by Han Nolan
“Yes, I was your apprentice, and I believed you. I believed everything you said. I believed in the incense, and the dances around the table to ward off evil, and magic and miracles. I believed in yellow for intellectual pursuits, and green for transcendent knowledge, and purple!” I tugged at my shirt. “I especially believed in purple. Purple was spiritual. Purple would make me just like you. Purple would bring Dane back to me and make me real. I just wanted to be real.”
“Dane!” Gigi put on her blinker and pulled off to the side of the road. She stopped the car. I could see tears slipping into the creases of her face. She opened the ashtray and pulled out some fresh sheets of toilet tissue to dab at her eyes.
“Have you been talking about Dane with that doctor?” she asked, twisting in her seat to face me. She glared at me, waiting for me to answer her, and I felt myself shrink, my body dissolve into its familiar nebulous state. I began to shake. I could hear Dr. DeAngelis speaking to me, asking me why it was safer to bury what I knew. Telling me to go forward, to stay on the train, look at the truth. When I was with Dr. DeAngelis, when he asked me about Dane, my mind reached out for Gigi. I had something I needed to say to her. I thought I wanted her to rescue me, take me with her to Tennessee, I thought that’s what I needed to tell her, but then I realized that wasn’t it at all. I wanted her to release me. I wanted her to say it was all right to stop believing. I wanted to break the unspoken pact we had kept between us for so many years.
I sat up and turned to face Gigi. Her face was still a rash of red blotches but the tears were gone. I looked in her eyes just the way Dr. DeAngelis would have wanted me to and asked, “Where’s Dane?”
Gigi’s mouth dropped open.
“Where’s Dane? Where is he?”
Her eyes widened. She leaned back, away from me. “You know where he is.”
I shook my head. “No, the truth. Where is he? What happened that night of the séance?”
“You know what happened.” Gigi’s hand clutched at her crystal. “He melted, remember? You saw for yourself. You saw the candle bottles. You saw his clothes.”
“No! I don’t want to hear your lies. Where did he go? What happened to him? Why did he leave?”
Gigi shook her head. “I told you, Miracle, I told you he melted. That’s all I know. He melted.”
“Gigi!” I slid closer to her and raised the leg of my purple pants, raised it up to expose the scars. “People don’t melt, they burn. See? They just burn.”
Chapter 29
GIGI DIDN’T LOOK DOWN at the burns on my leg, but I did. I looked down at them as if I were seeing them for the first time, my burns, my scars, vestiges of my last desperate attempt to feel something, to feel real, to feel the truth.
I lifted my head. I wanted to tell Gigi what I was feeling, make her understand why I needed the truth.
Gigi was staring out the windshield.
“But Dane melted,” she said, her voice quivering, her head tilted. She turned to me.
I looked in her eyes and I could see that she was pleading with me, asking me to believe. Begging me to keep our silent pact, to stay with her in her fantasy world. But I couldn’t do it. I had realized it wasn’t safe there anymore, if it had ever been. There was nothing there for me. I was nothing, felt nothing when I lived in that other world. I shook my head and started to turn away.
“He melted,” Gigi said again, grabbing me with her words.
I didn’t want to look at her. I didn’t want her to pull me in, but I couldn’t help it. I tried staring at her hands locked together in a tight grip. She had put on weight. The bracelets on her wrists pressed into her flesh. I lifted my head and Gigi looked at me, pleading. Wrinkles ran down her face like a thousand frowns. I could read her pain as if I had struck her in the chest. I could read her fear, and I nodded. I understood that fear. Gigi still needed to believe. She wasn’t lying to me. She believed what she told me. She believed Dane had melted. She had to. Knowing that Dane left her because he didn’t want her anymore was more than she could bear. It was the loneliest, most desperate feeling in the world. That’s what I knew. That’s what I would tell Dr. DeAngelis when I saw him again. When he asked me where Dane was, I would tell him he left us. He ran away. And when he asked me how it made me feel, I would tell him . . . my thoughts stopped. No, it wasn’t just the loneliest feeling. It wasn’t just the emptiness, it was—it had been, a need. All those years I needed Dane, I needed him desperately to make me feel safe and real, but what I realized, staring again at my scars, was that I was real right there, right then. I didn’t need those scars anymore, I didn’t need Dane or Mama to make me feel real. How did it happen? When? I studied my hands, touched my face, I was real, and it wasn’t Dane or Mama who made me so, it was knowing the truth—all of it. The truth made me real.
