The Innocent

by Candice Raquel Lee

“What are you doing?” I cried, but she did not stop. She took them all.

  “You go naked,” was all she said.

  “Why?” I asked, covering as much as I could with my hands and arms.

  “These are the trappings of the world,” she said, folding my clothes and putting them in her wagon. “These are the lies you tell yourself about who you are, what you can do, what you mean in the world. These threads define you. You are made of threads,” she spat with disgust. “Who are you without your lies? Who are you when you are alone? Without the world, without your stories, without Cristien to save you?”

  I felt a cold chill blow through my bones, an emptiness so dark and dank it seemed to eat my soul. I shivered and glared at her wrapped up in all her blankets while I stood here cold and naked like Eve.

  No. Not wrapped in blankets but the clothes of people who had come here before me. Stolen clothes. Borrowed clothes.

  “Who are you?” I asked her.

  “Persephone, Minia, Ereshkigal, Malach ha Mavet,”

  The last name I knew. It meant Angel of Death in Hebrew. She was Death. I knew Persephone too, queen of Hades. I didn’t know the second name, but the third name… Ereshkigal. I had read about her once. She too was queen of the Underworld.

  Ershkigal had stripped her sister, Inanna, when she came down to visit her. It had weakened Inanna to be naked, to lose the robes of her Queenship. Nudity equaled powerlessness.

  “Who are you now?” Ereshkigal demanded.

  I remembered my talk with Lance, “Nothing has changed. I am who I always was. My outsides don’t make me who I am.”

  She smiled. “We will see.”

  “I want to go back,” I told her.

  “We all want to go back, but that is impossible.”

  Inanna had made it back. So had Psyche. I would make it back.

  “Which way?” I demanded.

  She laughed and shrugged. She wouldn’t help me?

  “I gave you money! I had pity on you,” I cried.

  “You gave me the fee to cross over. That is all,” she said.

  I looked around. It was darkness in all directions. So black, and yet my eyes started to see things, shadows and lights like one sees in a dream. I saw a web as wide as the world and a spider weaving at its center. The shining bits of dew were suns.

  Then there was the girl who first saw the spider, and dreamed of a loom. Then there was the first woman who told the story of how Fate wove with thread the days of our lives and knitted them into a cloth. When her life was over, the thread was cut.

  The cloth fell away and became a shroud to wrap the body in. It looked like a cocoon of white silk for a butterfly. The butterfly came to symbolize the immortal soul, whose name was Psyche.

  The butterfly materialized and flew aimlessly in the darkness. Lost. Lost like me. How could I get back? Ereshkigal stood waiting, watching me. Then I understood.

  “I can’t go back to the past,” I said, slowly. “Life only progresses.”

  “From birth to grave, it marches on and then again from grave to birth. The soul’s merry dance,” the old woman smiled, doing a little jig. And out of the dark, the butterfly came to flutter in my face. I shooed it away.

  “But which way?”

  “Which way do you usually go?” she asked, tilting her little head.

  I looked all around me. It all looked the same. How to choose? I felt frozen to the spot, so unsure I couldn’t take a step. Which direction? How could I decide? I didn’t have enough information. It was as impossible, as she said.

  … Or was it? Which way do you usually go? She had asked. Forward. We always went forward. We had no other choice. I just started walking.

  “The first step on a journey is always the hardest,” she laughed. Then, “It’s hopeless. You know that, don’t you? You’ll never find your way out of here without help.”

  I knew she was right, but I kept walking. I was on my own. Death wasn’t going to help me. I knew that much. I also knew only a few people had made it back from the Underworld, and that most had not.

  Out of the dark, the butterfly flew at my face again. Its fluffy wings brushed my cheek. No. Not a butterfly. A moth. It landed on my hand.

  Moths went to the light. I tossed it into the air. I could follow it to the light, but it only flew back toward me again and again as if I were the light. The only light here was me?

  What was the light I held? What did the stories have in common? Cupid kissed Psyche. Inanna called to her friends and family.

