Spring Belle

Nathan Dixon

I.

The girls were late getting out of bed again.  Momma walked up the stairs hollering.  Girls, she said.  Girls.  Come on, now, it’s time to get up.  Into their pink room, polyester curtains, doilies on the nightstand.  Pink.  Back in the woods, the boy in the red bandanna had whispered the word—pussy—in her ear. 

Give them anything they want.  Everything.  Come on now, she said, flipping the overhead, her little girls shrieking.  No, momma, no.  Their heads beneath their pillows.  Their little feet retracting from her fingers.  Curled and cool to the touch.  Was this love?

No, they said, no, their eyes pinched closed.  Rollypollies beneath wet rocks in the woods.  It was always the same.  Every morning, funny for a minute or two.  She heard her father’s voice.  They need to learn responsibility.  To fear God, these little Christian girls—from whom?  Her husband?  Slick customer in a business suit, she thought, staring blankly at the pink folds of the comforter.  Where was that boy from the woods?  Where her father?  Why grow up?  Her insides floating away as she stared down at the lumps.  Was this the American Dream?  Pink.  How many women just like her in houses just like hers?  Their husbands away in the mornings—off to bring home the bacon.  Malaise.  Her aunt had said that word one summer in the mountains, referring to her mother.  Malaise.  Her father had been on a business trip again.  Business trip, her aunt said, sure.

She tried to piece together how it had happened.  Stranded out here in this strange place.  She heard her mother’s voice.  Blossomed into womanhood.    

Come on, now, it’s time to get up, she said.  Knowing they wouldn’t listen.  Knowing she hadn’t listened.  Wondering if she enjoyed this pageantry.  She remembered her mother wagging her finger.  Staring at her budding breasts. 

Strangers now among the look-a-like houses marching through treeless subdivisions.  A big house, a family.  From mother to daughter.  Everything she had ever wished for.  Yellow blocks of sunlight through the windows. 

Now calling out their names, now knowing them awake.  Unwilling to rise.  A game for them—this life.  She heard her mother’s voice.  Know your place, Martha May.  We all have roles to fill. 

Listen, she said, bending toward their hidden heads.  Listen now, you have to listen, OK? 

Being lenient leads to mischief.  Said her mother.  Said her father.  Idle hands, the devil’s play things.  Tommy cut a switch.  He never did his chores, was always getting into trouble.  Her father whipped him.  Poor Tommy.  How small the toes in her hands. 

She imagined how it had been.  Or could have been.  Blossoming into young womanhood, her mother said.  I looked just like you when I was your age.  You’ll blossom beautifully Martha May—a flower—have any boy you want, you know.  Pretty pink flower.  Be careful, though, and walk with Jesus.  Be careful of those boys.  They only want one thing.  Yes ma’am, she answered.  Her mother stared at her breasts.  Yes ma’am, I’ll walk with Jesus. 

Imagining the older boys asking her onto the dance floor, smiling.  Tapping one another’s shoulders—just like in the movies.  Can I cut in?  Looking for something, her mother warned her.  They only want one thing.  Pussy, the boy had whispered in her ear, looking her up and down.  Hungry.  She had seen that look in her daddy’s eyes when he looked at her mother’s sister.  And when— 

Come on, you two, she said.  Come on, we’re losing daylight here.  Pulling the cover off quick.  Pale little things laid bare.  Song on a pull string.  Ma-ma.  Ma-ma.

No, they said.  No.  Writhing in the light.  Give us five minutes please.  Their shiny legs unreal beneath the overhead—playthings—she let covers fall. 

Five minutes.  Twirling, walking to her own bedroom down the hall—her bedroom and her husband’s.  The pageantry.  Five minutes, they knew, always worked. 

She was a pushover, she thought, as she checked her makeup in the mirror.  Picked out jewelry for the day.  Rummaging through the closet, wondering what dress she would wear for daddy when he got home.  Dear daddy.  Playing dress-up in the wet candlelight.  After the cocktails and music on the radio, they pretended to be glamorous.  Floating for a little while at least.  Pretended life hadn’t passed so quickly.  Faded, before the girls came shrieking in. 

Lately he had been staying late at work.  Business meetings, he said.  What kind of business?  Long-legged secretaries on spiked heels.  What kind of business so late?

