Godmother Night

by Rachel Pollack

  The market went on and on, piles and piles of old watches, fifty-year-old calendars, broken thermometers. Here and there people shouted, or shoved each other, but Kate didn’t look. That wasn’t what she’d come to see. She had just reached the end of the street and was hoping she could get back to school in time if she ran all the way to the subway, when someone grabbed her arm. As she screamed, she heard high-pitched laughter. She looked to the side and saw a child about seven years old, holding her arm with both hands in a grip so strong Kate was sure it would leave marks on her skin. The boy (or maybe it was a girl, she wasn’t sure) wore a T-shirt with a picture of some cartoon character Kate had never seen before, too-short jeans, and torn sneakers with a big hole in the toe. “Let go of me,” Kate said, and tried to pull loose her arm. The child paid no attention.

  “Want to buy my dolls?” it said. A small pile of toys lay at its feet, including a beat-up teddy bear and a baby doll with one eye missing.

  “Can I take a look?” Kate said.

  “Sure,” the child said, and let go one hand to reach down.

  Kate managed to jerk her arm away, only to back into someone else. “That wasn’t a very nice trick,” a man’s voice said, and the child added, “That wasn’t nice at all. You said you’d buy my dolls.”

  “I did not,” Kate said, then realized that wouldn’t get her anywhere and turned around. A man and a woman were standing there, alike enough in their faces to be brother and sister. Or maybe, Kate realized, parent and child. They both looked about Mark’s age, or maybe a little older. They were among the better dressed ones. At least their clothes weren’t all torn. The man wore a white short-sleeve shirt, gray pants, and white shoes; the woman wore the kind of dress Grandma Lang wore, knee length and very plain, with a short yellow cardigan draped over her shoulders. The two of them smiled at her. Kate shuddered.

  “Come to find some treasures?” the woman said. “We’ve got a lot of treasures. You could furnish your whole house with the wonderful things we have here.”

  Kate stared up at them. “You’re dead, aren’t you?” she said. “You’re all dead.”

  Their smiles widened. “What a smart little girl,” the woman said, and clapped her hands once.

  “And this stuff you’re selling,” Kate said. “It’s all the stuff from your lives, isn’t it? From when you were alive.”

  “Yes, exactly,” the woman said. “That’s what makes it so special.”

  Kate said loudly, “Nobody wants your old junk. Why can’t you just go away and leave people alone?”

  The woman put her hands over her mouth. To the man she said, “Cheeky little witch, isn’t she?”

  The man squatted down and took hold of Kate’s shoulders. Putting his smiling face very close to hers he said, “You think you’re fucking clever, don’t you? Figuring us out. Well, we fucking know who you are, too. You’re Mother Night’s pet meat.”

  Kate turned her head to look up and down the street. A few marketers were watching her, but none of the living. The man laughed again. In the middle of her fear Kate noticed that no breath came out of his mouth, and she thought about the time she and Dead Jimmy had played kissing, and she realized now how she’d never felt his breath, even when they’d touched their tongues. Dead people don’t breathe, she thought, even as she had trouble getting air into her own lungs. The man was saying, “What are you looking for? The motorcycle bitches? They’re not here. Probably off at some battlefield scarfing up dead murderers. Or maybe you’re looking for your meat police. You can forget those bed wetters.”

  Kate’s voice cracked a little as she said, “Why do you want to bother these people? They haven’t done anything to you.”

  “They’re meat,” he said. “Like you. They don’t know anything. They can’t even remember their own fucking families.”

  The woman bent forward slightly. “Why should the nons own the world?” she said. “We have as much right to the streets as they do. More, in my opinion. Aren’t there vastly more dead people than non-dead? We just want our rights.”

  Kate was trying hard not to cry as she said, “What are you going to do to me?”

  The man shoved her backward so hard that she fell down in the street. The sound of Kate crying out made the child who’d grabbed her shriek with excitement. The man said, “What do you think? That we’re going to eat you? We don’t eat, remember? Especially not meat. More fucking non stupidity.”

