All of Us with Wings

by Michelle Ruiz Keil

  Next came the clothes, versions of the black-and-white service uniform. Sometimes, a ridiculous costume was required, like the flared skirts and ruffled tops she wore at La Casa Fiesta or the cheerleader outfit she wore at the sports bar. After Gina was dressed, she did her hair. First, the hum of the blow dryer, a sound that always made Xochi sleepy, the patient skill required by the curling iron, the light mist of hairspray, the careful comb-out, the final dramatic flip.

  After that, there were hugs and kisses, the parting sad, yet so sweet. The bedtime teenage babysitters blended together in Xochi’s mind, unimportant. For hours after Gina was gone, her scent filled the apartment, promising her return.

  Xochi touched Gina’s hair. It looked dry, but the underside was damp, a state Gina would never have allowed given the choice. She’d let Xochi eat Captain Crunch for dinner or stay home from school whenever she wanted, but she was adamant about the importance of avoiding a chill. Xochi wore a coat on cold days whether she wanted to or not, wasn’t allowed to walk barefoot in the house in the winter and never once went to bed with wet hair. Xochi remembered the tug of the brush on her long brown tangles, her scalp toasted by the blow dryer’s heat. She remembered the good pajamas she got every birthday in September, the new robe and slippers at Christmas, the cute summer sleep sets after school got out.

  Putting a hand under Gina’s head, she pulled the damp hair from under her neck and spread it on the pillow, took up Gina’s glittery purple comb and went to work. Most of the tangles unraveled easily, but some hairs near the nape of her neck had matted. Working into the tangle, making sure to protect the tender scalp she herself had inherited, Xochi tried to recall the weeks before her mother left.

  Gina fought with most of her boyfriends. Sometimes the conflicts got physical, but they seemed more like battles than abuse. In the aftermath, it always felt like Gina won, even as they packed their boxes and left. With Evan it was different. Maybe because Gina loved him more. Maybe because he was angrier than any of the others had ever been. When they weren’t screaming at each other, Gina was red eyed and quiet. Loretta suggested an extended sleepover in her cabin. Maybe Xochi shouldn’t have agreed.

  She got up and went to the bathroom. There was water in the tub. She drained it and turned on the shower. Gina used the same baby shampoo and Ivory soap as always. Xochi washed her hair and scrubbed her skin.

  In her mother’s closet, things were organized the way Xochi remembered: by type, sleeve length, and color. None of the clothes were familiar. She found a black T-shirt, borrowed a pair of cotton underwear, a little too small, and put on her dirty jeans.

  Xochi sat on the bed beside her mom. She would only lie down for a minute. And then she’d do what she should have done hours ago: call an ambulance to take Gina away.

  61

  The Purest Blue

  Xochi blinked. She’d fallen asleep, lulled by the familiar scent of her mother’s pillow.

  Gina was still unconscious. It was time to make the call.

  Feeling rose, too rough to be tears. She slid to the floor and scooted away from the bed, stomach heaving, gasping for breath. When she began to cry, the sound was loud, foreign and frightening. The tears lasted a long time. Finally, she was quiet. She sat motionless, waiting to fly apart. She found herself humming old songs from Gina’s classic rock station, the constants in Xochi and Gina’s world of musical chair apartments and boyfriends and jobs and schools.

  When they got to Evan’s, his music took over. The Grateful Dead, bootleg after bootleg, Jerry Garcia’s noodling guitar like a mosquito at the back of Xochi’s neck.

  There was no more music after Loretta died. Both Xochi and Evan lost their appetite for Loretta’s blues and jazz and funk and folk. Even Xochi’s own music fell flat. When her Walkman ran out of batteries, she never replaced them. The birds stopped singing. The air was still as the forest sweltered in a late September heat wave. Her room was airless the first night he came in. He sat, not touching her as she pretended to sleep. Eventually, she did sleep. Soon enough she slept through his weird nightly vigil. Then, one night, he woke her up.

  A single word formed in her head, rising to meet the memory. She said it out loud.

  “Rape.”

