The Innocent

by Candice Raquel Lee

  I could not allow her to be with something like me. I would force her to go and never come back. Tears welled and fell from my demon-eyes, making a mockery of all I felt. That something like me should cry. A monster that wept? How ridiculous. How obscene. As if anyone could pity such a thing? Even heaven was not moved by the howls of devils.

  I took in my reflection, the figure of a miscreation, my hands completing the grotesque picture. I could not stand it. How could I face the truth, face myself, the cause of my own downfall? How could I, seeing my own violent repulsiveness, ever think to have her near me, ever imagine, ever dare to want her, and yet I did. I did. I smashed the glass, tore the sink from the wall then fell to my knees sobbing.

  “Cristien?” Lance came running in at the noise. I wiped my face and pushed past him.

  “Lance, is he okay?” I heard her yell.

  “Stay there, Honey. I’ll be right out,” Lance told her.

  “Take her away somewhere,” I said to him. “Do this for me as a friend. Take her somewhere. Make her happy. I always knew from the beginning, it would have been better if you had been the one to find her.”

  He stared at me in complete puzzlement, “And while I’m committing incest for you, is there anything else you’d like? Maybe a side-order of bestiality?”

  “Be serious for once, Lance,” I yelled at him, “I need you to take care of her, take her somewhere, so she’ll forget about me.”

  “Take her how? I couldn’t even drag her into the hallway. Besides, dude, there isn’t anywhere I could take her where she would forget you. Get real.”

  “Try,” I growled.

  “She loves you. Accept it with some grace, damn it! She’s been through the mill to save you. If there’s anyone who deserves all you can give her, it’s Alexa.”

  “She deserves more than something like me can give her,” I told him. “I always knew I would end up like this.”

  “Oh lord . . .” he said, covering his face.

  “I’m a monster.”

  “If you mean you were hurt beyond anything, then, yes, you’re a monster, but so are most people at one time or another.”

  “But they don’t have their insides out for everyone to see. I’m no better than Lily. We were two of a kind.”

  “That’s bullshit, and you know it. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. My daughter wants her husband back.”

  “Her husband is dead.”

  “Goddamn you, she . . .” Lance began, but I cut him off.

  “He already has,” I shouted back at him, but he continued.

  “. . . she loves you, and you better muster up enough unselfishness to make her happy. What other option is there, Cristien? She can’t live without you anymore, and you can’t live without her. You’re halves of a whole. Isn’t that what you told me? That’s it. That’s all. End of story.”

  “How can I touch her with these?” I cried, holding up my claws. “I can’t be a husband to her.”

  “Find a way. She’s worth the try,” he said. “Jesus, even I love her. I want her to be my daughter. I want it so much because then some part of me is good too. I’ve never been a part of anything good, and you’re not going to ruin it. I want her to have her happily ever after. She became a demigoddess for you right off the bat. Swami says nobody does that. Nobody. She’s amazing. If you need a reason to try, she’s it. And maybe if you can find a way to be with her despite everything. Then you’ll find a way back to yourself too.”

  I was silent. What could I say? Inside me his words were mixing acid into the wounds of my dilemma. He was heaping pain atop torment. I so much wanted to keep her, to make her happy, but I didn’t know how anymore.

  “Well, that’s it,” he told me, shoving his hands into his pockets and going to the door. “That’s my ‘you better treat my little girl right’ speech.” Then he stopped. “It’s also my ‘I’m your best friend, and I love you and want the best for you’ speech, in case you didn’t know.”

  Then he left, and I was alone again. In his wake, it started all over. Like a man starving, I had become hypersensitive to everything that related to Alexa. I thought at first that I was hallucinating. How could I hear her heart beating like a siren’s song calling to me? How could I smell her from my room? Hear her voice everywhere? It was driving me wild.

  This body had an even greater appreciation of her. She made my mouth water, my hands sweat. I was intensely aware of her every movement in the apartment, the sound of cloth shifting against her skin. I could almost see her through the walls. It took all my effort not to go after her. I kept imagining ripping the door off its hinges and bounding toward her, pulling her into my arms and telling her how much I loved, missed, needed her. But then I would see my hands, my bestial claws on her perfect golden skin, like a lion clutching a gazelle. Then I would see her horror, and the urge would recede until I smelled her again. And the exhausting cycle of desire and denial would begin once more.

  “He loves you desperately,” Lance told me after he walked into the kitchen. “He’s being real stubborn, but he still loves you.”

  “So, what do I do with the jerk?” I asked, rising from the chair.

  “Go get him, girl.”

  “Just like that?” I asked a little scared.

  “Just like that. He’ll fold like a house of cards. Don’t listen to what he says. Know he loves you so much he’d die for you. He’d let you leave him and find someone else, which is the same thing. Remember that, and don’t take no for an answer.”

  “You think that will work?”

  “Trust me,” Lance said, “he’s barely holding together. Go at him head on.”

  I smoothed my clothes and hair, “How do I look?”

  “You’d ask your father that? Isn’t it bad enough I’m pimping you out to Satan?”