  Kate got up and scurried back out of reach. “You’re the ones who’re stupid,” she shouted at them. “Think you’re so great just because you’re dead. Well, you can—you can…Fuck you!” She turned and ran for the end of the street. Behind her she could hear the dead laughing and applauding. She thought they were throwing things, too, but she didn’t dare to stop and look.

  Kate kept running for almost two blocks beyond the end of the market. Finally, she stopped and leaned against a wall. “Shit,” she whispered to herself. She realized she was crying and took Jimmy’s pink handkerchief from her knapsack to wipe her eyes and blow her nose. She hated getting it dirty. She’d only taken it for luck.

  Head down, Kate began walking toward the subway. She was almost there when she realized it was too late, there was no way she could get back in time. She stopped, out of breath despite the fact that she hadn’t even been walking very fast. It was so unfair, she thought. She just wanted to help. Why did they have to be so nasty? She wasn’t just some stupid non-dead person. Just because Mother Night was her godmother didn’t mean she was anybody’s pet. She came all by herself, didn’t she? And now she was late, and you weren’t allowed to come back late from lunch, you weren’t even supposed to leave the school grounds by yourself. She couldn’t go back now. Maybe Mrs. Benducci wouldn’t notice she was gone. Yeah, right. Even if Mrs. Benducci didn’t realize, that creep Billy Dorfman would be sure to tell her. She could just imagine Dorkman waving his hand and pointing to her empty desk. Suddenly she thought of Laurie. The school would tell Laurie! She would get that pained look on her face and say something like “Sweetheart, you know you’re not supposed to skip school. What were you doing?” And what could Kate tell her? It was so unfair. “Meat” they called her. And “non.” The dead were supposed to be her friends.

  A policeman came walking toward her. He’s going to know, she thought. He’ll say “Little girl, why aren’t you in school?” and before she could even answer he’d arrest her and put her in a cell. And call her mother.

  Trying not to look suspicious, Kate dashed across the street and around the corner. She better keep moving, she thought, look like she was going somewhere. She should have just stayed out the whole day. Then she could have forged a note from her mom the next day saying she was sick. Or that someone had died. That’s what Karen Schumer did. Karen skipped school almost every week. She was so dumb anyway it didn’t make a difference. If they called her stupid meat it would make some sense.

  Kate was walking around for nearly half an hour when she heard the sirens.

  At first she thought she must have doubled back and the police were coming for the marketers. But when she swallowed her panic and looked at the street signs, she realized she’d traveled fifteen blocks downtown. Along with a handful of others, Kate followed the sound.

  She saw the crowd and the smoke and the flashing red lights before anything else. Squeezing and ducking between all the grown-ups Kate made her way to the front, where she still saw the police cars and the ambulances and the small fire truck before the people or the accident itself. Slowly, through all the noise and smoke, and people rushing about and shouting, she made out the two cars, one half crumpled into the side of a subway entrance, the other lying on its side in a lake of glass. And the freshly dead people, two of them already safely in body bags, but two others still lying in the road, one with its head smashed beyond any semblance of a skull, the other nearly torn in half, with guts and blood and shit all mingled together. And the woman, unhurt except for all the cuts dyeing her face and clo
thes a bright red, screaming the name “Brian!” over and over and flailing her arms at the police whenever they tried to come close and calm her down.

  Despite the police pushing the crowd back, no one paid much attention to Kate. She just stood there at the edge of the street and stared. She stared at the non-dead shrieking woman and the paramedics who finally got a needle into her. She stared at the police and the paras scooping the remaining two bodies into the heavy sacks, almost like old cake and melted ice cream being dumped into a black garbage bag at the end of a birthday party. She stared at the police car and the ambulances, and all the people working so hard to clean everything up. She just stared—until one of the paramedics suddenly looked up and saw her and blurted out, “Kate? What are you doing here?”

  “Ester,” Kate whispered.

