A Spectral Hue

by Craig Laurance Gidney

  “I guess so,” Iris replied. Though she disagreed. Mona Broome was overprotective because she was a control-freak. Earlier that summer, Iris stopped wearing ribbons and child-like barrettes in her hair. Her mother actually argued with her over something that insignificant. Pop-Pop stopped the fight. “Let the child wear her hair the way she wants to. Stop fussing over her!”

  They spent the weekend together. It was a nice change from being in the house. Pop-Pop didn’t believe in air-conditioning the second and third floors of his house during the day, so all of them were cramped in the front room during the August heat. That meant hours of watching Billy Graham on the television, and her mother fussing over Pop-Pop. The drone of the big window unit and the slow stir of the ceiling fan were their only weapons against the wall of humidity that awaited them in the other areas of the house. Earline’s efficiency was nicely cool.

  Earline’s shelves were lined with books. Iris had never seen so many books outside of a library. A couple of them lay open on Earline’s bed. There was a tiny desk by the window, which overlooked a parking lot. On the desk, there was a typewriter and a legal pad filled with Earline’s spidery handwriting. Was she writing a book? Iris was in love with this tiny apartment, every square inch of it. However, there was one thing missing.

  “Where’s the TV?” Iris said.

  “I don’t have one,” said Earline. “Do you want something to drink?”

  “Sure. A Pepsi would be nice.”

  “I don’t have Pepsi. I have water and orange juice.”

  When Earline lived with them, she never watched television. Not even the news. She would retire to her room upstairs while the rest of the family watched programs. Iris recalled her calling TV “The Idiot Box” and claiming that it dulled people’s intelligence. Of course, she wouldn’t have a television, Iris thought. She wasn’t so sure that she could live exactly the way Earline did.

  The glass of juice was strangely bitter and full of pulp.

  Black Gnosis had been a back-to-nature group, at least according to her mother. They worshipped a black goddess and believed all sorts of heathen nonsense. When she spoke to Earline about her days with Black Gnosis, her aunt made it seem like just a denomination of Christianity, another flavor like Lutheranism or Seventh Day Adventist. They didn’t worship Sophia, the Black Madonna of Wisdom. They just honored her as a part of the Godhead. “God has a feminine aspect,” were the words she used. It sounded pretty out-there, to be honest. Her grandfather thought Black Gnosis was one of those “wacky, made-up religions,” like the Moonies. They had blasphemous ideas, and he was overjoyed when Earline left them. Iris thought she still held onto some of their beliefs. No TV, and unsweetened orange juice seemed to be a little bit hippyish. Along with her unprocessed hair and the fact that Earline wore no makeup.

  Iris had been looking forward to this weekend. But she couldn’t conceive of what they would do without a television. Television was more than just the programs. It was an organizing principle, something to spur conversation. It was an engine, a driver of social behavior. She could tell time via the programming, and the chatter and laugh tracks gave structure to her day. What else was there to do? Shadow puppets? She had hoped to see one of the movies that were banned in her house. The Exorcist was coming on this evening. Watching a scary movie with Earline would have been fun.

  She shouldn’t have worried. Earline took her shopping on Market Street. Market Street was full of stores that sold things like crystals, jewelry and incense, things Iris didn’t even know existed. There was a store that sold the African print fabrics Earline loved, and another store that just sold maps, the antique kind with sea monsters in the margins. There were tobacco stores and tattoo shops. Tons of restaurants, from pizza joints to fine dining. The street was full of the kind of people Iris never saw in her neighborhood. White people with impossibly colored hair arranged in spikes or mohawks. People of all colors who wore ripped clothing, or studs on their jeans, or T-shirts that had dirty sayings. She tried not to gawp at them. It was hard not to.

  She trailed along with Earline, who seemed to know a couple of the shopkeepers, as she bought various things, like earrings or a pick for her hair. Earline took her to a record shop, its bins full of albums with weird artwork and then to a used bookstore whose shelves were haphazardly stuffed with paperbacks. Earline left her to explore the store. Iris found herself in the Erotica section, where she pored over books titled The Sex God of Redondo Beach or Wicked Lesbians. There were some books that even had pictures of men and women naked. Looking at the images of sex organs was simultaneously thrilling and nauseating. She left the Erotica aisle when she heard Earline calling her name.