  Love and connection. Those were things even Death could not take from us. I thought of Cristien, of my mother, Lance, even Reese and Mikayla. I kept walking and remembering, my life, all my life.

  I began to understand it in a way I never had before. It was a mass of connections, joinings, starting from the day I was conceived even before I had left my mother’s womb. I had made connections, touched lives.

  I had touched my mother, the doctors and nurses, neighbors, friends, strangers, but, in the end, I had to make my way, find my own life. I had to find that thing, Love. And I had found it. I had found Cristien, but if I didn’t get back I’d lose him. I’d lose him again. Again?

  Suddenly, I remembered other lives. I was a mother, a nun in a cold, stone-white place where they took my child from me. The child had grown inside me like a miracle. I thought like Mary’s miracle, but they said he was a devil child, an evil child of Satan and sin.

  Yet, I was innocent. Innocent. I had upheld my vows. I had only dreamt of an angel coming to me in my sleep, giving me such sweet joy. Still, they came and took him from me. He was a blessed child, a tiny gift from God. He was Cristien still, and I loved him, loved him with all my heart, and my love followed him.

  I was alive again, a Native girl in a village by a beautiful river. My family fished and had a simple life. One night, Cristien came to me, a white man, a ghost man, a spirit man, and I knew he was a good omen. The old women told tales of how children born from such men would be powerful and bring good luck to the people. I welcomed him with open arms to my bed. I loved him, waited for him to come again, but my life ended soon after. My people decimated.

  Then I was a black girl with bouncing hair and long legs and round hips that made boys smile when I walked by. I was pretty, and I knew it. Smart too. The world was going to be mine. I had a brother named Lance. He was handsome as the day was long.

  He was also big and dumb like a puppy, always teasing me, always had to be saying stuff, but I loved him. Together, because we never did anything without each other, we were going to reach for the stars. I didn’t know it then, but I was heading right for Cristien like a bullet. Then one day, I was walking home and something happened, something bad, and thank the lord, I mercifully could not remember what.

  Then I was Alexa, and I was still chasing Cristien with my love. I had thought I was crazy getting married to him so soon, saying ‘yes’ so soon, but I was only doing what I wanted, what my heart wanted. Then I was sidetracked again. If I died now, how would we find each other? How long would it be until next time—fifty years, a hundred, a thousand? And what of his pain?

  What would he suffer if I left? His pain would be as great as mine, burning and falling, perhaps more, because his would not end. There would be no tunnel for him. There would only be loss. I could not do that to him. I could not do that to myself. I had to go back. I put my back to the darkness and moved doggedly toward life. As I moved, I heard my feet running. In the dark, my heart was pounding.

  Then she was there, Death, Ereshkigal, the wandering homeless woman. I thought she was blocking my way, but she just bowed to me, smiled, and said, “What a beautiful, strong girl.”

  “Young woman,” I said, as I passed her by.

  “Her heart is beating,” Chandraswami told me happily.

  I walked over then. I saw the charred skin and could not believe she could still be alive. I turned to him with my complete disbelief.

  “Here,” Chandraswami said,
putting my hand under her nose. She was breathing.

  “Alexa,” I cried. I didn’t touch her. There was nowhere to put a hand, but I had never been happier. I turned to the miracle man again. “Thank you. Thank you.”

  “Move,” Chandraswami told me. I moved.

  He and his wife got to work. She rolled out a plastic sheet on the floor. They lifted Alexa onto it. Then they opened their bags. They took out at least fifty big jugs and put them on the floor around Alexa. There was a rainbow of colors, a forest of smells as they opened them one by one and poured them over her. Red liquid, orange, and yellow touched her skin then misted to fill the room with light.

  After about an hour of applications, they began wrapping her in cotton bandages like a mummy while they continued pouring more colors on the bandages. In the end, Alexa was a blackish-brown mess with only her nostrils exposed. They closed the plastic cover over her, taping it down after they cut an air hole for her.

  Then they sat down on the floor. Swami pulled out what looked like a super-long guitar from his bag, and his wife sat opposite him.

  “Sit down,” he told me.

