by Mav Skye
“She’s on a little bit of a sugar hi—igh. Yow!” Joey jumped as Chloe’s foot connected with his crotch. He bent over and sucked in his breath.
Shirley screamed, “Chloe Sevenstars!”
Joey was bent low, and Chloe stretched her flip flop, scratching the surface of the gravel. If she kicked him one more time… Chloe lifted her foot, aimed for a home run this time, and was about to let it fly when Joey slapped her on the ass. Hard.
Stunned, Chloe screamed, “Ow!” then, “How dare you?”
“Ha!” cried Kara Leigh.
Chloe shrieked, “I am going to skin you alive, Joey Parker,” she pointed at Kara Leigh, “and then I’m coming for you!”
Joey spanked her again, harder.
She screeched, “Ow!”
“Stop it! Now! All of you!" Shirley shouted. “I am very, very tired, and I’m not entirely sure that I’m not dreaming, but…” Shirley put her hands in her eyes, rubbed them like a little girl, then crossed her arms over her chest. “Why are you two kicking and spanking each other? And why did Chloe kick this poor thing in the nose? Be honest with me. Are you kids on the weed?”
“Sugar! Only sugar. Sugar highs can make you do crazy things, Mrs. Pratt. We’re just having fun!” Joey laughed and kept moving down Gander Avenue. He patted Chloe on the thigh. “That’s enough, my darling friend. Straight to bed with you.”
Chloe yowled, “Don’t touch me you, you, you—monster! Let me down. Shirley! Tell him to put me down.”
Shirley took a few steps after Joey. “Wait just a minute. Chloe sounds really upset. Someone needs to tell me what’s going on—”
Joey interrupted her before she could finish. “We’re just playing a game, Mrs. Pratt. All fun and games. Can you drive Kara Leigh home? There was an accident and she’s not feeling so good.”
“What kind of game is this, Joey?”
He was out of her flashlight’s beam now and yelled, “Duck, Duck, Goose!”
Shirley said, “What?” and then, “Kids these days.”
He ignored her and continued walking down Gander. It wasn’t three minutes later when Shirley’s headlights approached, then passed. Joey waved.
If Chloe had been thinking clearly, she’d have tried to get Shirley’s attention—jump on the hood of her car maybe—but she was too busy beating, screaming at him to put her down. Telling him all the ways she was going to skin his hide the way her people had done to the white folk all those years ago.
Joey rounded the fork and trudged down Goose Avenue. He flipped off his flashlight, knowing the long drive by heart. Chloe continued to rant about how Kara Leigh aka Mr. Jingles had stolen her childhood, had stolen her boyfriend and best friend. How her tribe would rise again and take back what the white man had stolen.
After a while, Joey responded to her with two words. Two words that usually came out of her mouth. “Shut. Up.”
Tired and defeated, Chloe responded the way he usually did. “’kay.”
By the time they reached her trailer, Chloe was utterly drained. All the blood had pooled to her head, and she felt dizzy. Joey tromped up the porch steps, skipping the third one, and before opening the front door said, “If I set you down are you going to sock me one, or do I need to keep you up there.”
Chloe’s anger had turned to tears. And she said, “I won’t hit you.”
He gently set her down against the door, and she reached for his waist as the world slowly stopped spinning. He put his hands on either side of the door. Close enough to comfort her, but not enough to touch.
He said, “Do you want to tell me what all this is about?”
She spat out, “Kara Leigh is Mr. Jingles.”
“No,” he said a little too loud at first, then sensing Chloe stiffen, he said gently, “Kara Leigh is my friend, and I think you’re jealous.”
Chloe leaned back and folded her arms. “What about the white paint on her face?”
“What about it? I helped her with her algebra homework last quarter, as a thank you, she was teaching me how to paint, Ayita. We were painting clouds.”
“On her face?”
Joey gave her a look, and Chloe bit her lip and looked away. When she brought her face back around, his was very close to hers. Chloe opened her mouth to give him a piece of her mind. and Joey kissed her.