  “You can’t pimp me to my own husband,” I told him. Then on an impulse I reached up and kissed his cheek. “Thanks.”

  “No problem, kiddo, and be happy.”

  “I will,” I told him, realizing how much I already loved Lance like a dad as ridiculous as that sounded. We hugged each other. We held on a long moment. Then he gave me a grim thumbs up, and I headed to my bedroom door again.

  I prepared myself for her second coming. I sat on the bed with my knees up, my arms around them in a death grip. She walked in slowly—I thought at first like a deer, but then I saw the strength of her. She was wary but not afraid. More like a lioness stalking her prey. She sat by me again. I felt her intimately, and all kinds of yearnings and poems and raptures filled me, desperate to overflow.

  “My every breath sounds your name. My heart pounds it like a drum until every atom of me is calling, humming, trilling a symphony of yearning, a polyphony of desire.” So did my soul recite to her, but I would not open my lips. I pushed all of it down, knowing how profaned it would all be if I allowed it to pass my sharpened teeth.

  “Being near you is unbearable,” I confessed.

  “Why?” she cried, her voice full of pain. I didn’t seem to be able to stop hurting her.

  “I won’t touch you with these hands,” I growled, clenching them. They made an earsplitting sound.

  “But you want to,” she said positively. “Thus the unbearablility.”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to. She put her hand on my shoulder. My skin melted under her fingers, as though spring had come to that one place on my body.

  “Go, Alexa.”

  “Where?” she asked.

  “Anywhere, away from me.”

  “Why?” she said, putting her head on her hand. I shrugged both away again. I had to set her free, give her a chance to go, to find happiness away from me if she could. She had to try.

  “I won’t. I can’t ask . . .” I stammered. “I don’t deserve your love.”

  “No, you don’t,” she said, shocking me. “And I don’t deserve yours. Nobody does. We don’t love people because they deserve it, not even because they need it. We love them because we can’t help
it. Because we’ve found that other part of ourselves, and we can’t live without it anymore. That’s the only reason why.”

  “Alexa, I’m a monster.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re Cristien. You’ve talked to Chandraswami for how long, and you still don’t know there is no such thing as evil or good? No such thing as right and wrong? You keep punishing yourself for decisions you’ve had to make to survive. You’ve judged yourself worse than God ever has. He gave you me. He gave you eternal life. What more do you need to prove that you are loved?”

  “All I have to do is look in the mirror to know God hates me. All I have to do is look at you to know you should never and could never be mine.”

  “Then let’s turn out the lights. Eyes are such deceiving things, beloved,” she said.

  Then she reached over and flipped the switch. She took off her sari. I could see, hear and smell each piece as it fell away. My hands ached to catch them and press them to my burning face. My body yearned to feel her skin against it. And then the room filled with rustling as her white wings bloomed. They had their own magical light that made her skin glow. They had their own fragrance that only intensified hers. Her feathers smelled of lotus flowers. It was beyond unbearable. Still, I didn’t move.

  “Passive resistance, eh?” she said, sounding a little disappointed. “Like trying to make love to Gandhi.” Then her tone changed. It became soft, imploring: “But haven’t you learned, dearest, you can’t avoid your destiny? Resisting only makes the pain last longer.”

  I remembered what Lance had told me an eternity ago about Oedipus. There were certain things you couldn’t avoid, but still I refused to move. I made myself stone. I would not sully her. Then she kissed my tattered wings and said, “I seem to have loved thee in numberless forms, numberless times. In life after life in age after age forever.”

  I almost sobbed. Almost. Instead, I hid my head in my arms in my effort to resist. She continued to torment me. I was stone, but she was water. She flowed over me, getting into every crevice and crease, stroking me incessantly. She put me through every sweet agony, until I had no strength left, until even the iron will of this devilish body fell beneath her sway.

  And I remembered a story I had heard long ago about the court of King Arthur where a question was put to a knight to solve, his life being forfeit if he could not. The question was “what do women want?” The answer was simple: for their men to do as they wished them to. That was what Yueliang was telling me. It was the same thing God wanted, for me to stop resisting.

  I gave up. I let Alexa pull my arms away from my face. I let her lay me down on the pillows and do whatever she pleased with me. I let her find whatever was in me that was still human, still divine, since I could not. I never touched her. She touched me. Even to the last, when she slipped over me, I did nothing, yet resisted nothing while she brought us together, made us one.

  I said bye to Chandraswami, closed my cell and climbed back into bed. Cristien blinked awake. I smiled down at him.

  He spoke quickly. “You know this makes no difference. I’m not condemning you to hide like a monster forever.”

  “I wouldn’t have to hide. You would,” I told him, getting comfortable. “I could go out, go shopping, do my business and then throw you your dinner or give it to you at the end of a stick, whichever way you prefer, and then make love to you all night. It’s a woman’s fantasy.”

  “Alexa . . .”

  “Stop,” I said. “While I’d love to torture you some more because you can be such a colossal ass sometimes, look at yourself.”

  I pulled back the sheet, heard him gasp as he saw his arms and chest. Then I leaned over and took my compact from the bedside table. I held the mirror to his face. He stared in shock. His hair was black, his hands were normal, his skin was a shade of human again.

