“Thanks for saying yes,” he said, taking the other end. Together, they shook off the leaves, moving closer and closer as they folded it into a perfect square.
Evan was horizontal, floating. He could feel his body again, but his limbs were weak, his resistance spent. It was October, and leaves were blowing around the yard. Xochi walked out of Loretta’s cabin in a dress that made her look like a frothy blue cupcake. She sparkled with some sort of glitter on her eyelids. The same shine drew Evan’s eyes to her chest, exposed in the strapless dress.
She pulled on a fuzzy sweater and hiked up her skirt to climb on the back of Collier’s motorcycle, leaving Evan alone to count his abandonments: his mother, his stepmother, Gina, Loretta and now Xochi. His dad might as well be gone, too, lost as he was to his grief.
Evan went into Loretta’s cabin and found the bottle of good vodka she’d used to make herbal medicine. It was empty by the time Xochi got home from the dance. He was crying when she walked in, had been crying since the bottle was half done. Xochi’s first response was kindness, the last time she ever touched him willingly.
It had been an animal thing, taking her there on the table in Loretta’s cabin. He’d been rough, he could see that now. And she hadn’t wanted it. He could see that, too.
After that, he only came to her when he was wasted, but he found a way to do it sober soon enough, never thinking of it when she wasn’t there, never planning in advance, living in the moments of sweet relief and forgetting them when they were done. Now he could see his mistake, taking silence for acceptance, despair for consent. Image after image flickered past like pages in the flipbooks his brothers used to make, cartoons of goofy cats chased by mangy dogs, cars racing and crashing, a goose landing in a lake. His lake wasn’t so innocent.
After Xochi took off for good, he drove north. She’d always wanted to see Seattle. He had pictures, was going to make flyers, but never could bring himself to leave the highway for long. He drove as far as Portland before he turned around and went home.
After that, there were women, a few of them too young. Hitchhikers. Travelers. Alone in the world like Xochi must be now. It was fine at first when he was the best-looking guy in the hole-in-the-wall bar, when he bought them drinks and let them win at pool. But sometimes, later, it went wrong—a crying girl in a shitty motel who wanted something he could never figure out.
He tried staying closer to home. There were bar fights in Garberville over somebody’s sister, bar fights in town over nothing at all. Anywhere else, he’d be thrown in jail. But no one wanted the cops up here. Evan would suffer another punishment. He knew that now. This was his karma, come to meet him. And it wasn’t just about Xochi. It went back farther than that.
Like a time-lapse flower blooming in reverse, Xochi grew younger, dark hair fading to blond, daughter melting into mother, Gina under the stars at the fair. He could have stayed there forever, but he forced himself onward. The creatures floated beside him. He found he could open his eyes. The green one touched his hand. She was female, he realized. Beautiful the way wild things could be even when they were scary as shit. She placed her hand in his. It was so small it fit into his palm.
Show us, she said. We will help you be strong.
The memory had the faded colors of a home movie from Evan’s childhood. The cabin was clean and homey, with scarves over the lamps and wildflowers in mason jars. Gina’s womanly touches were everywhere, but Gina herself was on the floor. He stood over her, a monster. He was twice her size, but she met his eyes, defiant, blood smeared on her thighs because he’d been too rough. Too rough after her female troubles, too rough too many times. There were bruises on her arms, a black handprint spanning her bicep. Her blue eyes were pale as water. He remembered the fairy princess she’d been when they’d met. She looked like a different person.
With Gina so fair and Xochi so dark, it was hard to link them as mother and daughter, but now he read it in Gina’s eyebrows, her cheekbones, her hairline, her voice. Mother and daughter. He had done this awful thing to both. But unlike Xochi, Gina knew how to say no. She’d fought, but he was stronger. He’d forced her, hurt her. Gina, his soulmate, his one and only love.
The movie replayed, again and again. The creatures held him as he fought to stop it, to stop himself—moment after moment when he could have been kind, could have been soft. Could have saved them all. But the moments piled up, crashed into each other, and then it was too late. There was no evil he was safe from, no innocence left to redeem.
