Woman in Red

K. Huebner

Sometimes she wears orange and sometimes red, but she always
follows me and I cannot get rid of her. Sometimes I love her and
sometimes I hate her, but there is no escaping her reckless near-
sighted vitality. She has several faces, depending on which body
she inhabits, but she has brown hair and her birthday is close to
mine. She likes to spit fire and dance like a serpent, and to creep
into hearts like a mouse into its hole. Laughing too loudly, a little
hysterically, she sticks knives into unsuspecting lovers. Her name
can be Eden, Paloma, Laura, Inez…
She doesn’t know whether she likes or despises me, trusts or
needs me. Once she cried and said that I was pure, but I was
never pure, only naïve.
I live on a houseboat, my mode of existence tenuous. I scrub
its walls and hold to the edge of a stranger’s grace, waiting the
state of an unknown man’s whims. Will he hate the pile of
clothing on my bunk, dismiss me for a stick of butter left upon
the table? I am a woman of talents without skills, rowing my way
through life like a surgeon seeking a heart in the dark. I hunt for
my happiness through the waves and the forest, while she follows
me in my wanderings and sneers at me.
Originally published in Fantasy and Terror 5
 She tells me to take out the trash, to wash her clothes, to pour
her drinks, and leave her lovers alone. I comply and draw my
voodoo pictures of her, but I am mistaken; I have made her in
my image and I only hurt myself. We draw sharks’ teeth with
which to bite each other, and mine becomes an ouroboros
doubling back on me, curling till I cry in the night.
In her first incarnation she was small with plump wrists, an
anorexic dancer who hung a rubber shark above my door. In her
second, she was a playwright in a red dress with white shark fins.
How many incarnations has she, this woman of my undreamt
nightmares? How many bodies, how many faces, how many
ages? Red and orange are her colors, brown her hair. I amuse
myself with her destruction, she with mine. Who destroys herself
first? It’s an open question. Her body she flaunts before me, as I
have flaunted mine: we have perfect bodies because we admit to
no imperfections. See the lines formed by the shape of our arms!
We are without flaw, and riddled with worms.
She has planted worms in my body, and they have grown in
my sleep. Snakes throughout my body dictating my movement
and my emotion, snakes of envy and jealousy and rage. But there
is an asp in her toe, its egg planted years ago, its winding self now
hatched and growing. She must feed it fruit every day as it climbs
up the bone of her leg, comforting and suckling it because she is
afraid to have it removed. I think she should let one of her
sharks eat it, but she is afraid of being completely consumed.
The asp will consume her one of these days anyway. By that time
no one will care.
She wears orange and she wears red, and she will not be
kicked away because she wants to do the kicking. She wears
orange and red and sticks knives into her lovers’ hearts. She has
stabbed me in my heart of hearts and I have run away to bleed
on my boat.
Bleeding on the deck of my boat, choking for air in the night, I
can see a red skirt beside me. Have I poked myself with too
many pins?
“I was a weekend junkie until I met you,” she says. “Now I just
suck your blood and that’s enough.”
She vanishes, but the red skirt is still lying on the deck soaking

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Huebner: Woman in Red

up my blood. I am my own voodoo doll, but her voice whispers

out of the darkness through the chimes on the yachts: “In ten
years there’ll be skin on my tracks and no one will know. But
you’ll be bled dry, baby, you’ll be a rag doll on your dock.” Oh,
might I scream, has she pierced my lungs too? Bleeding on the
deck of my boat in the middle of the night, I can see the red skirt
like a flag for a crime. I will be turned out of this boat for certain
if I can’t sop up the blood by morning. She crept into my heart
like a mouse into its hole, and she has gnawed out all my
ventricles. I will be thrown off my boat for bleeding from my
auricles.
Stanch my bleeding with your shark teeth. My boat is
important to me. Stop playing your piano in my ear, stop fiddling
like a dance of death. My boat is important to me and you are
staining the deck with my blood.
My boat is important to me, and you are letting my blood drip
through its imperfect planks to fill the hull. You cannot sink my
boat with my blood; let me rise to the surface before it can sink.
Oh where can I bleed but on my boat, bleed out the miseries of
my tattered heart? You have gnawed and sawed it to rags, and its
blood is filling the hull. How can I bail when I am too weak to lift
my head? The chimes on the yachts are banging in the wind and
there is a red skirt on my deck, a red cotton circle skirt. Only free
me from my destruction. My boat is important to me and must
not sink; I must mop up my blood before morning or be evicted.
There are sharks in the waters of the bay. My affection has an
unknown bottom like the Bay of Portugal, but there are sand
sharks in the shallow waters here and they are drinking the
driblets of my blood. They smile with their teeth and invite
manta rays for a bite. Bite that boat, they say to the ray, and it will
burst like a balloon full of blood. It’s a blood blister on the bay, a
big fat one with more gore pumping in every minute out of an
open heart.
My open heart: my open wound. If I cannot mop up my
blood before morning I will be evicted, but the boat must not
sink first. If only someone would bring me a cup of tea.
3
 She wears red like the angel of death and the pulse of life.
Why did she wound me so? I defy my crimes against her; why
must I suffer in my haven? My haven in the harbor. I cannot put
up with such indignities.
She wears red, and I have mopped my deck. There is an
electric pump at the end of the ladder and it expels my blood
into the bay. Tell me another about the gray-water ordinances!
This is a red tide! Red tide at morning, bathers take warning.
And don’t hose off your decks today or you might find inch-long
infant sharks swimming up the hoses through the blood. I am
going to scrub the walls because I am afraid to scrub the floors.
One never knows what one might find under the scum on the
tile.
Will he hate the pile of clothing on my bunk, dismiss me for a
stick of butter? I am a woman of talents without skills, rowing my
way across fears and seeking a heart in the dark. My heart, my
boat. I fear the caprices of landlords. I will hit mine over the
head with an oar if he comes too close to my boat.
She wears orange and she wears red; she has made me bleed.
She has disrupted my search for happiness and made me a
temporary devil. We have made each other happy in the past
and may make each other happy in the future, but what of the
present? I am interested in the pursuit of happiness; am I not an
American citizen? Ah, but we citizens of the waterfront are the
scum of society, a mere step up from skid row. We must run to
our boats in the middle of the night and bleed out the blood of
our miserable hearts on the wooden comfort of our decks. But
doesn’t everybody have a nemesis?
How many incarnations has she? How many bodies, how
many faces, how many skins?
My lover comes in bluejeans and his beard is clean when he
kisses me, but he cannot help me; it’s all an individual rack and
pillory.
Who is this woman? She is a woman in red. Who is this
woman? She’s a nearsighted dancer. Who is this woman? I have
eschewed thought to describe her, she the brown-haired Lorelei.

END