It wasn’t like the kiss behind the tree at the beginning of summer, or the fake one she’d given him at the pool. It was warm and moist. Joey’s lips tasted of fading summer and blackberry pie, of slow moving clouds amidst a slate blue sky. It was a kiss she would remember twenty years from now on a rainy afternoon when she would truly understand what it meant to be alive, really alive, the instant before death snatched what was most precious from her. Chloe’s hands trailed up his bare waist, to his chest.
Joey wrapped his arms around her, pulling her closer. Closer.
A loud sob broke them apart.
“Oh!” How could Chloe have forgotten why she had gone to Joey’s in the first place.
Joey said, “Mama Nola?”
Chloe felt immediate guilt. “She’s… she’s been crying and crying. That’s why I came to get you.” They rushed through the door, Chloe pausing to close it behind them.
He said, “Huh, that’s pretty convenient.”
Chloe followed Joey through the living room, down the hall to Mama Nola’s room. “What is that supposed to mean?”
They both paused when they saw her. Chloe’s jewelry box was on the table. It was open and playing circus music. The little clown clapped. Mama Nola’s hair was down. She slathered red lipstick over her mouth with one hand, the other hand was around the handle of a hatchet sitting on the dresser. Chloe was sure it was the one that had been hidden beneath her mattress. Mama Nola talked to herself in the mirror between sobs. “I don’t want to hurt anybody! No, no, don’t make me do it.”
“Mama?” asked Joey.
At the sound of his voice, Mama Nola turned to them and dropped the lipstick and the hatchet. Her eyes were bruised black. She held her arms out to Joey and said, “Ohanzee! Ohanzee!” Then she began to cry again.
Chloe clenched and unclenched her fists as Joey raced to her. Mama Nola draped her arms over his neck as he picked her up and brought her out of the bedroom, down the hall, and into the living room where he placed her on the couch.
Chloe said, “Should I go to Shirley’s and call the police? Someone gave her two black eyes!”
Joey shook his head.
Mama Nola wept in Joey’s arms. Chloe swept her mother’s hair out of her face and noticed the black smears on the smooth skin of Joey’s shoulder. Mama Nola’s eyes weren’t bruised. It was paint, black paint on her eyes.
“I don’t want to hurt anyone. Did I hurt somebody, Ohanzee?”
“Of course not, Mama Nola, you’ve never hurt anybody.”
Chloe bit her lip and looked down at her toe. The bandage was hanging on by a thread, and blood had begun to seep out of it.
Mama Nola cried and cried in Joey’s arms as he murmured softly to her. Feeling useless, Chloe announced she would make tea, and left to go to the kitchen.
She went through familiar motions she’d performed countless times before, motions that should have comforted her, but instead they felt foreign as if she had never filled a kettle and put it on the stove to boil. She felt uncertain about everyone and everything. Perhaps she was stuck in a dream, an awful, awful dream that she’d never wake up from. Had Mama Nola truly been the creeping monster that had tried to eat her toe? Chloe doubted it, but she couldn’t explain her toe, or the bandage on it. Why was she holding the hatchet and furthermore, why was black paint on her face? Was Joey telling the truth about Kara Leigh? Or was Kara Leigh aka Mr. Jingles deceiving Joey, manipulating him the way she had manipulated everyone her whole life. But wasn’t Kara Leigh right there when the lifeguard was performing CPR on Erin? She couldn’t have given Sharon that balloon.
Dream or not, Chloe was trapped. She was trapped inside the
same old horror story. Only this story wasn’t repeating itself. It was progressing.
Chloe had to stop it. She needed help, someone outside the sphere she was stuck in. The answer came to her immediately. It was so clear and simple that she almost slapped herself for not following through with it sooner.
Aunt Tayanita.
She needed to call her aunt, and her aunt would have all the answers. She had to. It would be the very first thing Chloe would do in the morning.
When she brought three steaming mugs into the living room, Mama Nola was sitting upright on the couch, wiping her nose with a tissue. She said, “You promise, Ohanzee. One last time?”
“One last time…” he murmured back.
Chloe handed Mama Nola a mug, then Joey. “One last time for what?”