I wanted to sing out, to dance, to move the way I was feeling inside, wild and ecstatic, but Gigi held me back, bringing me down with her voice.
“Miracle?” Her voice pleaded once again.
I turned to face front, away from Gigi. I couldn’t help her. I didn’t know how. My own feelings were too new, too fresh. Thoughts and memories were slamming around inside my head, crashing into one another, exploding, breaking wide open. I needed time. I needed a chance to sort them all out. I needed someone to talk to who would understand and listen, really listen. I needed Dr. DeAngelis and Aunt Casey. I wanted to tell them everything, to share what I was discovering with them, and to let them know I needed them.
“Would you take me back to The Cedars, please?” I asked, staring straight ahead.
Gigi sat up and reached for another piece of toilet tissue. “But I’m taking you to Tennessee. I can heal you. I can send you the healing dreams.” She sniffed and wiped her nose. “You’ll be my first cure—my miracle cure. We’ll take pictures—before and after. You’ll be written up in all the papers—Miracle McCloy and the Miracle Cure.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to be a miracle. I just want to be a girl. I just want to be normal.” I looked at her. “Please. Take me back to The Cedars.”
Gigi shook her head and the loose skin under her chin wobbled back and forth. “But I can’t. They’ll think I kidnapped you. That prying Dr. DeAngelis will get after me.”
“But I have to go back. I need them. I need that place.”
Gigi started up the car and turned on her blinker. Then she accelerated back onto the highway. I thought she would turn around at the first exit, but she didn’t. She moved into the passing lane and kept going north, to Tennessee.
I sat leaning up against the door, watching the signs go by—NASHVILLE 57 MILES, NASHVILLE 52 MILES— and I remembered other trips in and out of the state of Alabama. I had never wanted to go. I hadn’t wanted to leave our home and move in with Grandaddy Opal. Then, I hadn’t wanted to leave Grandaddy Opal to move in with Uncle Toole and Aunt Casey, or to leave them to stay at The Cedars in the yellow unit with Dr. DeAngelis. No, I never wanted to go, they just took me. Without asking how I felt about it, they took me, and I went without saying anything, because I was a nobody. They had made me feel like a nobody.
I stared out the window, anger welling up in me. I had to go back to The Cedars. I couldn’t let Gigi take me away again.
I turned to Gigi. “Gigi, I have to go back. You need to turn around, now!”
Gigi turned on her weight loss tape and accelerated to seventy-five miles an hour.
“This really is kidnapping,” I said.
“Nonsense, I’m your legal guardian.” She turned up the sound on her tape.
“But you’re taking me against my will. Gigi?”
She stared out at the road, pretending I hadn’t just spoken to her. If she weren’t driving I knew she would go into a trance. That was her way. If she didn’t like what she was hearing, if she didn’t like what was happening, she just pretended it all away.
“Is this what you did to Dane?” I said, raising my voice to be heard over the tape. “Is this how it was?”
“Dane melted,” she said, still staring at the road.
“No, before—when he was thirteen and you took him away from Grandaddy Opal. This is how it was, wasn’t it? He didn’t want to go. He didn’t want to just write all day. He wanted to be with Grandaddy Opal and ride bikes and build things, but you just took him. You took him away from Grandaddy Opal and brought him to that beach house. He didn’t want to go, did he?”
“Miracle, hush!” Gigi slowed down and moved over to the traveling lane. She hummed along with the flute, but I could tell by the deep furrows in her brow and the way she tilted her head away from me that she was listening to me, listening to what she didn’t want to hear.
“And he didn’t want to marry Sissy, and maybe he didn’t want me, but most of all he didn’t want to live the life you chose for him, so he ran away. He ran off, didn’t he?”
