Margaret Emma Brandl
Beetroot owned a flying horse. Beetroot went to bed every night with her socks on. Beetroot spoke only once in Kindergarten, and not even for her own name, but to name a thing that was making its way across the doorway during naptime, when she wasn’t allowed to speak—“Redhead.” Beetroot was talking about the giant centipede, black body and bright red head like a pickled plum, long legs and antennae like the daikon her sister liked to chop up for dinner. The Redhead moved otherwise unnoticed through the classroom, past the metal legs of chairs for tiny bodies, boxes of Elmer’s glue, stacks of washable markers, mountain of baby wipes. Beetroot heard it tip tip tip past her head on the plastic mat, held her breath. The teacher didn’t know who had spoken, and thought the word was something like “wet bed,” so as she scuttled between students the Redhead scuttled its own path up the dark metal side of her desk. When the teacher returned to her desk the Redhead was nesting in a pile of the students’ papers, shuffling under a stack of fruits and vegetables scribbled with all the wrong colors. The teacher shrieked and the Redhead heard, diving forward into her open drawer, which she slammed closed. There was a light switch on the wall by her desk, which she flipped on, and as the other Kindergarteners grumbled and grumped at being awoken Beetroot got silently to her feet to stand in the corner by the door where the Redhead wouldn’t get her. The teacher evacuated the class next door, nearly in tears. The janitor came and went through her desk. He carried the Redhead out in a gray bucket. Beetroot heard it hissing as he moved past.
*
Beetroot’s favorite color was electric orange. Beetroot painted her toenails a different color, each one of them, as soon as she had saved up money to buy her first bottles of nail polish. She waited until she had ten bottles, lined in a row, in all the best off-shades she could find. Nail polish was like magic for Beetroot: she had just begun to read, delayed but all at once, and words were the most delicious of delicacies, tastier than the carrots in almost her favorite color, tastier than the hard-outside chewy-inside strawberry-paper-wrapped candies the school secretary kept in a dish on her counter. Beetroot bought nail polish by name: Razzmatazz, Bridal Blush, Chartreuse, Grapicola, Persnickety Persimmon, Modal Mauve, Blooberry, Jazz Hands Jasmine, Banana Boat, Iridescence of Delight.
*
Beetroot’s mother was a tree. Beetroot’s father whistled all day and made shoes in his workshop in the garage. Beetroot’s sister was a biologist who caught things in the backyard and took them to a lab to study. Beetroot’s sister said the backyard was a unique habitat and showed Beetroot the things she caught in jars. Beetroot looked at the Redhead centipede and watched it tip tip tip against the glass jar. The ceiling was white and the floor was scuffed white tiles and the fluorescent lights in the ceiling made all the surfaces of the lab shiny. Beetroot tip tip tip’ed back at the Redhead, her little finger tentative against the glass. “You can’t do that,” Beetroot’s sister told her. “It’ll startle.”
*
Beetroot was proud of her rainbow toe polish but the first time she saw a Redhead she wore her socks to sleep. “I can’t see the Razzmatazz this way,” Beetroot’s sister told her, but Beetroot just shook her head. “Redheads,” she said. “I think they want my toes. I can’t have them uncovered.” Beetroot’s sister snorted, but Beetroot heard the Redheads that crawled on her window outside at night. The house would be quiet, or the air conditioner would rumble on, and the blinds would be closed, but especially the tiny window above her head—the one that framed the room in such a way that demanded her bed sit beneath it—she’d hear that same noise, the one she knew was the Redheads’ feet: tip tip tip.
*
Beetroot’s father had a magic tattoo all up and down his arm. Beetroot’s sister had eyes that were two different colors. Beetroot liked to spend long hours curled up under her mother on a paisley comforter her father had said was ok to use as a picnic blanket. Beetroot would gather up supplies to spend time with her mother: bread-and-butter sandwiches, the orangest carrots she could find, the bubble gum that came in rainbow-striped packages, whichever encyclopedia she was reading. Beetroot was reading the encyclopedia, but not so diligently: she’d get bored sometimes and skip pages. But her mother always gave a disapproving rustle if she skipped too many. Beetroot’s parents cared about education.
*
Beetroot wanted new shoes that were Redhead-proof but her father sometimes acted like he couldn’t hear her. She’d go to ask him every now and then—she said her socks were too thin. But he would just stand at his table, whistling as he cut or hammered or did whatever it was he did up there to form pieces of leather and cloth and board into bright-colored shoes. A row of hooks on the wall held the shoelaces—shades of black and white, long and thin or round and fat or all coiled up in curlicues. Beetroot watched her father’s wrist—he always wore long sleeves buttoned to the quick. He said it protected the tattoo. Sometimes Beetroot could see red tips licking out of the sleeve. Once it was a long, single purple tendril.