Mama Nola turned to Chloe. “Ohanzee is taking me to the circus for one last dance.” She gave Chloe such a sweet, innocent smile. It was so good to see her brighten up, that Chloe couldn’t help but smile back at her.
She looked at Joey, her eyebrows up, asking him to explain.
He only shrugged and patted Mama Nola on the back.
Three items were sitting on the coffee table: her jewelry box, the lipstick, and the hatchet. The hatchet gave her the chills. Chloe picked it up and put it over her knees. She turned it this way and that. It looked brand new; the wood was still shiny with a clear coat of glaze over it. The edge looked as if it had never been used. She pressed her thumb against the edge, testing its sharpness and yipped in pain when it broke her skin.
She sucked on her thumb, intrigued and repulsed by the razor sharp edge. Chloe became aware of how quiet the house was and glanced up to find Joey and Mama Nola watching her. It was eerie. She broke the silence with a question. “Etsi, where did you get—”
Joey put a finger to his lips. “Husshhhhh…” And then jutted his chin toward Mama Nola who had put her hands on her cheeks, her mouth opened in the form of an O. Chloe was reminded of an old painting called The Scream that her art teacher had brought to Chloe’s attention in the eighth grade. Her teacher had only wanted to point out the abstract qualities, but Chloe saw much more. She saw it as a horror of the unknown, at the what could be, and possibly, what would be… Was that what Mama Nola was thinking just now? Or was Chloe being just plain paranoid?
She replaced the hatchet on the coffee table and said, “Never mind, Mama. I’m just glad you’re feeling better.”
Her mother slowly dropped her hands into her lap, and nodded.
Joey let out a sigh of relief.
Chloe got it. He didn’t want Mama Nola getting upset again. She didn’t want that either. But still, Chloe had questions, and she would need answers. Soon. But not tonight. Everyone had been through enough tonight.
Mama Nola said, “Ohanzee, I am tired. Please help me to bed.” Joey glanced at Chloe as if asking if it was okay.
Chloe stood. “Go for it. She prefers you over me anyhow.”
He gave her a look that said, Oh, please, but instead of voicing his thoughts, Joey did what he always did. “She prefers my hairy man chest. No offense.” He lifted his arm, flexed, and kissed his bicep. “Real women can’t resist me.”
“No. They just feel sorry for you.” Chloe grinned, but just barely.
“Keep on telling yourself that, sweetheart.”
Chloe rolled her eyes but was grateful for the banter. It was the closest they could bring the moment to normality. “Get over yourself.”
His eyes twinkled in amusement. “Make me.”
At this Chloe let her eyes wander over his body up and down, feeling a need that she wasn’t sure how to voice. If truth were to be told, she preferred his hairy man chest, too.
“Mind out of the gutter, Ayita.” He was grinning like a wolf now.
Ugh. How did he know what she was thinking?
He helped Mama Nola stand, and without another word, she watched them walk down the hallway. Joey stood in front with his arm lowered so Mama Nola could lean on it. She hobbled along, talking as she did.
“Can we go to the circus now, Ohanzee?”
“Perhaps tomorrow. You need to rest now.”
Chloe touched the hatchet, listening.
Mama Nola said, “But you promised, Ohanzee.”
“And I plan to keep that promise, Etsi. I always keep my promises.”
Chloe couldn’t help but feel love for Joey in that very second. She’d always loved him.
The bedroom door opened and closed, and their voices were muffled. Chloe stared at the objects on the coffee table. She picked up the tube of lipstick. The little label on the bottom of it read Dead Sunset Red. Such a morbid name for a lipstick. Chloe wondered again where it had come from. She took the top of the tube off, screwed the lipstick up, then flipped open her jewelry box. A little mirror lined the box behind the clown. She was thankful the circus music had run itself out. Chloe dabbed on the lipstick.
It was much too dark for her, and she wiped it off on her wrist and closed the box over the clown. She touched the hatchet, then picked it up.
Where had it come from? Why was it under her bed and how did Mama Nola find it?
Ugh. Too many questions.
Chloe carried the hatchet back to her room, pausing by Mama Nola’s door. Joey spoke softly. Mama Nola murmured back. What was he telling her?
