“Niña Bruja! Witch Baby! Cherokee and Raphael told me about you. What a crazy name! Why do they call you that? I don’t think you’re witchy at all.”
“I don’t know why.”
“Who are your parents?”
Witch Baby shrugged again. She thought Angel Juan’s eyes were like night houses because of the windows shining in them.
He sat watching her for a long time. Then he looked up at her wall with the newspaper clippings and said, “You need to find out. That would help. I bet you wouldn’t need all these stories on your wall if you knew who you were.”
Witch Baby took out her camera and looked at Angel Juan through the lens. “Can I?” she asked.
“Sure. Then I’ve got to go.” Angel Juan winked at the camera and slid out the window. “Adios, Baby.”
But Angel Juan came back. He and Witch Baby sat in the branches of the tree, whistling and chirping like birds. They went into the shed and he played My Secret Agent Lover Man’s bass while Witch Baby jammed on the drums she hadn’t touched for so long. Fireworks went off inside of her. Their lights came out through her eyes and shone on Angel Juan.
How could I not play? she wondered.
“They should call you Bongo Baby,” Angel Juan said. “What does it feel like?”
“All the feelings that fly around in me like bats come together, hang upside down by their toes, fold up their wings, and stop flapping and there’s just the music. No bat feelings. But sometimes the bats flap around so much that I can’t play at all.”
“Don’t let them,” said Angel Juan. “Never stop playing.”
They made up songs like “Tijuana Surf,” “Witch Baby Wiggle,” and “Rocket Angel,” and sometimes they put on music and danced—holding hands, jumping up and down, hiphopping, shimmying, spinning and swimming the air. They went to the tiny apartment where Angel Juan lived with his parents, Gabriela and Marquez Perez, and his brothers and sisters—Angel Miguel, Angel Pedro, Angelina and Serafina—and played basketball until it got dark, then went inside for fresh tortillas and salsa. The apartment was full of the lace doilies Gabriela crocheted. They looked like pressed roses covered with frost, like shadows or webs or clouds. Hanging on the walls and stacked on the floor were the picture frames that Marquez made. Some were simple wood, others were painted with blue roses and gold leaves; there were elaborately carved ones with angels at the four corners. Angel Juan and his brothers and sisters had drawn pictures to put in some of the frames, but most were empty. Everyone in the Perez family liked to hold the frames up around their faces and pretend to be different paintings. The first time Witch Baby came over and held up a frame, Angel Juan’s brothers and sisters laughed in their high bird voices. They squealed at her hair and her name and her toes, but they always laughed at everyone and everything, including themselves, so she laughed too.
“Take our picture, Niña Bruja!” they chirped from inside one of Marquez’s frames when they saw her camera.
The pictures of Angel Juan were always just a dark blur.
“Why do you move so fast?” she asked him. “You are even faster than I am.”
“I’m always running away. Come on!” He took Witch Baby’s hand and they flew down the street.
They flew. It felt like that. It was like having an angel for your best friend. An angel with black, black electric hair. It didn’t even matter to Witch Baby that she didn’t know who she was. At night she put pictures of an Angel Juan blur on her wall before she fell asleep.
Weetzie smiled when she saw the pictures. “Witch Baby is in love,” she told My Secret Agent Lover Man. “Maybe she’ll stop being obsessed with all those accidents and disasters, all that misery. It’s too much for anyone, especially a child.”
“Witchy plus Angel Juan!” Cherokee sang from inside her tepee. “Witch hasn’t put up one scary picture for two weeks.”
Witch Baby ignored Cherokee. She was wearing a T-shirt Angel Juan had given to her. Gabriela Perez had embroidered it with rows of tiny animals and it smelled like Angel Juan—like fresh, warm cornmeal and butter. The smell wrapped around Witch Baby as she drifted to sleep.
“My pain is ugly, Angel Juan. I feel like I have so much ugly pain,” says Witch Baby in a dream.
“Everyone does,” Angel Juan says. “My mother says that pain is hidden in everyone you see. She says try to imagine it like big bunches of flowers that everyone is carrying around with them. Think of your pain like a big bunch of red roses, a beautiful thorn necklace. Everyone has one.”
