Mom
Witch Baby wondered how she had missed the note all this time. Just then, she looked up and saw a girl sitting by herself, watching her. The girl had short, black hair, a round face, and almond-shaped eyes. She was wearing a fuzzy, brown hooded jacket with ears; it made her look like a bear cub. Witch Baby smiled before she could stop herself, and the girl smiled back. She had a slight overbite. In that dark place, she had the brightest smile Witch Baby had ever seen.
The girl walked over and sat next to Witch Baby. She had to shout to be heard over the music, and her voice made Witch Baby’s ears ring. Good pain.
“Hey!”
“Hi,” Witch Baby said. She never knew what to say.
“It’s too loud over here. Do you want to go get a drink?”
Witch Baby followed her to the bar. They ordered Cokes, and the girl said, “Don’t you go to Cal?”
Witch Baby nodded. “I don’t think I’ve seen you.”
“I’ve seen you! I never run into any girls from school at these shows.”
Witch Baby looked over at the band. A boy did a somersault off the stage into the crowd. “Why do you come?”
“I don’t know. I’m bored. How about you?”
Witch Baby shrugged. She couldn’t exactly say that she was lonely. Or could she?
“What’s your name?”
“Lily.”
“I wish I had a cool name like that. I’m Julie.”
“That’s a beautiful name.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No. It’s great. It’s so normal.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“Sure. You should hear what my parents call me.”
Julie waited. Her eyes were slightly close together, very dark, and a bit sad.
“Witch Baby.”
Julie smiled. “Wow! Where’d they get that?”
“They’re just crazy,” Witch Baby said.
Julie nodded. “Mine are crazy. But in this boring, normal way. At least my dad is. My mom used to be good-crazy.”
“What’s that?” Witch Baby asked.
“She was an artist in the early eighties—into punk. Actually, I’m named after her best friend, who was this legendary scenester, this beautiful debutante who freaked out her family by moshing at the Mabhuay Gardens but always had this perfect hair and wore the most beautiful vintage dresses with her boots and chains. I actually can’t believe my dad let my mom name me after her.”
“Why not?” Witch Baby asked.
“He’s so conservative. Wants me to be a doctor or some shit. Plus, because of what happened to Julie…” She seemed suddenly restless. “Hey, let’s get out of here. I know this place that has the biggest burritos you’ve ever seen!”
They walked down the street to the bright, loud, noisy restaurant, where they gobbled up giant veggie burritos and grilled green onions and sucked on salted slices of lime. Witch Baby thought, It’s so strange how much difference one person can make. Not to mention a few letters in a word—the burritos tasted a lot better than the mushuritos she’d been eating.
“Did you take BART?” Julie asked her when they’d finished their food.
Witch Baby nodded.
“Because it is really late and I don’t think it’s that safe, to be honest. I’ve got a room in this hotel, if you want to stay.”
The hotel was a dark brick building, and Julie’s room was tiny and drab, with only one small window that looked out at another dark brick building just a few feet away. But there was something so comforting about being in that room. They lit Nag Champa incense and tiny tea candles that Julie had brought in her backpack, and sat cross-legged on the bed.
“My mom’s staying in a hotel right now,” Witch Baby said. “Actually, she’s not my mom, she’s my stepmom. My real mom’s basically insane. But, anyway, my stepmother, who is just crazy, is having some kind of midlife crisis or something and she checked into this hotel and she won’t tell my dad where she is.”
“I love hotels,” Julie said. “They are so empty and full at the same time.”
Witch Baby nodded. She kind of knew what Julie meant. “I just wish she didn’t need to do that now. I mean, why couldn’t she have gotten it out of her system when she was young?”
“How old was she when she met your dad?”
“Like, nineteen or something.”
Julie shrugged. “She didn’t have a chance, I guess.”
“What about your mom?” asked Witch Baby. “Would she do that?”
“No, but she should.”
“I’m just so afraid of turning into my stepmom,” Witch Baby said. “I mean, she’s cool and everything, but she never really had a life of her own. She’s always been there for everybody else.”
“I hear that,” said Julie.
“I have this boyfriend,” said Witch Baby. “We’ve known each other since we were little kids. He’s been all over the world and now he’s coming back to L.A. and I think he wants to be with me. But I haven’t really done anything yet. I mean, even being in Berkeley is like a big deal or something.”
Julie nodded. Witch Baby felt herself getting drowsy. Her eyes closed.
A Chinese girl with long, black hair and a blond girl wearing a pale blue lace dress were sitting in a large, dark ornate nightclub, holding bouquets of fake red-silk roses. Boys and girls with Mohawks, tattoos, and pierced faces were swarming around them. One of the boys leaned down and bit the blonde on the neck.
Witch Baby’s eyes popped open.
“What ever happened to Julie?” she asked.
“You mean my mom’s friend? She died of AIDS,” Julie said. “She was only twenty.”
Witch Baby shivered.
“If she hadn’t died, my mom would have been an entirely different person,” Julie said. “But then, I might not be here, either.”
Witch Baby said softly, “Isn’t it weird how much difference one person can make?”