After five minutes, she went back to the pink room.  Her Azalea Belles pretending to be sleep.  What valiant Prince Charming—Southern Beau mounted horseback—would kiss their lips and take them away from her? 

We’ve got to hurry, she said, or you’ll be late.  Give an inch they take a yard.  Her father’s voice again.  Shaking his head, nothing ever good enough for him.  Never would be.  Tommy cut a switch.  Daddy stared her up and down in the doorway, shook his head.  Disgusted.  Faded to late-night business meetings as she blossomed beautifully.  Some power bursting from her body.  Intangible.  He hated how she looked.  Like her mother.  They both blamed her for it.  Come on, now, she said.  Move it.

When she pulled the blanket off this time, she flung it against the wall, knocking trinkets from the chest of drawers.  Plinking to the rug.  She paused—imagining her mother hiding at the threshold, trying to catch her doing something.  Wrong, always wrong.  Her daddy in the doorway at night. 

Right now, she said, staring down at the soft shapes.  Right now.  Authoritative.  Remembering the creased face of God squinting back at her.  Her daddy in the doorway.  Not at all like the beautiful boy’s.  Tommy’s friend in the kudzu.  A nasty boy, her mother said.  She remembered his smile and the red bandana.  Striking, gallant.  How he whispered in her ear in the green grotto of the kudzu.  Pinched the pistil of the honeysuckle blossom.  Pulled it through the petals, licked the dew drop away.   

They all run away, her mother said.

But momma, said her little girls. 

Manipulative.  Her mother’s voice. 

But momma, but momma— 

No.  She plucked them up by their elbows—scrawny—and plopped them onto the floor.  Both of them crying.  Already—first thing in the morning.  Little Barbara—Barbie—sniffling, her arms crossed in anger. 

No ma’am.  Pouting for pity.  Not today, missy.  Come on.

II.

They went sorting through the heaps of clothes in the dresser drawers.  Tiny, sewn together with frills, so cute, for the princesses pink.  Little fashionistas turned happy in a heartbeat.  Digging through their things.  Things.  Momma put a pair of panties on Nancy’s head to make her laugh.  Always caught herself a little too late. 

Barbara put a pair of panties on her own head.  OK, OK, momma said, let’s stay focused.  Barbara hung a pair on momma’s ear.  Silly. 

Always a little too late.

She remembered her father’s face.  Looking at her.  Like a whore, he said.  She pulled the panties from her head and put on a serious face. 

No, Barbara, no.  Let’s stay focused, OK?

But Nancy got to.  Momma.  Nancy got to, and I—

That’s enough.  We need to hurry, OK?

She looked at her watch, an anniversary gift, golden.  Filched from the jewelry box.  A plaything for grownups.  She still had trouble reading the hands.  Her husband hadn’t listened.  She had wanted something else.  She cried in the candlelight.  And daddy bought her flowers.  Flowers to fix everything.  Azaleas, fading.  Her own father, fading.  The Southern Beau rode away on a business call at night. 

When she looked up from her wrist, Barbara was pulling a pair of panties over Nancy’s head.  Stretching the elastic down hard.  Blonde curls sprung through the leg holes.  Nancy’s neck cricked to the side.  Blonde bush pouring from the underwear.  Whore, said her daddy.  Snapping.  Harder.  Harder.

No, she said, reaching out to stop it.  No Barbara.  Knocking Nancy down as she pulled the other’s hands away.  No, no.  Nancy crying on the floor with underwear around face.  Barbara crying, too, arms clasped together at her wrists. 

What did I tell you? momma said.  Standing, walking to the bed, a shackled prisoner in her hands.  Flipped over her knee, panties down.  No, the girl wailed, kicking her legs.  No, momma, no, I’m sorry. 

But it was too late for that.  She smacked her bottom with the palm of her hand, and the clap startled her.  Again, again.  It felt good to hit her.  The little legs kicking.  Don’t fight it, she said.  She heard her mother’s voice.  Don’t fight it.

No sense of decorum, her mother said, staring at her breasts.  Cover yourself up.  No sense of propriety.  Out playing grab-ass with those boys in the woods.  You have to learn sometime, don’t you?  Tommy cut a switch.  Mother teaches daughter, teaches daughter, teaches daughter.  Duties to God and husband.  Honor thy father and mother.  A red handprint spilling.  Again, again, again.   

