In the Shadow of Blackbirds

by Cat Winters

  “Why don’t you let me make the soup, and you go get ready. You’re the one who’s worked in the shipyard all day.” It was my roundabout way of telling her she stank too much to attend a formal social event, but she agreed without offense and hurried off to bathe.

  AFTER SUPPER, WHEN THE SUN HAD LONG SINCE SET AND our gas lamps illuminated the house, I sifted through my wardrobe, pushing aside the nicest dress I owned—the black silk taffeta one I’d worn to Stephen’s funeral. My second best, a navy-and-white plaid wool dress with a lace-trimmed collar, ended up being the garment I wiggled over my shoulders and buttoned into place. A belt made of the same fabric cinched my waist, and the hem fell mid-calf. I’d have to wear my black Mary Janes instead of my dingy Boy Scout boots. A pair of kid gloves would hide the scaly lightning-burn remnants on my fingertips. I dug around in my doctor’s bag for a little beaded coin purse that had belonged to my mother and stocked it with a portion of the money my father had made me pack before I fled Portland.

  In the kitchen, where we could heat the curling rod on the stove, my aunt fluffed, knotted, and swirled my long locks into an elaborate style she called a turban coiffure. To be specific, she made me look like I was wearing a fuzzy turban made out of my own chestnut-brown hair. My reflection in her hand mirror didn’t even look like me.

  “I really regret chopping off all my curls.” She nitpicked over the last few pins at the back of my head, jabbing my scalp until I winced. “I feel so ugly these days with my short hair and my red, calloused hands.”

  “You’re not ugly. Your hair is modern and chic, and your job in the shipyard is admirable, both for the country and the women’s movement.”

  Someone rapped on the front door with the metal knocker.

  “It’s him!” She grabbed her mask and flew down the hall, contradicting everything I’d just said about her being an admirable symbol of the women’s movement.

  Julius stood on our front porch in a chalk-stripe suit and a charcoal-gray fedora—and again no flu mask, which I found to be arrogant. His face looked pale, and the skin beneath his eyes bulged with bruise-colored bags, as if he hadn’t slept the night before. Taking advantage of one of my new peculiarities, I inhaled a deep breath through my mask and tried to detect the emotions rolling off him.

  My tongue went numb.

  “Good evening, ladies.” He took off his hat and revealed slicked-down black hair, stiff and shiny with pomade that smelled like a barbershop. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes, we are indeed.” Aunt Eva grabbed her handbag and led us out the door. “Thank you so much for inviting us, Julius. How is your mother?”

  “Not well. Let’s not talk about that.”

  He placed his hat on his head, and we followed him down the front path to a blue two-door Cadillac roadster convertible with a hood that stretched for miles and a wooden steering wheel as large as a ship’s helm. He had parked the car underneath the electric streetlamp in front of the house, and the light shining down through the bulbous globes made the vehicle’s paint glisten as bright as sapphires.

  “What type of engine does it have?” I asked.

  He opened the passenger-side door for us. “Why don’t you just try looking pretty for a change?”

  I was just about to give him a tart reply when a screaming black police department ambulance sailed around the corner and came to an abrupt stop in front of a house across the street.

  Aunt Eva froze. “Oh, dear God. The flu has reached our block.” Her feet skidded on the sidewalk like she was trying to run away on ice, and then she took running leaps back to the porch. “The flu has reached our block!”

  “Eva, stop!” called Julius in a voice deep and authoritative enough to keep her from escaping inside the house. “The flu is everywhere. It’s not some big, bad monster coming down the street, knocking at each door. It’s random, and you and your niece smell enough of onions and camphor mothballs to fight off any germ that gets within ten feet of the two of you.”

  I watched policemen in high-buttoned green uniforms hustle to the neighbors’ front door while maneuvering a beige stretcher. Their clothing reminded me of army tunics. Soldiers engaging in battle against an enemy they couldn’t even see.

  “Come back down here, Eva.” Julius opened the passenger door wider, revealing a plush black seat more luxurious than any sofa my family had ever owned. “We don’t want to keep our hostess waiting.”