Witch Baby and Angel Juan made gardens of worlds. They were Gypsies and Indians, flamenco dancers and fauns. They were magicians, tightrope walkers, clowns, lions and elephants—a whole circus. They spun My Secret Agent Lover Man’s globe lamp and went wherever their fingers landed.
“We live in a globe house.”
“Our house is a globe.”
“I am a Sphinx.”
“I am a bullfighter who sets the bulls free.”
“I am an African drummer dancing with a drum that is bigger than I am.”
“I am a Hawaiian surfer with wreaths of leaves on my head and ankles.”
“I am a dancing goddess with lots of arms.”
“I am a Buddha.”
“I am a painter from Mexico with parrots on my shoulders and a necklace of roses.”
And then one day Angel Juan wasn’t on the set of Los Diablos, where Witch Baby always met him.
Somehow she knew right away that something was wrong. She hurled herself past Dirk and Duck’s trailer, among the children Ping was painting, under the radiant blue archways that Valentine was building. The whole set and everyone on it seemed to pulse with blue, the blue of fear, the blue of sorrow.
“Angel Juan!” Witch Baby called. She jumped up and down at Valentine’s feet. “Have you seen Angel Juan?”
Valentine shook his head.
“Angel Juan!” cried Witch Baby, tugging at Ping’s sarong.
“I haven’t seen him today, Baby Love,” said Ping.
Dirk and Duck opened the door of their trailer. They didn’t know where Angel Juan was either.
My Secret Agent Lover Man was directing the scene in which Coyote was dying of radiation in a candle-lit room. Witch Baby pulled on the leg of My Secret Agent Lover Man’s baggy trousers with her teeth.
“Cut!” he said.
Coyote sat up and opened his eyes.
My Secret Agent Lover Man scowled. “I’m busy now, Witch Baby. This is a very important scene. What do you want?”
“Angel Juan!”
“Angel Juan didn’t come to the set today. I don’t know where he is.”
Witch Baby put on her skates and rolled away from the blue faces and archways as fast as she could. When she got to the Perez apartment, she felt as if a necklace of thorns had suddenly wrapped around her, pricking into her flesh.
Angel Juan was not there.
Angel Miguel, Angel Pedro, Angelina and Serafina were not playing basketball in the driveway. There weren’t any baking smells coming from Gabriela’s kitchen and there was no sound of Marquez’s hammering. There was only a “For Rent” sign on the front lawn.
“Angel Juan!”
Witch Baby pressed her face against a window. The apartment was dark, with a few frames and doilies scattered on the floor, as if the Perez family had left in a hurry.
“I’m always running away,” Angel Juan had said. Witch Baby heard his voice in her head as she skated home, stumbling into fences and tearing her skin on thorns.
Weetzie was talking on the phone and biting her fingernails when Witch Baby got there.
“Witch Baby!” she called, hanging up. “Come here, honey-honey!” She followed Witch Baby into her room and sat beside her on the bed while Witch Baby pulled off her roller skates.
“Where is Angel Juan?” Witch Baby demanded. On her wall the pictures of Angel Juan were all running away—blurs of black hair and white teeth.
Weetzie held out her arms to Witch Baby
.
“Where is Angel Juan?”
“I just got a call from My Secret Agent Lover Man. He found out that the immigration officers were looking for the Perez family because they weren’t supposed to be here anymore. They went back to Mexico.”
Witch Baby leaped off the bed and out the window.
She wanted to run and run forever, until she reached the border. She imagined it as an endless row of dark angel children with wish bracelets in their hands and thorns around their necks, sitting in the dirt and singing behind barbed wire.
My Secret
Witch Baby was crying. Witch babies never cry, snapped a voice inside, but she couldn’t stop. Angel Juan had been gone for two days.
Weetzie had never seen Witch Baby cry before and went to hug her, but Witch Baby curled up like a snail in the corner of the bed, burying her face in the embroidered animal T-shirt Angel Juan had given her. It hardly smelled like him anymore. Weetzie saw that the tears streaking Witch Baby’s face were the same color as her eyes.
“Come on,” Weetzie said, scooping her up.