  It lay there, flat and dead, a thing in a book, the title of a famous picture, a scene from Greek mythology. Xochi remembered the green girl, swan crowned and deadly. She saw Evan faceup in the water, dead. She sat up straighter and said it again. “Rape.”

  Rape was bad. Even the word made her feel bad.

  Still, it wasn’t the worst thing that had happened, the worst thing Evan had done.

  Xochi groped for the words he’d used to poison her. They lay in her body, hidden away. One by one, she dug them out. Some were alive, stinging and furious. Others were furred husks, missing legs, antennae, wings. Laid out one by one, she could see a pattern. Almost a plan. A look here, a word there. Innocent praise, a comment to someone else Xochi was meant to overhear. It went back years.

  That morning at the diner—was it yesterday?—Kylen tried to tell her. Xochi was Pallas’s age when Gina left, growing and hungry. To survive, she’d have opened her mouth for anyone. Loretta’s clean, simple affection couldn’t save her. It was Evan who’d felt most like home. He’d go weeks without noticing her until one morning he’d smile and see her all the way, saying something so good it shone inside her for days.

  Xochi saw it now, a yoke of bright beads made of Evan’s cleverness, like the pearl necklaces they used to sell on late night TV. Buy it now for your daughter at this low, low price and add one every year until she gets married. Xochi had scorned the teary bride with her ugly dress and poofy hair. She’d wanted the necklace, though. More than that, she’d wanted someone to smile at her the way the fake TV dad smiled at his fake TV daughter. Somehow, Evan knew. Not with his brain—even Gina used to say thinking wasn’t his strong suit. But he was strong in other ways. He’d smelled it on Xochi, all that sweet unmet need. He’d watched, biding his time, his whispers hiding under her pillows, crawling into her ears as she slept, colonizing every part of her.

  Hurt and hurting. Golden and broken. Evan’s brokenness had been part of what made Xochi stay. He would not stop. He could not mend.

  Of all the men who’d loved Gina, Evan was the only one Gina had truly loved back. Xochi’s throat ached. There had been no Collier in Gina’s life. No one like Leviticus or even Aaron or Ky or Pad. Just Evan, with his need and damage and abandonment. It was so little, so mean. Not nearly enough.

  Xochi got up.

  The sun was up now, streaming into the room. It was time to stop thinking about the past and start thinking about reality. She’d believed the Waterbabies when they told her she could make everything all right. But she couldn’t. Now there was nothing left to do but get up and make the call.

  “Show me my favorite color,” Xochi whispered in Gina’s ear. “Show me the ocean. Show me the sky.” It was how they woke each other on tired mornings when Xochi was small. Show me chocolate kisses, Gina would say. Show me black coffee. Maple syrup. Grizzly bears. Garden dirt. Xochi only knew she was crying because a tear glistened on Gina’s lips like something sparkly you’d find in a small hinged box.

  Lashes fluttered, a flash of blue.

  A second tear dropped, an eyelid quaked.

  Eyes opened: Xochi’s birthstone, sapphire, dark with sleep.

  62

  Heroes

  Peasblossom panted in the side yard, exhausted from the Buena Vista hill. The wind changed. Hackles up, he scanned the garden. There, under the jasmine hedge—a furred shape. The cat approached it. Slowly, a large animal rose, bowing its head, a universal gesture of submission. It was a dog by the smell, pungent but clean. Not a stray, but a pet. Lost? Peas held his ground. An animal that size might consider a cat a meal.

  “Excuse me,” the dog said. “I don’t mean to trespass.”
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  Peasblossom took a step closer. The dog was a breedable female, German Shepherd mixed with some muscular Northern breed, Malamute or Husky. Possibly wolf. She exuded a trustworthy calm that made the cat’s high alert feel foolish. Peasblossom’s hackles settled. “May I help you?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “These creatures asked me to bring them here. Do you know them?” She stepped aside. Her own strong musk had masked the now-faint scent of the Waterbabies. Peasblossom rushed to their side. “They were sheltering in my yard,” she said. “They were ill and very cold.”

