by Anne Rice
There was no one minding the gate at the cemetery, so when they got there they just drove through like they were supposed to be there. The full-bright moon was even brighter here, where there were no street lights; it made the whole place even more strange and unearthly than it was by nature.
Mama Estrella drove what felt like half a mile through the cemetery’s twisting access roads, and then pulled over in front of a stand of trees. “Are there others coming, Mama? Don’t you need a lot of people to have a ceremony?”
Mama Estrella shook her head again and lifted a beer from a bag on the floor of the car that Emma hadn’t seen before. She opened the can and took a long pull out of it.
“You wait here until I call you, Emma,” she said. She got out of the car, lifted Suzi out of the back, and carried her off into the graveyard.
After a while Emma noticed that Mama’d started a fire on top of someone’s grave. She made noise, too—chanting and banging on things and other sounds Emma couldn’t identify. Then she heard the sound of an infant screaming, and she couldn’t help herself anymore. She got out of the car and started running toward the fire.
Not that she really thought it was her Suzi. Suzi had never screamed as a baby, and if she had she wouldn’t have sounded like that. But Emma didn’t want the death of someone else’s child on her conscience, or on Suzi’s.
By the time Emma got to the grave where Mama Estrella had started the fire, it looked like she was already finished. Emma didn’t see any babies. Mama looked annoyed.
“I thought I heard a baby screaming,” Emma said.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Mama Estrella said. She stepped away from Suzi for a moment, looking for something on the ground by the fire, and Emma got a look at her daughter. Suzi’s eyes were open, but she wasn’t breathing. After a moment, though, she blinked, and Emma felt her heart lurch. Suzi. Alive. Emma wanted to cry. She wanted to pray. She wanted to sing. But something in her heart told her that Suzi was all empty inside—that her body was just pretending to be alive. But her heart wouldn’t let her stop pacing through the steps, either; it wouldn’t let her back away without showing, one last time, how much she loved her baby. Emma ran to Suzi and grabbed her up in her arms and sang in her cold-dead ear, “Suzi, Suzi, my darling baby Suzi.” When her lips touched Suzi’s ear it felt like butchered meat. But there were tears all over Emma’s face, and they fell off her cheeks onto Suzi’s.
Then, after a moment, Suzi started to hug Emma back, and she said, “Mommy,” in a voice that sounded like dry paper brushing against itself.
Emma heard Mama Estrella gasp behind her, and looked up to see her standing over the fire, trembling a little. When she saw Emma looking at her, she said, “Something’s inside her.”
Emma shook her head. “Nothing’s inside Suzi but Suzi.” Emma was sure. A mother knew these things. “She’s just as alive as she always was.”
Mama Estrella scowled. “She shouldn’t be alive at all. Her body’s dead. If something happened to it … God, Emma. Her soul could die forever.”
“What do you mean?”
“Emma … you were hurt so bad. I thought … if I could make Suzi’s body pretend to be alive for a while it would help you. I could make a zombie from her body. A zombie isn’t a daughter, but it’s like one, only empty. But if her soul is inside the zombie, it could be trapped there forever. It could wither and die inside her.”
Emma felt herself flush. “You’re not going to touch my baby, Mama Estrella. I don’t know what you’re thinking, but you’re not going to touch my baby.”
Mama Estrella just stood there, gaping. Emma thought she was going to say something, but she didn’t.
After a moment Emma took Suzi’s hand and said, “Come on, child,” and she led Suzi off into the graveyard, toward home. There were a few tall buildings in another part of the city that she could see even from here, and she used the sight of them to guide her. It only took a few minutes to get out of the cemetery, and half an hour after that to get home. She carried Suzi most of the way, even though the girl never complained. Emma didn’t want her walking that far in nothing but her bare feet.
When they got home, Emma put Suzi in bed. She didn’t seem tired, but it was long past her bedtime, and God knew it was necessary to at least keep up the pretense that life was normal.
Twenty minutes after that, she went to bed herself.