Because Witch Baby was limp from the tears and the effort of trying to find Angel Juan in the T-shirt, her kicks and kitten bites did not prevent Weetzie from carrying her into the pink bedroom.
My Secret Agent Lover Man was in bed, reading the paper. He had never seen Witch Baby cry before either.
“What is it?” he asked gently, moving aside so Weetzie and Witch Baby could sit on the warm place. He reached out to stroke Witch Baby’s tangles, but she shrank away from him, baring her teeth and clinging to the T-shirt.
“She wants to understand about Angel Juan,” Weetzie said. “I thought you could explain.”
My Secret Agent Lover Man scratched his chin.
“The Perez family came here to work, to make beautiful things. But our government says they don’t belong here and sent them back again. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. I’m sorry, Witch Baby. I wish there was something I could do. Maybe with my movies, at least.”
“Angel Juan belongs anywhere he is,” Witch Baby said. “Because he knows, who he is.”
“He is lucky then,” said My Secret Agent Lover Man. “And he will be okay.”
“Will I see him again?” Witch Baby whispered.
“I don’t know, Baby. There are barbed wire fences and high walls to keep the Perez family and lots of other people from coming here.”
Witch Baby crawled under the bed and began to cry loud sobs that shook the mattress. She felt like a drum being beaten from the inside.
My Secret Agent Lover Man got down on his hands and knees and tried to reach for her, but she was too far under the bed. She looked at him through a glaze of amethyst tears.
“Who am I?” she asked, clutching Angel Juan’s T-shirt to her chest. “I need to know. You tell me.”
My Secret Agent Lover Man turned to Weetzie, who was kneeling beside him and she reached out and took his hand. Then he looked at Witch Baby again. His face was dusky with worry.
“I didn’t want to tell you because I was afraid you would be ashamed of me,” he began. “I’m sorry, Witch Baby. I should have told you before. See, I’ve always thought the world was a painful place. There were times I could hardly stand it. So when Weetzie wanted a baby, I said I didn’t want one. I didn’t want to bring any baby angel down into this messed-up world. It seemed wrong. But Weetzie believed in good things—in love—and she went ahead and made Cherokee with Dirk and Duck. Or maybe Cherokee is mine. We’ll never be sure who her dad really is. Well, you know all that.
“But then I got jealous and angry because of what Weetz had done, so I went away.
“While I was away I met a woman. She was a powerful woman named Vixanne Wigg and I fell under her spell. I didn’t know what I was doing. Then something happened that woke me up and I left. I found Weetzie again, but I had been through a very dark time.
“One day Vixanne left a basket on our doorstep. There was a baby in it. She had purple tilty eyes.
“The only good thing about what happened with Vixanne Wigg was that we had made you, Witch Baby. I didn’t want to tell you about it because I wasn’t sure you would understand. But you’re mine, Witch Baby. Not only because I love you but because you are a part of me. I’m your real father.”
“And we all love you as if you were our real child,” Weetzie added. “Dirk and Duck and I. You belong to all of us.”
Witch Baby searched My Secret Agent Lover Man’s face for her own, as she had always done. But now she knew. Tassellike eyelashes, delicate cheekbones, sharp chins. When he reached for her again, she let him bring her out from under the bed.
My Secret Agent Lover Man held Witch Baby against his heart, and she felt damp with tears and almost boneless like a newborn kitten. She closed her eyes.
She is holding on to the back of his black trench coat that has the fragrance of Drum tobacco from Amsterdam deep in the folds. His back is tense and bony like hers but his shoulders are strong. She is strong too, even though she is small—strong from playing drums—he has told her that. He will take her with him down arrow highways past glistening number cities, telling her stories about when she was a baby.
“My baby, my child that lay on the doorstep smoldering. For such a young child—it frightened us to see that strength and fire. But I knew you. I remembered the way I’d seen the world when I was young. I’d seen the smoke and the pain in the streets, heard the roaring under the earth, felt the rage beneath the surface of everything, most people pretending it wasn’t there. Only those who are so shaken or so brave can wear it in their eyes. The way you wear it in your eyes.”
They are both dressed in Chaplin bowler hats and turned-out shoes as they ride My Secret Agent Lover Man’s motorcycle around a clock that is a moon.