*
One night at dinner Beetroot’s sister announced she was getting married. She showed Beetroot the ring. Beetroot’s father said he didn’t know Beetroot’s sister was even dating and got up to get a second helping of greens. Later Beetroot watched her sister show the ring to their mother. Beetroot’s mother seemed to approve. She dropped a few leaves at Beetroot’s sister’s feet. The stone in Beetroot’s sister’s ring was not orange. It was not Razzmatazz or Jazz Hands Jasmine. It wasn’t even Bridal Blush. It just looked like glass.
*
Beetroot’s sister brought her fiancé to the house a few weeks later. He had one glass eye and Beetroot had a bad feeling about him. When he came into the house two Redheads tried to follow him in, tip tip tip, and Beetroot had shut the door fast. The fiancé had frowned at her. He laughed at Beetroot’s dirty socks. He wasn’t interested in her father’s shoes. He scratched boredly at his nose when he met Beetroot’s mother. Beetroot heard her mother give a disapproving groan, high up in her branches, and watched a Redhead scuttle down the trunk and come to rest by the fiancé’s feet.
*
Beetroot’s sister borrowed the Modal Mauve to make people look at her hands, to make them notice the ring on her finger. She didn’t want to go dress-shopping like the brides on TV; she said she’d wear her lab coat. The fiancé came by the house a handful more times, to help Beetroot’s sister put things into boxes. Once Beetroot’s father sought them out to announce that he was making their wedding shoes, but they just nodded at him. Beetroot saw the tattoo surge from under his sleeve as he walked away from them, long green lines that traced up his fingers. He balled his hand into a fist before she could see any more. The fiancé said he had a headache and went home.
*
Beetroot’s horse got lonely out back in her tent so Beetroot went to visit her. The horse’s name was Porridge. Porridge landed gracefully next to Beetroot and Beetroot patted her long nose. “Sister is going away,” Beetroot said. She thought of the little piece of glass and the shoelaces in her father’s workshop. “There won’t be anyone to protect me from the Redheads.” Porridge breathed softly into Beetroot’s face. Beetroot took off her socks and showed Porridge her feet. “I guess I don’t care who bites them now.” Beetroot thought of the Redheads crawling around in jars in her sister’s laboratory, tip tip tip on glass. Like a dog, Porridge licked her toes, one color at a time.
*
The day Beetroot’s sister left to be married Beetroot stayed with her mother and Porridge. Her father went to deliver the wedding shoes. They were the most beautiful shoes he had ever made and the most beautiful shoes Beetroot had ever seen. For the fiancé, blue leather boots with natural brown edging in a spiky pattern like flames. One boot had a tiny Redhead at the back above the heel; the other in the same place had a small eye. For Beetroot’s sister, flat lace-up red shoes with delicate images of insects etched all over. At the back above the heels one shoe had a tiny etching of a tree—their mother—and the other had two eyes, in the blue and gray of Beetroot’s sister’s eyes. When Beetroot’s father returned home hours later, he was still carrying the shoes. He approached Beetroot and her mother and sighed heavily. The area under his collar on one side had gone black, and one entire hand: the tattoo again. He reached down with his normal hand and gave the red shoes to Beetroot. “These won’t fit you,” he said, “but I thought you might like them.” He placed a hand on Beetroot’s mother and was quiet for a long time, and Porridge took off for the backyard.
*
Beetroot looked at the shoes, how careful and beautiful they were, and dropped tears onto them long after her father had gone inside. She didn’t dare touch them with her dirty feet, her rainbow toenails. Across the yard, a Redhead started crawling toward them, and she got up and moved to the driveway. The Redhead didn’t seem to notice her; and within just a few more moments it had her sister’s wedding shoes. It crawled across the tips of the toes; it scuttled into and back out of each foot-hole; it curled around the back and touched the engravings with all of its legs—tip tip tip. Beetroot watched it learn the shoes, every curve and careful detail. “You can have them,” she told it softly, and turned and went inside.
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Margaret Emma Brandl is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at Texas Tech University, where she teaches English courses and serves as an associate editor for Iron Horse Literary Review. She holds an MFA in prose from the University of Notre Dame; and her writing has appeared in Gulf Coast, Cartridge Lit, CHEAP POP, Hobart, and Paragraphiti, among others. You can find her on Twitter @margaret_emma.