She stepped away from Etsi’s door and went into her own room, slipping the hatchet back under the mattress. Chloe glanced around her room, feeling very lonely. She didn’t want to be alone in the house tonight. Yanking her comforter off the bed, she wrapped it around herself, then sat in the hall by Mama Nola’s door.
She could hear what they were saying now, rather what Joey was saying.
He was telling her a story, not just a story, but the story. The one Etsi had told her and Joey at least a thousand times growing up, the one she told every visitor that walked through the front door, the one she had practically built her life upon. The story was an old Cherokee legend called, The Snake Boy. The familiar words comforted her as Joey told it just the way Mama Nola did. Chloe leaned her head against the wall, tugging the blanket snug against her body. She briefly touched Godzilla before closing her eyes and listening to the story.
Long ago, there lived a boy with his family. The boy loved to hunt the birds of the forest and every day he would bring the day’s catch to his grandmother and visit with her. The old woman loved him, and he brought her great joy for she enjoyed his visits and he kept her well-fed. The boy’s brothers became jealous of his grandmother’s favor, and they were cruel to him to the point that the boy knew he must leave. He told his grandmother of his plans to depart. She grew very upset, but he made her promise that she would not grieve for him.
The next morning, he rose early and left hungry. His grandmother spent the day praying in the hothouse. The boy returned at sunset carrying a rack of deer horns. He walked directly into the hothouse where he knew his grandmother would be waiting for him.
He told her that he must be left alone there for the night, but to meet him at daybreak. So, the boy’s grandmother left him and went into the house with the rest of the family.
At dawn, the old woman arose and rushed outside to the hothouse, eager to speak with her grandson. Upon opening the door, she was amazed. What curled before her was a creature of legends and folklore that only the elderly had whispered about over firelight when she was a child.
Instead of the boy, she found a mighty Uktena with horns as white as bone and sharp as arrow heads. Its girth filled the space of the hothouse. However, its transformation had not completed for the great serpent did not have a tail, but sat upon two human legs, which the old woman recognized as her grandson’s.
At this she wept for the boy, calling out his name.
The Uktena spoke kindly to the grandmother, telling her that her boy would be fine and well—and that the legs were all that was left of her grandson. It asked her to leave, and the old woman obeyed, closing the door behind her.
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As the sun rose high in the sky, the serpent began to uncoil and crawl out of the door of the hothouse. Crimson crystal scales reflected like fire in the sunlight, and it made a great hissing noise that brought fear to anyone who heard it.
When the sun had reached the top of the earth, the Horned Serpent fully emerged from the hothouse in all of its radiance. It rattled its mighty tail as a warning to all creatures above and below. All of the boy’s family, except the grandmother, ran from it afraid of the great beast. For the Horned Serpent could see into the hearts of mankind, the dark and light. And if the dark outweighed the light, the Uktena would consume the darkness and what was left would forever be trapped in the belly of the beast until he was no more.
Others hid and watched in wonder as the Uktena slowly crawled its way across the settlement, leaving a wide path behind it. Little children watched in awe and curiosity as their mothers swept them up and hid them in the forest. Brave young men tagged behind, following its mighty path, wanting to see where it would go and daring one another to challenge it, for it was rumored that if one possessed the heart of the Horned Serpent, one would rule the world.
When the Uktena reached the river, it dove beneath the water, never to be seen again.
The grandmother cried day and night for her boy—so much so that her family’s heart were hardened. They told her if she loved him so much to go join him in the river.
She followed the trail the Uktena had left to the river. As she approached, the clear, cool water turned into blood, then burst into flames. Most would have turned away at such a vision, but the old woman was unafraid for she knew from legends of old that the Uktena boiled the river in blood and bathed it in fire before granting a single wish to the one that possessed its heart. What the young men who had followed it didn’t understand was that it wasn’t the physical heart that one needed to possess, but the heart that can’t be seen, only felt. The old woman grew closer and closer to the river of fire, unwavering and unafraid. Before stepping into the river, the grandmother closed her eyes and made her wish. She placed one foot into the flaming river, and then the other, continuing to walk until the flames covered her head, and she was seen no more.