Xochi sat in the window seat, sun warmed and empty, calmer than she’d been in a long, long time. She retrieved the poem from the floor and read:
When the child was a child
It was the time for these questions:
Why am I me, and why not you?
Why am I here, and why not there?
Is life under the sun not just a dream?
Given the facts of evil and people
Does evil really exist?
Evan floated on the surface of the lake, face raised to the sun. The big-eyed creatures swam in widening circles around him, stirring the lake into a circular current as they went. When they reached the bank, Evan gasped as they launched out of the water to the top of the dam they’d built to trap him.
They stood with their legs planted, crazy hair flapping behind them like capes in the wind. Joining hands, the children began to chant, one soprano, one bass, chasing each other in a rhythmic pattern of call and response.
Noontime holds breathless the balance of day
Stones hold this sacred water at bay
Pure as her dignity should have remained
You fouled her bright faith
Maiden’s flower disdained.
Judged and found guilty
Heart viewed and found vile
We come to restore
The soul-stolen child
Double, double
Toil and trouble
Fire burn!
Cauldron bubble!
The water began to bubble as bidden, heat rising from below.
Panic rose and receded.
His limbs were strong again, his head clear. The pair watched from above, impassive, waiting. Evan understood. He could leave. Or he could stay and meet his fate. He thought of Loretta, so brave in the face of all her pain. This death would be gentler than hers, a kindness he didn’t deserve.
The water swirled in faster spirals as Evan surrendered to the current’s urge, lying back as it pulled him into its foaming, white-capped center. The last thing he saw was the clear blue sky, as blue as the dress Xochi had worn to homecoming, as blue as Gina’s eyes.
Xochi woke to darkness. She tried to remember her dream. Something about Badger Creek. Something about Evan.
She sat up, an image of him so clear in her mind he could have been standing in front of her. Long legs, brown dreadlocks, green-brown eyes. She’d loved him once. When he’d gotten her the dirt bike, made her a tire swing, made her mom laugh in a way that meant Xochi wouldn’t be moving for a long, long time. She’d felt sorry for him when Gina left. She heard whispers about what he’d done to make her mother go, but she’d refused to believe them, hating Gina and giving him a pass. Hating Gina even now.
Xochi sat up straighter. She’d sided with Evan over Gina. A man who hit a woman. A man who hit her mom. Sided with him, had sex with him. Maybe the invisible ropes that held her down when Evan came to her cabin at night had been punishment for her betrayal. Maybe, but it was all over now. Over and done.
Xochi considered Evan for a moment more, remembering the look on his face when he wanted her and tried to resist. It could last for days or minutes. Eventually, he always gave in.
Crazy out, Xochi thought in James’s proper voice. Crazy out, divinity in.
“I’m done,” Xochi said out loud. “I’m done with you.”
When she reopened her
eyes, the edges of things were sharper, the reds and blues in her patchwork quilt jewellike, almost too vivid.
It was after eight and she was hungry. She found a pair of reasonably clean jeans and a soft Lady Frieda T-shirt modified by Kiki so it hung just right. She grabbed her boots. Opening her door, she almost missed the shiny laminated rectangle someone must have slipped under it while she was asleep. Xochi laughed, tucking it into the back pocket of her jeans.
When the child was a child, her friends got her a fake ID.
25
Water Music
The fish swam nose to tail around the circular tank that was the whole of their world.
Two months before, Pallas had laid eyes on Xochi for the first time in this room. It had been a gloomy day in early February, and everyone at home was cross, most of all Pallas. The Academy of Science’s aquarium was a perfect relief, the watery calm a soothing remedy for her unpredictable moodiness.
At first glance, there had been nothing remarkable about Xochi—her uniform of a leather jacket and jeans did nothing to broadcast the kindred spirit within. Still, Pallas had been drawn to her. She sat down next to Xochi, but couldn’t think of what to say. Xochi spoke first.
