Like Wormwood on the Lips
“The Reckoning” by Andy Valk
Raise your hand, Wendy. If you want to be Juliet, you must risk being assigned Juliet’s nurse, who, according to Ms. Johnson, showed poor judgement by coordinating Juliet’s dalliance with Romeo. You, who’s never been kissed, agree with Ms. Johnson that teens are too immature for the emotional entanglements of sex. Ms. Johnson, 27 by your calculation, knows things, has lived deeply. After graduating from Iowa’s flagship university, she moved to Bakersfield, California, endured the Northridge earthquake on a visit to L.A., then returned to Iowa “to be closer to family.” You’re pretty sure someone in Bakersfield broke her heart.
Ms. Johnson, who still hasn’t called on you to read Juliet, has brown hair and big hands. You worry she is ashamed of her impressive hands, her protruding teeth. Her crisp style—chambray oxford, GAP chinos, and braided leather belt—makes you want to watch her all day. You want brown hair, big hands, and to be her best friend. Last week you gave her a picture of your dog in a frame you crafted from colorful foam sheets and construction paper. You aren’t weird.
Marianne Miller raises her hand, thereby blowing your shot at Juliet. Even your progressive-has-lived-in-Bakersfield-CA teacher is not so forward thinking as to cast Noxzema-fresh Marianne as Juliet’s wet nurse. Rules of beauty don’t bend. (In fact, two decades later, Marianne will become the marketing manager—the face and voice—of the un-dead mall, which is to say Marianne will land the Juliet of jobs.) Ms. Johnson is not wrong to pick Marianne to be Juliet: This is 9th grade Language Arts, 3rd period, not a goddamned black-box theatre.
Marianne smiles. All is right with her world. She’s dating a future homecoming king. She will one day be on the homecoming court. Her skin is annoyingly creamy; she looks like Sandy in Grease before the black-spandex transformation. Marianne is Olivia Newton John in mid-90s fashion: relaxed-fit jeans and a lilac Henley. Marianne does not need Juliet. The role and everyone in the classroom are beneath her, even her best friend, the cute-but-not-pretty Kimmy, who will have very talkative intercourse in the top bunk of her Iowa State dorm room (lots of “Put your c*ck in my p*ssy!” and “Do you like your c*ck in my p*ssy?”) according to your friend who will be friends with a friend of Kimmy’s college roommate.
And now you’ve been called upon to read Juliet’s nurse.
For I had then laid wormwood to my dug,
When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple
Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool,
To see it tetchy and fall out with the dug.
Christ! Can’t you stop talking about your dugs? You hate having boobs—they’re too big, grotesque—the Bakhtinian grotesque, a saving grace you’ll learn about in grad school. The abject and grotesque are also qualities of the nurse. Marianne (Juliet) calls you (Juliet’s nurse) Ancient Damnation when she’s mad. Mean and funny, and you can appreciate sophisticated humor—you watch British sitcoms on PBS—but Ms. Johnson gazes approvingly at Marianne.
If you were reading Juliet, Ms. Johnson would comprehend the depth of your soul, how it transcends its earthly casing, and be your best friend. At the beginning of the Romeo and Juliet unit, you were assigned a one-page essay about your favorite song. You considered early Joni Mitchell but chose “Least Complicated” by the Indigo Girls. Ms. Johnson chose “The Bug” by Dire Straits but considered your Indigo Girls song—which she said isn’t to say she’s a lesbian. That—what she said and didn’t say—threw you.
An honor! Were not I thine only nurse, I would say thou hadst sucked wisdom from thy teat. You’re not paying enough attention to the play. Or too much attention. Star-crossed lovers! Though you merely want to be Ms. Johnson’s best friend—super platonic—which would include activities like going to the bookstore, listening to Indigo Girls CDs, and talking about your feelings. If Ms. Johnson were to mention her ex-boyfriend (Sebastian—you overheard her lamenting to another teacher in the computer lab), fine! You, her good friend—nay best!—would offer consolation.
Ms. Johnson! You want to yell her name into the night à la Stanley Kowalski (though you’ve never read that play). You are every character who might get her attention. If not Juliet then Romeo! What about fiery Tybalt—can you be him? No, your life will be about learning and forgetting and learning and forgetting you aspire to Mercutio, whose tragic death marks an important point in the text and makes people sorry for how they’ve failed you. People are jerks and Mercutio pure of heart. Like Mercutio, you will make people sad sometimes, but you won’t break hearts the way Romeos and Juliets do. Like Mercutio, you feel and verbalize things deeply: Why the devil did you come between us? I was hurt under your arm, is what you’d like to tell Marianne, who came between you and Ms. Johnson because pretty girls are too pretty to ignore, even when they get mostly Bs in Language Arts.
Go, girl, seek happy nights to happy days, you tell Marianne at the end of the scene. In this moment, with so much wonder, laughter, and pain ahead of you, you are the nurse, lucky to get any stage time at all. The nurse isn’t ashamed of her teats or lust, and maybe that’s why you fear her, why Ms. Johnson wanted you to read her. Meanwhile, Marianne doesn’t seem worried about Juliet’s fate. Marianne will grow up, work at the good mall, bear attractive children who will likely sire and bear attractive children, and if she ever struggles to grasp the difference between fantasy and reality, you’ll never know.
About the Author
Wendy Oleson (she/they) is the author of two award-winning chapbooks. Wendy's fiction appears in Cream City Review, Copper Nickel, SmokeLong Quarterly: Best of the First Ten Years, and elsewhere. Wendy serves as managing editor for Split Lip Magazine and lives in Walla Walla, Washington.
About the Artist
Andy Valk is a queer self portrait artist who explores themes of self exploration and exploitation through paintings inspired by crudely made sets, props and dolls. Their work is a tribute to the act of creation, and the incredibly human urge to record and relay our experiences. The characters and actors depicted are all different versions of Andy who exist solely to frantically construct and produce films pertaining to the epic highs and lows of their own universal human experience. The paintings are stills from the productions. The sculptures are sets and props.