“And you’ve come all this way to take that . . . shell back?” I can see it sticking out of the chest pocket of her fleece shirt.
“It’s difficult to explain to you, because you don’t have the background, and I don’t have the time to teach you. I specialise in shell formations. I mean, that’s Vanda’s specialty. She’s the curator whose memories I’m carrying. Of its kind, the mollusc that made this shell is a genius. The unique conformation of the whorls of its shell expresses a set of concepts that haven’t been explored before by the other artists of its species. After this one, all the others will draw on and riff off its expression of its world. They’re the derivatives, but this is the original. In our world, it was lost.”
Barmy. Loony. “So how did you know that it even existed, then? Did the snail or slug that lived inside it take pictures or something?” I’ve descended into cruelty. I’m still smarting that Kamla hasn’t picked me, my work. My legacy doesn’t get to go to the future.
She gives me a wry smile, as though she understands.
I pull up outside the house, start leaning on the horn. Over the noise, she shouts, “The creature didn’t take a picture. You did.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck. With my precious video camera. I’d videotaped every artifact with which I’d seeded the soil that went onto the gallery floor. I didn’t tell her that.
She nods. “Not all the tape survived, so we didn’t know who had recorded it, or where the shell had come from. But we had an idea where the recording had come from.”
Lights are coming on in the house. Kamla looks over there and sighs. “I haven’t entirely convinced you, have I?”
“No,” I say regretfully. But damn it, a part of me still hopes that it’s all true.
“They’re probably going to institutionalise me. All of us.”
The front door opens. Sunil is running out to the car, a gravid Babette following more slowly.
“You have to help me, Greg. Please? We’re going to outlive all our captors. We will get out. But in the meantime . . .”
She pulls the shell out of her pocket, offers it to me on her tiny palm. “Please keep it safe for me?”
She opens the car door. “It’s your ticket to the future,” she says, and gets out of the car to greet her parents.
I lied. I fucking hate kids.
The Smile on the Face
Innocent young ladies of Niger will sometimes mess around with tigers.
There was a young lady . . .
“Geez, who gives a damn what a . . . what? What a laidly worm is, anyway?” Gilla muttered. She was curled up on the couch, school library book on her knees.
“Mm?” said her mother, peering at the computer monitor. She made a noise of impatience and hit a key on the keyboard a few times.
“Nothing, Mum. Just I don’t know what this book’s talking about.” Boring old school assignment. Gilla wanted to go and get ready for Patricia’s party, but Mum had said she should finish her reading first.
“Did you say, ‘laidly worm’?” her mother asked. Her fingers were clicking away at the keyboard again now. Gilla wished she could type that quickly. But that would mean practising, and she wasn’t about to do any more of that than she had to.
“Yeah.” Damn. If Mum had heard that, she’d probably heard her say, “shit,” too.
“It’s a type of dragon.”
Looks like she wasn’t going to pay attention to the other word that Gilla had used. This time, anyway. “So why don’t they just call it that?” Gilla asked her.
“It’s a special type. It doesn’t have wings, so it just crawls along the ground. Its skin oozes all the time. Guess that protects it when it crawls, like a slug’s slime.”
“Yuck, Mum!”
Gilla’s mother smiled, even as she was writing. “Well, you wanted to know.”
“No, I didn’t. I just have to know, for school.”
“A laidly worm’s always ravenous and it makes a noise like a cow in gastric distress.”
Gilla giggled. Her mother stopped typing and finally looked at her. “You know, I guess you could think of it as a larval dragon. Maybe it eats and eats so it’ll have enough energy to moult into the flying kind. What a cool idea. I’ll have to look into it.” She turned back to her work. “Why do you have to know about it? What’re you reading?”
“This lady in the story? Some guy wanted to marry her, but she didn’t like him, so he put her in his dungeon . . .”
“. . . and came after her one night in the form of a laidly worm to eat her,” Gilla’s mother finished. “You’re learning about Margaret of Antioch?”
Gilla boggled at her. “Saint Margaret, yeah. How’d you know?”
