The Girl with the Crooked Spine

Her skin is like leather. What remains of her reddish hair sits in a tuft beside her mummified head. She has no arms or legs, though both feet and her right hand lay alongside her torso. The eyes deteriorated almost two thousand years ago, long before her well-preserved body was dug out of the peat near Yde, a village in the Netherlands, and placed in this traveling exhibit. She was sixteen years old the day she died, and her spine, much like Patrick’s, was horribly twisted by scoliosis.

Archaeologists call her Yde Girl. Patrick calls her Edie.

Propped up beside the display case is a poster of the girl’s suggested appearance. Using a wax-head reconstruction, the image depicts a teenage girl with wavy reddish hair, a high forehead, and what some might consider an intelligent but sad countenance. The exhibit, titled ‘Bog Bodies of Europe,’ also includes Lindow Man, Tollund Man, and the Girl of the Uchter Moor, among others, each fragmented body displayed in small, personalized exhibit rooms adjoined by dim corridors.

*     *     *

It’s a late Sunday afternoon in January. Snow accumulates outside the Field Museum in Chicago, long drifts rising across the steps of the main entrance. In the distance, Snowy Owls, on winter leave from Canada, sit on elongated water breaks, their sleepy, golden eyes scanning for ducks on the gray surface of Lake Michigan. Few cars populate the streets, and despite the storm, Patrick has come to see Edie. It’s his fourth visit.

As he enters the exhibit, Patrick wiggles out of his backpack and lets it slide off his left arm, the side of him that is slightly higher than his right. He pauses to admire the photo of Edie’s reconstructed face, the version of her he prefers—though he does address the fragmented body now and then, so as to not seem disrespectful.

“Hello Edie,” Patrick says, pushing aside his red bangs. He reaches into his backpack for a spiral notebook. “Big storm out there today. We almost didn’t come, but I told my mom I had a paper due tomorrow.” He laughs. “She’s so gullible! Anyway, we took the bus and it was totally fine. She’s over in the gift shop right now.”

Although Edie’s hardships had undoubtedly been more profound than his own, Patrick could still identify with how he imagined she must have felt all those years ago. Surely she had been stared at, pointed at, laughed at—all by superstitious people that did not, or would not, understand her deformity. A deformity that had probably led to her death, as it was theorized she had been beaten, strangled, and stabbed during a sacrifice to the gods.

And now, roughly two thousand years later, her naked remains lay exposed in wizened, leathery fragments atop a sterile white slab—a static, lonely darkness curled tight about her display case. Worst of all is the frayed rope, an instrument of her death, still wrapped loosely about her neck.

“You should’ve seen it, Edie,” Patrick says, inching closer to the photo. “There’s this huge Cecropia Moth in the entomology exhibit. It’s gorgeous!” He shifts his torso to the right in an attempt to gain comfort in his back brace. “In fact, they’re the largest silk moths in North America. At night, in summer, you can find them near artificial lights.”

Realizing she may not understand “artificial lights,” Patrick gestures to the track lighting over her display case.

“Most people aren’t even aware that these beautiful creatures exist,” he adds. “It's kinda sad, actually.” His eyes follow a swirl pattern on the floor as he grows lost in thought.

“Before he died,” he continues, still looking at the floor, “my dad used to show me all the best places to find them. That’s when I really got interested in nature and stuff.” Patrick shakes his head. “I don’t know. I keep trying to get my mom to go out and look for them with me, but besides butterflies, she pretty much hates insects. She thinks they’re all going to bite her. Anyway, my friend José, he used to help me catch them all the time. That was awhile ago though, before he got hooked on video games and stuff, so . . . I just go out by myself now.”

Edie lies silent in her display case. All is quiet but for the subdued howling of the wind over the museum.

By the end of his first visit, Patrick had come to believe that Edie’s presence lingered within the small exhibit room, a presence that grew stronger—more intimate, it seemed—with each of his subsequent visits. And today, perhaps because the museum is virtually empty, he welcomes the feeling that her spirit has leaned up against his crooked body and under his arm for comfort, the snowstorm blowing forcefully across the high roof. In such an atmosphere, mixed with the quietude of the museum’s closing hour, Patrick imagines he can hear her breathing beneath the persistent drone of the heating vents, occasionally feeling a slight flinch from her asymmetrical shoulders when a far-off door slams or a noisy child disturbs the tranquility. Her hair seems to give off the scent of heather, and this conjures up the image of a lush, boundless moor.