Emma woke early in the morning, feeling fine. She went out to the corner before she was completely awake and bought herself a paper. When she got back, she made herself toast and coffee and sipped and ate and settled down with the news. As she’d got older she’d found herself waking earlier and earlier, and now there was time for coffee and the paper most mornings before she went to work. It was one of her favorite things.
She let Suzi sleep in; there was no sense waking her this early. She kept expecting Mama Estrella to call; she’d really expected her to call last night before she went to sleep. All night she dreamed the sound of telephones ringing, but every time she woke to answer them the bells stopped. After a while she realized that the real telephone wasn’t ringing at all, and the rest of the night she heard the bells as some strange sort of music. The music hadn’t bothered her sleep at all.
At nine she decided it was late enough to wake Suzi up, so she folded her newspaper, set it on the windowsill, and went to her daughter’s bedroom. She opened the door quietly, because she didn’t want Suzi to wake to a sound like the creaking of a door on her first day back home. Suzi was lying in bed resting with her eyes closed—probably asleep, Emma thought, but she wasn’t sure. The girl lay so still that Emma almost started to worry about her, until her lips mumbled something without making any sound and she rolled over onto her side. In that instant before Emma went into the room, as she stood watching through the half-open door, she thought Suzi was the most beautiful and adorable thing in the world.
Then she finished opening the door, took a step into the room, took a breath, and smelled her.
The smell was like meat left to sit in the sun for days—the smell it has after it’s turned gray-brown-green, but before it starts to liquefy. Somewhere behind that was the sulfury smell that’d permeated Suzi’s waste and her breath—and after a while even her skin—since a little while after the doctors found the cancer in her.
Emma’s breakfast, all acidy and burning, tried to lurch up her throat. Before she knew what she was thinking she was looking at Suzi and seeing something that wasn’t her daughter at all—it was some dead thing. And who gave a good goddamn what sort of spirit was inside? The thing was disgusting, it was putrefied. It wasn’t fit for decent folks to keep in their homes.
Then Emma stopped herself, and she felt herself pale, as though all the blood rushed out of her at once. She felt ashamed. Suzi was Suzi, damn it, and no matter what was wrong with her she was still Emma’s baby. And whatever else was going on, no matter how weird and incomprehensible things go, Emma knew that Suzi was the same Suzi she’d been before she died.
She tiptoed over to her daughter’s bed, and she hugged her good morning—and the smell, strong as it was, was just Suzi’s smell.
Which was all right.
“Did you sleep well, baby?” Emma asked. She gave Suzi a peck on the cheek and stepped back to take a look at her. There was a gray cast, or maybe it was blue, underneath the darkness of her skin. That worried Emma. Even just before the cancer killed her Suzi hadn’t looked that bad. Emma pulled away the sheets to get a better look at her, and it almost seemed that the tumor in Suzi’s belly was bigger than it had been. Emma shuddered, and her head spun. There was something about that cancer that wasn’t natural. She couldn’t stop herself from staring at it.
“I guess I slept okay,” Suzi said. Her voice sounded dry and powdery.
Emma shook her head. “What do you mean, you guess? Don’t you know how well you slept?”
Suzi was looking down at her belly now, too. “It’s getting bigger, Mommy.” She reached down
and touched it. “I mean about sleeping that I guess I’m not sure if I was asleep. I rested pretty good, though.”
Emma sighed. “Let’s get some breakfast into you. Come on, out of that bed.”
Suzi sat up. “I’m not hungry, though.”
“You’ve got to eat anyway. It’s good for you.”
Suzi stood up, took a couple of steps, and faltered. “My feet feel funny, Mommy,” she said.
Emma was halfway to the kitchen. “We’ll take a good look at your feet after breakfast. First you’ve got to eat.” In the kitchen she broke two eggs into a bowl and scrambled them, poured them into a pan she’d left heating on the stove. While they cooked she made toast and buttered it.
Mama Estrella finally called just after Emma set the plate in front of Suzi. Emma rushed to the phone before the bell could ring a second time; she hated the sound of that bell. It was too loud. She wished there was a way to set it quieter.
“Emma,” Mama Estrella said, “your baby could die forever.”
