Superheroes

by Margaret Ronald

  When she’s in a sad mood, she says everything went wrong. People she had just rescued died a week later of something Grandma couldn’t have helped. Hanta virus or some such that they got from vacuuming a closed room, though sometimes Grandma had just warned them not to do that. (Grandma believes in prevention as much as rescuing.) I’ve rescued things. Lots of them. Nothing went wrong, either. I rescued a junco with a broken wing. After rains I’ve rescued stranded worms from the wet driveway and put them back in our vegetable garden. I didn’t let Grandma cut the suckers off our fruit trees. I rescued mice from sticky traps. I fed a litter of feral kittens and got fleas and worms from them. Maybe this rescuing is the one part of Grandma I inherited.

  Who’s to say which is more worthwhile, pushing atom bombs far out into space or one of these little things I do? Well, I do know which is more important, but if I were the junco I’d like being rescued.

  Sometimes Grandma goes out, though rarely. She gets to feeling it’s a necessity. She wears the sunglasses and a big floppy hat and scarves that hide her wrinkled-up face and neck. She still rides a bicycle. She’s so wobbly it’s scary to see her trying to balance herself down the road. I can’t look. She like to bring back ice-cream for me, maybe get me a comic book and a licorice stick to chew on as I read it. I suppose in town they just take her for a crazy lady, which I guess she is.

  When visitors come to take a look at her, I always say she isn’t home, but where else would a very, very, very old lady be but mostly home? If she knew people had come she’d have hobbled out to see them and probably scared them half to death. And they probably wouldn’t have believe it was her, anyway. Only the president of the Town and Country Bank—she rescued him a long time ago—I let him in. He’ll sit with her for a while. He’s old, but of course not as old as she is. And he likes her for herself. They talked all through his rescue and really got to know each other back then. They talked about tomato plants and wildflowers and birds. When she rescued him they were flying up with the wild geese. (They still talk about all those geese they flew with and how exciting that was with all the honking and the sound of wings flapping right beside them. I get goosebumps—geesebumps?—just hearing them talk about it.) She should have married somebody like him, pot-belly, pock-marked face, and all. Maybe we’d have turned out better.

  I guess you could say I’m the one that killed her—caused her death, anyway I don’t know what got into me. Lots of times I don’t know what gets into me and lots of times I kind of run away for a couple of hours. Grandma knows about it. She doesn’t mind. Sometimes she even tells me, “Go on. Get out of here for a while.” But this time I put on her old tights and one of the teeny-tiny bras. I don’t have breasts yet so I stuffed the cups with Kleenex. I knew I couldn’t do any of the the things Grandma did, I just thought it would be fun to pretend for a little while.

  I started out toward the hill. It’s a long walk but you get to go through a batch of pinõns. But first you have to go up an arroyo. Grandma’s cape dragged over the rocks and sand behind me. It was heavy, too. To look at the satiny red outside you’d think it would be light, but it has a felt lining. “Warm and waterproof,” Grandma said. I could hardly walk. How did she ever manage to fly around in it?

  I didn’t get very far before I found a jackrabbit lying in the middle of the arroyo half-dead (but half-alive, too), all bit and torn. That rabbit was a goner if I didn’t rescue it. I was a little afraid because wounded rabbits bite. Grandma’s cape was just the right thing to wrap it in so it wouldn’t.

  Those jackrabbits weigh a lot. And with the added weight of the cape …

  Well, all I did was sprain my ankle. I mean I wasn’t really hurt. I always have the knife Grandma gave me. I cut some strips off the cape and bound myself up good and tight. It isn’t as if Grandma has a lot of capes. This is her only one. I felt bad about cutting it. I put the rabbit across my shoulders. It was slow going, but I wasn’t leaving the rabbit for whatever it was to finish eating it. It began to be twilight. Grandma knows I can’t see well in twilight. The trouble is, though she used to see like an eagle, Grandma can’t see very well anymore either.

