chainmail, wearing a feathered mask, and carrying a tray with a teapot, sugar, and cups, was immediately identified by Karen as the old woman.

“Hello,” the woman said in a more mechanical tone than before. “How mature! I am told you are a tea connoisseur.” Karen played along.

“Will your wife be joining us for tea?” she asked.

“I can’t say,” Bart shrugged. “An AI only serves, and even I cannot foresee the future.”

Courtney and Connie knew they needed to lift their feet and move from that spot. They didn’t want to imagine what horrors their friend might be experiencing, but knew this was all Teresa’s fault, as they had all been warned many times of the dangers of unsupervised door-to-door activity.

Connie was confused and spat out all that was wracking her brain, “What is wrong with her? Why in the world would she do that? Why would you let her do that?”

“Me? Do not go there Concetta. You were here right with me.” Courtney quickly followed this with an apology, since she immediately felt bad about intentionally using Connie’s hated non-nick name, and knew she had already been guilty of name-ism today, and worried that her name-ist attack may have been what broke Karen’s sense of reality and rationale.

There was no way around it, they had to enter that yard, and not along the slight trace of a path to the door. They would have to go through the jungle of weeds, branches and junk to try to hear something from a window and form a plan before anyone else did anything as silly as Karen. If only they had one of Mr. Yang’s vests to bring them some protection, even one of his wacky helmets would help.

They slowly and quietly made their way through the mini forrest, their shins getting tiny nicks and scratches the whole way. All of the windows were blacked out by drapes, so they picked one around the corner from the door and held on to the frame to lift their heads up and press their ears tightly to the, unfortunately filthy, window.

Like Karen inside, they were perplexed by that metallic din. Connie thought it sounded a bit like her mother’s Tesla was running inside the house. They could just barely make out some muffled voices, so they pressed up even tighter. Suddenly, a blast of light shown through the drapes, knocking the girls back in shock. They fell to the brambly ground.

Bart filled a cup with tea, placed it on a saucer, and handed it to Karen. There was something about the crisp old woman in costume that set her at ease. The china was warm on the tips of her fingers, and the bergamot cleared her nostrils—a tightness in her chest receded, and Karen was at peace. It was this feeling of tranquility that awakened Karen to the possibility that it was all a ruse. The world in which she dwelt was a dangerous one. Did they think she would sip their tea? Perhaps it was merely a lonely rite, or perhaps the old woman’s basement was filled with tea partiers’ bodies? Karen didn’t know, but if there was one thing she had learned growing up in the valley, it was that the miraculous and the bizarre could all be pushed aside by the might of capitalism.

Karen pulled a box of Thin Mints from her rucksack.

“Everyone likes Thin Mints, and everyone likes a good cause. Support your local troop. Two for $24.99.”

Bart bowed and left the room.

The old woman returned, a shock of her platinum hair floating freely from her bun.

“Is the tea not to your liking? Bart looked somewhat distressed.”

“Thin Mints. Two for $24.99,” Karen replied, surprised to find herself less inclined to indulge the woman without the feathers.

“Surely, we could open a box—to go with the tea? Friend to friend?”

“Deal or no deal. No more crap, lady,” Karen stated.

“Bart has my pocketbook,” said the woman. “Wait here.”

Karen had never addressed an adult with such a tone before. To do so in what should have been a simple exchange felt bold. She hoped for payment, of course, but she prepared for retribution. In her experience, adults didn’t respond well to assertion. She heard a clattering from behind the door. ‘When Bart returns,’ she thought, ‘I will be ready.’ She scanned the room for a blunt object—a paperweight or a fire iron—but her gaze landed on cats. Cats upon cats. A Russian Blue on the mantel. A Tonkinese lurking behind an armoire. A Cornish Rex flicking its tail by a grandfather clock. The sounds of metal on metal and cat tongues sliding over fur filled the air. The dark slits of their eyes widened. Were they watching her? Surrounding her?

Bart reappeared, his presence as imposing as a howling wolf. She would not meet her end in this room. With a heave, she threw a painted rock across the space.

A Burmese cat startled. A lamp toppled.

The shade, bulb, switch, and cord tangled. Pop! The chainmail on Bart’s chest burst into a blaze of light. Then the room—and the house—fell silent.

Meanwhile on the ground, Karen’s friends lay amongst brambles and spilled boxes of thin mints, do-si-dos, samoas and tagalongs.

The flash of light still blurring her vision and the accompanying metallic cacophony ringing in her ears, Courtney felt all that forced courage, confidence and character slipping away. She wanted to run and not look back, not actively deciding to abandon her friends, but also not actively considering what would happen to them. She sprung and ran.

Connie, being in the middle of what seemed to be a never-ending growth spurt, had far less coordination and found herself struggling to get to her feet.

“Courtney, you little piece,” she cried. Being frequently scolded by following the word ‘piece’ with ‘of shit,’ ‘of crap,’ and even ‘of garbage’ by some of the more uptight adults like Courtney’s mom, the girl’s had taken to calling people and various things that were upsetting or not impressing them simply ‘pieces.’

Courtney stopped dead in her tracks. She wasn’t a ‘piece.’ Teresa was a ‘piece.’ Pop quizzes were ‘pieces.’ The TV and movies her mom let her watch were ‘pieces,’ but she certainly wasn’t.

“C’mon, if you’re coming, come. I was just going to get help,” she said, lying. She hadn’t worked anything out and her brain had just clicked flight mode. “My mom should be home already. We need to go get her, and Karen’s dad works from home, so we can tell him too.”

The three girls huddled under a space blanket, leaning against the ambulance bumper. Red and blue lights danced off the citrus trees and palm leaves. Karen’s dad and Courtney’s mom stood near the yellow tape, their postures mirroring each other’s in a somber duet reminiscent of a two-person improv troupe. Her dad shook his head and kicked at the pavement, while Courtney’s mom crossed her arms and readjusted her bun. They punctuated their whispers with occasional glances toward the girls, checking in.

“You girls okay?”

“Everyone warm enough?”

Center stage was the house—dark and brooding, a silent witness to the night’s events. Years ago, it had boasted a cheerful yellow paint and windows adorned with flower boxes creeping up the shutters blooming clematis. Now, under the glare of the squad cars’ headlights, its grey slats stood stark and dull. Why was it that new things glittered in the light?

Inside was unlit. A pair of medics hoisted a gurney three steps from the porch to the sidewalk. The old woman covered in a white sheet. The girls’ parents crowded around them, as if to shield their eyes from the scene. Yet, even without their parents’ intervention, the girls looked away. They had learned to avert their eyes in the valley. The had learned not to see things that might haunt them. In a second-story window of the gloomy house, a cat licked the fur on its shoulder.