“I . . . I wrote you something,” Patrick says, opening his notebook. He flips to the desired page, freckled face turning a light shade of red. “It’s sort of a—well, it’s like a poem.”

To keep from being heard outside the thin, temporary walls of the exhibit, Patrick lowers his voice: “I call it ‘To a Girl from Yde’.”

Edie’s display lights begin to flicker, their low, electric hum filling the tight space of the exhibit. Shadows stretch and retract across the walls. Patrick twists his torso to the right, pressing a free hand over his back brace for stability. The eyes in Edie’s photo stare straight ahead. He continues:

“I am here, as a friend

A kindred soul of tomorrow

To offer my heart

To a girl who knew much sorrow”

The storm howls and whips across the sky. And though the massive building seems impenetrable, a rogue wind finds its way in and wanders sharply down the marbled, columned halls. Floor by floor it brushes against glass cases and interpretive signs, past the Charles Knight murals, in and out of the gift shop and café, through the angry skull of Sue, the T. rex.

“Oh my gawd, Brian, this one is really gross!” A woman in her early twenties, holding hands with a guy who looks visibly exhausted by the museum, comes bounding into the exhibit. Patrick backsteps into the outlying darkness. The woman snaps a few quick, thoughtless photos of the bog body and the couple giggles their way out.

“Man, I am so sick of people like that,” Patrick says. “Stupid, self-centered jerks!” He sighs, shaking his head as he reenters the light. He stares into a corner, lost in thought, then turns to Edie’s photo.

“I’m sorry,” he says, pushing aside his bangs. “I just get so mad sometimes. I mean, why do they say stuff like that? It’s beyond rude!” He regards Edie’s fragmented remains. “You know what? I don’t care if I ever see another human being again for as long as I live. Seriously, there’s no one else besides you that—” He turns away, embarrassed. “Oh, forget it. You’re probably sick of me by now anyway. I’ll just . . . I’ll just finish this stupid poem and go.”

Dust falls from the edge of the display case; a large mote floats off into the darkness. Sighing, Patrick continues with the poem:

“I give you these words

That arose from our meeting

To help end the loneliness

That the both of us are feeling—”

An announcement comes over the loudspeaker, indicating that the museum will be closing in ten minutes.

“Patrick, the museum’s going to close in ten minutes.” It’s Patrick’s mother. She’s sticking her head into the exhibit.

“I know, mom. Everyone hears that announcement. I’ll be out in a minute.”

“Just letting you know. We need to get going or we’ll miss the next bus.”

Her head retreats into the corridor, and Patrick listens to her footsteps as they move along the walls of the exhibit, going a short distance until they reach a nearby bench. He hears her sit down and rummage through her purse.

“Jeez,” Patrick says, rolling his eyes playfully. In the photo, Yde Girl stares off to Patrick’s left. The eye sockets of her partially collapsed head are set directly on him.

He continues with the poem, a bit unsteady on his feet:

“Let’s break the barrier—”

He pauses, grimacing in pain from having stood too long in one spot. He decides to support the bulk of his weight against the display case as he recites the final lines of the poem:

“Let’s break the barrier

And walk hand in hand

Across all time & space

To the moors of our own land”

A security guard approaches the exhibit as he goes about his route.

“My son’s in there,” Patrick’s mother says, pointing with one hand and snapping shut her compact with the other. “He’s taking notes for a school paper. He’ll be out in just a minute.” She smiles at the man, who responds with a lazy yawn. Outside, the blizzard presses up against the museum.

Pop!—Broken glass hits the floor.

The guard spins on his heel, rips a flashlight from his belt and scrambles into the exhibit. Patrick’s mother chases after him. Inside, a low fog drifts down the shattered display case and rolls across the floor, the stench of rotten peat permeating the air.

As the fog clears they see Patrick’s back brace wobble to a stop on Yde Girl’s remains.

The boy’s mother screams. The security guard throws a meaty arm across her lunging body and yells into his radio. Stumbling back, she shouts her son’s name from the wall as the guard frantically shines his flashlight into each corner of the room.

No further trace of Patrick was ever found.

(From the book The Hunchback's Captive and Others)