Nancy struggled on the floor, trying to get her head free from the underwear.  Pink. 

She couldn’t help how she looked, she told her mother.  Cover yourself up, her mother answered.  Tommy cut a switch and wore the stripes like stars.  A soldier.  She remembered following him through the woods, blindfolded to the boys’ fort.  The location a secret, holding hands through the dark world, tender, careful.  Had she liked the color pink back then?  Again.  Watch your feet Martha May, he said, there’s a step here.  Be careful, Martha May.  This is no place for girls.  Slowly beneath the whispering trees, blindfolded like a prisoner, a tomboy.  She smelled honeysuckle, fat blooms, wisteria, bursting purple through the woods.  The leaves of oak trees rustling, pine needles underfoot.  To stand still, his hand pulled from hers.  Reaching out towards empty air.  Hold still for a minute, he said.  Tommy’s voice behind her, his hands untying the knot.  Close your eyes, now.  Hands rough on her face, the smell of dirt on him.  His voice floating in the dark, around beside her.  OK.  Taking his hands away, OK, open up now.  A tree castle sprawling through the green.  Nailed together through the kudzu dripping, sunlight sparkling in the twinkle-bright canopy.  The hideaway of lost boys, peeking from the turrets, swinging from the branches, wild boys.  Ladders and bridges drooping between tree trunks.  Never Never Land.  Never again.  And him in the red bandana.  Smiling that pussy smile.

Momma?  Barbara was still bent over her knee.  Momma, she said.  Momma, you done now? 

You’ll know when I’m done, she said, seeing gray rebels in miniature, stars and bars unfurling.  A fort to stop the Yanks, they said.  The South will rise again.  He stared straight at her, bandana around his forehead, his smile making her knees go weak.  It hadn’t been that long ago.  It was the face from her father’s stories.  Great great grandparents fighting great great fights in the greatest of all the great lands.  She could feel his eyes.  On her skin, inside of her.  Now gone, gone with the wind.

There was a little nick bleeding on her daughter’s spanked cheek.  Bright red and dripping.  She lost her breath for a moment, surprised.

Yes, she said.  Yes.  Let me get you a band aid. 

Band aid? her daughter echoed.  Am I bleeding?  She turned in circles with her nightgown lifted up above her waist trying to get a look at herself.  Momma did the same thing in the mirror before daddy came home.  Malaise. 

Daughters become wives become mothers.  With husbands to please, with children to feed.  Her own mother told her what would happen if she hung around Tommy’s nasty friends.  They’ll stick their fingers up you, she said.  They’ll put a baby in you.  Run away. 

Nancy leaned naked against the wall, silent.  Her pale body rigid.  Sensitive girl, pallid.  Her flesh frozen in the overhead. 

I’ll be right back, momma said, wondering if she had hit Barbie too hard.  Wondering if they would hold a grudge like she did against her own mother.

She got them dressed quickly.  Remembering when nakedness was freedom.  Before she began blossoming.  She could almost remember.  Sliding rock in the mountains in the summer.  Her aunt splashing in the green pool that was so cold it took her breath away.  Before her mother started saying, Be careful Martha May.  Be careful.  Body parts secreted away. 

Blonde curls and pink blossoms.  Compliant now.  Pliant.  She lift their arms, and dressed them, talking to herself.  A martyr like her mother.  What did martyr mean? 

Malaise.  A pink light in a green world where Tommy’s friends wanted to stick their fingers in you.  Know your place, Martha May.  Know your place.  

Their faces were sad in the overhead glare.  Fixed.  They had always been sad, she thought.  She had never taken the time to look.

She flung the blanket above them, and they shrieked as the sky tumbled down.  To bump and stumble beneath the pink comforter, laughing again. 

Once upon a time Tommy had let her peek through the crack into their parents’ room.  Lumps in the dark bed.  Moaning.  He had asked her if she wanted to try. 

I’ll do it one more time, she said.  And then we’ll finish making it.  OK?

OK, they said.  OK.  We promise.  Their eyes upturned as she lifted the blanket.  Crouched forms with plastic smiles.  She started crying in the pink room.  Felt hollow inside.  Wishing she hadn’t hit her daughter. 

She remembered those boys in the jungle fort.  All eyes on her.  Babies from their fingers as they reached up her skirt.  Pussy, he whispered in her ear.

III.