  No one seemed to pay any attention as Ester said to her, “Does Mother know you’re here?” Kate shook her head. “Damn,” Ester said. “She’s really going to be pissed.” She got up from kneeling by the body and marched over to take Kate’s hand. “Come on,” she said. “I better get you out of here.”

  They found Mother Night by a department store a few blocks away. She was talking to a man selling ice cream from a little booth alongside the main entrance. People were waiting for ice cream but the man, who had long hair tied back in a ponytail, paid no attention to them, only listened to Mother Night and nodded his head. When Mother Night spotted Kate and Ester coming she inclined her head toward them and raised her eyebrows. She left the ice cream man, who called after her, and walked to meet Kate. “Good afternoon, Kate,” she said. She was wearing a long violet dress with an embroidered neckline, and a straw hat with a wide brim. “We didn’t expect to see you today.”

  Ester dropped Kate’s hand and told her to wait as she and Mother Night stepped a few feet away to talk. Kate paid no attention to them. She was looking at her hand, wet with blood Ester had carried from one of the dead people. She wiped her hand on her jeans but it still looked red. Maybe it was stained forever. Something else she wouldn’t be able to explain to Laurie.

  Mother Night walked back to Kate. Stroking her hair, she said, “Now. Why are you wandering the streets instead of sitting at your nice wooden desk?”

  “Those people—” Kate said. Her own voice sounded funny to her.

  “Yes?”

  “By that accident. What—what was Ester doing to them?”

  Mother Night glanced at Ester, who said nothing. Mother Night said, “Helping them, of course. Helping them adjust.”

  “And that woman? The non-dead one? Can you help her?”

  Ester said, “Survivor. She was making a lot of noise.”

  To Kate, Mother Night said, “We do what we can, Kate. But we cannot help everyone.”

  “Then what good are you? If all you do is help dead people.” She stopped herself and took a breath. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just—it’s just not fair. That’s all I wanted to do. I wanted to help.” She realized she was crying when Mother Night gave her a large white handkerchief, but she didn’t wipe her eyes or blow her nose. Instead, she said, “And then they called me names. And I don’t know what to do. I can’t even go back. And I can’t tell Laurie. It’s just not fair.”

  Mother Night bent down to hold Kate against her. She looked up. “Ester,” she said, “will you please get my car?” Ester saluted and walked away. Slowly, Kate managed to tell her story. When she finished she said, “I’m not just your pet meat, am I?”

  “Of course not. You’re my precious goddaughter.” Kate nodded, as if they’d settled the issue. “And ‘meat’ is just not a term we use. Those people at that market sound very rude.”

  “Are you going to do something about them?” Kate asked.

  “Perhaps. But first we must bring you safely back to school.” The moment Kate sat down in the backseat of her godmother’s limousine, she felt a wave of safety float away the dirt and blood. When she closed her eyes she still could see the bodies poured out onto the street, and the screaming woman, but now they played out their scenes far, far away.

  At school, Mother Night walked firmly into class and straight to Mrs. Benducci at the blackboard. “Good afternoon,” she said warmly. “I am Mrs. Knight, Kate’s godmother.” She held out her hand and waited while Mrs. Benducci wiped the chalk dust from her hand. “I’m very sorry to have kept Kate out past her lunch hour. The poor thing kept warning me and pointing at the clock, but I’m afraid I just hushed her.” She leaned forward slightly and lowered her voice. “I really just wanted to show her off to my friends.” With a push she sent Kate to her desk. “You didn’t have a test, did you? I’d be horrified if Kate missed a test because of me.”

  “No. No, of course not,” Mrs. Benducci said.

  “Oh good,” Mother Night said. She looked around. “What a lovely classroom.” As she left she brushed the top of Kate’s head with her fingertips.

  Two days later Kate stepped onto the playground at lunch hour and saw her godmother waving to her. For once she hesitated rather than ran to the gate. She was sure all the kids in her class must be staring at her as she finally took Mother Night’s hand and left the school grounds. They got into the red sports car, and as they turned the avenue the Motorcycle Girls, all five of them, came roaring up alongside them.