Emma took the phone into the living room and closed the door as much as she could without damaging the cord. When she finally responded her voice was even angrier than she meant it to be. “You stay away from Suzi, Mama Estrella Perez. My Suzi’s just fine, she’s going to be okay, and I don’t want you going near her. Do you understand me?”
Mama sighed. “When you make a zombie,” she said, “when you make a real one from someone dead, I mean; you can make it move. You can even make it understand enough to do what you say. But still the body starts to rot away. It doesn’t matter usually. When a zombie is gone it’s gone. What’s the harm? But your Suzi is inside that zombie. When the flesh rots away she’ll be trapped in the bones. And we won’t ever get her out.”
Emma felt all cold inside. For three long moments she almost believed her. But she was strong enough inside—she had faith enough inside—to deny what she didn’t want to believe.
“Don’t you say things like that about my Suzi, Mama Estrella,” she said. “My Suzi’s alive, and I won’t have you speaking evil of her.” She knew Suzi was alive, she was certain of it. But she didn’t think she could stand to hear anything else, so she opened the door and slammed down the phone before Mama Estrella could say it.
Suzi was almost done with her eggs, and she’d finished half the toast. “What’s the matter with Mama Estrella, Mommy?” she asked.
Emma poured herself another cup of coffee and sat down at the table across from Suzi. She didn’t want to answer that question. She didn’t even want to think about it. But she had to—she couldn’t just ignore it—so she finally said, “She thinks there’s something wrong with you, Suzi.”
“You mean because I was dead for a while?”
Emma nodded, and Suzi didn’t say anything for a minute or two. Then she asked, “Mommy, is it wrong for me to be alive again after I was dead?”
Emma had to think about that. The question hurt. But when she realized what the answer was it didn’t bother her to say it. “Baby, I don’t think God would have let you be alive if it wasn’t right. Being alive even once is a miracle, and God doesn’t make miracles that are evil.”
Suzi nodded like she didn’t really understand. But she didn’t ask about it anymore. She took another bite of her toast. “This food tastes funny, Mommy. Do I have to eat it all?”
She’d eaten most of it, anyway, and Emma didn’t like to force her to eat. “No, sugar, you don’t have to eat it all. Come on in the den and let me see those feet you said were bothering you.”
She had Suzi sit with her feet stretched out across the couch so she could take her time looking at them without throwing the girl off balance. “What do they feel like, baby? What do you think is the matter with them?”
“I don’t know, Mommy. They just feel strange.”
Emma peeled back one of the socks she’d made Suzi put on last night before she put her to bed. There wasn’t anything especially wrong with her ankle, except for the way it felt so cold in her hands. But when she tired to pull the sock off over Suzi’s foot, it stuck. Emma felt her stomach turning on her again. She pulled hard, because she knew she had to get it over with. She expected the sock to pull away an enormous scab, but it didn’t. Just the opposite. Big blue fluffs of sock fuzz stuck to the … thing that had been Suzi’s foot.
No. That wasn’t so. It was Suzi’s foot, and Emma loved it, just like she loved Suzi. Suzi’s foot wasn’t any thing. Even if it was all scabrous and patchy, with dried raw flesh poking though in places as though it just didn’t have the blood inside to bleed any more.
Nothing was torn or ripped or mangled, though Emma’s first impulse when she saw the skin was to think that something violent had happened. But it wasn’t that at all; except for the blood, the foot almost looked as though it’d worn thin, like the leather on an old shoe.
What caused this? Emma wondered. Just the walk home last night? She shuddered.
She peeled away the other sock, and that one was a little worse.
Emma felt an awful panic to do something about Suzi’s feet. But what could she do? She didn’t want to use anything like a disinfectant. God only knew what a disinfectant would do to a dead person who was alive. Bandages would probably only encourage the raw places to fester. She could pray, maybe. Pray that Suzi’s feet would heal up, even though everything inside the girl that could heal or rebuild her was dead, and likely to stay that way.