“How?” Her mother swivelled the rickety steno chair round to face Gilla and grinned, brushing a tangle of dreadlocks back from her face. “Sweetie, this is your mother, remember? The professor of African and Middle Eastern Studies?”
“Oh.” And her point? Gilla could tell that her face had that “huh?” look. Mum probably could see it too, ’cause she said:
“Gilla, Antioch was in ancient Turkey. In the Middle East?”
“Oh yeah, right. Mum, can I get micro-braids?”
Now it was her mum looking like, “huh?” “What in the world are those, Gilla?”
Well, at least she was interested. It wasn’t a “no” straight off the bat. “These tiny braid extensions, right? Maybe only four or five strands per braid. And they’re straight, not like . . . Anyway, Kashy says that the hairdressing salon across from school does them. They braid the extensions right into your own hair, any colour you want, as long as you want them to be, and they can style them just like that. Kashy says it only takes a few hours, and you can wear them in for six weeks.”
Her mum came over, put her warm palms gently on either side of Gilla’s face and looked seriously into her eyes. Gilla hated when she did that, like she was still a little kid. “You want to tame your hair,” her mother said. Self-consciously, Gilla pulled away from her mum’s hands, smoothed back the cloudy mass that she’d tied out of the way with a bandanna so that she could do her homework without getting hair in her eyes, in her mouth, up her nose. Her mum continued, “You want hair that lies down and plays dead, and you want to pay a lot of money for it, and you want to do it every six weeks.”
Gilla pulled her face away. The book slid off her knee to the floor. “Mum, why do you always have to make everything sound so horrible?” Some of her hair had slipped out of the bandanna; it always did. Gilla could see three or four black sprigs of it dancing at the edge of her vision, tickling her forehead. She untied the bandanna and furiously retied it, capturing as much of the bushy mess as she could and binding it tightly with the cloth.
Her mother just shook her head at her. “Stop being such a drama queen. How much do micro-braids cost?”
Gilla was ashamed to tell her now, but she named a figure, a few bucks less than the sign in the salon window had said. Her mother just raised one eyebrow at her.
“That, my girl, is three months of your allowance.”
Well, yeah. She’d been hoping that Mum and Dad would pay for the braids. Guess not.
“Tell you what; you save up for it, then you can have them.”
Gilla grinned.
“But,” her mother continued, “you have to continue buying your bus tickets while you’re saving.”
Gilla stopped grinning.
“Don’t look so glum. If you make your own lunch to take every day, it shouldn’t be so bad. Now, finish reading the rest of the story.”
And Mum was back at her computer again, tap-tap-tap. Gilla pouted at her back but didn’t say anything, ’cause really, she was kind of pleased. She was going to get micro-braids! She hated soggy, made-the-night-before sandwiches, but it’d be worth it. She ignored the little voice in her mind that was saying, “every six weeks?” and went back to her reading.
“Euw, gross.”
“Now what?” her mother asked.
&nbs
p; “This guy? This, like, laidly worm guy thing? It eats Saint Margaret, and then she’s in his stomach; like, inside him! And she prays to Jesus, and she’s sooo holy that the wooden cross around her neck turns back into a tree, and it puts its roots into the ground through the dragon guy thing, and its branches bust him open and he dies, and out she comes!”
“Presto bingo,” her mum laughs, “Instant patron saint of childbirth!”
“Why?” But Gilla thought about that one a little bit, and she figured she might know why. “Never mind, don’t tell me. So they made her a saint because she killed the dragon guy thing?”
“Well yes, they sainted her eventually, after a bunch of people tortured and executed her for refusing to marry that man. She was a convert to Christianity, and she said she’d refused him because he wasn’t a Christian. But some people think that she wasn’t a Christian any more either, at least not by the end.”
“Huh?” Was Kashy ever gonna show up? It was almost time for the party to start.
“That thing about the wooden cross turning back into a living tree? That’s not a very Christian symbol, that sprouting tree. A dead tree made into the shape of a cross, yes. But not a living, magical tree. That’s a pagan symbol. Maybe Margaret of Antioch was the one who commanded the piece of wood around her neck to sprout again. Maybe the story is telling us that when Christianity failed her, she claimed her power as a wood witch. I think that Margaret of Antioch was a hamadryad.”