Cherokee and the Sphinx
Cherokee and Raphael woke at the same time and lay holding each other, watching the rainbows on the wall from the sun kissing the old flea-market chandelier crystals they had hung in the window. Cherokee had cramps from her period, so Raphael rubbed her belly gently. After so many years together, they knew exactly what each other’s bodies needed.
“There’s going to be a good swell this morning,” Raphael said.
Cherokee groaned. “I’ve got a bad swell inside me. I think I’ll just watch today.”
While he surfed, she sat on the sand, wrapped in a heavy Mexican blanket. The sea breeze whipped stray hairs across her face; her fingers absently popped open juicy pods on the thick strands of seaweed she was weaving together. She could see Raphael cresting a wave—his body crouched, poised, part of the ocean. Usually they went into the water together. She loved surfing with him. And she loved music and dancing and clothes. But what did she really want? What did she love enough to spend her whole life doing? At least Weetzie had her own shop, and she’d made those movies. What if Cherokee got old like that and still hadn’t done anything? Maybe she wouldn’t run away to a hotel to find love she had lost; maybe she would run away to find something she loved to do.
Raphael ran up the beach in his wet suit and dripped salt water from his dreadlocks onto her upturned face. She could see the form of his body perfectly silhouetted against the dazzling morning horizon. She wanted, somehow, to create something even partly that beautiful.
“How was the water?” she asked as he dropped down on his knees beside her.
“Good. I missed you, though. And I’m starved.”
They went to their favorite greasy spoon on State Street and sat in the back patio with the ceramic sun ornaments and the peeling maritime mural, eating huevos rancheros. Cherokee was quieter than usual. She knew she should be happy to be here with him, having their favorite meal, but she just didn’t feel it. Maybe because of her period.
“What’s wrong, Kee?”
“I’ve been
thinking about Weetzie,” she said.
“That hotel thing really got to you, ay?”
“I was just thinking, what if I spend my whole life having fun, hanging out, not sure what I really want to do? Then I turn forty and I realize I haven’t really done anything. She’s running away but at least she’s done some cool stuff.”
“You’re still young, babe. You’ll figure it out. And, besides, you’ve done some amazing things already. Just the way you can make things is incredible.”
“I haven’t made anything for years,” Cherokee said.
Neither mentioned the wings, but they were both thinking about them. Years ago, Cherokee had constructed a pair of wings for her sister, Witch Baby. They were huge, intricate, covered with a rainbow of feathers. They had helped lift Witch Baby out of her sorrow. And then things turned strange. The wings had too much power. After they flew off by themselves, Cherokee vowed never to create anything like them again.
“I don’t even know what my major is,” Cherokee said, trying somehow to make things feel normal. “I feel like I’m here to be with you and that’s about it.”
He rubbed her bare knee. “I’m a lucky man.”
She kissed him and smiled, but the sadness still lay inside of her, curled up like a sleeping animal, ready to awaken.
When they got back to the apartment, there was a large box waiting on the doorstep. They brought it inside and Cherokee tore it open.
“It’s the Sphinx!” she said.
“What?”
“The Sphinx sewing machine. It’s an early-model Singer. I can’t believe she sent this. She must have done it before she went away.”
Attached to the sewing machine was a little note.
Cherokee,
Once, when you were younger, you made a pair of wings for your sister. I know that some scary things happened after that. But I want to tell you, I think you have grown into your magic now. Use it well.
Love,
Mom
Suddenly Cherokee felt badly about how she had treated Weetzie at the pink hotel. Especially what she had said about her clothes. Weetzie was right—that was just mean-spirited. Her mother had been her fashion idol since Cherokee could remember. Not that Cherokee planned on ever letting her know that she still felt this way, of course.
Raphael showered for class, and Cherokee sat at the black-and-gold sewing machine, rubbing her hands along its smooth sides. She knew that it had once belonged to Dirk’s Grandma Fifi, and there was a long story about it before that, but she never really paid attention to those things. Now she wished she had; the machine seemed to hold a secret, like a real Sphinx.
Cherokee did not go to class that day. Instead, she stayed home and made sketches of the pictures she had seen in her mind for years, and been afraid to see. She sketched sleek, stretchy, wet suit–inspired outfits with zippers everywhere, which unzipped into smaller and smaller pieces of clothing. She made sketches of tiny minidresses under buoyant wire-hoop skirts overlaid with tulle. She sketched iridescent sharkskin suits, sweaters and knit pants trimmed with pale feathers, sheer voile trench coats over narrow trousers and tank tops, and slim dresses, coats, and hats made of hundreds of dewdrop beaded silk taffeta petals. She drew clear, heart-shaped charms filled with dried flowers, stars, tiny dolls, bits of poetry, and pictures of goddesses, to use on the pulls of zippers. She imagined that each piece of clothing would have little secret spells written into the lining—incantations that would make the wearer feel her beauty and her power.
That was what clothing could do, Cherokee realized. It could seduce, soothe, enhance, disguise, protect. It could empower. Like magic. And Weetzie had said Cherokee had grown into her magic now.
Then Cherokee thought about her mother making her own kind of magic at the pink hotel. Transforming her own life, and maybe theirs. Cherokee was suddenly no longer afraid.