“I love your hat,” she said. Pallas’s big, furry cat hat was a signature item, something she rarely left home without. In the winter, with her cold-sensitive ears, it was a necessity even indoors.
“Thank you,” Pallas said.
“And that red coat—you look like a girl from a book.” Xochi smiled.
“Any book in particular?” It had been a promising beginning, but a lot rode on the girl’s answer.
“My favorite book,” Xochi said. “I haven’t read it yet—I don’t think anyone’s gotten around to writing it—but there’s a cat girl with your exact coat who lives by the sea and communicates with whales. Definitely my favorite.”
After that, the conversation flew by. They discovered a mutual fascination with manta rays, a shared preference for black licorice over red and an abject terror of the crocodile in the open pit under the suspension bridge you had to cross to get to the Fish Roundabout.
Pallas’s eyes followed the aquarium’s largest ray. As a little girl, she’d imagined being a ray herself, arms traded for water wings, swimming through the open sea with a long catlike tail streaming out behind her.
On her seventh birthday, she’d asked to have her party here. Kiki made Pallas a set of silken manta ray fins with a manta-headed hood, and Pad brought a boom box with Handel’s Water Music. They’d all danced around the aquarium, moving in time with the winging rays. The few people who came in just smiled or joined them. Even the guard wasn’t mad. All he said was, “Turn off the music when the song is over and eat your cupcakes outside.” They’d had a picnic in the Shakespeare Garden and a ride on the carousel, too. It had been a good birthday, one of Pallas’s best.
Now it was strange thinking of her entire family in this room. When Pallas was nine, she’d decided she was ready to go places on her own. When her family finally gave in, Pallas had been thrilled, but after a while, going places alone became an expected thing. People rarely came along—they had other things to do. Now Pallas’s favorite places in the city carried a hint of bittersweet loneliness, like the yellowish tint in an old photograph of people you used to know.
She pulled another rope of licorice out of Xochi’s pack.
“Hand me the Walkman?” Xochi asked.
Pallas and Xochi were working on an aquarium mix, taking turns picking songs. It was Xochi’s turn, but she was stumped. Pallas was hunting for the headphones when the room filled with kids. They were Pallas’s age, or close to it. Middle schoolers.
“They smell,” Pallas whispered. Was a horrible stench next in her own personal parade of indignities? She was already moody and unreliable, slept too much, and had an occasional embarrassing blemish.
“Hey, Pal?” Xochi had on her careful face, the expression everyone wore around Pallas lately. “Did you ever go to school?”
Pallas had, for two long years. She remembered noise, mostly. Noise and bad smells. The thought of liquid yogurt in a tube would always make her gag. And then there was the reading. No one else did it but her. The adults pretended to be impressed, but it made them and the other children uncomfortable.
“When I was small,” Pallas said. “I stopped after the first grade.”
“Ever think of trying it again?”
Pallas startled. Last week, she’d gone so far as to walk by the French American school on her way back from getting Xochi a bagel. A girl in a fetching Madeline uniform and purple hair smiled at her from the playground, but there was no way Xochi could have known about that.
Pallas’s back ached. Probably from sleeping in the car on the way back from LA. A boy tapped on the glass at a passing juvenile shark. After that, an epidemic of male glass tapping broke out in the class. Girls giggled. The guard intervened. There was no logic to the children’s behavior—nothing to be gained by tapping the glass, nothing humorous to respond to. The pretty young teacher shot an apologetic smile as he herded them to another part of the museum.
Pallas sighed. Maybe middle school was a bad idea. She’d wait for high school. A girls’ school, with uniforms and strict nuns. She leaned back, intending to share the headphones with Xochi, but something hot leaked from between her legs. She jumped up. The back of her skirt was wet. Her fingers came back red stained and sticky.
“Xochi!”
Xochi was quick on her feet. “Here.” She unbuttoned the flannel she wore over her T-shirt and handed it to Pallas. “Tie it around your waist.” Normally, Pallas considered this practice a fashion abomination, but bloody humiliation was infinitely worse.