After she dropped them off at school, she reminded herself it was a game.  That she could keep on driving if she wanted.  Start over again.  Forget everything her parents ever told her. 

Instead, she went to the grocery store.  To pick up ingredients for dinner as she did every day.  As her own mother had done.  She would never be able to leave the children.  That’s what her own mother said.  Muttering to herself in the kitchen.  A martyr, her father said.  But, then again, she could take them with her.  Bubbly blondes beneath summer suns on beaches far away.  Bouncing around in swimsuits, the boys looking at them.  The boys entranced.  The boys smiling.

Instead she climbed from the minivan with her purse under her arm.  Remembering how her mother complained about her father’s secretaries.  What kind of work in the evenings? she would ask.  Awfully long legs on that one.  A bit heavy in the chest, I think. 

Beneath the florescent tube lighting, men undressed her with their eyes.  Be careful, Martha May.  Be careful.  Sometimes she would let them look.  Like a whore, her father said.  So what?  She swung her hips down the white-tiled runways—antiseptic—bag boys grinning at her down the aisles.  Nasty.  Let them look.  The manager—distracted from tallying pickles—dropped his clipboard on the tile, and rushed the other way.

She remembered her mother talking to herself in the kitchen.  Too much skin.  Too much skin.  Her father vowing to kill Tommy’s friends as he whipped the boy beneath the basketball hoop. 

The cashier rang up an old black man in front of her, and she remembered tall tales about phantoms in the woods.  They always made her feel like someone was out to get her.  She had something they wanted, they said.

Back home, she listened to the radioman as she chopped ingredients for supper.  Immigrants pouring over the border, violent protestors pouring into the capital, lawmakers—once again—trying to take their guns away.  People wouldn’t be able to protect themselves.  She heard her father’s voice through the speaker.  Communist scumbags.  The radioman segued into a long segment on abortion and the lucrative sale of dismembered fetuses.  Unable to protect themselves.  She cried as she peeled potatoes, thinking about her little girls.  A holocaust, the radioman screamed.  A holocaust. 

Prayer group on Wednesdays, church on Sundays.  A green fort.  A yellow beach.  A pink room.  Three times a week, she went for coffee with another stay-at-home mom.  Also named Martha.  They talked of children and the world’s decay.  The world rotting from the inside out.  Folks need to keep God in their hearts, they agreed.  School committees, play dates, yoga classes, life.  Sometimes they went shopping for things.  Things.  She always forgot later what they had talked about, and sometimes she got lost on her way home.  All the streets looked the same. 

She read books for Sunday school class and—sometimes—romance novels that she secretly bought with her allowance at the library sale.  On the deck, in the sun, she read and imagined what might have been.  That boy in the green swooping down on a vine.  A white horse and a yellow beach, languid. 

He didn’t love her like he used to, she thought.  She heard her mother’s voice.  She never told the other Martha that.  In the coffee shop.  Never told her how they had been mad for each other once upon a time.  Electric.  Hand holding sent shivers, pecked kisses took breath.  She used to dream of him, of their life together, a long time ago.  What might have been.  She dreamed of how they had lingered on front porches past curfews.  How—after she was crowned queen of the Azalea Bells—he pulled a garter from her thigh with his teeth.  How, behind ballooning blue and pink hydrangeas they stole kisses, pretending they were married, Southern Beau and Southern Belle.  Now faded at the edges.  She heard her mother’s voice.

I used to have a body just like yours, she said.  I couldn’t keep your father off me.  She always bragged about how she could still fit into her own Azalea Belle gown. 

She bought lingerie to wear for her husband.  Lingerie from the shopping mall, always feeling awkward.  In the bedroom she found herself looking over her shoulder—checking out her backside in the mirror.  Like Barbie had that morning.  Up on her tiptoes to get a better look.

Vain, her father would say.  Like a whore.  He had seen her in her underwear once—dancing in her bedroom.  He stood there, thinking she hadn’t seen.  Hungry looking.  Then slammed the door, yelling.  Never again.  Overeager to fill her plate at supper that night, though.  He heaped mashed potatoes next to the pork-chop.  Looked like he wanted to ask her something.  Like he had been crying.  That’s too many mashed potatoes, she said.  He dropped the plate on the floor.  As long as you’re under my roof, he yelled, you will do what I tell you to do. 

