The Idealists: Part X

The Idealists – Part X


The Blondettes

​Before she even realizes she’s pregnant, Ruthie
begins having terrible dreams. Often, she only
remembers bits—disconnected moments that linger
through her day—a young man with Aryan features
she almost recognizes, lecturing a class full
of blonde, perfect young girls; the same man,
but younger—a boy—surrounded by those same
blondettes (as she starts calling them) cajoling
him to do something horrible, she could never
recall; the blondettes breaking into her bedroom
as she slept, their manicured fingers digging
into the soil of her belly, taking something away
from her; and finally, her, surrounded by these
girls as her baby cries somewhere nearby. One
of them has it behind her back, Ruthie is sure,
but every one she searches has empty hands. She
cannot find him. Him. She sits up in bed, shakes
Derick awake, and tells him,

​“It’s a boy.”

​“It’s very draining,” she says. They’re in
the car, stuck in traffic on the way to dinner.

​“It’s probably the hormones. Dr. Buttkuss said
some things might happen,” Derick says.

​“I know, but I can’t help thinking it’s relevant.”

​“Well, what does it mean, then?” Derick asks, but
before Ruthie can answer, the traffic clears and
she lets the subject drop.

​“I dreamed about food every night,” Christine,
a math teacher, says in the lunchroom.

​Ruthie glances at her hair, which is red. Most
of the faculty has brown hair. 85%, actually.
Ruthie has been counting. The staff, on the other
hand, are almost the opposite—about 70% are blonde.
But Ruthie rarely interacts with them.

​“My sister had weird dreams,” Christine
continues. “Nightmares.”

​“My grandmother always said nightmares mean a boy,”
Joan, another teacher, says, causing everyone
to laugh.

​“My sister did have a boy,” Christine adds.

​“Do you know what it is?” Joan asks.

​“I think it’s a boy, but we don’t know,”
Ruthie says.

​All the women stare at her belly, which is
just beginning to show. Ruthie feels a blush
spread across her face.

​“There you go,” Joan says. They all laugh again.

​“The custodians tend to have brown hair,” Ruthie
says to Derick, in bed.

​“How about the barn staff?”

​“Pretty good mix, actually, of brown and blonde”

​“The cafeteria workers?”

​“Brunette.”

​“Maybe it’s the parents,” Derick says.

​“Could be,” Ruthie says. “They certainly tend
to be blonde.”

​“And scary,” Derick adds, but Ruthie doesn’t
smile.

​The next morning, Ruthie has her students write
an in-class essay. As they work, heads bent over
their desks, she begins counting. Of the fifteen
students, the first row has three blondes. As she
goes down the rows, the number doubles, quadruples;
almost all of them are blonde. She is in a room
full of Aryan dream-children. The memories of her
dreams flash against her minds-eye—she sees her
little boy ruined, turned into an evil thing by
these oblivious girls. The light seems weird in
the room, and she isn’t sure whether she’s actually
awake. Terror envelopes her, and she lurches back
to her desk, her feet clumsy.

“All I have to do is make it to the bell,”
she tells herself.

​At their desks, the children write away,
ignoring her.


C.L. Bledsoe

Posted over on Troubadour 21