  “They’re dying right across the street, Julius.”

  “Eva—come talk to the spirits. They’ll tell you there’s nothing to fear.”

  His words acted as an elixir upon my aunt’s nerves.

  Her shoulders lowered. Her chest rose and fell with a soothing breath. “Oh. I hadn’t thought of the séance that way. I suppose you’re right.” She ventured back to the Cadillac and climbed into the middle section of the seat.

  I stepped in next to her with my coin purse dangling off my wrist. Julius helped me push the hem of my skirt into the car so it wouldn’t catch in the door when he closed it, and then he strode over to the driver’s side.

  The officers across the street hauled out a body concealed by a sheet. Long red hair swung off the end of the stretcher.

  Aunt Eva turned her face away with pain in her eyes. “That was Mrs. Tennell, the woman who found you dead during the lightning storm, Mary Shelley. The poor thing. She has five children.”

  I dug my nails into the beads of my handbag. “I should have thanked her for helping me. I should have visited her. I’m too late.”

  “There’s nothing you can do.” Julius climbed into the driver’s seat and slammed the door shut. “Stop thinking about it.” He brought the engine to life with a roar and steered the roadster southward, to the heart of downtown San Diego.

  We traveled past houses and storefronts and more black ambulances. On the sidewalk in front of a home as pristine white as a wedding cake lay three bodies a huckleberry shade of blue, dressed in nightclothes. The corpses rested beneath a streetlamp, as if the living had kicked out the dead like garbage. I bent forward and held my forehead in my hands to stave off nausea.

  “I heard the Germans snuck the flu into the United States through aspirin,” said Julius.

  I swallowed down bile. “That’s just more anti-German propaganda.”

  Aunt Eva kicked my ankle. “Don’t talk like that.”

  “I’m not trying to sound un-American,” I said, “but the aspirin rumor is stupid. Influenza is an airborne illness. The only way the Germans could have used the flu as a weapon was if they shipped boatloads of sick German people over here and let everyone cough on us. But the flu kills so quickly and randomly that everyone on the boat might have been dead by the time it arrived in an American harbor, like Dracula’s victims on the Demeter.”

  “Does she always argue like that?” asked Julius.

  Aunt Eva nodded. “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

  “She sounds like my brother.”

  A small smile managed to spread across my lips beneath my mask.

  Another siren screamed by. That old bully Death breathed down my neck and nipped at my skin, warning, Don’t waste one spare second of time. If there are things you want to accomplish while you’re still alive, you’d better do them soon. I’m coming.

  JULIUS PARKED THE CADILLAC IN FRONT OF A FIFTH Avenue hardware store. The shop was wedged between a toy store and a restaurant that smelled of juicy grilled hamburgers. The sign in front of the eatery claimed the place specialized in “Liberty Steaks,” but that was simply paranoid speak for We don’t want to call anything a name that sounds remotely German, like “hamburger.” We’re pro-American. We swear!

  A glass door led us to a dark interior staircase that clattered with the echoes of our dress shoes as we climbed the steps. Another door, plain and chipped and brown, waited at the top. Julius knocked.

  Someone opened the door a crack and stuck out her head: an unmasked girl, a year or two older than me at most, with long golden ringlets crowned
by a sparkling jeweled band. Her eyes were lined in black kohl, her lips rouged a deep red.

  “Hello, Julius.” She opened the door farther, enough for us to see her wine-colored dress and gargantuan breasts that seemed at odds with the innocent Goldilocks look of her hair. “I didn’t know you were bringing two guests.”

  Julius took off his hat. “Does that throw off your numbers?”

  “Sadly, no. Not at all. Francie died over the weekend. We’re not sure if Archie and Helen are still alive. Roy saw an ambulance at their house on Monday.”

  Julius wrinkled his brow. “That’s disturbing.”

  We entered a dim, bare hallway, and the girl shut the door behind us.

  “Welcome.” She offered her hand to Aunt Eva. “I’m Lena Abberley.”

  “I’m Eva Ottinger. And this is my niece, Mary Shelley Black.”

