by Alan Rodgers
Awful.
Really awful.
Sometimes Lisa got a want to do something so terrible she couldn’t stand herself.
When her head was clear she didn’t want to do those things. But other times the desire was on her like a demon she could not deny.
And sometimes she thought: Of course I feel those ways! I’m a zombie girl, and zombies are dead things that do the worst things in the world.
Lisa never meant to be a zombie. She never meant to die, she never meant to live and die and die again; she never meant to become a thing that looked like a baby with a devil in her heart. But she became all those things, or they happened to her, or however you want to think about it.
Lying in her stinking bed still and quiet as a dead baby staring at the ceiling, Lisa swore she’d never be angry or cruel ever again. But it was a false promise, and Lisa knew that even as she swore it to herself: I’m a monster, she thought. She couldn’t change what she was any more than a tenement could be a mansion.
After a while she began to cry, and swore she wasn’t any monster, wasn’t wasn’t wasn’t, she was just a little girl with hopes and fears and dreams, aspirations and afflictions, and the terrors that suffused her weren’t anything she meant to become.
But she became them all the same, and Lisa wasn’t wrong when she called herself a monster.
Someone screeched outside her window, and then the screech turned into laughter. It was those girls again, those teenage girls who thought it was so funny to scream to see who noticed. Lisa never understood why they did that, but she’d known girls like that all her life — it was a common thing for teenage girls in Harlem, screaming for the joy of it to see who’d look out at them. It never bothered her when she was alive, but when she’d died something had changed inside her ears, and the sound of the girls screaming was a thing that made the bones rattle in her head. Lisa hated that so bad.
She rolled out of bed, stumbled to her window. Climbed up onto her toy box she kept in front of the window and pushed the window open. Leaned out into the child-guard to get a look at the girls.
“You be quiet out there,” Lisa shouted, and she saw one of the girls look up at her agog. “It isn’t nice to scream without a reason.”
The goggy-eyed girl turned to her companion, who was staring up at Lisa now, too. “What is she?” the girl asked. “Babies never talk.”
The girl laughed fearfully. “Some kind of freak,” she said, and the girls stared at one another for the longest time, wide-eyed and terrified and fascinated until one of them suddenly went running away down the block, leaving her companion alone with Lisa who stared at her angrily and for just that moment the girl stared back —
— and then she screamed.
And took off running after her companion, running like her life depended on it even though her scream metamorphosed to laughter before she was gone halfway down the block.
There was a noise behind Lisa, and she turned in time to see her mother push open the bedroom door.
“What’s going on in here?” Mama asked.
Lisa lied.
“Nothing, Mama.”
But her mother saw the open window; she could figure out what happened.
“I bet nothing happened,” she said. “Child, someone’s going to have to teach you how to tell a lie. But it won’t be me.”
Lisa tried to go to sleep when her mother closed the door, but it wasn’t any use. She was too angry. Too mad! She wanted to find those girls and wring their necks, she really did.
After a while she sat up and looked out the window. And heard the sound of screaming somewhere in the distance.
I’m going to hurt those girls, I am, I swear I am, Lisa thought. She pushed herself off the bed, stumbled toward the window on her baby legs too small to walk too stumpy to balance too new to understand. When she got to the window she climbed up on the toy box and peered sidelong down the street trying to see as far as she could around the edge of her window. She kept thinking that if she could just see a little farther she’d find the screaming girls.
But they were nowhere in sight.
They’re in the park, I bet, Lisa thought. The north edge of Central Park was three blocks south of them; when Lisa looked as hard as she could she could just barely see the high edges of the tallest trees. I bet I know exactly where they are.
If Lisa would’ve given it a little thought there’s no way she would have started after them. The whole idea was crazy — little baby Lisa wandering off into Harlem without the protection of an adult!
But she didn’t think. She just got up onto the toy box, pushed her window the rest of the way open.
Climbed out onto the fire escape and into the world.
I’m going to make those girls so sorry, Lisa thought. She really really was.
Down the fire escape, onto the sidewalk. It was late, now, and Lisa’s part of Harlem was all but deserted; there was no one on the street as far as Lisa could see in either direction.
They went to the park, Lisa thought. I know they did.
She hurried awkwardly toward the park, stumpling on her bowed and wobbly baby legs. It wasn’t a good walk. Twice she saw eyes watching her from the shadows of abandoned buildings, and once she heard a feral dog growl at her from a direction she wasn’t sure of.
She didn’t let herself be scared.
Maybe she should have. If she’d been afraid she would have been more ready for what she found when she reached the park.
Across the wide night-empty street that ran along the north side of Central Park; through the thicket that was supposed to wall off the north edge of the park. Into the trees that seemed in the darkness deep as primordial forest; and the world closed around her like the darkness at the end of life.
The screaming girl screamed from someplace close but impossible to see. The sound of her scream frightened Lisa — terrified her.
I shouldn’t be here, Lisa thought. I should be home in bed where my mama left me. She felt so stupid, just like she really was a baby all over again, and she hated that so much. . . !
