That night she gave both Dirk and Duck fisherman sweaters that had belonged to Duck’s dad, Eddie Drake. She didn’t give Witch Baby anything.
Witch Baby kept watching and listening and nibbling her fingernails. She hid in the closet in Duck’s old bedroom, with the fading surf pictures on the walls and the twin beds with surfing Snoopy sheets, and heard Duck and Dirk talking about Darlene’s boyfriend, Chuck.
“He is such a greaseburger!” Duck told Dirk.
“Tell me about your dad, Duck,” Dirk said. He had asked before, but Duck wouldn’t talk about Eddie Drake.
“He was a killer Malibu surfer,” Duck said. “I mean, a fine athlete. He had this real peaceful look on his face, a little spaced out, you know, but at peace. They were totally in love. She was Miss Zuma Beach. They fell in love when they were fourteen and, like, that was it. They had all of us one right after the other. Me while they were into the total surf scene when we lived in Malibu, Peace and Granola during their hippie-rebel phase, and then they got more into Eastern philosophy—you know, the twins, Yin and Yang. But then he died. He was surfing.” Duck blinked the tears out of his eyes. “I still can’t talk about it,” he said.
“Duck.” Dirk touched his cheek.
“I remember, later, my mom trying to run into the water and I’m trying to hold her back and her hair and my tears are so bright that I’m blind. I knew she would have walked right into the ocean after him and kept going. In a way I wanted to go too.”
“Don’t say that, puppy,” Dirk whispered.
Witch Baby tried to swallow the sandy lump in her throat.
“But who the hell is Chuck?” Duck said. “I couldn’t believe she’d be with a greaseburger like that, so I left. Plus, I knew they’d never understand about me liking guys.”
Dirk kissed a tear that had slid onto Duck’s tan and freckled shoulder and he drew Duck into his arms, into arms that had lifted Witch Baby from the dirt the night she had been searching for the Joshua tree seeds.
Just then, Witch Baby stepped out of the closet, holding out her finger to touch Duck’s tears, wanting to share Dirk’s arms.
“What are you doing here, Witch?” Duck said, startled.
“Go back to bed, Witch Baby,” said Dirk, and she scampered away.
Later, curled beneath the cot that Darlene had set up for her in Yin and Yang’s room, Witch Baby tried to think of ways to make Dirk and Duck see that she understood them, she understood them better than anyone, even better than Duck’s own mother. Then they might let her stay with them and see their tears, she thought.
The next day Duck and Darlene were walking through the redwood forest. Witch Baby was following them.
“Duck!” Witch Baby called, “Do you know that all trees have spirits? Maybe your dad is a tree now! Maybe your dad is a tree or a wave!”
Duck glanced at Darlene, concerned, then turned to Witch Baby and put his finger on his lips. “Let’s talk about that later, Witch. Go and play with the twins or something,” he said, and kept walking.
“Duck, why did you go away?” Darlene asked, ignoring Witch Baby. “What have you been doing with your life?”
Duck told Darlene about the cottage and his friends. He told her about the slinkster-cool movies they made, the jamming music they played and the dream waves they surfed. The Love-Rice fiestas, Chinese moon dragon celebrations and Jamaican beach parties.
“You sound very happy,” Darlene said. “Do you have a girlfriend to take care of you?”
“My friends and I take care of each other,” Duck said. “We are like a family.”
“That’s good,” said Darlene. “They sound wonderful. The little witch is a little strange, but I really like Dirk.”
Just then Witch Baby jumped down on the path in front of Duck and Darlene. She was covered with leaves and grimacing like an angry tree imp.
“That’s good,” she said. “That you like Dirk. Because Duck likes Dirk a lot too. They love each other more than anyone else in the world. They even sleep in the same bed with their arms around each other!”
“Witch Child!” Duck tried to grab her arm, but he missed and she escaped up into the branches of a young redwood.
Darlene stood absolutely still. The light through the ferns made her blonde hair turn a soft green. She looked at Duck.
“What does she mean?” Darlene asked. And then she began to cry.
She cried and cried. Duck put his arms around her, but no matter what Duck said, Darlene kept crying. She cried the whole way along the redwood path to the car. She cried the whole way back to the house, never saying a word.