  “You led them to Eris Gardens?” Peasblossom crept closer to the creatures and was instantly reminded of Gina. There was life in the two small bodies, present but fading.

  “I carried them most of the way,” she said. “But I couldn’t get them into the house. I considered ringing the bell, but the creatures insisted on only speaking to the child who lives in the attic. The lights were out when we arrived. I agreed to wait an hour or so.” Her black-lined eyes lowered. “I’m not as young as I used to be. I must have fallen asleep. They’re unconscious now.”

  “I’ll check the attic,” Peasblossom said. For all the dog’s bulk and majesty, Peasblossom had the advantage there. He stretched, preparing to climb. The sun was rising. The creatures’ skin was dull and pale, their hair tangled in lifeless piles. The sky darkened with rain, but as it lowered, Peasblossom could see that it was not a cloud, but a flock of crows. They landed in the garden, at least a hundred strong. One flapped to the ground near the creatures.

  “We must warm them,” she said. Her accent was clipped, bare of embellishment. The crows’ language was too complicated for most other creatures; they had to simplify for those less gifted. She turned to order her compatriots, a complicated series of clicks. “Step away,” she said to Peas.

  Several birds hopped into a loose circle around the unconscious pair, each grasping a lock of limp hair. They began to flap, carefully rising. A second group massed under the creatures in support. They rested their burdens carefully on the sun-warmed fire escape outside Pallas’s bedroom. The crow in charge swooped back to Peas and the dog. “Come,” she said, gesturing to the attic window.

  “I must go,” the dog said, bowing formally to Peas and the crows.

  “Thank you,” Peasblossom said. “I hope we meet again.” To his surprise, he meant it.

  “So do I,” she said with an uncomfortably fangy smile.

  “Come!” the crow commanded.

  Peasblossom set his shoulder to the attic window. It rose just enough to get the creatures inside. He walked carefully over the green girl, wedging himself between her and her companion, and started to push.

  “Stop.” The crow flew to the railing above him. “They need the sun. Find a covering.”

  Peasblossom blinked, unsure of the bird’s meaning. The sun came out, streaming onto the fire escape. He understood now: a blanket. He scrunched through the window and dropped into the attic.

  A heavy quilt lay on the sofa. Peasblossom pushed it to the floor. Grasping an edge with his teeth, he pulled, but the carpet’s fibers held it back. From the window, Peas smelled the forest perfume of the siblings, stronger in the sun. Steam rose from the crows’ feathers. He pulled at the quilt again. Nothing.

  There was a clatter at the window. Two crows sat on the window seat, incongruous with the floral upholstery. They flapped to the cat’s side and gripped the quilt in their strong black beaks. Together, the trio pulled it to the fire escape, covering the prone creatures.

  “You.” The crow in charge nodded at Peas. She held the top of the quilt open and gestured. As Peasblossom crept between the creatures, they shifted position like plant leaves angling toward the sun. The cat’s fur crackled with static. He lay in the small space between their smooth chests and began to purr. Crows roosted on their bodies from above.

  Under the blanket with the creatures, the world was small. The quilt made the sky rose gold. The air was thick with the scent of trees and plants, some familiar to the cat, others strange. Peasblossom’s hours with Gina had primed him. Now he worked with effortless grace, not tiring, not rushing, purring warmth and life as if he were a great fire-fueled wheel whose spinning turned the world.

  Up close, so still, the fey pair resembled normal children sleeping with innocent abandon. Peasblossom closed his eyes.

  Another fort, years before, the light blued by the fibers of the blanket that covered them: Nora, Peasblossom, Ron.

  “I wanted a kid.” A tear slid down Ron’s cheek.

  “You have one,” Nora said.

  “I mean, our kid. A little brother for Anna B. We always said we’d do it when we turned thirty.”

  “Anna will have to be enough,” Nora said.

  Ron laughed. “Oh, she’s enough, all right. Wish I could see her grow up.”

  Ron’s room, the curtains closed on a cold gray afternoon, Peas purring on the man’s thin chest.

  In a week, he would be gone, his body burned to ash, the ashes released in the bay.