  The market was in full session when they drove onto the street. All up and down the road the noise stopped. The sellers stood, the shop owners and their few customers looked at each other, wondering if the mayor had arrived. There was no traffic, Kate saw. She wondered if the police had cordoned off the market.

  The MGs all stood very still while Mother Night slowly turned and looked around. “Well?” Mother Night said finally. “Who is going to speak?”

  The man who’d pushed Kate into the road strolled forward. “Why the fuck not?” he said.

  Mother Night snapped her fingers. “One,” she said. “You will not talk that way in front of my goddaughter. Her mother would not approve.”

  “What do I care about someone’s mother?”

  “And I do not approve. I am an old-fashioned woman.”

  “What do you want here?” the man said. Other dead were beginning to cluster around them. “Your little non whistles and you come running? Is that what’s going on here?”

  “Everyone is a non,” Mother Night said. “She is non-dead. You are non-living. That makes you the same, brother and sister.”

  The woman who’d been with him the other day stepped forward. She still wore the plain dress. “But that’s just not true,” she said. “We have nothing in common with them. Nothing at all. They are all so—” She fluttered a hand. “Narrow.”

  Kate thought of the accident, the woman screaming for Brian. She wondered if Brian was there, lined up with all the other non-living.

  Mother Night said, “Then you will not mind leaving their street.”

  The dead began to shout. There was some kind of high-pitched whistling noise in their collective voice that Kate had never noticed before. The man said, “You can’t be serious.”

  Mother Night smiled. The sunlight caught her teeth so that they became very bright. She said, “Oh, but I am always serious.”

  From the gathering crowd someone who looked like a teenage girl came forward. She wore a puffy pink sweater, grease stained, over tight stretch jeans torn at one ankle. She said, “How can you do this? How can you take their side? You’re not one of them.”

  “Nor am I one of you. I do not belong to any side.”

  An elderly man in a gray suit stuck out his arm to point a rusty fork at Kate. “Except her. Except your little toy. She just chatters her teeth and you rise up in righteous anger. At us! Your lovers.”

  Mother Night inclined her head toward him. “I’m sorry, Geoffrey. For you alone I would wish to indulge you all. But I cannot. Your market violates the country of innocence. You will have to withdraw.”

  The first man said, “And what if we don’t?” Lillian laughed, and he s
tepped back.

  The woman in the plain dress wiped tears from below her eyes with the tips of her fingers. “We only wanted to pass on the things that were precious to us.”

  Mother Night touched her own fingers to the woman’s cheek. “I know, Sharon,” she said. “I know. But they don’t want them. Don’t you see that?”

  “Well, what can we do then?”

  Lillian said, “Why don’t you start a mail-order house? Maybe you just need to reach a wider market.”

  Amy raised a finger. “But remember—no telephone soliciting.”

  Mother Night clapped her hands. “You will all pack up your merchandise and leave this street. And you will not return, not here or anywhere.” Slowly, stooped over, the dead began to go back to their places and wrap up their sheets. All up and down the street Kate could see joy and fear rush through the living.

  In the silence, Kate heard Mother Night sigh. Suddenly she remembered her godmother kissing her, and the feather of Mother Night’s breath on her cheek. She’s alive, Kate thought. She’s not dead.

  A shout broke into her thoughts. “I hate you!” it said. “You pretended to be my friend, but you’re not. You’re a liar.” Kate turned to see Dead Jimmy standing there in a short blue dress and shiny yellow shoes. He had balled his hands so tightly into fists that lines stood out along the knuckles. If he’d been alive, Kate thought, his long nails would be cutting into his palms, maybe even dripping blood onto that soft blue.

  “I’m sorry,” Kate said. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

  “You’re a liar,” Jimmy said again. “You’re just like all the rest of them. You pretended to be dead.”

  “I did not!”

  “But you’re just another one of them.”

  “That’s not fair,” Kate said. “They were hurting people. And they pushed me.”