“Mom!” Duck said. “Please, Mom. Talk to me! Why are you crying so much? I’m still me. I’m still here.”
Darlene kept crying.
Back at the house Chuck was barbecuing burgers. Dirk and the kids were playing softball.
“What is it, Darlene?” Chuck asked.
Darlene just kept crying. Dirk came and stood next to Duck.
“I’m gay,” Duck said suddenly.
Chuck and all Duck’s brothers and sisters stared. Even Darlene’s sobs quieted. Dirk raised his eyebrows in surprise. Duck’s voice had sounded so strong and clear and sure.
There was a long silence.
“Better take a life insurance policy out on you!” Chuck said, laughing. “The way things are these days.”
“Chuck!” Darlene began to sob again.
“You pretend to be so liberal and free and politically correct and you don’t even try to understand,” Duck said. “We’re leaving.”
“Clutch pigs!” said Witch Baby. “You can’t even love your own son just because he loves Dirk. Dirk and Duck are the most slinkster-cool team.”
Duck ran into the house to pack his things, and Dirk and Witch Baby followed him.
A little while later they all got into Jerry and began to drive away.
“Wait, Duck!” his brothers and sisters called. “Duck, wait, stay! Come back!”
Darlene hid her ex-Zuma-Beach-beauty-queen face in her hands. Chuck was flipping burgers. Dirk looked back as he drove Jerry away but Duck stared straight ahead. Witch Baby hid her head under a blanket.
On the way home from Santa Cruz, Dirk and Duck stopped to walk on the beach. They were wearing their matching hooded mole-man sweatshirts. Witch Baby walked a few feet behind them, hopping into their footprints, but they hardly noticed her. It was sunset and the sand looked pinkish silver.
“There are places somewhere in the world where colored sparks fly out of the sand,” Dirk told Duck, trying to distract him. “And I’ve heard that right here, if you stare at the sun when it sets, you’ll see a flash of green.”
Duck was staring straight ahead at the pink clouds in the sky. There was a space in the clouds filled with deepening blue and one star.
“I want to let go of everything,” Duck said. “All the pain and fear. I want to let it float away through that space in the clouds. That is what the sky and water are saying to do. Don’t hold on to anything. But I can’t let go of these feelings.”
“Let go of everything,” Witch Baby murmured.
Dirk put his arms around Duck.
“How could she be with him?” Duck asked the sky.
“She must have been lonely,” Dirk said.
“If I ever lost you, no amount of loneliness or anything could drive me into the arms of another!” Duck said. “Especially not into the arms of a greaseburger like Chuck!”
Witch Baby felt like burying herself headfirst in the sand. She knew that if she did, Dirk would not lift her in his arms like a precious plant, as he had done that night in front of the school. She knew that Duck would never share his tears with her now.
Dirk and Duck gazed at the ocean.
“How do you hear the water?” Dirk asked Duck.
Dirk and Duck and Witch Baby didn’t arrive at the cottage for three days because they stopped to camp along the coast. The whole time Dirk and Duck ignored Witch Baby. She wished she had
her drums to play for them so that they might understand what she felt inside.
When they got home, they smelled garlic, basil and oregano as they came in the door. They entered the dining room and Duck practically jumped out of his Vans. There at the table with Weetzie, My Secret Agent Lover Man, Cherokee and Raphael sat Darlene, Granola, Peace, Crystal, Chi, Aura, Tahini and Yin and Yang Drake.
Darlene didn’t have tears in her eyes. She and Weetzie were leaning together over their candle-lit angel hair pasta and laughing.
“Duck!” Darlene leaped up and ran to him. “I need to talk to you.”
Darlene and Duck went out onto the porch. The crickets chirped and there were stars in the sky. The air smelled of flowers, smog and dinners.
“Duck,” Darlene said. “After you told me, I went to everyone—my acupuncturist, my crystal healer and my sand-tray therapist. Then I went for a long walk and thought about you. I realized that it wasn’t you so much as me, Duck. My femininity felt threatened. I don’t know if you can understand that, but that’s how it was. I felt that if my oldest son rejects women, he’s rejecting me. That somehow I made him—you—feel bad about women. Ever since your dad died, I’ve been so vulnerable and confused about everything.”