The brush grew thick around her again, and now suddenly it cleared away to show a crowd of two dozen teenagers dancing around a bonfire.
They shouldn’t start no fires in the park, Lisa thought. It’s against the law!
And that was stupid, too, because everybody knows teenagers don’t care nothing about the law.
They don’t care much about baby girls, either, and Lisa should have thought about that, too. But she didn’t. Where she should have turned away and run for her dear life, she crept toward the fire, moving as quiet and as careful as she could. When she got close she realized she could hear someone singing, playing the guitar, and she looked around to see a boy with pitch-dark skin playing music —
Real music. Music like she heard sometimes deep inside her heart when she dreamed about the lady with the sword.
He’s beautiful, Lisa thought, but she wasn’t sure if the beautiful part was his music or his self. She thought, I want to hold him, but she didn’t know why. The idea of touching him made her uncomfortable.
The screaming girls stood before the bonfire at the center of the dance. How could they dance so close to the flames? Lisa was certain that the darker girl’s hair was going to catch fire, go up in a fury of flame that would burn her till she died. But no matter how Lisa expected it, the girl never caught fire. None of them did. It was like they couldn’t burn, but that couldn’t be, could it? Everything can burn, people not excepted.
Now the singer’s tempo began to pick up, and he slapped the face of his guitar rhythmically to mark the lines of his song.
Lisa found herself caught up in the song, wanting to dance, but she knew that wasn’t wise. They’ll see me if I dance, she thought. They’ll see me if they don’t already know I�
��m here. And sudden as she had thought she was certain the guitar man knew just where she was. He knew everything about her, Lisa thought, and in his way he loved her even if he meant to see her dead.
They won’t kill me, Lisa thought. I’m not afraid.
That was a lie; the truth was she was terrified.
But it was too late to be afraid. The music had found its way inside her, and she no longer had a choice: she had to follow the song where it led her, and follow until the music set her free.
She inched toward the fire, still hoping to keep herself out of sight until the bluesman finished his song and she could run. And inched closer and closer until she stood among the dancers, crawling among their legs as the music reached deeper into her, until finally she stood up on her wobbly legs and began to dance wildly, manically, dance on her tiny awkward legs that rolled out from under her and sent her falling toward the fire —
Into the fire and crashing down among the embers. She struggled to get free of the flames as her pajamas smoked and sputtered, searing hot melting sputtering rayon into her skin, but her arms and legs betrayed her — when she tried to stand, to run, to push herself out of the embers all she managed to do was flail among them until she covered herself with char and ember and fiery debris, and Lisa screamed —
As the screaming girls saw her flail below them, and forgot their dance to shriek in horror and surprise, and one of them shouted, It’s her, it’s her, it’s the freak from the window, I told you didn’t I, I told you what she’d do!
And the music stopped and people ran in all directions as Lisa struggled uselessly to push herself out of the fire. She was going to burn to death, why didn’t they help her, why didn’t they help, did they want her to burn alive? But they didn’t help, no help, no help at all and Lisa screamed in fury and frustration as she rolled twice over the hottest part of the fire, crashed over the stones that ringed the fire’s edge and came to rest on the far side of the flames.
I’m burned I’m burned I’m going to die, she thought, rolling in the grass among the terrified teenagers. Her clothes were still afire, and her hair smelled like a rat fried on the third rail in the subway, and she could feel the embers clinging to her skin, clinging and burning and she knew her skin was seared and scorched and ready to peel away from her flesh and bones —
As she came to an abrupt stop.
At the feet of the bluesman still playing his guitar.
And suddenly everything went quiet, and the world was just Lisa and the bluesman and the music — the music and magic and fire shimmering the air around them.
Lisa sat up, and saw that though her clothes were all but burned away the flames had hardly touched her skin. Even where the embers still clung to her they didn’t seem to burn her. She could feel the heat, she could feel the fire burn and blister her, but no matter what she felt she couldn’t see it happen.
“I don’t understand,” Lisa said, and the bluesman smiled at her.
He didn’t answer by talking, the way Lisa would have expected. Instead he sang to her: “You don’t have to understand,” he sang. “If you knew you would forget.”
“I wouldn’t,” Lisa said. “I was dead, and I remember all of it — I remember the Lady, and the hallway, and the door that led back into the world. How could anyone forget those things?”
“At the end there are two doors,” he sang. “Nobody knows them both.”
“I know the doors,” Lisa said. “I saw them from the hallway. One of them is Heaven. The other one is Hell.”
“People go inside, and they don’t ever come out.”
“I think you’re wrong,” Lisa said. “I heard a story once, and then I had a dream.”
“They don’t ever come out,” the bluesman sang.