  “Ahh.” Lena shook my hand and grinned at Julius. “You’ve brought your muse, Julius. ‘Beauty resides within the sacred studio of Mr. Julius Embers, Spiritualist Photographer.’”

  I reddened and let go of her hand, tasting a flavor that stung sharp and hot. “I didn’t know he was going to put me on that handbill.”

  She winked at me. “Don’t be modest about the great Julius Embers’s interest in a pretty young thing like you. He and I refer clients to one another. You’ll find a stack of those handbills next to my donation jar in the parlor. Come along.” Lena beckoned with her index finger. “Roy is already here.” She swished through a doorway to the right of the entry hall with her curls bouncing and her hips swinging beneath her dress.

  We followed her into a small living room decorated in fringed electric lamps and paintings of mustard-yellow flowers that weren’t particularly pretty. A blond young man with cloudy eyes puffed on a cigarette at a round wooden table in the center of the space. Julius closed the room’s door.

  “This is my fiancé, Roy.” Lena nodded toward the young man at the table. “Roy, this is Julius’s muse and her aunt.”

  “I’m not his muse,” I told Roy, who looked straight through me like he didn’t care one way or another.

  “I have a homemade anti-influenza remedy for you to snack on.” Lena picked up a bowl of sugar cubes from the table. “You’re going to need to take off your masks for the séance. The gauze scares away the spirits who died before the flu attacked. They worry surgeons are sitting around the table, waiting to operate on them.”

  Julius snickered. “You just don’t want to wear your own mask, Lena. You hate how it looks on you, so you blame the helpless spirits.”

  “I don’t see you spoiling your handsome face with the gauze, either, Mr. Embers.”

  “If Death is coming for me,” said Julius, lifting his chin, “I want him to see my entire face. He’s not going to find me cowering behind anything.”

  Aunt Eva massaged her masked cheek. “Are you sure we need to take off our gauze? The flu just arrived on my block tonight.”

  “The flu is everywhere,” said Roy, sucking on his cigarette.

  “That’s what I told her.” Julius scooted chairs out for each of us. “Sit down, ladies. Take off your masks and eat Miss Abberley’s snack so we can begin.”

  Aunt Eva took the seat next to Julius, so I positioned myself in the chair between her and Roy and dropped my coin purse next to my aunt’s bag. I pulled down my mask until it dangled around my throat like a necklace and watched Aunt Eva do the same. Lena presented us with the bowl of sugar cubes, which smelled like my father’s hands after he’d fill cans of kerosene in the back storeroom of Black’s Groceries.

  I sniffed at the cubes again. “Sugar cubes soaked in kerosene? Is that your flu remedy?”

  “Precisely.” Lena scooted an extra chair between Roy and Julius for herself. “That’s how you get rid of germs. You burn them away.”

  “I’ll burn my throat away.”

  “That’s the point.” She sat down. “Eat it or leave.”

  I picked up a glistening cube and studied it.

  Aunt Eva placed a piece of sugar on her tongue, grimaced, and swallowed it whole. Her face turned red. Her eyes watered, and I half expected her to breathe fire. “May I have a drink of water, please?”

  “Roy, be a gentleman.” Lena knocked Roy’s arm with her elbow. “Get Mrs. Ottinger a glass of water.”

  I raised my cube to my mouth but transferred it inside my fist at the last second and pretended to swallow. When Roy hustled back in with the sloshing glass for Aunt Eva, I flicked the cube to the floor beneath the table.

  “So, tell me, ladies.” Lena leaned forward on her elbows. “Who do you want me to bring to you tonight?”

  My jaw dropped. “We can’t tell you that information. How will we know whether or not you’re a cheat?”

  Lena raised an eyebrow. “A cheat?”

  “Mary Shelley!” rasped my aunt. “Be polite. We’re guests here.”

  “If I tell you whom I want to see,” I said, folding my hands on the table, “and drop clues about what I want him or her to say, we’ll have no proof whether or not you genuinely contact the dead.”

  “Are you insinuating I can’t contact the dead?”

  “I’m saying, if you can, you don’t need to ask whom we want to see.”