“A cobra?” That much they had learned in school. Gilla knew the word “hamadryad.”
Her mother laughed. “Yeah, a king cobra is a type of hamadryad, but I’m talking about the original meaning. A hamadryad was a female spirit whose soul resided in a tree. A druid is a man, a tree wizard. A hamadryad is a woman; a tree witch, I guess you could say. But where druids lived outside of trees and learned everything they could about them, a hamadryad doesn’t need a class to learn about it. She just is a tree.”
Creepy. Gilla glanced out the window to where black branches beckoned, clothed obscenely in tiny spring leaves. She didn’t want to talk about trees.
The doorbell rang. “Oh,” said Gilla. “That must be Kashy!” She sprang up to get the door, throwing her textbook aside again.
There was a young lady of Niger . . .
“It kind of creaks sometimes, y’know?” Gilla enquired of Kashy’s reflection in the mirror.
In response, Kashy just tugged harder at Gilla’s hair. “Hold still, girl. Lemme see what I can do with this. And shut up with that weirdness. You’re always going on about that tree. Creeps me out.”
Gilla sighed, resigned, and leaned back in the chair. “Okay. Only don’t pull it too tight, okay? Gives me a headache.” When Kashy had a makeover jones on her, there was nothing to do but submit and hope you could wash the goop off your face and unstick your hair from the mousse before you had to go outdoors and risk scaring the pigeons. That last experiment of Kashy’s with the “natural” lipstick had been such a disaster. Gilla had been left looking as though she’d been eating fried chicken and had forgotten to wash the grease off her mouth. It had been months ago, but Foster was still giggling over it.
Gilla crossed her arms. Then she checked out the mirror and saw how that looked, how it made her breasts puff out. She remembered Roger in the schoolyard, pointing at her the first day back at school in September and bellowing, “Boobies!” She put her arms on the rests of the chair instead. She sucked her stomach in and took a quick glance in the mirror to see if that made her look slimmer. Fat chance. Really fat. It did make her breasts jut again, though; oh, goody. She couldn’t win. She sighed once more and slumped a little in the chair, smushing both bust and belly into a lumpy mass.
“And straighten up, okay?” Kashy said. “I can’t reach the front of your head with you sitting hunched over like that.” Kashy’s hands were busy, sectioning Gilla’s thick black hair into four and twisting each section into plaits.
“That tree,” Gilla replied. “The one in the front yard.”
Kashy just rolled her perfectly made-up eyes. “Okay, so tell me again about that wormy old cherry tree.”
“I don’t like it. I’m trying to sleep at night, and all I can hear is it creaking and groaning and . . . talking to itself all night!”
“Talking!” Kashy giggled. “So now it’s talking to you?”
“Yes. Swaying. Its branches rubbing against each other. Muttering and whispering at me, night after night. I hate that tree. I’ve always hated it. I wish Mum or Dad would cut it down.” Gilla sighed. Since she’d started ninth grade two years ago, Gilla sighed a lot. That’s when her body, already sprouting with puberty, had laid down fat pads on her chest, belly and thighs. When her high, round butt had gotten rounder. When her budding breasts had swelled even bigger than her mother’s. And when she’d started hearing the tree at night.
“What’s it say?” Kashy asked. Her angular brown face stared curiously at Gilla in the mirror.
Gilla looked at Kashy, how she had every hair in place, how her shoulders were slim and how the contours of the tight sweater showed off her friend’s tiny, pointy breasts. Gilla and Kashy used to be able to wear each other’s clothes, until two years ago.
“Don’t make fun of me.”
“I’m not.” Kashy’s voice was serious; the look on her face, too. “I know it’s been bothering you. What do you hear the tree saying?”
“It . . . it talks about the itchy places it can’t reach, where its bark has gone knotty. It talks about the taste of soil, all gritty and brown. It says it likes the feeling of worms sliding in and amongst its roots in the wet, dark earth.”
“Gah! You’re making this up!”
“I’m not!” Gilla stormed out of her chair, pulling her hair out of Kashy’s hands. “If you’re not going to believe me, then don’t ask, okay?”
