“Then how’d you know what to do?” Betsy clutched her arm.
It was foolish of Opal to bring attention to herself like this. She couldn’t very well tell Betsy the truth: her husband was a doctor, but now her husband was dead—murdered, that’s what the papers had said. The headlines had read like a gauzy dream.Husband not expected to live. Wife on the run.When she’d read the articles, it was like reading about someone else completely. Someone dangerous. A woman gone mad. Authorities claimed to be seeking all leads.
Opal felt the eyes of the Earthshine Girls press upon her. She touched her stomach for a moment, but quickly pulled her hand away.Cautiously alert.
“Who are you anyway?” Maria asked. All the women turned toward Opal now. In their white uniforms they looked like something of a militia that might mobilize against her at any moment.
How could she explain she’d been an ordinary wife until she waded into the river and heard a voice? How could she tell them she was pregnant with a baby from the Other Side? How could they possibly understand all this when she didn’t fully understand it herself?
“I’m just an Earthshine Girl,” she managed. For a moment, she couldn’t breathe. Then Betsy emitted a small, birdlike peep, and promptly passed out from the pain.
January 4, 1986
Interview with Jane Doe No. 2
ByThe Cincinnati Inquisitor
CI:What drew you to Earthshine Soap?
JANE DOE NO. 2:I swore by Earthshine Soap. There’s nothing else like it, really. When it came out in the 1950s—the “new and improved” formula in that yellow canister with the girl’s face—I was a kid. I loved their commercials, especially the one with the Earthshine Girl as that secretary who saves her boss from ring around the collar. She sings to the tune of that children’s song. [Sings]Ring around the collar, the dirt will make him holler. Earthshine. Earthshine. The clean you need.
CI:Did you feel misled by those advertisements?
JANE DOE NO. 2:Looking back now, that commercial seems to be saying she needed to clean her boss’s shirt so he wouldn’t yell at her anymore. But I’m not one to be fooled by advertisements. Earthshine really worked. My goodness, I used to have to scour grime all day to get the same effect. And I used it on everything: in the bathrooms and kitchen, on wood and glass. I sprinkled it on my carpets. I added a quarter cup to every load of laundry, and it got out even the most hard-set stains. And my hands—they felt so soft after I used it. They say you can take a bath in it, but I never did. Earthshine really was some kind of magic.
CI:Now you sound like an advertisement.
JANE DOE NO. 2:[Sings]The clean you need.[Laughs.] I miss it. I do.
CI:But then something changed for you, correct?
JANE DOE NO. 2:Yes. I started to notice things—abnormalities, you could say. Pain. Mood swings. Increased appetite. My periods got longer and longer, but my cycle got shorter and shorter. And when it was my time of the month, I just felt so… pent-up. Frustrated. Like I might burst out of my skin. Like I was angry about something but I didn’tknow what. But then all that stopped, just like that [snaps fingers]. I’m not a young woman anymore, but I’m not old. I know the body changes. But I believe it was the soap. I used it for years. I used it on everything.
CI:Why didn’t you come forward sooner?
JANE DOE NO. 2:[Pause.] Because for a long time, I didn’t realize anything was wrong.
1986
Freshness, charm—the Enticement of Skin More Precious than Personality or Cleverness—do you seek it?
—PALMOLIVE SOAP
Stella had been beneath the ground a week now. Nobody heard her cries or the frantic banging from the casket six feet under.
I began to manifest Stella’s stress in my own life. Taphephobia: the fear of being buried alive. At work, as I walked from the parking lot to the studio, my senses were assaulted by the flash of bulbs, news cameras, and boom mics pointed down in my direction. “The Earthshine Girl!” someone shouted. A circle began to form around me, so I turned backward, toward the stairs, but I snagged my heel. I tripped and nearly fell.
“Easy, there.” He grabbed my elbow and pulled me up, then spun me around. John Dale Fox from Action 13 News. He had on a blazer over a turtleneck, the same outfit he wore when I’d met him six months ago during a gig my agent found for me hosting a fund drive. Now hehanded me a business card, slipped between his two fingers. “Give me the first interview. Please. Can I call you?”
“Like last time?” I said.
“It won’t be like last time, I promise,” he said.
“I don’t know anything about those women.”
“You know what they’re saying,” he said. “Alleging.”
“Earthshine Girl!” someone yelled again now, and a woman emerged from the crowd. She was one of the handful of protesters I’d seen near the factory entrance in the mornings as I made my way to the studio—another bored housewife, I assumed, looking to attach herself to a cause. The woman wore braids and a yellow visor, the color of the Earthshine canister, even though it was early and the sun wasn’t yet out. “Do you feel responsible at all?” She toted a camera—not a news camera but a personal camcorder, a bulky contraption strapped across her chest and connected to a box with coil wire.