  That day, Ron was talking. He often talked to Peasblossom in the afternoons before Nora and Anna got home.

  “Screw this,” he said calmly, scorn tamed by morphine. He got out of bed, shaky. He put on an album, Skinny Puppy, an electronic cacophony that made the cat fold back his ears. Ron turned it up loud enough that the neighbors might complain, as they had last week when it was the Sex Pistols.

  He danced, his limbs loose, a gift of the drug. “I never did this shit back in the day,” he told the cat. “I just liked speed. It kept me skinny. Guess I’m skinny now.” He grinned, still beautiful. He’d always doubted this, Peasblossom knew. Eugene had been angular, with pouting lips and pale eyes. Ron was short and strong with a sandy crew cut, his ordinary face made extraordinary by the green of his eyes. Cat eyes, Anna said. Green like agates, green as jade. Green as the succulent ice plants that grew in the small patch of earth in front of their apartment.

  Peasblossom opened his eyes. The atmosphere beneath the quilt was balmy now. The creatures’ skin had brightened. The green girl didn’t stir, but her rest had a healing quality, like the change in Anna when a fever broke. Curling around her head as he had once done with Ron and Eugene in turn, washing Eugene’s thick brows before moving on to Ron’s bristly buzz cut, he kneaded his paws in the creature’s tangled hair. His claws became electric, conduits for the story that poured and poured from the hair that was not hair, but something more like whiskers: a massive sensory organ, now sparking in the small space. A collage came together, images of feeling, pieces of a life, smearing, blurring, combining.

  Peasblossom recalled the poster above Nora’s writing table, a print called “Candlelight,” full of yellow heat and wordless meaning. Through the scent of this new piece of abstract art, Peasblossom understood: the story of Xochi and her mother and a man, no longer alive. It shook the cat like an earthquake, swelled in his cells like a wave. He stood, quivering, fur upright, paws stinging with fire. The smell of the sea was everywhere, and sulfur and cedar and jasmine and crows and redwood forests and Tenderloin piss and candlelit prayer and beds full of love.

  A crystal dropped from the cat’s blue eye, a single tear. It slid into the green girl’s mouth. Her hair undulated, seeming to yawn and stretch. Crows flapped as they flung the quilt away.

  The green creature’s eyes opened. She knelt by her companion and opened her mouth. On her tongue sat a sun-spun bee, a small winged creature of light. The garden exhaled: barely sprung lilac buds opened, star jasmine blinked to life, and crocuses stretched their throats in longing. The bee left the green sister’s tongue and flew, landing on the lips of the sleeping brother. He sat up, hair reaching into the clear, sunlit air. Grasping his sister’s hand, the creature stood and bowed to Peas.

  63

  Small Blue Thing

  “Mom?”

 
“Xochi? Is that you?” Gina blinked. Her eyes widened. She leaped up, nostrils flared.

  “It’s okay,” Xochi said, grabbing Gina’s forearm to steady her. “Sit down. I’ll get you some water.”

  Gina shook her head like a mare in a field. She circled the bed and sat on its edge. “I’m dizzy,” she said.

  Xochi handed Gina the water and watched her drink. When she was finished, Gina reached up to touch Xochi’s cheek. Xochi let her mother’s hand rest there for one broken second before pulling away. She stood up, backing toward the door.

  “Are you all right?” Gina asked.

  Gina’s voice was a time machine. The room tilted. Xochi should be bleeding, the way she felt. But she’d done it. Gina was awake.

  “I’m fine,” Xochi whispered. “But I’ve got to go.”

  “Xochi—” Gina stopped, started again. “Something happened. How . . . how are you here?”

  “It’s a long story.” Xochi backed up. One step, another.

  “Please,” Gina said. “I have no right to ask. I know nothing I say will fix it—”

  “You could try sorry.”

  “Will you stay? Just for a while?”

  Xochi nodded. Why was she nodding? She would give anything to beam away like people did on the Star Trek reruns she and Gina had loved. But here she was. Staying because Gina wanted her to. There was nowhere to sit but the bed, so she went to the kitchen for a chair and sat down across from her mother.