“Okay, okay, I believe you!” Kashy shrugged her shoulders, threw her palms skyward in a gesture of defeat. “Slimy old worms feel good, just”—she reached out and slid her hands briskly up and down Gilla’s bare arms—“rubbing up against you!” And she laughed, that perfect Kashy laugh, like tiny, friendly bells.
Gilla found herself laughing too. “Well, that’s what it says!”
“All right, girl. What else does it say?”
At first Gilla didn’t answer. She was too busy shaking her hair free of the plaits, puffing it up with her hands into a kinky black cloud. “I’m just going to wear it like this to the party, okay? I’ll tie it back with my bandanna and let it poof out behind me. That’s the easiest thing.” I’m never going to look like you, Kashy. Not any more. In the upper grades at school, everybody who hung out together looked alike. The skinny glam girls hung with the skinny glam girls. The goth guys and girls hung out in back of the school and shared clove cigarettes and black lipstick. The fat girls clumped together. How long would Kashy stay tight with her? Turning so she couldn’t see her own plump, gravid body in the mirror, she dared to look at her friend. Kashy was biting her bottom lip, looking contrite.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have laughed at you.”
“It’s okay.” Gilla took a cotton ball from off the dresser, doused it in cold cream, started scraping the makeup off her face. She figured she’d keep the eyeliner on. At least she had pretty eyes, big and brown and sparkly. She muttered at Kashy, “It says it likes stretching and growing, reaching for the light.”
Who went for a ride . . .
“Bye, Mum!” Gilla and Kashy surged out the front door. Gilla closed it behind her, then, standing on her doorstep with her friend, took a deep breath and turned to face the cherry tree. Half its branches were dead. The remaining twisted ones made a mockery of the tree’s spring finery of new green leaves. It crouched on the front lawn, gnarling at them. It stood between them and the curb, and the walkway was super long. They’d have to walk under the tree’s grasping branches the whole way.
The sun was slowly diving down the sky, casting a soft or
ange light on everything. Daylean, Dad called it; that time between the two worlds of day and night when anything could happen. Usually Gilla liked this time of day best. Today she scowled at the cherry tree and told Kashy, “Mum says women used to live in the trees.”
“What, like, in tree houses? Your mum says the weirdest things, Gilla.”
“No. They used to be the spirits of the trees. When the trees died, so did they.”
“Well, this one’s almost dead, and it can’t get you. And you’re going to have to walk past it to reach the street, and I know you want to go to that party, so take my hand and come on.”
Gilla held tight to her friend’s firm, confident hand. She could feel the clammy dampness of her own palm. “Okay,” Kashy said, “on three, we’re gonna run all the way to the curb, all right? One, two, three!”
And they were off, screeching and giggling, Gilla doing her best to stay upright in her new wedgies, the first thing even close to high heels that her parents had ever let her wear. Gilla risked a glance sideways. Kashy looked graceful and coltish. Her breasts didn’t bounce. Gilla put on her broadest smile, screeched extra loud to let the world know how much fun she was having, and galumphed her way to streetside. As she and Kashy drew level with the tree, she felt the tiniest “bonk” on her head. She couldn’t brush whatever it was off right away, ’cause she needed her hands to keep her balance. Laughing desperately from all this funfunfun, she ran. They made it safely to the curb. Kashy bent, panting, to catch her breath. For all that she looked so trim, she had no wind at all. Gilla swam twice a week and was on the volleyball team, and that little run had barely even given her a glow. She started searching with her hands for whatever had fallen in her hair.
It was smooth, roundish. It had a stem. She pulled it out and looked at it. A perfect cherry. So soon? She could have sworn that the tree hadn’t even blossomed yet. “Hah!” she yelled at the witchy old tree. She brandished the cherry at it. “A peace offering? So you admit defeat, huh?” In elation at having gotten past the tree, she forgot who in the story had been eater and who eaten. “Well, you can’t eat me, ’cause I’m gonna eat YOU!” And she popped the cherry into her mouth, bursting its sweet roundness between her teeth. The first cherry of the season. It tasted wonderful, until a hearty slap on her shoulder made her gulp.
Falling in Love With Hominids Page 6