  Once again I did as told. Then his wife started chanting. I would have thought they were crazy except everything turned white in the room, and I didn’t remember anything until I woke up on the floor. I’m not used to waking in strange places, so I was a little surprised that I was staring up at a stained tile ceiling when I opened my eyes.

  Then I remembered where and why. I sat up and saw that Swami and his wife were cutting the bandages away from Alexa. I leapt to my feet. Swami threw a big chunk of wrapping onto the floor. The inside was crusty, oily, rank and disgusting.

  A moment later, he lifted Alexa’s hand, her left hand with all five fingers. I laughed aloud. I almost jumped for joy. My heart skipped. I owed him everything. Alexa sat up, rising from her bandages. She was in her birthday suit.

  It was like I was seeing her for the first time. She was the goddess Aphrodite rising from the sea; she was the Phoenix after the flames; she was a butterfly breaking from her cocoon; she was my baby girl. She looked at me with big lustrous eyes. Her white wings rained down from her back. And then Swami’s wife whipped a piece of blue cloth around her and it turned into a dress. She had grown up so fast.

  “Lance?” Alexa said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Where’s Cristien?”

  I looked down. “It’s going to be okay,” I told her. I fished the rings from my pocket I held them out to her. She stared at them until I slipped them on her finger. She watched silently, bewildered, feeling the wrongness as I did it.

  “Why isn’t Cristien here?” she asked me.

  I looked to Swami for help, for some story to make it easier on her.

  “The Truth is all, incubus,” he told me wobbling his head.

  “My name’s Lance,” I grumbled.

  Everything Changes

  Chandraswami held my arm firmly while I listened to Lance. His gaze was everywhere—floor, ceiling, walls, right behind me, my left shoulder—while he tried to find a nice way to tell me that Cristien had turned into a madman, a monster, after I had died. And that wasn’t the only change. He didn’t even look like himself anymore. When Lance finished, Chandraswami’s hand jerked upward, while I slid a bit sideways. An Asian woman grabbed my other arm, but it was too late. I was on the floor, on my knees. I couldn’t believe what I was being told. I couldn’t ever imagine Cristien so changed. I couldn’t.

  “Where is he?” I begged. I had to see him with my own eyes. I would see him and know the truth, see what they could not.

  Lance shook his head. “But we’ll find him. He’ll be all right.”

  “It may not be that simple,” Chandraswami said, squatting down beside me. “He has been overwhelmed by his pain and suffering. It is all he knows now. He feeds on his hate, his fury. He is consuming himself, as the flame feeds on the candle to live. He has shut himself from the light, from you and from the source of all light. He will not know you. There is not much time. If he exacts his revenge, he will be doomed, his bargain with darkness concluded. You can save yourself. There is a ritual, a way to sever you from him.”

  “What do you mean ‘sever’?” I asked, cringing at the sound of the word.

  “It will be as if you had never met, so that when he dies, you will not.”

  “Cristien isn’t going to die. He’ll know me.”

  Chandraswami shook his head emphatically. I looked away from him to the hard, gray-painted floor of the morgue. He was wrong. Cristien loved me. I knew that now. I was certain of it.

  “Has this ever happened before?” Lance asked.

  “Too many times,” Chandraswami told him.

  “And you’ve never been able to save the ones like him?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t care,” I said. “Take me to Cristien.”

  “If you cannot reach him, he will take his revenge,” Chandraswami warned. “I will have to destroy him before he does this, for his sake.”

  I stared at him, horrified. “You can kill Cristien but not help him?”

  “What I do, I do out of friendship,” he explained. “Neither you nor Cristien would want him to live this way. If he finishes his task and dies in this form, he will have no other chance of rebirth as anything except a demon. His pain will give him his form. He will choose it. He will not see the light for thousands of years. I will not let that happen to him. With my sword, I can at least assure he will be born human again. With its strike, he will die with the light. He will understand, and it will bring him to consciousness, to some sort of peace. It will redeem him in his own eyes.”

  I couldn’t believe what he was saying. He was going to kill Cristien? Take his life right in front of me? Hate bubbled up inside me for the calm little man who was offering Death as Hope. I would give him death, tear him limb from limb.