  “Good Lord.” Julius rubbed his swollen eyes. “Listen to all those proper whoms. No wonder Stephen couldn’t keep his hands off her.”

  Lena’s eyes pounced on me. “Stephen? Is that who you want to find?”

  I glared at Julius. “I didn’t want you saying anything to her about your brother and me. I don’t want her summoning him.”

  “Then why did you agree to come here?” asked Aunt Eva, her voice struggling back to life after the kerosene. “I thought you wanted to find Stephen.”

  “I’m here because I’m curious. If you’re going to summon a spirit for me, Miss Abberley, I want you to pick someone obscure—someone no one here would have ever mentioned to you. If I see you’re genuinely gifted, I’ll pay you to show me how you channel your gifts. But I’m not parting with one precious cent if you’re going to sit there and ask me to feed you information.”

  Lena tugged on one of her coiled curls. “Are you setting rules for me?”

  “Yes. If I’m to pay you for tutelage, I’d be an employer of sorts.”

  Roy chuckled and actually spoke more than four words. “You’re being challenged, Lena. It’s about time, after all that spoiling you get from your doting followers.”

  “Shut up, Roy. Put out your cigarette.” Lena rose from her chair and pressed her hands against the table. “I’ve got rules for you, too, Miss Black.”

  “What are they?”

  “No getting out of your chair after I turn off the lights. No talking. No breaking the sacred circle. No touching the ectoplasm.”

  “What’s ectoplasm?” I asked.

  “Aha! So, you don’t know everything.” She beamed with a show of shiny white teeth. “Ectoplasm is spiritual energy, fully materialized. Imagine an umbilical cord connecting the other side to the mortal world. My body produces ectoplasm that reaches out and moves tables and objects with the strength of human hands. Keep your fingers off it, and while you’re at it, keep your fingers off Roy, aside from holding his hand while we create the chain of energy. Are you quite clear on my rules, Miss Black?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Then let’s begin.” Lena plunked the bowl of sugar cubes on a side table that also held a donation jar and Julius’s handbills. She clip-clopped in her thick heels to a switch by the door and pressed the button that turned off the lights, submerging the room in blackness. Agonizing chills spread down my back and arms. The temperature seemed to drop twenty degrees. I smelled Roy’s extinguished cigarette. And mold.

  Lena traveled back to her chair in the dark with the same clip-clop rhythm as before, which reassured me she hadn’t traded places with anyone else. A chair scraped against the floorboards, sounding like she had taken her seat.

  “Join hands,” she s
aid.

  We did as she asked. Roy took my gloved hand tenderly, and Aunt Eva clamped down on my healing fingers until I fidgeted enough for her to loosen her hold.

  Lena drew air through her nose and released it through her lips with a slight whistle. “I’m going to fall into my trance now.” She breathed in and out again. “Open your mind. Leave your doubts at the door. Turn your thoughts to loved ones who’ve left this world for the Summerland.” She continued her long, audible breaths, each exhalation punctuated by a soft moan that caused Roy’s fingers to twitch against mine. I tried to see the outlines of my companions’ heads, but the darkness penetrated the room completely. Lena must have sealed off the windows to keep even the slightest hint of moonlight from peeking through the shades.

  I didn’t turn my thoughts to any loved ones.

  The perfume and cigarettes and mold in the air gave the séance a dirty feel. We were not attending a formal social event, as Aunt Eva had said we would. I’d been tricked into another theatrical show, courtesy of Mr. Julius Embers, whose impenetrable emotions reminded me again of Stephen’s warnings about opium. Hazy Roy, who sounded like he was starting to snore next to me in the dark, was probably an addict, too.

  “Spirits, are you with us?” Lena’s new, deep trance voice rumbled up from her belly. “Knock once for yes, twice for no.”

  Aunt Eva’s hand flinched in anticipation.

  “Are you with us?” asked Lena again.

  SLAM.

  A solid knock walloped the table and made me jump.

  “How many spirits have joined us tonight?”

  SLAM SLAM SLAM SLAM SLAM.

  “Five spirits. Marvelous. Do you see your loved ones sitting at this table, spirits? Once for yes, twice for no.”

  SLAM.