Emma touched the scabby part with her right hand. It was hard and rough and solid, like pumice, and it went deep into her foot like a rock into dirt. It’d probably wear away quickly if she walked on it out on the street. But it was strong enough that walking around here in the house probably wouldn’t do any harm. That was a relief; for a moment she’d thought the scab was all soft and pusy and crumbly, too soft to walk on at all. Emma thought of the worn-old tires on her father’s Rambler (it was a miracle that the car still ran; it’d been fifteen years at least since the car company even made Ramblers). The tread on the Rambler’s tires was thin; you could see the threads showing through if you knew where to look. It made her shudder. She didn’t want her Suzi wearing away like an old tire.
Mama Estrella was right about that, and Emma didn’t want to admit it to herself. Suzi wasn’t going to get any better. But Emma knew something else, too: things can last near forever if you take the right care of them. Let Mama Estrella be scared. Emma didn’t care. The girl was alive, and the important part was what Emma had realized when Suzi asked: even being alive once is a miracle. Emma wasn’t going to be someone who wasted miracles when they came to her.
Not even if the miracle made her hurt so bad inside that she wanted to die, like it did later on that day when she and Suzi were sitting in the living room watching TV. It was a doctor show—even while they watched it Emma wasn’t quite sure which one it was—and it got her thinking about how tomorrow was Wednesday and she’d have to go back to the hospital where she cleaned patients’ rooms for a living. She’d taken a leave of absence while Suzi was in the hospital, and now she realized that she didn’t want to go back. She was afraid to leave Suzi alone, afraid something might happen. But what could she do? She had to work; she had to pay the rent. Even taking off as much as she had had bled away her savings.
“Suzi,” she said, “if anybody knocks on that door while I’m gone at work, you don’t answer it. You hear?”
Suzi turned away from the TV and nodded absently. “Yes, Mommy,” she said. She didn’t look well, and that made Emma hurt some. Even after all those months with the cancer, Emma had never got to be easy or comfortable with the idea of Suzi being sick.
“Come over here and give me a hug, Suzi.”
Suzi got out of her seat, climbed onto Emma’s lap, and put her arms around her. She buried her face in her mother’s breast and hugged, hard, too hard, really. She was much stronger than Emma’d realized, stronger than she’d been before she got sick. The hug was like a full-grown man being too rough, or stronger, maybe.
Suzi eased away. “Sorry, Mommy,” she said. She looked down, as though she were embarrassed, or maybe even a little bit ashamed. Emma looked in the same direction reflexively, too, to see what Suzi was looking at.
Which wasn’t anything at all, of course. But when Emma looked down what she saw was the thing in Suzi’s belly, the tumor. It had grown, again: it looked noticeably bigger than it had this morning. Emma touched it with her left hand, and she felt a strange, electric thrill.
She wondered what was happening inside Suzi’s body. She wanted to believe that it was something like trapped gas, or even that she was only imagining it was larger.
She probed it with her fingers.
“Does this hurt, Suzi?” she asked. “Does it feel kind of strange?”
“No, Mommy, it doesn’t feel like anything at all anymore.”
The thing was hard, solid, and strangely lumpy. When she touched it on a hollow spot near the top, it started to throb.
Emma snatched her hand away, afraid that she’d somehow woken up something horrible. But it was too late; something was wrong. The thing pulsed faster and faster. After a moment the quivering became almost violent. It reminded Emma of an epileptic at the hospital who’d had a seizure while she was cleaning his room.
“Suzi, are you okay?” Emma asked. Suzi’s mouth moved, but no sound came out. Her chest and abdomen started heaving, and choking sounds came from her throat.
The first little bit of Suzi’s upchuck just dribbled out around the corners of her mouth. Then she heaved again, more explosively, and the mass of it caught Emma square on the throat. Two big wads of decayed egg spattered on her face, and suddenly Suzi was vomiting out everything Emma had fed her for breakfast. Emma recognized the eggs and toast; they hadn’t changed much. They were hardly even wet. The only thing that seemed changed at all about them, in fact, was the smell. They smelled horrible, worse than horrible. Like dead people fermenting in the bottom of a septic tank for years.