Gigi shook her head and pointed at me. “Stop telling your lies! It’s that doctor brainwashing you. Don’t say another word. I knew that place would damage you. Casey and her big ideas.” She glanced at me. “Look at you, your aura’s black. The darkest black. That’s what happens when you go to those nut houses. Everyone there walks around in a black cloud.”
“No! It’s good there. I’m learning good things, and Aunt Casey’s there with me. She holds my hand. She rides through the tunnels with me. And Dr. DeAngelis and Kyla and everybody, they talk to me and they listen and they touch me. They’re giving me something I’ve never had before. When I’m with them, I’m somebody. When I’m with you, I’m nobody!”
“Nonsense.” Gigi shook her head as if she had a fly in her hair.
I reached over and turned off her tape. “It was the same way with Dane,” I said. “He had to leave. He had to run away or he’d always be a nobody, no matter how many books he wrote. Gigi, don’t make me run away, too. Take me back. I need to go back.”
Gigi switched the tape back on and turned it up so loud I couldn’t yell over it. She pulled some more toilet tissue out of the ashtray and blew her nose.
I sat back in my seat and faced the window, but instead of watching the other cars passing by, the people staring, trying to read our van, I watched myself in the reflection of the window. It had been a long time since I had dared to look at myself, searching for Sissy’s freckles. This time I didn’t look for Sissy or even Dane, I just looked at myself. It was my hair, growing out from its Dane-like cut. It was my face, long and thin, my eyes blinking back at me, my mouth, my chin—me. I stared at myself a long time and sometimes the sunlight would fall on the window and take my face away, but then there it would be again, just the same, me staring out at me. I kissed my finger and pressed it on the window where my mouth appeared. I held it there and tears spilled from my eyes. I took my finger away and watched myself cry.
Gigi turned on her blinker and shot off the highway onto the exit ramp. She shut off the music. The silence felt wonderful.
I sat up, wiping my face. “Are we in Tennessee?” I asked.
“There’s a bus station here,” she said. “You can just go back to that place on your own.”
I turned to thank her but she held up her hand. “You’ve been ruined by that doctor. My healing dreams can’t possibly work on you. It would be a waste of my time and energy.”
We rode into town in silence. Gigi found the bus station and checked the schedule. There was a bus leaving for Birmingham in less than an hour. She didn’t wait with me, and she wouldn’t look at me when she said good-bye. She looked past me, at the buses shifting gears behind me.
“You’ll be all right,” she said.
I nodded.
“Yes, of course you will. Now, you keep wearing that purple. You want . . .” She stopped. Our eyes met and then she looked away again, down at her own green robe.
“Well, safe trip then. I better get going or Eugene will start wondering where I am.”
She turned away, walking off in the wrong direction. She stopped, turned around, and walked past me as if I weren’t even there.
Chapter 30
I SAT DOWN ON A BENCH to wait for my bus. I watched the people passing in front of me, studied their faces, their clothes, the way they walked. I had never really noticed people before, and I wondered what it meant, to see them now, as if they were newly born upon this earth, and I, too, newly born, alive, truly alive. It felt good, so good to get away from Gigi, from the hold she had on me. I felt so free and light. I just knew if I stood up and did a leap I would leap clear over the tops of the buses and the tops of the trees and I wouldn’t come down for a long, long time.
I watched a man waiting in line for his turn to buy a ticket. He looked tired, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. I wished I could lend him mine, my new legs, my leaping, springing legs. I heard him order his ticket and I sprang from my seat, not to lend him my legs, but because I had just realized I had no ticket, and I had no money.
“Gigi! How could she forget?”
I twisted around, looking this way and that, looking for a solution to my problem and believing, I suppose, that the answer hovered somewhere close, if I just knew where to look. I watched several more people purchase their tickets. I stood up and walked to the ticket counter. I paced in front of it a few times listening to a man ordering his ticket to Montgomery and wishing he’d drop a few bills by accident. When the counter was empty, the woman selling the tickets called out to me from behind her window, “Can I help you?”
I stopped and moved closer, leaning into the window. “I have to get to Birmingham.”
“Yes?” The woman held out her hand.
“No, I don’t have any money. I—I need to get back. What can I do?”
The woman narrowed her eyes. “You a runaway?”