  She tried to fly as she used to do. She did fly. For my sake. She skimmed along just barely above the sage and bitterbrush, her feet snagging at the taller ones. That was all the lift she could get. I could see, by the way she leaned and flopped like a dolphin, that she was trying to get higher. She was calling, “Sweetheart. Sweetheart. Where are yoouuu?” Her voice was almost as loud as it used to be. It echoed all across the mountains.

  “Grandma, go back. I’ll be all right.” My voice can be loud, too.

  She heard me. Her ears are still as sharp as a mule’s.

  The way she flew was kind of like she rides a bicycle. All wobbly. Veering off from side to side, up and down, too. I knew she would crack up. And she looked funny flying around in her print dress. She only has one costume and I was wearing it.

  “Grandma, go back. Please go back.”

  She wasn’t at all like she used to be. A little fall like that from just a few feet up would never have hurt her a couple of years ago. Or even last year. Even if, as she did, she landed on her head.

  I covered her with sand and brush as best I could. No doubt whatever was about to eat the rabbit would come gnaw on her. She wouldn’t mind. She always said she wanted to give herself back to the land. She used to quote, I don’t know from where, “All to the soil, nothing to the grave.” Getting eaten is sort of like going to the soil.

  I don’t dare tell people what happened—that it was all my fault—that I got myself in trouble sort of on purpose, trying to be like her, trying to rescue something.

  But I’m not as sad as you might think. I knew she would die pretty soon anyway, and this is a better way than in bed looking at the ceiling, maybe in pain. If that had happened, she wouldn’t have complained. She’d not have said a word, trying not to be a bother. Nobody would have known about the pain except me. I would have had to grit my teeth against her pain the whole time.

  I haven’t told anybody partly because I’m waiting to figure things out. I’m here all by myself, but I’m good at looking after things. There are those who check on us every weekend—people who are paid to do it. I wave at them. “All okay.” I mouth it. The president of the Town and Country Bank came out once. I told him Grandma wasn’t feeling well. It wasn’t exactly a lie. How long can this go on? He’ll be the one who finds out first—if anybody does. Maybe they won’t.

  I’m nursing my jackrabbit. We’re friends now. He’s getting better fast. Pretty soon I’ll let him go off to be a rabbit. But he might rather stay here with me.

  I’m wearing Grandma’s costume most of the time now. I sleep in it. It makes me feel safe. I’m doing my own little rescues as usual. (The vegetable garden is full of happy weeds. I keep the bird feeder going. I leave scraps out for the skunk.) Those count—almost as much as Grandma’s rescues did. Anyway, I know the weeds think so.

  THE LOS ANGELES WOMEN’S AUXILIARY SUPERHERO LEAGUE

  ELANA FORTIN CAMILLE IS TWENTY-SIX WHEN SHE FIRST DISCOVERS SHE HAS SUPERPOWERS.

  It happens when she is escorting a rock legend down the red carpet of an awards show, and the photographer from Blaze is yelling at her to get out of the way so he can get a clear shot of The Legend’s pants (which are made out of sky-blue ostrich skin).

  Camille can’t move the other way because then she’ll bump into an aging movie star who can only be photographed from her left side, and Camille doesn’t want to do that. This particular aging movie star threw a cup of tortilla soup at a friend of hers two weeks ago because it arrived with actual bits of tortilla in it.

  So Camille closes her eyes and thinks about being not there, or at least not right between tortilla soup woman and the man in the blue ostrich pants. And when she opens her eyes, she’s disappointed.

  Because she’s still there. And the flashbulbs are still going off. And the photographers are still yelling to get th
e aging movie star to look at them, and all around them the publicists are hovering.

  But no one sees Camille. She can’t explain it, and she doesn’t know why she’s so sure that they don’t see her, but there it is. She’s invisible.

  Cool, thinks Camille.

  It’s less cool later on, when she goes back to the start of the red carpet, and her boss, Ari, (“The most powerful Armenian in Hollywood”) starts yelling at her for vanishing.

  Camille says: “Ari, how could I vanish? The crew from ET was right on top of me, you want me to pull the tape?”