“This is crazy!” Duck said. “You are such a beautiful woman. And how I feel about Dirk has nothing to do with your femininity. I love Dirk. It just is that way.”
“I don’t understand,” Darlene said. “But I’ll try. I am worried about your health, though.”
“Everyone has to be careful,” Duck said. “Dirk and I believe there will be a cure very soon. But we are safe that way, now.”
“I love you, Duck,” said Darlene. “And your friend Dirk is darling. Your father would be proud of you.”
“I miss him so much,” said Duck putting his arms around her. “But he’s still guiding us in a way, you know? When I’m surfing, especially, I feel like he’s with me.”
Suddenly there was the click and flash of a camera and Duck turned to see Witch Baby photographing them.
A few days later, after Darlene and the little Drakes had left, Duck found a new photograph pasted on the moon clock. The picture on the number eleven showed Weetzie, My Secret Agent Lover Man, Dirk, Duck, Cherokee, Raphael, Valentine, Ping, Coyote, Brandy-Lynn and Darlene. Their arms were linked and they were all smiling, cheese. It looked as if everyone except Witch Baby were having a picnic on the moon.
Angel Wish
No one at the cottage paid much attention to Witch Baby when she got back from Santa Cruz. They didn’t even mention how worried they had been when she had disappeared. Everyone was too busy working on My Secret Agent Lover Man’s new movie, Los Diablos, about the glowing blue radioactive ball.
So Witch Baby skated to the Spanish bungalow where Valentine and Ping Chong Jah-Love lived. Raphael lived with them, but he was almost always at the cottage with Cherokee.
Wind chimes hung like glass leaves from the porch, and the rosebush Ping had planted bloomed different colored roses on Valentine’s, Ping’s and Raphael’s birthdays—one rose for each year. Now there were white roses for Ping. Inside, the bungalow was like a miniature rain forest. Valentine’s wood carvings of birds and ebony people peered out among the ferns and small potted trees. Ping’s shimmering green weavings were draped from the ceiling. Witch Baby sat in the Jah-Love rain forest bungalow watching Ping with her bird-of-paradise hair, kohl-lined eyes, coral lips, batik sarong skirt and jade dragon pendants, sewing a sapphire blue Chinese silk shirt for Valentine.
“Baby Jah-Love,” Ping Chong sang. “Why are you so sad? Once I was sad like you. And then I met Valentine in a rain forest in Jamaica. He appeared out of the green mist. I had been dreaming of him and wishing for him forever. When I met Valentine I wasn’t afraid anymore. I knew that my soul would always have a reflection and an echo and that even if we were apart—and we were for a while in the beginning—I finally knew what my soul looked and sounded like. I would have that forever, like a mirror or an echoing canyon.”
Ping stopped, seeing Witch Baby’s eyes. She knew Witch Baby was thinking about Raphael.
“Sometimes our Jah-Love friends fool us,” she said. “We think we’ve found them and then they’re just not the one. They look right and sound right and play the right instrument, even, but they’re just not who we are looking for. I thought I found Valentine three times before I really did. And then there he was in the forest, like a tree that had turned into a man.”
Witch Baby wanted to ask Ping how to find her Jah-Love angel. She knew Raphael was not him, even though Raphael had the right eyes and smile and name. She knew how he looked—the angel in her dream—but she didn’t know how to find him. Should she roller-skate through the streets in the evenings when the streetlights flicker on? Should she stow away to Jamaica on a cruise ship and search for him in the rain forests and along the beaches? Would he come to her? Was he waiting, dreaming of her in the same way she waited and dreamed? Witch Baby thought that if anyone could help, it would be Ping, with her quick, small hands that could create dresses out of anything and make hair look like bunches of flowers or garlands of serpents, cables to heaven. But Witch Baby didn’t know how to ask.
“Wishes are the best way,” said a deep voice. It was the voice of Valentine Jah-Love. He had been building a set for Los Diablos and had come home to eat a lunch of noodles and coconut milk shakes with Ping.