  By the time they had finished shopping, they had walked the entire length of the street. There still were places Iris wanted to visit.

  “I know it’s a few hours off, but have you thought about what you wanted to eat for dinner?” Earline asked her.

  “Anywhere on this street!” she said.

  Earline laughed. “Your mama keeps you locked up like a caged bird.”

  “I know. I hate it. I had to argue to let me wear jeans and a T-shirt. She dresses me up like a baby doll.”

  “Oh, that Mona. If you had known her when she was your age….”

  “How was she when she was younger?” Iris asked. The late afternoon crowd was full of ambling couples, holding hands or hugging.

  “You have got to promise to keep this secret. Just between you and me. Swear?”

  “I swear!”

  “Before she met your father, Mona was a bit of a wild child. She smoked cigarettes when she was your age. I remember the horse whipping Daddy gave her when he found out. She was suspended at least three times during junior high. Once for playing dice! She put Mama and Daddy through hell.”

  “Really?” Iris said.

  Iris couldn’t believe her ears. Her straight-laced, uptight mother as a juvenile delinquent was impossible to imagine. Her mother, who wouldn’t let her listen to the radio because of all the racy lyrics. Her mother, who told her that babies came from the stork up to and including age eleven. Iris thought of the teenage tough girls she’d seen in Grease. Her mother was a reverse Sandra Dee: she went from tight leather and garish makeup to dowdy dresses with lace trim.

  “Yes,” Earline replied. “She got herself under control by the time she left high school. She had a ‘Come to Jesus’ moment. But you didn’t hear it from me!”

  ***

  They had dinner at Esme’s, a French restaurant just off Market Street. It was a small room with a bar, and drenched in atmosphere. The restaurants Iris was used to had pictures of the food on the menus. Esme’s was candlelit, the flickering flames barely illuminating a room of ancient wooden floors, white table cloths, and booths girded with purple damask curtains. Oval portraits of women in elaborate hats stared at them from the walls. The servers wore crisply ironed outfits, white shirts with bow ties (even the women) and black slacks.

  The bread was crusty and warm from the oven. The French onion soup was rich, and the steak and fries she ordered was tender, the shoestring potatoes crunchy and perfectly salted. For dessert, she and Earline shared a chocolate eclair.

  Iris sat back and watched the interesting array of fellow diners while Earline drank a cappuccino. This was the life she should have had. The life that she deserved. She felt like a grown-up. Sophisticated, like a movie star. She was the only kid in a room full of adults discussing important things over food that was both delicious and beautiful. Each dish, from the salad placed in front of one woman to the dessert placed in front of a young man, was a work of art. The wine glasses were filled with exotic liquids, mostly in tones of purple and pink. The candlelight cast slowly changing shadows against whitewashed walls.

  The drowsy, warm seed of euphoria bloomed in her chest. It was a flame-flower roughly where her heart would be.

  Then, her happiness ended, right then and there. She became Ritz the Ditz once again.

 
; One of those things entered the restaurant, a woman-shaped slice of darkness. This silhouette was in an A-frame dress, and she was short, not much taller than Iris. The fullness of her bosom and her wide hips were the only things that let her know she was a grown woman. She was the most nightmarish apparition Iris had seen yet. It was not in the way she paced about the room. It was in her color. Her darkness. This was no ordinary black. It was too dark, too textured. It wasn’t the black of a starless night. It was jet. And the jet of her substance wasn’t solid. It moved, like a rustle of fabric or the heavy fall of oil in water.

  “Iris, are you all right?”

  She pulled her eyes away from the mesmerizing figure, and looked at her aunt. A furrowed expression of concern was on her face, wrinkle patterns on her forehead, a glint in her eye. Her golden halo had a touch of green at the edges, feathered wisps.

  “I…” she started.

  “You don’t look well,” Earline said as she touched Iris’s forearm.

  “I’m good,” she said, unconvincingly.

  “You sure?”

  The woman of moving darkness went into the kitchen.

  “Yes,” she replied.

  But she wasn’t fine. Far from it.

  ***

  “Aunt Earline?”

  They had just gone to bed. A few minutes had passed, and Iris’s vision adapted to the grain of the darkness. (Though, it wasn’t truly dark. Light from the street leaked in through the window.)