  Sunlight glittered on the hardwood, and sometimes she pretended she lived in her father’s old stories.  A Southern Belle, pampered, pretty, waited on by everyone.  The good days gone, gone with the wind.  How wonderful it must have been.  To be waited upon.  To be in charge of a house like that.  Something to do, at least. 

The whole world gone to hell, said the radioman.  She played a game where she imagined all the things she could have been.  Until it was time to pick up the girls.  Baby dolls as Christmas gifts for as long as she could remember.

They’ll stick their fingers in you, her mother said.  Get a baby on you.  Run away.    

IV.

When she saw them again something warm spilled over.  They talked and talked and talked while she sat flooded in the driver’s seat.  The world didn’t have to end in the cul-de-sac.  Somewhere horses streamed over yellow beaches.  Green forts tumbled through pinewood.  She remembered the look on her father’s face when he smoked his secret cigarettes.  

What did y’all learn today? she asked.  They bounced like blossoms in a breeze.

Teacher read a book in class about the thirteen colonies.  That’s why there’s stripes on the flag, Nancy said.  She unzipped her book bag and pulled out a tiny flag on a tiny flag post, the finial tip painted gold and pointed.  She waved it back and forth. A tiny patriot.

Give me liberty, or give me— 

Me too, me too, Barbara said, her little body shaking.  As she dug through her own pink backpack.

And fifty stars for fifty states, Nancy said. 

Barbie singing, now, to drown her sister out.  Fif-ty nif-ty U-ni-ted States. 

Nancy joining in.  From thirt-teen ori-gi-nal co-lo-nies. 

Both of their wrists flicking, syncopated stars and stripes—Shout ’em, scout ’em, tell all about ’em—mirror images mimicking each other.  Each shrill voice trying to outdo the other.  ’Till one-by-one we’ve gi-ven a name to— 

OK, girls.  Momma laughed, eying them in the rearview.

E-very state. 

OK.

In the U—S—A.  Holding out the last syllable until they exploded in giggles.  And tomorrow, they said, and tomorrow.  Talking over each other, and tomorrow, their little flags dangling in their hands.  Tomorrow we start learning the states.

I was going to tell her, Barbie said.

I guess I’m faster, Nancy answered.

No you’re not.  Barbie’s face turning red.

Yes, I am.

Momma watched the fight unfold.  No, you’re not.  In the rearview.  Yes, I am.  As if in slow motion.  Like she herself was split in two and arguing back and forth. 

They slapped and kicked each other first.  Then stabbed each other with their flags, their backpacks falling to the floor.  Spilling out.  She remembered how the older boys at school had always chanted—cat fight, cat fight—whenever two girls went at it.  They’ll stick their fingers in you.  Flock from every fifty nifty.  Hoping girls will spill from clothes.  Breasts bouncing, crotches split down the middle, underwear torn from clinched limbs and wrapped tight around pretty faces.  The whole world in decay.  She heard her mother’s voice.  Would Tommy and his friends have watched?  Those gallant soldier boys?  Looked for slipped nipples?  Reached for flesh with sweaty hands? 

Her aunt had been raped at that cabin in the mountains.  She asked her mother what rape meant.  They never went again.  Her father’s eyes were hungry.

The girls screamed, but she didn’t hear them.  Just watched them, frame by frame in the rearview.  Woman brought about the fall.  That’s what the Good Reverend said on Sunday.  Know your place.  That’s what her father said.  Her mother.  She watched them scream and stab. 

But remained calm in the driver’s seat.  Until she saw Nancy bleeding.  The little flag poles too sharp—golden tips blooming—and Barbie bleeding too.  Poked.  Penetrated.  Blood ran from their eyes. 

Stop it, she said.  Pulling over, unbuckling herself, jumping into the afternoon.  Stop it.  Sliding open the door, screaming.  Stop it, you two.  Fumbling with their buckles, her own hands just as clumsy as theirs.  A little girl herself.  Angry, she tore at them, yanked them from their seats. 

Their bodies limp.  At the mercy of the world.  Her hands pinched around their wrists.  Grown to Goliath, two humans hanging from her hands.  Both of them crying, their heads rolled back and wailing.  Big noises from tiny mouths.

Stop it, she said.  Right now.  Stop it.  You have to know your place.