  He grabbed me, crushing me against him. He kissed my eyes, my cheeks, my lips. He let his hands wander over me. His hands on my skin? I nearly died of joy. He picked me up, swung me around the room.

  “I told you it would be okay. I told you,” I yelled, my heart bursting with joy while he spun me. “Chandraswami said he knew you’d be fine when you held his sword because only the true of heart can do that. He said you had to learn patience, so he didn’t say anything.”

  Cristien got mad then laughed. Our bedroom door slammed open. Lance was there sleepy and fuming in his undershorts.

  “What the hell?” he shouted then winced at our nudity and turned away.

  We ran for clothes. I threw on a nightie. Cristien put on pants. We came back out and jumped Lance, brought him to the ground. He hugged me, kissed my forehead.

  “I should have known,” he said. “Never underestimate the power of love.” Then he grabbed Cristien, stared in his face.

  “Dude,” he said, “I never thought I’d be so happy to see your silly mug again.”

  “We did it,” I told Lance, pushing him over.

  “You did it,” he said, laughing. “I didn’t do anything, and that is official and on the record.”

  Cristien grabbed us both. We held onto each other like a family. Then we got up and had breakfast together. Cristien looked so happy to be in his own kitchen again. It would probably take him a month to reorganize, but he didn’t complain. I helped make pancakes while Lance sat laughing as if nothing had happened.

  “God, I didn’t sleep all night,” Lance said, dropping his head on the table. “I was so worried.”

  “Then who was that snoring till dawn?” I asked him.

  “You,” he told me. “Like father like daughter.”

  We laughed all through the meal. Then Lance went off to bed, and so did we. We all stood staring at each other before we closed our doors.

  “I’m going to bed,” Lance said finally, waving, “Day. See you tonight.”

  “See you,” we said.

  Cristien and I laid down again. Then, when we were somewhat quiet, and he had me safely in my arms, he asked, “How? How could you be with me when I was like that?”

  “I love you,” I said. Then I lifted a brow, “You know, if you had given in to me and done what I said, this would have been over days ago.”

  “I know. I’m so sorry,” he said seriously. “You’ll never know how much I love you. I know I said things, but I couldn’t condemn you to share my personal hell.”

  “And you never will. Trust me. Being with you could never be a punishment. It could only be a reward.”

  reward.”

  Epilogue

  I stared out over Manhattan as I clung to the spire of the Empire State Building. I was resting from one of our flights. Cristien was below me, looking out at the dawn coming over New York City. It was the best view no money could buy of the sun rising like an orange goddess from the blue water she had set on fire. I could barely see the twinkling lights of the buildings or hear the car horns incessantly honking.

  “. . . and they lived happily ever after,” Cristien breathed.

  It was music to my ears. Still, I couldn’t wait until finals were over, and we could start our honeymoon trip. I smiled though because the challah bread had been right.

  I wanted it to show me my B’shert, my true love, but it had shown me so much more. B’shert literally means “fated.” It had taught me that everything good and bad was meant to help me become my true self. All roads really did lead to Rome.

  But what a price I had to pay to know that truth. We had been through so much, but in the end it had made us stronger, made me fearless, made me the hero of my own life. It was worth it.

  I could not believe that once I had thought God hated me, that He had made a mistake when He brought Cristien into my life, but it was all part of a glorious story. A story I could never have dreamed of. I thought I was just a plain girl who loved books… but maybe there is no such thing. Maybe we are all extraordinary beings waiting to break out of ours shells, our mundane lives.

  I thought Judaism was wrong, but it was just the shell protecting me
all those years until I was strong enough to fly away. I had learned so much from it, but like a chick, the time comes when I had to break free, before protection became suffocation, and I died. I was still Jewish, the same way Cristien was still Christian. They made us who we were, but not who we would become. God was not the God of the Hebrews or the Christians, or Hindus but everyone’s God that had a plan for all of us.

  My problem was that at first, I hadn’t believed that when a girl goes out into the world, she is bound to meet monsters, make mistakes, die and be resurrected. I thought all was good and safe because my mother had made my life that way. The truth was, the real world was dangerous. We all had claws and wings, one way or another. We just had to decide how we wanted to use them—to soar high and to protect or to swoop down and harm. The adventure came in trying to know one type of people from the other, and then finding the one you were meant to love out of all of them.

  As my newfound wisdom filled me with peace, I got struck by a bolt of lightning out of the blue. After all we had experienced, I had a feeling I should have been expecting it. If I had learned anything, it was that the crazy in life doesn’t end. The heroine always has more adventures.

  “Are you okay?” Cristien asked, patting down my frazzled hair. I nodded. The hit was actually quite invigorating.

  “Maybe we should get down from here,” he said.

  As we glided to the street of the waking city, I thought of all the people down here, all the stories being told, all the hidden goddesses, monsters, saints, dreamers and humans. I thought of that first story about Cupid and Psyche and how it had led to other stories, and others until it led to mine. And I knew then that this was only a part of my story, which is a part of other stories, which is a part of the greatest story ever being told.