  “Yes?” Earline said. Iris saw her shape in the bed, the shimmer of her golden translucent outline.

  “Can I tell you a secret?”

  “Of course.” Iris heard the note of concern, and felt the tears building up behind her eyes. One of them escaped, streaking her left cheek.

  “I think I’m going crazy,” she said. And she told Earline about the Calico Girl, the Gingko Man, and the appearance of the Jet-Black Woman. She told her about the halos she sometimes saw around people, and how they could flare or fade, depending on people’s moods. At some point, Earline turned on the light and just quietly listened. When Iris was finished, they sat in silence for a while.

  “Thank you for trusting me with your story,” Earline finally said. “I’m glad you told me.”

  “So, you think I’m going insane?” Iris couldn’t look at her aunt. She was afraid of what she might see in her face.

  Earline laughed. More of a snort than a laugh, but still. “I don’t think you’re crazy at all. Lots of people have visions. Or callings. It’s no different than when people at church get the Spirit. I think the things that you see are messages of some kind.”

  “Messages? From who?”

  “Have you heard of Joan of Arc, Iris? No?” Earline got up and began rummaging through her bookshelves. She brought out an oversize book with glossy coated pages. A couple of moments of furious flipping through the book ensued before she found the right page. She placed the opened book in front of her. Iris looked at the picture of a sharp-featured white girl armed with a sword. Behind her was a flowering tree and three ghostly figures with haloes—one woman, two men. “She was a French peasant girl in the 14th century who led an army. She started having visions of angels when she was around your age. She described them as lights.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Well, it’s complicated,” said Earline. “She was allowed to lead an army, on the strength of her visions. But she also was a victim of a backlash, and was denounced as a heretic. The point is, she was a visionary. She saw things that ordinary people didn’t see. And she was misunderstood, but ultimately granted sainthood for her abilities.”

  “So, they thought this Joan chick was crazy?” (Ritz the Ditz. She didn’t tell Earline about that; it was too embarrassing.)

  “Some people did. Others didn’t. They saw her as gifted. Even, blessed.”

  “When she was denounced, what did they do to her? Did they hang her, like those witches in Salem?”

  “Iris,” Earline said, “you’re missing the point. You can choose to view your visions as a curse. But you can also see them as a kind of gift.”

  The colored haloes of living people, the shimmering dead were all messages of some kind? So far, Iris could just see those things. They did not interact with her. They weren’t necessarily frightening. In fact, the colors and textures were quite beautiful, which made them even more disturbing. If the ghosts moaned or were hideous, at least she would know what to do. These luminous shapes that randomly appeared had no apparent meaning or motive.

  “I think I know what you’re saying,” Iris said. “It might be a blessing. But I definitely shouldn’t tell Mother or Pop-Pop. They’d think it was a curse.”

  “Oh, by no means tell those two,” Earline said. “They certainly wouldn’t get it.”

  Not too longer after, Earline switched the light off. Fire-red blobs of color slowly faded behind Iris’s closed eyelids.

  Joan of Arc wasn’t hung, she thought as she drifted off, she was burned at the stake.

  9: Fuchsia (1840)

  Hazel’s mind was quick as a water moccasin coiling through the swamp. As quick as a hare bounding through the brush, as quick as the fox that chased the hare. Quick as a heron diving for a fish, as quick as the fish slipping through the talons. Thoughts went here—and there—and here again. Her moods changed colors, like the seasons. From placid green spring happiness to fiery red autumn leaf angry. Winter cool sadness, summer bright manic joy.

  For a good while, Fuchsia floated like a leaf on the hurricane of Hazel’s thoughts. She found no mooring, nothing she could hold on to. She was buffeted and overwhelmed with the cascade of emotion and word, image and touch and smell. The child buzzed and burned with demonic energy, flitting from situation to stimuli.

  I hate laundry day. They ought to clean their own shit-stained small clothes! Why does Missus always be rebuking me? Master drinks too much. I wonder what tobacco smoking is like? I wish I could wear some fine clothes every once and a while. I swear they have a raccoon in the attic; I can hear it scritch-scratching away!

  Her thoughts were an endless, relentless rush that drowned Fuchsia. There was no rhythm. Entering the girl had seemed like such a good idea at the time. Now she regretted it.