They stabbed at each other across her body, their flags waving red, white, and blue.  She stood with her arms apart, crucified in the shallow ditch.  Immense.  The whittled sticks digging into her flesh, the girls hanging like ornaments from her hands.

She saw a vision of her father’s face in the clouds.  Angry, twisted, spitting the word whore.  She could feel it in her heart.  Whore.  She couldn’t help it.  Couldn’t handle the noise, and for a moment stood panting, her mind blank.  Everything so loud it was quiet.  Her arms beginning to sag.  Until—without thinking—she clapped her hands together.  Her teeth-clenched, furious, swinging with all her might. 

Thinking—wait, wait, wait—before they collided.  Wait, wait, wait.  But it was too late.  Their bodies crashed together and crumpled.  Intertwined in a mess as she let them go.  Horrified.  All the world gone quiet.  Like a flipped switch.  She stood panting in the heat.

Tangled, they dropped silently into the grass, as she pulled her hands back—afraid of what she had done.  Wait, she thought.  I didn’t mean to.  And turned as if to flee.  Saw her father’s face in the trees.  Wait, she thought, wait.  Slow down.  Just wait.  She turned back.  Swam—off balance—into the green where pink dresses rolled in the ditch.

She crawled through the thick weeds, and caught them.  Everything was green and hot.  Breathless.  A hollow place in the honeysuckle.  She smelled grass, gasoline, asphalt, burning beneath the yellow sun.  She smothered them to her breast, crying.  Rocked back and forth by the roadside with playthings in her lap.  Girls.  You’re OK, she said.  You’re OK, you’re OK, smoothing their hair.  Her fingertips probing tenderly.  Fingertips probing.  Afraid to look at them.  Her father’s face looming.  Behind the cracked door.   

Now you’ve done it, Martha May.  A flash, then fading, his eyes beating in time with her heart.  She hadn’t meant anything.  I’m sorry, she whispered to herself.  I’m sorry.  I can’t help it, clutching blonde curls.

Blood and broken skin, slick red upon her hands.  Sticky, smeared upon the baby dolls.  She dribbled blood on their faces.  Little whores waiting for a kiss from Prince Charming.  A red tongue and fingers that smelled like dirt.   

Bring Tommy back from lost boy years, with friends in flannel grays.  To kiss their foreheads, bring to life, and live through antebellum days.  She smeared the blood on her face and chest.

Barbie’s arm twisted around Nancy’s neck, her hand pointed the wrong way on her wrist.  Nancy’s ear torn off and dangling, her eyeball hanging loose.  She looked around to see if anyone had seen.  Said sorry again and again.  They would need stitching up.  Hot glue and staples.  She hated them.  Flower girls like herself.  Loved them.  Began to speak to them, then heard her name whistled through chain-link fences.

Martha May.  Her mother in the breeze.  Across the green.  All the years swallowed at the sound.  Martha May, it said, it’s supper time.  You out there, Martha May?  She dropped the baby dolls beneath the chinaberry tree, beside the fire truck minivan.  Tommy’s old toy.  Barbara and Nancy in the roadside ditch, sprawled.  Broken.  Best friends, her babies, stuffed.  In the drainage ditch of the cul-de-sac. 

Her momma said she was too old for toys like them.  She heard the screen door slapping shut.  Momma back inside to wait for Tommy from the fort.  She wasn’t allowed there anymore.  Caught kissing the boy in the red bandana.  Nasty boy, her mother said.  Asking if he tried to touch her private parts.  Pussy.

Don’t take her there anymore, her father said.  Tommy’s friends with eyes for her.  Tommy too.  And daddy?  You’ll be the belle of the ball, her momma said, all the boys will want you.  Sure.  She looked down at her bloody arms.  Be careful, they always said.  Be careful Martha May.  Of what?

She picked up her dolls, stuffed them under her arm and grabbed the fire truck from the ditch.  The grass cool on her bare feet.  Fresh cut, it had that antebellum smell.  She had seen framed pictures of plantations, and always dreamed she would live in one.  One day.  The good old days, her daddy said.  The radioman, the good reverend.  The good old days.  Let me tell you about my great, great grandfather.  She walked through the trim yard, through the suburban split-level south, imagining his face in the doorway.  The sun on its way down, casting long shadows—lank—through the gloaming.  On the petal-limbs of a growing girl, through the yards of the look-a-like homes.