Witch Hunt
The next morning Witch Baby woke at dawn and ran around the cottage naked, crowing like a rooster and dragging Rubber Chicken along behind her. Cherokee climbed out of her tepee and stood in the hallway rubbing her eyes.
“Witch, why are you crowing?”
“My Secret Agent Lover Man is my real dad,” Witch Baby crowed.
“He is not,” Cherokee said. “I know! He and Weetzie found you on our doorstep.”
“He told me he’s my real dad! He went away and met my mom and she had me and brought me here.”
“He is not your dad!”
“Yes he is. He’s my real dad but maybe not yours. You’ll never be sure who your real dad is!”
Cherokee began to cry. “My Secret Agent Lover Man and Dirk and Duck are all my dads. None of them are yours!”
“My Secret Agent Lover Man is,” said Witch Baby. “You have three dads but it’s like not having any. You’re a brat bath mat bat.”
Cherokee ran to My Secret Agent Lover Man and Weetzie’s bedroom. Her face and cropped hair were wet with tears.
“Witch says I’m a brat mat because I have three dads!”
My Secret Agent Lover Man took her in his arms. “Cherokee, you’ve known about that all your life. Why are you so upset now?”
“Because Witch says you’re her real dad. I want one real dad if she has one.”
“Honey-honey,” Weetzie said, “My Secret Agent Lover Man is Witch Baby’s real dad, but you get to live with your real dad and two other dads even if you aren’t sure which is which. Witch Baby doesn’t even get to meet her real mom. Think what that must be like.”
Cherokee stopped crying and caught a tear in her mouth. She snuggled between My Secret Agent Lover Man and Weetzie, her hair mingling with Weetzie’s in one shade of blonde.
None of them knew that Witch Baby was hiding at the doorway and that she had heard everything.
I’ll meet my real mom! she told herself. I’ll have two real parents and I’ll know who I am more than Cherokee knows who she is.
The next morning Witch Baby put her baby blanket, her rubber-bug sneakers, her camera, Angel Juan’s T-shirt and some Halloween candy she stole from Chero
kee’s hoard into her bat-shaped backpack, and she skated away on her cowboy-boot roller skates.
Later Weetzie and My Secret Agent Lover Man woke up and lay on their backs, holding hands and listening for the morning wake-up crow. But this morning the house was quiet and Rubber Chicken lay limply by the bed.
“Where is Witch Baby?”
They looked at each other, looked at the globe lamp on the bed table, looked at each other again and jumped out of bed. They ran through the cottage, checking under sombreros and sofas, behind surfboards and inside cookie jars, but they couldn’t find Witch Baby. They woke Dirk and Duck, who were surfing in their sleep in their blue bedroom, and told them that Witch Baby was missing. Cherokee came shuffling in, holding the puppy Tee Pee wrapped up like a papoose.
Duck pushed his fingers frantically through his flat-top. “I bet the witch child ran away!” he said.
Cherokee began to cry. “I’ve been so clutch to her.”
“Let’s go!” Dirk said, pulling on his leather jacket and Guatemalan shorts.
My Secret Agent Lover Man took the motorcycle, Duck took his blue Bug, Dirk took Jerry, Weetzie called Valentine and Ping who got in Valentine’s VW van. They drove in all directions looking for Witch Baby. They went to the candy stores, camera stores, music stores, toy stores and parks, asking about a tiny, tufty-headed girl. Cherokee and Raphael ran to Coyote’s shack on the hill, chanting prayers to the sun and looking in the muddy, weedy places that Witch Baby loved. Brandy-Lynn stayed with Weetzie by the phone, while Weetzie called everyone she knew and peeled the Nefertiti decals off her fingernails.
Weetzie and Brandy-Lynn waited and waited by the phone for hours. Finally, Weetzie’s fatigue swept her into a dream about a house made of candy. Inside was a woman with a face the color of moss who warmed her hands by a wood-burning stove. A suffocating smoke came out of the stove and there was a tiny pair of black high-top sneakers beside it.
Weetzie woke crying and Brandy-Lynn held her until the sobs quieted and she could speak.
Dangerous Angels Page 9