  “Whoa. Whoa,” Lance cried, grabbing me. “Your aura is going dark. Are you feeling okay? Is she dying again?”

  I blinked, met his gaze and let out a long breath. I let it go, all my anger and rage. I disconnected from it like flicking a switch. It was a handy skill I learned to cultivate while listening to my mom or others insult me. I would feel like I was going to ignite with emotion, but I couldn’t toss my mom or anyone else around. So, I flipped the switch and walked away or started reading or pretended they had not just made me bleed internally. I guess I did that with Cristien too: when things got too crazy, I shut down. Maybe I shouldn’t have. I promised myself I would never do that with him again. When I saw him, I was never letting him go.

  “I’m okay. I’m okay.” Lance released me slowly but kept watching me. Now I understood what Cristien must have felt when I died. I understood how easy it was to become a demon.

  “You’d better kill us both,” I told Chandraswami. Lance gasped.

  “I needed to hear you say that,” Chandraswami said. “Otherwise I could not have raised my blade against an innocent.”

  “Hold the hell on here,” Lance shouted, coming between us. “You can’t do that. You can’t bring her back to kill her.”

  “I did not bring her back, incubus. She has returned to give herself a chance to save her mate. She has chosen her path.”

  Lance knelt in front of me. He took me by the shoulders. “Alexa, do you think Cristien would want you to die for him? If you don’t know the answer, I’ll tell you: he wouldn’t. He would want you to live.”

  “How, Lance?” I asked him. Even now I couldn’t feel Cristien anywhere. I hadn’t really known it until I lost him, but he was always with me. And now he was gone. I could taste the emptiness, the echo as my soul called and called, and he did not answer. I didn’t know how long I could stand it.

  “One day at a time,” Lance said.

  “Why? If he’s dead, I might as well die too and be reborn. It’ll be easier. Maybe we’ll find you again,” I told him to try and make it easier.

  “Don’t talk that way,” he s
houted. “Do the damn ritual. Separate yourself. Search for him after.”

  “I’m sorry, Lance. If he dies, I don’t know how not to become a monster. You’re going to lose us both anyway.”

  “Damn it, Alexa. If I let you die, he’d never forgive me in this life or any other.” He looked so miserable. I didn’t want to hurt him. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. But I didn’t know how to go on without Cristien.

  “It’ll be okay,” I said for him. But I knew I couldn’t go back. Already I was dying without Cristien. I had married my soul to his, my life to his, and there was no such thing as death parting us. We would either rise or fall together.

  “Listen to me. If he were here, he’d tell you to go on. He’d beg you.” He took my hands and squeezed them.

  “I know. I know what he would want.” Then a feeling, a calm acceptance came over me. I had died. There was nothing to fear there. I would simply be going home. Perhaps I had turned back at the door for Cristien, to light his way when he had gotten lost, or maybe I was here to take his hand and lead him on. I didn’t know. I would have to find out. I smiled a little for Lance. “But I never listen to him. You know that. He always does what I say.”

  Lance let me go. “You better bring him back, or Swami’s going to have to take us all out.”

  Lance, sweet, brave, fatherly Lance. I was glad he was with me when Cristien couldn’t be. I felt oddly less alone, less afraid.

  “Help me up,” I told him.

  He pulled me to my feet and held me. “It’ll be all right. You’ll see. Let’s go get Cristien and bring him home. And I’m driving,” Lance said to Chandraswami.

  Lance helped me outside after I hid my wings. It was a dark moonless night in New York. The sky was a starry for once. The air was stiff, cool and blustery. The cloth of the sari I was wrapped in barked in the wind like a sail. It was the loveliest dress I had ever seen. It sparkled in the street lights. I wished I was going someplace worthy of it. Morbidly I thought, I’d most likely to be buried in it.

  We walked on toward Lance’s car. The street noises, horns and screeches made me jumpy. My ears and eyes felt so sensitive, so new. Lance opened the back door and helped me inside into the silence. The woman whom I assumed to be Chandraswami’s wife sat in back with me.