  Almost regretted it.

  There were things that kept Fuchsia in Hazel’s body. While she couldn’t smell, or taste or touch anything, she felt the deep emotions Hazel felt when her senses were engaged. She might not know what Judith’s biscuits tasted like slathered with butter and honey, but pleasure exploded with every bite. Fuchsia knew the revulsion Hazel felt when she smelled fresh horse dung, or the thrill when a raccoon got into the house. Best of all, though, were Hazel’s dreams. When night fell, and her conscious mind rested, wondrous things crept out from hiding.

  There was the woman made of golden glass, transparent, with a locket for a heart. This golden woman was tall, and she would sing lullabies to Hazel. Baa, baa black sheep, have you any wool? Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle. Ladybird, ladybird. Mary, Mary, quite contrary. Sometimes, she would sing other songs, songs that Fuchsia half-remembered. Amazing Grace. Swing low, sweet chariot. The golden woman’s voice was soothing. Hazel always smiled when she heard it. She and the golden woman would play with rag dolls that could dance unassisted and put on elaborate plays. Sometimes, field mice in clothes—top hats, dresses, bonnets—would come to watch. The plays didn’t really make any sense. Fuchsia just enjoyed the warm feeling that suffused these moments.

  There was the dream of the dollhouse that floated in the clouds. It had eight gabled roofs the color of red clay and the outer walls were painted pale yellow, the color of fresh butter. Inside, the walls were covered in wallpaper patterned with tiny scarlet and yellow flowers. There was furniture made of dark, sturdy wood: several tables, all dressed in lace, a library full of miniature leather volumes, and a bedroom dominated by a four-poster, canopied bed full of soft pillows. Hazel was the only person in this dollhouse who soared throug
h the sky, always chasing the dawn or the sunset. This was the place where the girl just rested. It was a sanctuary, not unlike the beautiful wetlands Fuchsia had left behind.

  Not all of these dreams were halcyon. In fact, the first time she transpierced Hazel, she fell into a fever dream. It was like drowning. After the tranquil beauty of the wetlands, this was a fiery hell. In the grip of illness, Hazel saw blurred things, faces that bled from their eyes and noses. Eyes that were all pupil, or all red-veined whites. She/they saw mouths that were caves, abysses. Rotten teeth yellow and black, gums the color of guano. They smelled the bitter acridity of laudanum, the salt sourness of sweat, the sweet fecal odor of decay. And they saw needles and syringes of glass and metal, raining down on timid brown skin, bruising it black.

  There was a moment when Fuchsia thought that she was going to die, as she was spiritually yoked to the child. But gradually, days or hours, the fever subsided in a molasses-slow crawl. The fire in Hazel’s veins cooled, became embers. And everything she saw was haloed by a hazy shimmer. Faces looked normal, more or less.

  Since then, Hazel would occasionally have a full-on nightmare. Eyeless men, the color of flour and with teeth like glass, would hunt her down in an endless corridor full of holes and rusted nails. Hazel had a fear of snakes. Slit-eyed and fanged, serpents would slither into her shoes, her pinafore pockets, underneath her bonnet. Then there was the nightmare with the golden woman, where the eyeless white men took her away from Hazel. Their claw-like hands dragged the golden woman away. It was heartbreaking, Hazel’s tear-streaked face, the imploring stance as they pulled her away.

  Hazel would sometimes startle awake during these dark episodes. Upon awakening, the images would fade away. She would forget her nightmares. Fuchsia, however, remembered every image with crystal-clear clarity. The puckered pink flesh of the white demons, the black gums from which their glass-shard teeth grew. Hazel was enslaved. Fuchsia knew that the golden woman was some maternal figure in Hazel’s life, dimly remembered. During the rare moments when Hazel’s mind stilled, she could catch glimpses of the girl’s past. Fuchsia saw the coastal South Carolina mansion, its majestic rice plantations, the brown bodies attending the golden husks of grass that grew in muddy channels, sweating in the unforgiving sun. She heard, rather than saw, a motherly figure, in the background. Sweeping a wooden floor, feeding Hazel crackling pork and johnnycakes with honey. The woman didn’t have a clear face, but Hazel remembered the swish of her skirts, and how she smelled of mint-scented water. How Hazel got here, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, was unknown.