Amethyst Kiss
Weetzie had eaten a bento box of soba noodles, rice, sautéed tofu, seaweed, and pickled vegetables at the Japanese restaurant and was walking through a bamboo grove back to her room. Santa Anas played the stalks like an instrument.
She paused by a small stone pagoda and looked up at the moon. Was Max looking at it, too, this instant? It seemed strange to her that he hadn’t tried to call her all this time. Maybe the girls hadn’t told him where she was, but he could at least have tried her cell phone. She shivered, remembering the voice messages she had received. At least the messages had stopped since Peri and Bean left, and so had the footsteps. She hoped her friends were all right and had reached their destination. Maybe the warlock would protect them. Maybe the elf king would find them.
This hotel has done some strange things to me, Weetzie thought. Mostly, it has made nothing seem strange anymore.
The memory of the obscene-sounding voice on her phone was still shivering up and down her spine, so when she heard someone behind her, she whirled around right away, brandishing her hotel key.
“It’s me,” Pan said. “Careful with that thing.”
Embarrassed, she dropped the key back into her purse. “Sorry, I’m a little on edge.”
“Why is that?”
She didn’t want to say it was because she hadn’t made love in almost two years, she had received phone messages about abusing one’s private parts, that since she’d come here she was sure she was being followed, that there had been three nightmarish people with an empty baby carriage on the path, and that she believed Sal had captured and mutilated a mermaid.
“Thank you for your help,” Pan said as they walked. “Dashell Hart called me today. I have an audition next week.”
“That’s wonderful!” said Weetzie.
“I know it sounds kind of stupid, but it means a lot to me. I’ve wanted this chance forever. It gets frustrating.”
Weetzie stopped and smiled up at him. “I’m so glad.”
There was a heavy silence. Weetzie looked up at the sky. “What a pretty night! Look at that moon!”
“And you’re a moon girl,” said Pan.
She was wearing her white satin trench and her white jeans; her freshly bleached hair shimmered.
She moved away from him.
“Well, I just wanted to thank you. I’ll let you go.”
He started to leave, but Weetzie grabbed his large, smooth wrist. It felt like marble, except for the heat and pulse. “Wait. Will you do me one favor?”
He grinned, flashing the gap between his teeth.
“Can I kiss you?”
A TV screen was buzzing with static that then dissolved to let Weetzie tumble through into a kitchen. A woman who looked like a depressed Italian movie star was watching a soap opera and drinking red wine. A little boy with curly hair tugged on her skirt, but she shooed him away as the actors kissed. The boy tried to take her hand, on which gleamed a ring with a purple stone, but she pulled it away. He gazed at her wistfully and then went outside, into an overgrown garden. As he ran through the flowerbeds, the garden changed, becoming more and more wild until it was a forest. The boy stripped off all his clothes and kept running. He splashed through shallow streams, rolled in piles of leaves, plastered mud all over his body. Weetzie could see him from the back as he ran deeper into the trees.
He had a small, erect tail protruding at the base of his spine. Suddenly he turned around and held something up.
It was a many-faceted purple jewel.
Weetzie spit the amethyst out into her hand. Before she could show it to him, Pan was gone.
This time she thought at first that she must have imagined the footsteps. After all, even Pan had made her jump just a short time earlier. She was sure Peri’s monstrous family was gone. Who would want to bother her here? But then she thought of the shadow in the room above the pool and wondered if Sal might have a reason to hate her. If he didn’t yet, she thought he might soon. She glanced behind her. The path was empty. Even so, Weetzie ran the rest of the way back to her room and locked the door.
Hilda
&nb
sp; Hilda Doolittle was sitting behind the counter in the sunny front room of Weetzie’s, eating a Krispy Kreme doughnut and writing poetry in her journal, when her boyfriend, Ezra, walked in. She thought of hiding the doughnut but it was too late. She put it down and wiped the sugar off her fingers, though she wanted to lick them, and quickly closed her journal.
“What’s up, Hilda?” Ezra said. He started walking around, running his fingers over the beaded dresses. With the click of each bead, Hilda winced. She hoped Ping wouldn’t come back now.
“Not much.”
“Is this your poetry?” he asked.
She put her sticky hands on the journal.
“I was thinking,” he said. “How serious are you about this poetry stuff?”
“You know the answer to that, Ezra.”
“Well then.” He walked over to her and leaned on the counter. She could feel his warm breath. The goatee he had grown recently made him look like the devil. His eyes were cold and sparkling. She had no idea why she loved him so much. “I’ve been wanting to tell you a few ideas I have.”
She waited. Her fingers still felt gluey with sugar. She wished that she had worn the pink-and-black lace dress with the sweetheart neckline and borrowed the pink rhinestone chandelier earrings from the jewelry case. Instead, she had on a black beaded sweater that made her sweat, and an itchy black skirt.
“First,” he said, leaning closer, “we need to do something about those glasses.”
He reached up, very carefully, and removed her frames, without touching any part of her. Panic drummed at her throat. She wanted to snatch back her glasses but instead she smiled at his blurry face.
Necklace of Kisses Page 10