“Walk in front of me,” Xochi said.
Thank goodness the bathroom was empty. “I can go into the big stall with you,” Xochi said. Pallas shot her a look and went into the smaller stall alone.
The bathroom was freezing. Her skirt was a mess. “My underwear is ruined,” she said. Stupidly, she wanted to cry. She bit her tongue. More blood. Great.
“You just need them clean enough to get out of here. We’ll fix you up at home.” Xochi was fiddling with something—probably the vending thing with period supplies. “They only have tampons,” she said. There was a slamming sound. “Scratch that.” Xochi sounded annoyed. “This thing is empty. You’ll have to use toilet paper for now. Fold it into a pad. That’s what I always do, anyway. I never remember to bring stuff with me.”
Pallas bunched up the thin industrial toilet paper, but the blood just smeared around. She wiped at her thighs. “It’s too bloody for that,” she said. Her stomach cramped. More blood dripped into the toilet. “I’m worried it’s too much. Like, not a normal amount.”
“I’m sorry, Pal,” Xochi said. “I know it’s a pain. You just have to plug the leak.”
“All those kids are out there!” Pallas said. “Can you leave me here and go home for a change of clothes?” She was crying now, just a little, but she kept the tears out of her voice.
Xochi paced, her boots appearing and disappearing from the crack under the stall door. “Even if I take a cab both ways, that leaves you sitting here alone for almost an hour. How about I call and see if someone’s home to bring you something?”
“No!” Pallas hadn’t meant to yell, but there was no way she wanted the whole family talking about this. She closed her eyes, made herself calm down. Her bare knees peeked above her socks, plucked looking in the fluorescent light. “Please, Xochi. Don’t tell any of them about this. I don’t want them to know.”
“Okay,” Xochi said. “It’s okay. How about this: you hand me your underwear and I’ll wash them out. There’s a hand dryer, so I can dry them, too. If anyone comes in, I’ll hide them in a paper towel and wait till they leave. We can do the same thing with your skirt.”
“But that’s so gross
.”
“Listen to me,” Xochi said. “You’re always talking about the patriarchy, right? Well, this is a prime example. We’ve been trained to think being a woman is disgusting and shameful. We’ve gotta reject that. We’re beautiful, Pal. We’re goddesses. I am not the least bit grossed out by your blood.”
Pallas had to smile a little. It was great when Xochi went fierce. She remembered something Io had told her. Aaron was saying that sometimes shame was good, like if you’d done something shitty. But Io said no—shame and remorse were different things. Shame was a tool of oppression, especially if you were gay or black or brown or different. And you could multiply that by a million if you were also a girl.
“Come on,” Xochi said, her boot tapping the floor outside the stall. “Hand them over.”
It took Pallas a minute to figure out how to get her underwear off without bloodying her socks and boots, but she did it. Now how was she supposed to stand up without bleeding all over the floor? She balled up some of the rough paper, wedged it between her legs, and waddled to the stall door. Xochi took the gruesome bundle without comment.
Pallas heard the sink, the soap pump, the sink again. “Almost done,” Xochi said. The water turned off. The hand dryer roared like a hungry beast. After a while, Xochi passed Pallas her clean, dry underwear and went to work on her skirt.
“Don’t be afraid to make the pad thick,” Xochi said. “It won’t show under your skirt. And if it’s not too uncomfortable, shove some tissue up inside, kind of like a cork.”
“Lovely,” Pallas said, but realized that might actually work a bit better than the way she had things arranged. It was only a little while before Xochi handed Pallas her skirt under the door. Pallas came out of the stall clean and dry, wearing the long flannel shirt as a sort of jacket. “The blood didn’t get it,” she said. “And I got cold.” She looked in the mirror. No different, she thought. “It toughens up my outfit, don’t you think? And it’s long, which is good in case I leak again.”
All of Us with Wings Page 14