  Ari glares at her suspiciously, but backs down and tells her to take his next client down the line. This one is a girl who was on a recent season of Road Rules and then released a tape of herself making out with a dwarf. Ari reps her for free, because she’s hot. (Ari is actually gay, but feels compelled to represent really attractive women for some reason Camille doesn’t understand.) Camille makes herself invisible again while the dwarf girl is chatting to someone from Spike TV. Whoosh, she thinks, and closes her eyes.

  Cool.

  Camille’s best friend is a girl she met at the convenience store at four in the morning the week she moved to LA. Her name is Sharla, and Camille thinks she’s the smartest cookie in the universe.

  “Sharla,” Camille says. “I have to tell you something.”

  “Okay,” Sharla says, looking at her horoscope in this week’s Us Weekly. “Dammit, I’m going to experience a complex interaction with my loved one this week. Do you think that means Josh is cheating on me?”

  “Sharla, I think I might be a superhero.”

  Sharla looks at her.

  “Really,” she says. “A superhero?”

  She’s not mocking her, which is what she likes best about her friend. Camille feels like she gets mocked a lot, so Shar is a nice change.

  “Yes. I can make myself invisible.”

  Sharla closes the magazine and sits back on the couch Camille found by the side of the road a few months ago.

  “Okay,” Sharla says. “Let’s see it.”

  For a second, Camille worries that maybe it won’t happen, but she closes her eyes and thinks whoosh, and Sharla says: “Oh my God!”

  Camille wills herself back to normal.

  “You totally are a superhero,” Sharla says. “You bitch. I’m so jealous.”

  One of Camille’s other close friends is Jane, a junior copyright lawyer who hates her job. They both work in Beverly Hills, and the following Tuesday, they meet for lunch at the overpriced designer pizza place where everything comes with eggplant and goat cheese.

  Camille looks around to make sure none of the literary agents are eavesdropping, and then tells Jane about the powers of invisibility. She expects Jane to think she’s full of crap, because Jane may be a lawyer who hates her job, but she’s still a lawyer, and prone to disbelieving people.

  But what Jane does is lean in over the goat cheese and broccolini pizza and look at her intently.

  “Invisibility?”

  “Yes,” Camille says, a little hesitantly. Jane is kind of scary when she gets all focused.

  “What’re you doing after work?” Jane asks.

  “I was going to go to the gym,” Camille says.

  “Meet me at the bottom of Runyon Canyon,” Jane says. Jane is very commanding, and Camille is an assistant, and used to doing what people tell her to. She agrees, and Jane takes a slice of pizza and goes back to the office.

  Camille thinks about calling Sharla, but doesn’t. Her best friend is very laid-back, but this is getting a little weird, even for her.

  To her surprise, when she shows up at the bottom of Runyon Canyon, as ordered, Jane is already waiting. With Sharla.

  Jane is wearing a designer sweatsuit with “FRUITY” spelled out across the butt. Sharla is wearing a designer sweatsuit with “YOU KNOW IT” spelled out across the butt. Camille feels sort of awkward in the textless and pretty unsassy jeans she wore to work.

  “I brought Sharla,” Jane says.

  “I can see that,” Camille says. Sharla nods at her, all business.

  “Come on,” Jane says. “We need to get to the top before it gets dark.”

  Dusk in Los Angeles always makes Camille feel melancholy and sweet, like she wants to learn to play Gordon Lightfoot songs on a guitar she doesn’t yet own. The canyon smells like dust and dry brush. A few dogs and their humans pass them on the way up, but the canyon trail is mostly deserted.

  It’s fire season: the higher they climb, the more Camille can smell the smoky tang in the air. At sea level, it’s lost in the regular blend of smog.

  They’re approaching the last curve in the trail now, and all three are breathing hard. Runyon is a good hike even when you take it slow, and Jane has set a brisk pace. It’s almost dark as they come up over the rise and onto the uneven plateau that looks out over the Los Angeles basin. If you bring a dog, this is the spot to rest and socialize a little before heading back down, but the dogs and their humans have left for the night, and it’s just Camille and Sharla and Jane now.

