Disappearing Girls
Mary Morris
Word Count 873
I was in high school when the girls began disappearing. First, there was Maggie Ward. She went away without any warning. Then there was Traci Peterson. We watched her get fat in her gym suit, and then she too was gone. Perhaps we could have anticipated something like this after the public shaming of Sherrie Salter. Sherrie had done something in cars with boys when we were still in middle school, and our teacher made Sherrie stand up in front of us – just the girls, not the boys – and confess her sins. Her mother sat in the first row, stoically watching as her daughter, one of those tough girls from the other side of the tracks, cracked and fell to pieces before our eyes. After that, I always knew what I’d do.
If anything ever happened to me, I’d go to the bluff. The bluff was at the end of our street, and it fell hundreds of feet to the shores of Lake Michigan. There was a trail that followed the bluff, and I’d had spent much of my girlhood wandering its edge but always careful – and god knows I’d been warned – not to get too close to the cliffs. Why my mother let me go there at all remains a mystery to me, but for whatever reason, she trusted me to keep to the trail, which I always did.
But after what happened to Sherrie and then the disappearing girls, I knew what I’d do. If I found myself in that “way,” rather than shame my father or be made to disappear, I’d hurl myself off the bluff. This wasn’t some idle threat. I was dead serious that I would do this. I told no one, but it was my only option as I saw it. Not that I was actually anywhere near a situation where that would become a necessity. But I did have a boyfriend, and we spent hours driving around in his car, sitting close and fondling one another, or we’d find a secluded place to park, usually at the end of my street right where the bluff was, and the car would get steamy with our petting. It wasn’t for nothing I thought that how far a boy got was measured in baseball terms. We got to first and often to second, but then memory blurs, but I can vouch for the fact that we never made it “home.”
Still it seemed possible. It could happen. And then I, too would disappear.
My boyfriend – an Irish boy who planned to play basketball his whole life until a detached retina changed everything – was growing more insistent and ardent in his lovemaking, and I was not resisting. After each session during which his car steamed up and the gear shift left its mark on my back, I grew more concerned.
It was around this time that my friend, Bonnie Weber, began throwing up on the way to school. We often walked together, but sometimes she’d stop by the side of the road and vomit. And then I knew. Bonnie would disappear soon.
That was when I began going and standing at the edge of the bluff. I wanted to see what it would be like when it came time to jump. Some places seemed too impeded with fallen trees or rocks. But there was one spot where it was almost a straight shot to the shore below. I’d stand at the edge and look down. Once I closed my eyes. I imagined myself in full flight.
One day Bonnie told me that her father had thrown her out of the house. “I thought he was going to kill me,” she sobbed. She was staying at her boyfriend’s until she could figure out her next move. I thought about telling her about the bluff, but I decided to keep it to myself. What would Bonnie think of me if she knew? And if she jumped, wouldn’t I somehow be to blame?
My father played bridge with Bonnie Weber’s father. The card games rotated from house to house, and one Saturday, when it was at ours, I heard Mr. Weber shouting about something. He was a bit of a drunk, and he tended to drink too much during these card games, but I’d never heard him shouting like that. Then he got up abruptly and left. I heard our front door slam and saw him staggering down our drive to his house. Later that evening, I picked up the phone to make a call and heard someone on the line. It was Mr. Weber, still shouting.
Then I heard my father say. “If anything ever happened to Mary,” I heard him say, “she could always come home.”
Gently I put the receiver back in its cradle. The bluff would no longer be my fate. From then on, I just walked along it as I always had.
The next year the girls who had disappeared began returning. One by one, they came back, but something wasn’t the same. There was a blankness to their stares. They didn’t laugh as they had before. It was as if they’d left some crucial part of themselves behind. It was as if only their bodies came home.
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Mary is the author of sixteen books - eight novels, including most recently Gateway to the Moon (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2018), three collections of short stories, and four travel memoirs, including the travel classic, Nothing to Declare: Memoirs of a Woman Traveling Alone (Houghton Mifflin, 1988), and an anthology of travel literature. All the Way to the Tigers, from which “Visa Trouble” was excerpted was published by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday to rave reviews.