Valentine sat beside Ping, circling her with his sleek arm, and grinned down at Witch Baby. “Wish on everything. Pink cars are good, especially old ones. And stars of course, first stars and shooting stars. Planes will do if they are the first light in the sky and look like stars. Wish in tunnels, holding your breath and lifting your feet off the ground. Birthday candles. Baby teeth.”
Valentine showed his teeth, which were bright as candles. Then he got up and slipped the sapphire silk shirt over his dark shoulders.
“Even if you get your wish, there are usually complications. I wished for Ping Chong, but I didn’t know we’d have so many problems in the world, from our families and even the ones we thought were our friends, just because my skin is dark and she is the color of certain lilies. But still you must wish.” He looked at Ping. “I think Witch Baby might just find her angel on the set of Los Diablos,” he said, pulling a tiny pink Thunderbird out of his trouser pocket. It came rolling toward Witch Baby through the tunnel Valentine made with his hand.
Niña Bruja
On the set of Los Diablos, My Secret Agent Lover Man and Weetzie sat in their canvas chairs, watching a group of dark children gathered in a circle around a glowing blue ball. Valentine was putting some finishing touches on a hut he had built. Ping was painting some actors glossy blue. Dirk and Duck were in the office making phone calls and looking at photos.
Witch Baby went to the set of Los Diablos to hide costumes, break light bulbs and throw pebbles at everyone. That was when she saw Angel Juan Perez for the first time.
But it wasn’t really the first time. Witch Baby had dreamed about Angel Juan before she ever saw him. He had been the dark angel boy in her dream.
When the real Angel Juan saw Witch Baby watching him from behind My Secret Agent Lover Man’s director’s chair, he did the same thing that the dream Angel Juan had done—he stretched out his arms and opened his hands. She sent Valentine’s pink Thunderbird rolling toward his feet and ran away.
“Niña Bruja!” Angel Juan called. “I’ve heard about you. Come back here!”
But she was already gone.
The next day Witch Baby watched Angel Juan on the set again. Coyote was covering Angel Juan’s face with blue shavings from the sacred ball. They sat in the dark and Angel Juan’s blue face glowed.
When the scene was over, Angel Juan found Witch Baby hiding behind My Secret Agent Lover Man’s chair again.
“Come with me, Niña Bruja,” he said, holding out his hand.
Witch Baby crossed her arms on her chest and stuck out her chin. Angel Juan shrugge
d, but when he skateboarded away she followed him on her roller skates. Soon they were rolling along side by side on the way to the cottage.
They climbed up a jacaranda tree in the garden and sat in the branches until their hair was covered with purple blossoms; climbed down and slithered through the mud, pretending to be seeds. They sprayed each other with the hose, and the water caught sunlight so that they were rinsed in showers of liquid rainbows. In the house they ate banana and peanut butter sandwiches, put on music and pretended to surf on Witch Baby’s bed under the newspaper clippings.
“Where are you from, Angel Juan?” Witch Baby asked.
“Mexico.”
Witch Baby had seen sugar skulls and candelabras in the shapes of doves, angels and trees. She had seen white dresses embroidered with gardens, and she had seen paintings of a dark woman with parrots and flowers and blood and one eyebrow. She liked tortillas with butter melting in the fold almost as much as candy, and she liked hot days and hibiscus flowers, mariachi bands and especially, now, Angel Juan.
Angels in Mexico might all have black hair, Witch Baby thought. I might belong there.
“What’s it like?” she asked, thinking of rose-covered saints and fountains.
“Where I’m from it’s poor. Little kids sit on the street asking for change. Some of them sing songs and play guitars they’ve made themselves, or they sell rainbow wish bracelets. There are old ladies too—just sitting in the dirt. People come from your country with lots of money and fancy clothes. They go down to the bars, shoot tequila and go back up to buy things. It’s crazy to see them leaving with their paper flowers and candles and blankets and stuff, like we have something they need, when most of us don’t even have a place to sleep or food to eat. Maybe they just want to come see how we live to feel better about their lives, or maybe they’re missing something else that we have. But you’re different.” He stared at Witch Baby. “Where did you come from?”
Witch Baby shrugged.
Dangerous Angels Page 8