“I need to get back. Aunt Casey, Dr. DeAngelis, they’ll be waiting for me. She’ll be waiting.”
“You want me to call somebody?”
“Call?” What was she saying? “Oh! Yes, yes, can I make a call? I don’t have any money. My aunt, when she comes, she’ll pay you back.”
The woman pushed back in her seat and brought a set of keys out of her pocket. “Well, I shouldn’t, but I will. I’ve got a daughter just about your age. I’d want someone helping her if she ever had a mind to run off. Come on in.”
She unlocked the door and showed me the phone.
I dialed Aunt Casey’s number and held my breath. She answered before the first ring had ended.
“Hello!” she said, her voice sounding urgent.
“Aunt Casey, it’s me, Miracle.”
“Miracle! It’s Miracle,” she said, holding her voice away from the receiver. She got back on the line. “Where are you? We’ve all been so worried. Are you at Gigi’s?”
“No. I’m at a bus stop. I don’t have any money. I want to come home. Aunt Casey, I want to come home.”
“You want to come back? To me?” Aunt Casey sounded disbelieving. “You’re at a bus stop? Which one? I’ll come get you.”
“I—I don’t know, hold on.” I turned to the woman behind me. “Where am I? My aunt will come pick me up.”
“Here, let me.” The woman took the receiver from my hands and told Aunt Casey how to get to the station, then she handed it back to me.
“Hello,” I said, expecting to hear Aunt Casey’s voice again.
“Girl, what you doing way out there? I come for my first visit and danged if you don’t run off. A lesser feller might be plenty insulted.”
I felt my heart give a leap. “I didn’t run off.”
“Did too.”
“Did not. Gigi took me.”
“Well, you had better just hurry on back is all I got to say, before I take a mind to leave.”
“No, don’t leave! I need—wait for me, Grandaddy.”
“Girl, I’ll be waiting, don’t you worry. Why do you think I made sure them doctors fixed me up right?”
“Then you’re all right? Your heart’s okay?”
The woman behind me gave me
a nudge. “Hey, that’s long distance, hurry it up.”
“Grandaddy, I’ve got to go, but you’ll be there, won’t you? You’re all better now? You’ll come visit me in the hospital?”
“I’ll be here, don’t you worry. Here’s your aunt to say good-bye. You hurry on home, now.”
“Miracle?”
“Aunt Casey, I’ve got to go.”
“Yes, I know, I’m on my way.”
“Thanks. Oh, and Aunt Casey? Thanks for wanting me to know the truth—for wanting me.”
“Miracle”—Aunt Casey hesitated—“I love you.”
I hung up the receiver and thanked the woman with the tickets. She winked and let me out through the door. I went back and sat on the bench to wait. I watched the people again, getting on and off buses, passing in front of me, buying their tickets. All of them looked different, wore different clothes, different colors. I looked down at my purple outfit and told myself, I will never wear purple again. Then I thought, No, I won’t say never. I don’t want any rules. When it comes to numbers and colors, there will be no rules. I’ll wear orange and red and pink and sit on that strange blue-black-green couch in Dr. DeAngelis’s office. I’ll sit on it with Aunt Casey and she’ll take my hand and tell me again that she loves me.
Dr. DeAngelis once said that we would be talking about love, what it means, how it feels. I told him I didn’t believe in love. “You can’t touch it, or see it,” I had said, remembering my conversation with the wig heads. “I won’t believe what I can’t see.”
He said, “Then believe what you feel.”
I thought about that, sitting on the bench. I thought about Dane. I had so much still to figure out. I knew I no longer felt so desperate to find him, and this made me wonder if I even loved him. Did he love me? I wasn’t sure anymore. I still didn’t know what love was, not yet. But I thought maybe it was like dance, and music, and poetry. I knew how they made me feel, how the truth made me feel: real, and lit up from the inside, and like nothing in the world could ever really hurt me. I decided love might be like that, too, because when I thought of Aunt Casey taking those parenting courses and coming to the sessions with Dr. DeAngelis, coming to talk with me, spend time with me, and when I thought of Grandaddy Opal teaching me to ride a bicycle, teaching me how to care for something outside of myself, my own special Etain, I got that same lit-up feeling.