  “Are you sure this is legal?” Camille asks. She’s pretty sure the park closes at nightfall, and she can just imagine some cranky park ranger jumping out at her from behind a bush, and lecturing her about public safety.

  “Shh,” Jane says. “You have to see this.”

  She turns in the direction of the Angeles National Forest, and Camille thinks she can see the faint glow of wildfires in the far distance.

  “Okay, Sharla,” Jane says. “Do it.”

  Beside Camille, Sharla begins to make disturbing noises. It almost sounds like— “Sharla, are you okay?”

  “Shh,” Jane says, again, and she sounds a little irritated. “Let her work.”

  “But she’s crying!”

  “Give her a second, will you?”

  Camille shuts up. Around them, the thick, still air starts to move; Camille can feel it on the bare skin of her arms. Slowly, starting at her toes, a tingle rises over her flesh.

  “What—”

  This time, Jane just looks at her meaningfully. As Sharla sniffles quietly, the air moves more quickly. Camille is sure she’s not imagining the charge in the breeze. And there’s a certain scent on the wind, something you never smell in Los Angeles in the summer— “She’s going to make it rain,” Camille says, astonished, just as thunder rolls in the distance, and the smell blooms stronger on the night air.

  “Yes,” Jane says, satisfied, and the sky breaks above them. They’re soaked to the skin in seconds, and the dull glow in the Angeles Forest seems to dim.

  Slowly, Sharla stops sobbing.

  “She made it rain,” Camille says, again, and it’s so much of a better trick than invisibility that she doesn’t speak all the way back down to their cars. The rain has tapered off by the time they get to the bottom, but she can hear thunder rumbling in the distance, and somehow she knows that Sharla has pushed her storm over the wildfire.

  Sharla looks a little puffy, but Camille isn’t sure if that’s from sobbing her eyes out, or from controlling the weather, and she thinks asking might be sort of rude.

  “That was amazing,” is all she says. “When did you find out?”

  Sharla and Jane share a look.

  “Camille,” Sharla says, “Jane and I have known about our powers for months. We were just waiting for you to find yours.”

  “Oh,” Camille says. And then, after she thinks about it for a moment: “Why?”

  “For the League,” Jane says, brusquely. “We need a third to form a League. Otherwise we’re just a crimefighting duo.”

  “You fight crime?” Camille squeaks. Jane is pretty tough, but she has a hard time imagining ladylike Sharla stopping criminals in their tracks.

  “Not yet,” Jane says. “But now—”

  Camille looks at her stupidly. “But, Jane, what’s your power?”

  Sharla and Jane share another look, and Camille immediately feels that she’s stepped on something better l
eft alone.

  Jane mumbles something.

  “I didn’t—”

  “The power of nice,” Jane snaps. “I’m nice, okay? I stun my enemies with niceness.”

  Camille blinks, once, twice, and then she stares.

  “Okay,” she finally says. “I’m invisible, Sharla controls the weather, and you’re … nice.”

  “Yes, okay? I’m nice!”

  Sharla coughs, and Camille looks away from Jane.

  “Um,” she says, “what kind of crime are we going to fight, you guys?”

  The answer to her question leads them to an all-night diner in Los Feliz and so many cups of coffee that even when Camille finally makes it to bed, she can’t sleep for hours, and it’s only the return of Sharla’s rain, gentler this time, that finally lulls her to sleep.

  Camille wakes to find Jane standing at her door, holding a cup of coffee and a binder.

  “This is for you,” she says, handing over the binder, but keeping the coffee, even though Camille stares at it longingly. “I had one of the interns at work throw these together for us. Potential targets for the League’s activities.”

  The binder’s cover reads “Los Angeles Women’s Auxiliary Superhero League” in raised type. Camille looks up.

  “Why are we ‘auxiliary’?”

  “Because Sharla liked the way it sounded,” Jane says, and Camille thinks that’s a decent reason.

  “You better come in,” she says. Jane sprawls on the couch and reads back issues of Variety while Camille works her way through the binder.

  “What about this one?” Camille points to the tab labeled “Mr. SMOG.” “He seems pretty evil.”