Lisa wanted to argue with him, but she knew it wasn’t any use. He wouldn’t believe her, and no one would believe her, and she hardly believed herself when she heard herself try to contradict him. But how could she help but disagree? In her dream she’d heard Robert Johnson singing Judgment Day, and she knew the Gates of Heaven and Hell will open wide one day. And she knew from seeing Robert Johnson, too, because every solitary thing about him spoke of damnation and redemption, and how could both those things be on one man if the doors of Heaven and Hell don’t swing both ways?
Lisa heard a sound behind her and whirled around to see the teenagers crowding in around them, watching Lisa and the bluesman. “What do you want?” she demanded, glaring at them, glaring especially at the awful teenage girls who’d screamed outside her window.
No one answered. The bluesman behind her let his song drift away, but he kept playing his guitar — now the melody grew complex, and the rhythm drove hard and beautiful like thunder echoing among the tenements.
“I hate you,” Lisa said, still glaring at the girls. “I hate you hate you hate you.”
The dark girl laughed. The light girl repeated Lisa’s words back at her in a high, squeaky voice, taunting her. “Hate you hate you hate you!” the girl said. And then she laughed, too.
And Lisa got so mad.
So mad!
“You stop that, you awful, you, you —”
“. . . .you, you —”
That was when Lisa lost her temper.
It wasn’t good, losing her temper. Losing her temper got Lisa into awful trouble.
As she howled with rage and pushed herself off the ground; lurched toward the girls and caught the dark one by the ankle.
Pushed against the ground with every bit of strength she had in her legs —
And pushed the dark girl off her feet, onto the ground.
“I hate you!” she shouted, lunging forward to wrap her hands around the dark girl’s throat and squeezed as someone screamed and the dark girl’s hands flailed uselessly at Lisa, trying to batter her away, but Lisa didn’t care, not a bit, she was brave and she was strong even if she was a baby, and nothing any girl could do would ever hurt her, Lisa wouldn’t let it hurt —
As a boy started shouting from the far edge of the crowd. “Run!” he shouted. “Run, run, the police are coming!”
And the light girl reached under Lisa’s arms to pull her away from the dark one still flailing as Lisa tried to strangle her; and Lisa didn’t let go so easy, she whipped ‘round in the light girl’s arms to try to claw her eyes out, but the light girl was too fast for her, she flung Lisa away, away into the air tiny angry blood-hungry baby Lisa flew high through the air until she slammed into the trunk of a tree —
It got confusing after that.
Lisa saw the girls crying in each other’s arms, and she saw the teenagers running away, but she never heard the music stop. Maybe it never did stop. She thought she could hear it as she saw the Park Police enter the clearing, but how could that be? The bluesman was gone, and if he’d been there the police would have had words for him. Maybe they would have arrested him, even; they sure looked mad enough to arrest somebody when they saw the bonfire burning high enough to singe the leaves and branches up above them.
If they’d heard him the way Lisa heard him, they surely would have gone looking for him.
But they didn’t hear, and they didn’t look, and as they shoveled dirt into the fire the music began to fade. It ended when they pounded out the embers.
“We need to find the kids who did this,” one of the policemen said.
His partner snorted derisively.
“They’re miles away by now,” he said. “Long gone.”
Lisa wasn’t gone. She wanted to stand up and say so, but she knew she didn’t dare.
“They’re always gone,” the first cop said. “Damned hoodlums.”
His partner sighed. “Just kids dancing, Pete,” he said. “You ought to keep it in perspective.”
The first cop swore. “Kids my ass,” he said. “This is New Y
ork.” He stepped away from the dead fire, stooped to peer into the woods. “They could’ve set the park on fire,” he said. For a moment he seemed to look right at Lisa, and she thought for certain he’d found her. But then someone screamed somewhere east of them, and the policeman turned to look in that direction.
“What do you think that was?”
“I don’t know. But I’m going to find out,” the first cop said. He pushed through the thicket toward the east; his partner followed a moment behind him.
I’m free, Lisa thought. I’m saved.
She wasn’t wrong. If she’d got up that moment and hurried home to bed, nothing would have followed her, and maybe she could have had a normal life for a few more weeks before the world descended on her.
But she had to know who’d screamed, and she had to know why, and it wasn’t in her to run away just when things began to happen. She pushed herself up off the ground, stumbled across the clearing, and pushed into the thicket on the east —
And saw the Lady with the Sword.
Santa Barbara.
She stood in the clear place just beyond the thicket, waiting for Lisa. The moment Lisa saw her the Lady’s sword caught fire and lit the thicket bright as day.
Lisa saw the policemen in the firelight — the policemen and the girls and all the teenagers, too, everyone she’d seen that night except the bluesman: they were all hanging in the bows of a great tall oak, impaled upon the tree’s branches like flies run through by an entomologist’s nails.
“Santa,” Lisa said, and she fell to her knees and began to pray.
The Santa grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her back up to her feet.
“Never pray to me, child,” the Lady said.
Lisa knew why. It wasn’t seemly, praying to a Santa. She felt terrified, mortified, as though she’d committed some unpardonable sin the Lady could never forgive. “I’m sorry, Santa,” she said. “I didn’t mean —”
